Witch Interrupted (11 page)

“We can do that.”

“When do you predict you’ll be restored?” And when would he have to start keeping her away from organic substances that could be used to incapacitate or kill him? As sly as she’d been with the lavender, it was conceivable daily strip searches might be required.

Such hardship.

“Don’t know. Four days? Five? I don’t mend fast when I’m out of practice.”

Most witches didn’t bounce back quickly from a comprehensive drain, and if Katie were alpha, she’d have that much further to go. Her combat bonus, where a convex witch’s refill rate accelerated in a crisis, wouldn’t kick in immediately. And a witch who didn’t have enough power to cast a spell in the first place couldn’t access cayenne for a boost. “What about for less costly spells, like the true eye?”

“A day.” She finally looked at him, squatted on the floor beside her. “If I waste my energy on small magic, it will be that much longer before I top off. Unless…I could drain myself repeatedly. Might be smart to trigger my combat bonus.”

“Don’t worry about it.” She’d be easier to manage with limited magic. Monkshood took a lot of energy. “I’ll hide you…as long as you keep me happy.”

* * *

They spent a restless night in Katie’s apartment, he and Katie in her bedroom, Zhang Li in his and Tonya in hers. Marcus had to redose Zhang Li at the six-hour mark, though Tonya showed no signs of becoming a problem. As for Katie, she’d cooperated with a watchful stillness that did nothing to hide the fact she was probably plotting, every second, how she was going to escape him.

He’d gotten tired of the staring and popped her with a sleep spell. Neither of them was going to rest otherwise. Her bed was big enough that they didn’t have to come into physical contact. To his wolf, that didn’t matter. He could smell her and feel every wiggle of her body on the mattress. It was enough to keep him, and his cock, alert.

Luckily wolves didn’t need as much sleep as witches who’d been drained.

The sun barely peeked through the window in Katie’s bedroom. He turned to look at her. In sleep, she lost her frown, her wariness, her flashes of guilt and doom. They resonated with him, so similar to the guilt he felt over his failure to protect his sister and the doom he felt whenever he considered his mad experiment might come to naught.

He’d lost his family. She didn’t want to lose hers. They had that in common, but it hadn’t been enough for her to overlook her prejudice against wolves.

Katie’s cheek pillowed on her fist. He hadn’t secured her to the headboard since the sleep spell would last the night if he didn’t wake her.

This was probably the only time he’d get away with that. With every sleep, every moment of rest, her power would build, along with her poise. He’d do what he could to keep her from getting her hands on any spell components, but he’d keep a bay capsule on him at all times.

Marcus had planned his exile for years, plotting wolf territories and patrol schedules, setting up safe houses with labs, memorizing everything he could about keeper operations.

The near miss in California had driven him to the southern United States. Some packs’ border patrols were harder to predict, but Birmingham’s alpha was former military and prided himself on discipline. The keepers’ and elders’ efforts centered in West Virginia under the belief Marcus would turn to the Travises.

He’d cultivated the Travises prior to his transformation but had only pretended to go to them afterward. On one hand, it meant they weren’t a resource. On the other, despite having to redirect his study, he’d made some progress, mastering various aspects of the shift. Retaining tattoos and clothing was the first step in changing what he wanted, how he wanted. It was the first step toward regaining his witch…and his security.

With Katie, he was about to take giant leaps. He couldn’t deny his excitement. He was mentally stimulated. Physically stimulated. He had a hard-on right now, in brain and body, due to the woman beside him.

He smoothed a piece of black hair off Katie’s forehead. Should he exclude her from decision-making or attempt to win her over? If his experiments succeeded, it could solve both their problems. The covens would embrace the ability to rescue the transformed and heal cancer and would presumably protect him and Katie from Lars and the council.

Ultimately, Marcus believed they’d disband the council or redirect it to beneficial tasks instead of death and destruction.

It would be better to have Katie as a partner, but he’d only known her a day. Better that he keep her dependent. Vulnerable. He couldn’t lose sight of who she really was.

Today he’d have to protect three people who couldn’t be trusted. Zhang Li and Tonya weren’t trustworthy because they knew nothing. They could wander into trouble easily. Katie wasn’t trustworthy because she knew almost everything.

Today would be complicated.

