A Cursed Embrace(79)

The witch, sent by the oh-so-lovely Genevieve to assist Aric, remained straddled to her werecougar boyfriend. She stroked his fur, scowling at Danny. “Give me the book.”

Danny held it protectively against his chest. “Um, it’s very delicate. I’ll hang on to it until we get to the gorge.” He glanced at Aric. “If that’s okay with you, I mean.”

“No problem,” Aric answered. “Let’s go.”

The witch huffed before her fuzzy method of transportation took off in a dead sprint toward the gorge. Bren lifted Danny again. We barreled through a section of dried bushes, leaping over and across boulders until we reached the rim of the crater. The sides were steep and sharp along the football-field-wide hole. I panted hard, the thick, dry air making it difficult to catch my breath. “You okay?” Aric whispered beside me. His breaths weren’t as ragged, but then his were lungs were stronger. He kept his voice low so the others wouldn’t hear me. He didn’t want them to consider me weak. And neither did I.

I held out my hand. “Wanna ride?”

His grin told me he knew what I meant. He clasped my hand and leapt with me. I shifted us into the side of the gorge and resurfaced at the center, a few feet in front of the werecougar. The witch on the cougar’s back glared at me, with both surprise and apparent anger we’d passed them.

Aric squeezed my hand once before releasing me. “Thanks, sweetness. All right, let’s do this.”

Bren planted Danny on the ground and stripped before changing. Danny adjusted his glasses and turned the worn text over to the witch. “The section is marked with a—”

“I got it. Super thanks,” she said, cutting him off in true diva fashion. In high school she would have strutted with, if not led, the “mean girls.” My tigress wanted to eat her.

A few of the weres, including her boyfriend, formed a ring around her as her eyes skimmed along the frail pieces of parchment. She chanted. Again. And again. And again. The amulet around her neck sparkled from her magic and from the merciless sun roasting our bodies like wieners. She shielded her eyes and looked to the direction of the bodies and then she chanted some more. She waved a hand. She kicked some dirt. And she chanted more and more, this time swearing between chants. She continued. For at least twenty minutes. Her fits growing hairier each time she returned to the start of the page.

“This isn’t working!”

Yeah. No kidding, Glinda.

The bitchy witch threw Danny’s tattered leather-bound book on the dusty earth. He took a step to retrieve it, but a sneer from the witch and a growl from her werecougar boyfriend halted him midstep.

Bren’s colossal beast form bared his fangs and stalked in front of Danny, challenging the cougar for threatening his friend. “Enough,” Aric snapped. He rushed between the two from one blink to the next.

The werecougar immediately backed down. In the wild, a cougar would make hamburger out of a wolf. But this wasn’t the wild, and they weren’t mere animals.

I ambled slowly to retrieve the book, keeping my focal point trained on the witch. Genevieve had sent Miss Personality along to help the weres. That didn’t mean she’d help me, and it sure as hell didn’t mean she wouldn’t attack. So I watched and waited for one wrong move.

Sweat dripped in tiny rivers between my breasts and down my belly as I bent to lift the text by its tattered spine. Big mistake. The lexicon filled with old magic spells fell apart and scattered in the sweltering breeze swooping into the gorge. The witch had probably called the breeze just to be spiteful.

She shot me a nasty grin just to prove me right. Yup, we may have to eat her.

Danny and Shayna scrambled to snag the floating pages. I would have helped, but the witch’s crappy attitude warned me against giving her my back. We had a run-in with a clan of witches when we’d first moved to Tahoe. I hadn’t trusted the broom-humpers since.

The witch smirked as another battered piece of parchment floated past her. “Doesn’t matter. It was worthless anyway.”

I waved my hand to get her attention. “I’m sorry. What’s your name?”

“Rita,” she said slowly, like it would be too hard for me to pronounce.

“Then shut up, Rita,” I snapped.

I’m not sure what she saw in my face. Or Aric’s, who’d wandered to my side. But it was enough to make her back the hell away. Fast. “My apologies,” she muttered.

“She was saying the words wrong.” Danny spoke barely above a whisper, enough for me to hear, but not enough to risk pissing off the witch.

I grabbed a few pages that had swept near my feet and joined him. “Could you read them? Would that work?”