What’s New Pussycat(30)

But what had happened from the time she’d left Derrick until now?

Panic seized her. Jesus. How would she explain this to Derrick? One minute she was in the warm cocoon of his lovemaking, the next poof, gone.

Her stomach, bloated, churning in turmoil and in need of relief, reminded her of exactly where she’d disappeared to.

She’d been in the ether, or the realm, or as Escobar liked to call it, “That place where you steal shit against your will and bring it to me because you have no damn choice in the matter, seeing as I own you.” Then he’d cackle infuriatingly and disappear again until he needed her to snatch more magic.

Had Escobar found her? Her eyes scanned the surrounding area frantically. He was the only one who could send her into the realm. In the past, he didn’t have to be present to ship her off to do his dirty work. He only had to show up afterward and snatch what he’d stolen.

So what the hell? Did he still think she was in his apartment in New York?

More panic clutched her gut. Sitting up, Martine groaned not just at the freezing cold but also her bloated belly—full up with the witch magic Escobar so desperately needed to become a stronger, more powerful warlock. The bunnies scattered in every direction, leaving her alone with her fear.

And naked.

In the woods, with no idea where Derrick’s house was in all this vast acreage she’d heard JC and Nat talk about today.

If Escobar was responsible for plucking her from Derrick’s bed that meant he’d want the magic he’d sent her to retrieve.

Violent chills accosted her exposed flesh as she tried to remember how to purge the magic. Out. It needed out, now. She’d never done it alone before—Escobar snapped his fingers and it was just magically gone.

But if she didn’t purge, surely she’d explode at this rate. Not to mention, she was certainly some sort of homing device, and if he hadn’t found out she was gone yet, it wouldn’t be long before he did if she didn’t get rid of it.

Rising to her feet, she hopped around in a lumbering fashion, the snow sticking between her toes as her teeth chattered. Maybe if she shifted, weathering the icy cold would be easier.

You see, Martine? This is that point in your life that pig of a father of yours told you you’d come to. He told you, someday, as a familiar, you’d need to learn how to handle things like this.

Martine pictured his angry eyes, cold and as green as hers, his face red and pitted with scars from his drinking and fighting, and shivered harder. She pictured her dainty, dark-haired mother clinging to his beefy tattooed arm, coaxing him away from his daughter, shushing him, offering him another drink to appease his foul, hot temper.

Tears sprang to her eyes. She missed her mother so much—a mother who was too weak, too afraid to leave a man like Gavin Brooks. Too afraid to stay in contact with her only child.

So Martine had left instead—the moment the ink was dry on her high school diploma. Packed her things at the tender age of eighteen with her father’s words roaring in her ears. “Someday you’ll pay for turning your back on your own kind, you stuck-up little priss!”

As another round of shuddering chills assaulted her, she began to wonder if someday hadn’t arrived.

Familiars, much like humans or any supernatural creatures, had their good and their bad. As she recalled, a good familiar was an advisor, a healer and a guide to their witch.

A bad familiar killed witches by betraying them and snatching their powers on a quest for immortality.

Her father was the bad. Super bad. A wicked, deceitful man who wanted nothing more than to become a warlock and, eventually, immortal. The problem with that was he’d been really crappy at it, if the hushed whispers of her mother and her now-deceased grandmother were true.

He loved the bottle and horses far more than anything or anyone, and dedication to his wish for immortality fell to the wayside more often than not.

Martine closed her eyes and fought the memory of her mother, Dianna, rushing after her the day she’d left, handing her a thick roll of bills, hugging her hard and pressing a quick kiss to her forehead before shooing her off to keep her husband appeased.

All her attempts to contact her mother were met with deaf ears from there on out. Though, over the years, she’d spied on her often, putting money in places where her mother would find it, like under the welcome mat of their old house in Queens where she knew Dianna would religiously sweep beneath each night after her long shifts at the hospital she cleaned.

All in the hope that one day her mother would try to find her, reach out, allow Martine the opportunity to ease the burden of her alcoholic father’s ever-increasing madness.

But in well over fifteen years, that hadn’t once happened. So she lived on the outskirts of her mother’s life, made sure from a careful distance that she was in good health, had enough money to survive her father’s gambling debts and drinking.