Tonight would be his reward.

“You don’t get one.” Marcus plucked the pill out of Katie’s hand before she could use it to turn herself into a person no wolf would look twice at. Marcus had woken her an hour ago, at eight, and Katie estimated that the house protections were now gone.

Was he an idiot? She needed that mask.

“Give me that.” Katie lunged for it, but he let her bounce off his shoulder. He dropped the pill into the bottle and the bottle into an overnight bag.

He caught her chin and tilted her face toward him.

Patronizer. She slapped his hand. “No touchie, no feelie.”

“Hold still. That’s an order.” He’d given her several orders this morning, out of her father’s and Tonya’s hearing, and had reminded her what would happen if she didn’t obey.

So she stood, fists clenched, as he softly drew a fingertip from her forehead to her temple to her chin. He’d been touching her all morning, which he claimed was to convince Tonya and her father of their relationship.

Her father and Tonya were downstairs right now.

“No wrinkles,” he said. “You’re young enough to pass. Save the spell.”

Katie wanted to kiss him. He probably knew it too. But more than that, she wanted to kick him. Thank goodness she hadn’t lost her brain entirely. The Birmingham patrol was due in two hours or less, and Marcus had spent the morning side-eyeing her while joking with Dad and Tonya as if they were his friends. Granted, one had to treat the recently wiped with care, but did he have to treat her like pond scum?

If he’d just smile at her, she might…

Throw herself at him.

She hated him. She needed him. She couldn’t quit thinking about sex with him. Partly because he kept touching her and partly because, well, she wasn’t blind.

The man was gorgeous.

Would it be tonight? Would he…would he enjoy it? Or would it be a demeaning, mechanized experience?

The kitchen clock ticked loudly, emphasizing what was at stake. Katie should be eradicating all evidence witches had ever been here. She knew the process. It shouldn’t take long. She, Dad and Tonya lived in a way that allowed them to mount a quick escape. Yet she’d put off shredding papers, burying simples and pushing Marcus to go, go, go. Instead she’d made everyone eggs and bacon for breakfast.

Without being ordered to.

She trailed Marcus into the living room. He hadn’t ordered her to stay in the kitchen, and he hadn’t ordered her to drop the subject.

“What if we can’t avoid the patrol? I need that mask. We’re talking a twenty-foot radius. At least, that’s how far wolves could sense an unmasked witch when I was a…”
Keeper honeypot.
“In my prior occupation.”

He shrugged. “You’re of age.” Juvenile wolves weren’t all minors. “I’ll say you belong to me.”

“Like that will matter,” she scoffed. Tonya and Dad were downstairs filling a tattoo kit, per Marcus’s instructions. He kept glancing at the store camera, as did she, so she knew he wasn’t a hundred percent comfortable with the separation. “They’ll force us all to join the pack. Me, you, Ba, Tonya. You’re withholding my mask to bully me, and it puts us all at risk.”

He adjusted the volume on the television. “How long will the mask last?”

“Thirty-six hours.” Tonya was a master of disguises. Most spells lasted twenty-four hours, tops.

“No can do. I don’t want you to have a mask on. I’m not using one either, so it’s not bullying. It’s procedure.”

“You’re not masked?” she yelled, stiffening. “Jesus. They can sense you a lot farther than twenty feet away.”

Calmly, he rubbed his chin as if reconsidering. “I don’t want either of us to have anything on tonight, Katie. At all.”

She tried so very hard not to blush and failed. “Oh. Right.”

“While we’re on the subject, are you ovulating?” Marcus’s expression didn’t change, but his stare unnerved her. “I’ll need to procure condoms.”

Why was she insulted by the fact he didn’t seem enthused by the idea of sex with her? She shouldn’t care. But she did.

He raised his eyebrows. “Your heart rate just increased.”

“I’m stressed.”

“Finish packing.”

She stomped into the bedroom, grabbed the go bag from the closet floor and tossed it on the unmade bed. “I finished fifteen minutes ago. Tonya’s and Dad’s bags are complete too.”

“I know. I put them next to the door. I just assumed since yours was in your closet, you weren’t done.” Coming up behind her, he reached for it. “Does it have more space? I’d like to pack extra simples.”

She didn’t want him touching her luggage, so she tapped his watch. “We should go. If we’re not going to mask, we don’t have a huge safety radius.”

