Witch Interrupted (37 page)

When she went looking for Marcus and his new friend, she found them in Zhang Li’s room. Her father liked to sleep on a double bed in a pile of ratty comforters. Marcus sat on the edge of the mattress, watching the cat.

She—Marcus had said the cat was a she—sniffed the blankets and twitched her tail. She was…

She was scroungy as hell. Dirty white with gray spots, the half-grown kitten, while not emaciated, had not lived her days with a silver spoon serving her tuna.

“That cat’s mangy.”

The kitten sniffed a spot on Dad’s favorite blanket before rubbing her whiskers on the fuzzy cloth. Then she rolled onto her back and wiggled as if whatever she smelled had transported her to a happier place.

“Actually, no.” Marcus loosened his tie, one she’d bought for him as a joke, which had wolves all over it. After she’d given it to him, he’d worn it two days out of five. “But she does have fleas and common ear mites called Otodectes cynotis. I got her all her shots.”

“She was a stray?”

“Yes, near my laboratory. I’ve been feeding her. I suspect some human dumped her in the woods near the building. She’s quite friendly.” He reached out and scratched the kitten under the chin, and she began to purr loud enough for Katie to hear from several yards away. “She enjoys this, but don’t touch her stomach.”

“Does she have a name?”

“If she does, she hasn’t told me yet.”

Katie opened her mouth to remind him cats weren’t shifters, but when she looked at him his eyes were twinkling. “Gotcha.”

“Smart ass. You do realize Ba has been chasing the neighbor’s cats, right? Are you going to bring home chickens tomorrow?” Maybe it would keep Dad from harassing the neighbors, though she wasn’t sure how she’d feel about him tormenting animals that lived with them.

Marcus rubbed the cat affectionately several more times before he rose. “I think she’s going to solve our problem for us.”

“With Ba? How is a cat going to convince him to turn back into a person?”

“I don’t know if it will work, so I don’t want to get your hopes up.” He shut the cat in Zhang Li’s room and slid his tie out of his shirt collar.

Katie pressed a hand to her mouth in mock-surprise. “You have doubts? I am so disappointed in you.”

Marcus eyed her as if considering whether she was being serious. “Where is Zhang Li?”

“Out. Probably until well after dark.” She suspected, in addition to chasing cats and chickens, he’d been making rounds. Marking their territory and memorizing all the people in it. They cast a masking spell on him daily, so there was no fear the closest pack would take objection to an indie wolf poking around, but old habits probably died as hard with her father as they did with her.

Always know everyone around you and every escape route. Always be ready to run.

“Dusk falls in an hour,” Marcus said. “That’s enough time.”

“For what?”

Without a change of expression, he unbuttoned his shirt, and she recognized the lightening blue shade of his eyes. His wolf was rising. And other things. “For me to repair your disappointment in me, of course.”

“Is that a bay leaf in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” she asked, before helping him undress.

* * *

Later that night, after she and Marcus had made love, eaten dinner, discussed some of his proposals from the council, fed the cat, brushed the cat on Zhang Li’s bed, which Katie found a bit odd but didn’t question, let Dad into the house, let Dad out of the house, let Dad into the house, threatened Dad with the coop if he wouldn’t quit growling at the cat, fed Dad, fed the cat again, made love more quietly since Dad was in the house and gone to sleep, Katie became aware of an odd noise emanating from her stillroom downstairs.

Glass clinked. Drawers open and slammed. The sink gushed.

Nobody was supposed to mess around in her stillroom. Marcus had his lab, she had her stillroom and Dad had his entertainment center. She shouldn’t have to drag all her shit to another location in order to keep people out of it. Of course, that wasn’t why Marcus had a lab—some of his decontamination and electrical needs weren’t suited for this house—but Katie had no desire to leave her space every day just to work.

She sat up quietly and groped for her glasses. Cold air tightened her nipples. It was too late in the year to sleep nude, but she liked the opportunities it provided for more sex with Marcus. She checked the other side of the bed, expecting to see him missing, but he was there.

The whites of his eyes glinted at her in the moonlight shining through the curtains.

“Someone’s downstairs,” he said.

“Are you not bothered by that?” she whispered.

“It’s probably the cat. She’s curious about her new home.”

