Pack and Coven (9 page)

“Please calm down.” June took a deep breath and released it. She didn't have enough magic to don her Sandie spell, so Harry would have to take her confession on faith. “She's fine. Mostly.”

“What do you mean?” His grip tightened, not painfully but keeping her in place. “Did she leave you a message? Why didn't she leave me a message?”

She felt the compulsion to answer him and fought it so she could choose the perfect words.

“June, this is serious. Where is Sandie? If she told you about me, then you know she's like family to me.” His nostrils flared as his breathing quickened. “Do you understand what I'm saying? If anything has happened to her, I need to know.”

She wet her lips, more nervous than she'd imagined she would be if she ever had the opportunity to tell Harry the truth. Kissing him the second time might have been a bad idea.

“Sandie's not here because…well, she is here.” Goddess, she hoped he wasn't too peeved.

“Explain.”

How could she tell him about Sandie without telling him everything? In order to conserve magic today, she'd dropped two of the three facades her kind often adopted around shifters. She'd kept her humanness but dropped the face witches donned to hide their longevity—and the libido dampener. Not every witch needed that last spell, but she usually dosed herself, considering her affection for Harry. If he'd realized his “elderly” friend had feelings for him that weren't platonic, there was no telling what he'd have done. Besides, it was better if no sharp-nosed wolves ever noticed any sexual urges from witches.

Better for the witches. That was a bad, bad trail of crumbs to follow.

But after today it was cruel, and impossible, to lie to Harry anymore. He would just have to deal with the ramifications.

June threw back her shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes. “I'm Sandie.”

He lowered his head until he was close enough to kiss. “Don't screw around, June.”

His vehemence destroyed her composure. She began to babble. “My grandmother's name was Sandie, but she's dead. You would have liked her, except she couldn't cook. My mom's alive. She can cook. She's on her second pass-through. This is my first. My first time to tell anybody too, and I could get in so much trouble for this, but…”

“But what?” Harry prompted, his tone icy. He stepped away from her as if he couldn't bear to be in her space any longer.

“Oh, Harry.” June's throat tightened. “Please don't hate me. I'm the Sandie you know. I have been all along.”

Harry should have trusted his instincts this afternoon. He'd known it was Sandie in his parking lot. Not even the bloom of youth had been able to mask the woman he'd met eight years ago.

Since then she'd twisted facts, danced around the truth, made a mockery of their friendship. He'd never be able to repay her for helping him escape Bianca and that son of a dog Gavin Householder, but he saw no reason she couldn't have been honest from the get-go.

The woman formerly known as Sandie stared up at him with huge blue eyes. Her lips trembled, and she looked tearful.

Sandie didn't cry. Not even when the movie was a weepie and he himself was surreptitiously dabbing his eyes.

Of course, to his knowledge Sandie had never faced a ravening pack of wolves, raced through the West Virginia mountains and survived a car crash, all while sporting wounds and, apparently, a magic shortage.

Or had she?

The house he'd been in so many times smelled of lemon, herbs and food. Now that he'd met “June,” he could sense her sweet amber essence underlying everything. It had always been there, in the house, swirling around him.

It just hadn't been on Sandie. Good God, could his life get any weirder? Magic. Witches. Enemies from the past he'd hoped never to see again.

His favorite granny, his best friend, turning out to be a sweet young thing with hair like sunshine.

He tried to find his Sandie in June's face. “Why did you trick me?”

“Two reasons.” She ducked her head and pretended to scratch her nose, but she swiped her eyes.

Shit, she
was
crying. Harry felt like a heel. At the same time, he was angry and crestfallen. He didn't care about appearances. Never had. He didn't care how old she was or how oddball she was or how paranoid she was about recipe espionage. They were friends. Didn't she trust him?

“The reasons are?” he prompted a bit more gently.

She sniffed and raised her head. “One, would you have allowed an eighty-year-old woman to get involved today?”

“I would have done what Sandie said.”

“You would not have.”

“I would too. If Sandie gives me an order—”

“Oh, please. You're as stubborn as a mule when you think something's a bad idea.”

Sandie might have mentioned that a time or two, in the exact same exasperated way. He tried again. “If you hadn't been a stranger to me, it would have gone more smoothly.”

“I'm not a stranger.” She dropped her gigantic purse on the coffee table. What was in there, bricks? “This is my real face and body.”

“This could be the disguise,” he argued, sort of hoping it wasn't. Otherwise, the things that had crossed his mind while he'd been cuddling her nicely rounded self in Douglas's truck were more perverted than his usual fantasies about women.

“It's not.” She gestured—at what, he didn't know. “This is me. Everything I was, I still am. Except wrinkled and gray.”

Harry considered her confession. “So you were a liar before and you're still a liar.”

“Oh, that's enough,” she snapped, sounding exactly like Sandie. Again.