“Large enough.”

“Don’t be so sure. Have you considered that the two of us together might be more…noticeable?”

“Tonya did say we make an attractive couple.” His hands settled on her shoulders, and he set her aside as if moving a piece of furniture.

“Marcus,” she said, hoping to divert him from her duffel, “it’s a legitimate question.”

“You mistrust my self-preservation instincts?”

He was too close to the bed for her to wedge herself between him and her luggage without being obvious. “It seems like you’re being careless.”

“I’m never careless. I’ve avoided Birmingham for six months. I know my radius well.” He unzipped her bag, the corner of his mouth curling up when she growled at him in irritation. He sorted through her possessions until he located the items she’d secreted with the more innocuous things. He pulled out the spell baggies and a small bottle labeled Shampoo. “Aren’t these supposed to be in the case with your organics?”

“I was in a hurry.”

He set the baggies aside and sniffed the bottle. “Tut, tut. What do you need with a strong emetic?”

Dammit.
It had been like pulling teeth to stow those things while he’d been staring a hole through her every move. If he found what was inside her tampons, she was really going to hear about it. “I figure at some point in the next five days I might want to puke.”

“It’s harmful. It wouldn’t affect you. What could you mean to do with it? Are you old enough to remember when
Arsenic and Old Lace
was first in theaters?”

“Are you?” she shot back.

“Born in 1908.” Witches didn’t reveal their ages easily, and it surprised her that he’d just…shared. As if they were friendly. “You?”

It shouldn’t hurt to share back. “1941.”

“Not quite juvenile,” he said generously.

“I was twenty-one when the council…” Took over her entire life and twisted her into a secret weapon he had good reason to hate. He didn’t want to know anything about her except what she could do for his research. “Never mind.”

“I gather they don’t give convex witches much choice.” He refolded her clothing more neatly than she’d packed it. “Could your father not protect you?”

Those were not the days of her life she cared to remember. “Why would he? Convex witches are unnatural and wrong. We warp the precious gift.” She fluttered her fingers at him. “Ooooh, evil. That’s what normal witches think.”

Her father, in the past twenty years, had come around, but they’d not had a healthy relationship while she’d been with the keepers. She hadn’t had anything healthy or good while she’d been with the keepers.

Marcus frowned. She wondered if he realized she was throwing his own words back at him. “Evil’s a strong word.”

“I’m a strong witch.”

“I could formulate a side study of convex versus regular magic.”

She crossed her arms. “Why?”

“The unknown causes fear. Fear makes people assume the wrong thing.” He cleared his throat. “Also, such a study could be fascinating. The keepers wouldn’t let me see their materials, but with you on staff, I could eliminate a lot of…unknowns.”

“So I’m staff?” She let out an amazed laugh. “Will I be getting a salary? Perhaps a glowing letter of recommendation when we’re through?”

He just smiled, that awful, awful smile that made her want to jump him in a sexual way. Setting her clothes aside, he returned to her bag. With a sniff, he located a packet of herbs in a pair of socks. Then, to her dismay, he opened her zippered pouch of feminine articles. “Sachets?”

“Tampons,” she said. “You were curious about my menstrual cycle. Put those in your database.”

He smelled the pouch anyway. “Interesting hiding place.” He withdrew the fake tampon, ripped off the carefully glued paper and held up the finger-sized tube of herbs. “But I assure you, you don’t need to give me the gift of extra libido.”

He slid it into his trouser pocket while Katie did her best to maintain a poker face. If she’d sprinkled any of that delightful medley into his food, he’d have become as distracted as she was, and—maybe—she could have overcome her wolf lust long enough to neutralize a rapacious beast intent on having sex with her.

A dangerous ploy if she didn’t want to be forcibly seduced. Lust spells and wolves were…combustible. But technically, Marcus was already planning to have sex with her. And she’d agreed. And she damn well wanted it, so she’d been willing to risk his combustion.

“I forgot that was there,” she deadpanned.

Marcus fiddled with the herbs in his pocket, studying her with narrow eyes. “Tonight you can fight me if that’s what you enjoy in bed, but can’t it wait? I have to ensure everyone’s safety.”