“Cats don’t turn on sinks.” Katie slipped out of bed, put on pajamas and shoes, and grabbed a gun and a pouch of spell pods, which she buckled around her hips in a practiced motion. Protectiveness and anger at the home invasion woke inside her. Adrenaline surged. The wards hadn’t woken her. That meant the intruder was a witch. “Stay here. I’ll see who—”

“Katie.” Marcus was beside her before she finished her sentence. “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it together.”

“If it’s one of the escaped keepers, you’re defenseless. Mostly.” She slid out the door into their darkened home. The grandfather clock downstairs ticked. Another drawer slammed. Shit, she thought they’d hidden their location better. How had they been discovered? “Stay here. I don’t want you caught in the crossfire.”

She reached the top of the stairs, avoiding the creaky boards she’d already mapped. Marcus joined her, dressed now, carrying a weapon of his own. A cell phone.

“You’re the brains. I’m the brawn. Get your ass back in the room and lock the door,” she ordered in a low voice.

Ignoring her, he flowed down the stairs like a shadow—also avoiding the creaky steps, she noticed—and disappeared around the corner.

Goddess save her from wolves with hero complexes. She chased after him, slowing when she saw that the lights in the stillroom blazed. Whoever was inside had zero discretion.

Then she heard a voice she hadn’t heard in over a month.

“Where the hell is the pennyroyal?”

It was her father.

Katie holstered the gun and raced through the den and down the hallway to the stillroom. “Ba!”

Her father, wearing a pair of pajama bottoms and a grimace, stood in the middle of the substantial devastation he’d wrought on her carefully ordered space. She ran to him and hugged him anyway.

Zhang Li hugged her back for a moment, which was as much as she’d ever gotten, and took her by the shoulders. “I’m all right, girl. I’m all right.”

His grip was firm and his posture was straight. His face had lost none of its familiar wrinkles, but his whole body exuded—not vigor, but not infirmity. His hair was thick and extremely overgrown. His fingernails and toenails—well, the less said the better.

“What the fuck, Ba?”

“I need you to use some pennyroyal on me.” He shot Marcus an irritable glare. “Wolf boy’s damn cat gave me fleas. And my ear itches. It’s driving me crazy.”

“It worked,” Marcus told her. “Now you definitely don’t need to be disappointed in me. I’d like to keep the cat, though. I like her.”

“Fleas?” He’d gotten the cat in order to give her father parasites? Parasites Zhang Li could more easily shed in human form. It was…

Genius. Marcus was a genius.

“Have you ever had fleas?” Zhang Li crossed his arms around his scrawny chest, thrusting his fingers in his armpits. “It’s hell. Stupid cat. Why’d she want to sleep with me anyway? It’s not like I’m a dog.”

Katie opened her mouth to respond that
hell
was not knowing if her father was going to be a person again.
Hell
was not being able to discover if Tonya and Vern were alive.
Hell
was killing the man she loved with her tattoos and her magic.
Hell
was thinking Hiram Lars was going to murder them all.

Hell was not fleas.

Marcus slid an arm around her chilled shoulders, annulling the rant. She leaned into his warmth. The new house had many advantages, but she—in an effort to keep their bills down, because somebody had to be practical—decreased the heat to fifty-eight at night.

“Why have you waited so long to change back?” Marcus asked her father. “Your intractability hindered several ongoing investigations.”

Zhang Li put on one of Katie’s lab coats. “It’s freezing. You don’t have to be so cheap, Katie. Get back in the permabrand business.”

“Can you please answer Marcus’s question?”

Zhang Li swung his arms like a man warming up before his turn at bat. “I felt better in that wolf body than I have in thirty years. I was afraid when I started walking around upright, the arthritis would come back. So I just…stayed on four legs.”

“The wolf cures ailments of that nature,” Marcus said. “All you had to do was ask and I’d have reassured you.”

“Well, I know now. Are you going to get me some pennyroyal or not?”

“Not,” Katie said, suddenly irritated beyond belief at her father. He’d been able to shift this whole time but hadn’t? He could have given them the answers they needed but hadn’t? “You could have communicated with us about the keeper stronghold. It sounds like you’ve regained all your memories.”

“Hiram realized Tonya and I couldn’t tell him shit, so he and his punks reversed the life wipes.” Zhang Li laughed. “We still didn’t tell him shit. Took Hiram threatening to kill Tonya to get Vern to run his mouth.”

“Vern protected Tonya?” Now Katie had heard everything. But if adversity had fused her and Marcus into lovers, it could have made Vern and Tonya civil. “Where are they now?”

“No idea.” Zhang Li rubbed a hand over his hair, seemingly enjoying the feel of it. “After Hiram forced the location spell out of Vern, they disappeared.”

Her stomach bottomed out. “Disappearing can mean a lot of things.”

“It wasn’t that kind of disappearing. Hiram was pissed as a wet cat. We went to Millington to get Vern’s sister for that location spell even before Hiram used me to come after you. Talk about a nutcase. You should have killed him.”

“You could have killed him yourself.” Zhang Li, in wolf form, had had his teeth on Lars’s throat. “I don’t want to hear it.”

Her father shrugged. “I didn’t want it on my conscience.”

“But it was okay if it was on mine?”

“You’re tougher than any of us, Katie,” her father said with an unaccountably serious mien. “When you turned out convex, I… Well, I thought I was doing the right thing, but you—you learned to do the hard thing. The thing nobody else would do. If you can’t find an agent for your permabrand business, you should take the council job.”

“Hell, no. I’m finished doing the hard thing.” She crossed her arms, and her throat knotted. Her father had, a few times, apologized for handing her over to the council. For not fighting to keep her. She’d forgiven him—and he’d learned to appreciate her being convex—but it choked her up every time they discussed it.

“Then you at least need to get married. The way you two have been carrying on is a scandal,” he said grumpily. “I’m too old for babies in the house.”

“Babies? Come on.” Katie glared at her father. This past month, she’d been happier than—well, she’d been happy. But she and Marcus hadn’t exchanged declarations of love or permanence since they’d assumed it might be their last words ever. If he had been swept away by the gravity of the Hiram Lars situation, she wouldn’t force him to own his confession.

She loved him, and she knew it. It was enough.

“We’re not going to get pregnant.” She couldn’t hide anything from her father the wolf, but he didn’t have to be so…meddling.

“Not anytime soon,” Marcus added.

Katie’s eyebrows raised of their own accord. They’d definitely never discussed children, though they’d paid enough attention to birth control to make sure they were covered. Magically speaking.

“You got a pet. That’s the beginning of the end,” Dad said. “Right before Katie’s mother and I got pregnant, she came home with a cat too. I may not be able to do magic, but I mix a damn fine libido dampener. Ask Katie.”

“The cat was for you, Zhang Li.” Marcus opened a cabinet at eye level, extracted Katie’s pennyroyal and handed it to her. “I would suggest holding this over your father’s head until he cleans up the mess he made in here.”

“I have something for you too,” Zhang Li said. “Tonya gave me a message before she disappeared. It’s about your sister.”

It was Katie’s turn to slip an arm around Marcus when he seemed likely to rant at her father. Not that Marcus was inclined to rant, but her father had spent an entire month feeling his wolfish oats. That probably wouldn’t change anytime soon.

“And what might that be?”

“Elisa’s not dead.” Zhang Li took the pennyroyal out of Katie’s limp grasp as they stared at him. “Lars lied about the accident. The wolf kissers got her to safety. Tonya couldn’t tell you because you’d thrown your lot in with the keepers.”

Marcus eased himself onto Katie’s tall stool, closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. He remained like that, silent and yet somehow volatile, long enough that she exchanged a worried glance with her father.

Was Marcus going to flip? Accuse Zhang Li of lying? Rage about Tonya’s duplicities?

Was he going to find out where his sister was and leave?

She had no hold over Marcus. She helped him with his research when he needed magic. They had sex. They lived together. They’d lived through hell together. She loved him. But she had no hold over him and didn’t want one. If he stayed with her, it had to be because he wanted to.

Marcus dropped his hand and turned his attention to Zhang Li. His eyes were completely brown—whatever emotions he was feeling, he was handling them.

“Where is she?”

“Australia. The baby was a girl.” Zhang Li ambled toward the doorway, with none of the limp he’d had before he’d transformed. “I’ll let you two cogitate that. Me and the cat are going to have a snack.”

As soon as Zhang Li left, Katie took Marcus’s hand. “Are you okay? That’s great news.”