Even her ears grew hot at the images now in her mind. “That’s hardly the reassurance I want.” Goddess. She needed to nix the fantasizing and behave like an adult.

“What do you want?”

Him. She forced her mouth to speak other truths, though.

“I don’t want you to underestimate the situation. Out of negligence, out of a desire to scare me, I don’t know. I don’t care.” She took a deep breath and exhaled to calm the butterflies. “I’ve agreed to work with you and I understand your motivation, but I don’t want your choices to endanger my father and Tonya. And me, of course. I sure as hell don’t want the keepers to find out I’m alive.”

“You’ve fooled Lars into thinking you were dead for twenty years,” Marcus said, repacking her bag. “I’m sure you have plenty of ideas for avoiding him.”

“With magic,” she insisted. “That’s how we managed. My advice is, find a witch who can hide us until my magic comes back. That’s what works, Marcus. We can’t be shitting around with our lives. But I guess that’s out of the question because you think you…know everything.”

He zipped her duffel. “Yep.”

“Are you not going to tell me any of your plans?” Katie paced across the room. She raked her fingers through her hair. Finally, finally, as thoughts of actually being found by Lars intruded, her sex obsession ebbed. “You must have nothing to tell. We need to make some calls. We might get lucky and dodge the patrol—but it’s less likely the longer we hang around here.” When he didn’t immediately leap into action, she continued. “That doesn’t help Ba and Tonya get their memories back. Our situation is desperate. I could telephone Vern.”

She was babbling. Her mood had escalated into the panic she should have been feeling this whole time, and she was paying for the delay with a vengeance.

Zero to sixty in under ten seconds. She buzzed with a harsh panic she hadn’t felt for years. They were going to get caught. Marcus was being a dumbass. Why were they lingering? They needed to mobilize hours ago to avoid the Birmingham patrol.

“I got the impression you don’t want to rely on Vernon. What about Tonya’s sympathizer friends?”

“They won’t be her friends when they find out what she’s been up to the past twenty years. They’ll cut her off without question for helping me,” Katie explained. “They aren’t very forgiving.”

Many sympathizers considered wolves to be their better aspects. Their attrition rate, however, wasn’t as high as one would expect for witches who seemingly worshipped the wolf.

Purists, on the other hand, wanted all wolves dead. Lars had been rabid about it. Purism had been a calling for him, barely kept in check by region elders and various directors of the keepers. There were other purists on the council, but none as zealous as Lars.

Katie would have expected a council led by Lars to try to take over the world, but oddly enough it had become less effective once he had become director, according to Tonya.

“The sympathizers wouldn’t help me either. They think I’m on the keepers’ side,” Marcus said.

“That leaves Vern. He’d hide us all.” She might need to tell Vern a few lies to get him here, but once he arrived, the old donkey would do the right thing.

He always did.

“Vernon Harrower might be Harry Travis’s friend, but he won’t hesitate to notify his fellow elders about me,” Marcus said. “That’s assuming he could reach us unnoticed. The Travises and Vernon are both being watched by the council.”

“Lars hates him. Of course they spy on him. But Vern knows how to duck spies.” Staying in touch with Katie had been child’s play for the former director of the keepers.

“I realize you have great faith in Vernon’s abilities, but it’s not safe to contact him.” He checked his watch and sighed. “Five minutes. Come here.”

“What for?”

He just crooked his finger at her. She kicked a pillow on the floor, walked over to him and glared. “Is that an order?”

Marcus, completely unexpectedly, caught her in a strong embrace. He held her against him, no claws, no innuendoes, no comments about monkshood, and scuffed one big hand across her hair. “It’s all right, Katie.”

She hadn’t cried today, but her throat lumped with a sudden threat of tears. “It’s not all right. Third worst day ever.”

“Not first?” he asked, stroking her neck and back. “I like to be first.”

Damned competitive wolf. “The day they came to get me for the council and the day Lars tried to kill me were worse. You’re number three on my list of suck. You’ll have to try harder.”

He laughed, a rumble that started deep in his chest. “If I told anyone Chang Cai, the dreaded Black Widow, could be funny, they wouldn’t believe it.”

“I didn’t use to be,” she said, relaxing against him. The life of a keeper hardly lent itself to comic relief. “I changed.”

“I didn’t use to be either.”