Sounding exactly like herself.

But his mind went back to those kisses and how his heart had raced faster while she'd been in his arms than it had when the car had toppled the No Business welcome sign.

Good God, he'd made out with Sandie, and it had been insanely hot. In fact, he wouldn't mind doing it again. If this were true, if she weren't an elderly human, what else would change between them?

“This is a lot to take in,” he said gruffly. “I wish you'd told me a long time ago.”

He'd never thought about romancing Sandie. Yes, he loved her, and would do anything for her, but he loved her as a friend. As family. Never mind that he turned down dates with younger women for Sandie's movie nights or beach trips or even chores she needed done. Never mind that he preferred her company over anyone else's. Never mind that he'd been happier in Millington than anywhere in his life.

What would he have done if he'd known that underneath the gray hair and wrinkles she was the coziest armful in the western hemisphere?

For one, he might have played his cards differently on poker night.

The cozy armful rubbed her wrist. “Should I be offended you never told me you were a werewolf?”

“I couldn't tell you that,” Harry protested, knowing how stupid he sounded. “It's sacred.”

“Just like I couldn't tell you I was pretending to be old.”

“Ah.” He raised a finger. “But you knew I was a shifter. I had no idea you were a witch.”

She sighed. “We prefer the term wyse, but we gave up that fight a long time ago. Pop culture dictates terminology whether you want it to or not.”

“Wyse ass,” he muttered.

“No, like wise women, but we're not all women.”

“Probably not all wise, either.” He was going to lose this one. He could feel it already. She was as stubborn as she thought he was, particularly when it was possible she might have a point.

“The more important reason I came to you as myself,” June continued, speaking over his mutters, “is that maintaining another face takes lots of power. I needed the power to help you.”

He stepped closer to her. “Why do you make yourself look old anyway?”

“The same reason you don't let people see you shift. Privacy.”

That wasn't the whole story. Folks could be private when they looked like June as easily as when they looked like Sandie, despite the fact her current appearance would attract a lot of horny guys.

“Is there anything else you haven't told me?”

She blinked. “Yep.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Some of it,” she said. “I know you can smell dishonesty, so you might as well quit sniffing me.”

“Are you the only witch around here?” He needed to touch her, to reassure himself this was happening. That she was real. He fingered one of her blond curls, pulling it until it was straight. Sandie's hair had been curly too, but white, and she never wore it down.

“There are others.” The pace of her breathing increased, her breasts rising and falling. “I'm not going to tell you who. It's bad enough I came out to you.”

He had a pretty good idea. He knew the crowd she ran with. It was amusing to think the grannies were all hot witches in disguise, but he doubted any would be hotter than June.

Man, this freaked him out in so many ways. So why wasn't one of those ways how much he still wanted to seduce her?

“You can't let on to anyone that you know about magic,” she said. “You have to play dumb.”

“Why? Is it against your rules to help people like you helped me today?”

She smiled. “We try to be more subtle. What can I say? Bianca jumped you in my tea room, and I had to act fast. It's not like we can enforce world peace or stop wars.” Her gaze grew distant. “Not big ones, anyway. Our powers are limited.”

“So what now? I need to leave town.” As if Bianca's plans weren't enough, the presence of Gavin Householder cinched it. Since he and his mother had fled Roanoke when he was only ten, Douglas and Gavin hadn't recognized him. However, if Gavin realized Harry Smith, stanch indie, was John Lapin, son of Christine Lapin, he didn't want to estimate his chances of survival. Or June's. “You should come with me.”

“We can't leave that easily if Bianca put the border territories on lockdown.”

“That is a complication.” He put his hands on his hips and didn't miss when her attention snagged on his chest, where his gesture stretched his T-shirt.

This pleased him. Despite everything, even the untimely appearance of one of the few people in the world he wished were dead, he was very attracted to June.

It didn't seem to matter to his body that June was…Sandie. His Sandie, who'd never had the hots for him before. He could sense gut emotions like lust, fear and dishonesty; he'd have noticed. Then again, he hadn't noticed his bunco buddies were witches.

He sniffed. And smiled.

Either way, she was into him now. Even if he didn't act on it, he was going to enjoy harassing her about it. It was what friends did.

His friend. His Sandie. His best friend Sandie was a pink-and-white angel who'd kissed him as if she meant it.

She dragged her gaze from his chest and returned to his face. “It's not that complicated. You can hide here. There's a spell on my house like the one I put on the car. Shifters can't sense you as long as they don't come inside.”

As he'd seen the car spell in action, that was heartening. But it didn't feel like the right decision or she'd have brought him here in the first place. “Can you get out of work tomorrow?”

“I'll have to,” she said. “I should be with you in case anything happens.”

“For how long, a couple days?” If they stayed, they'd have to amuse themselves somehow, trapped inside. He had some ideas.

“After I rest up, we can leave town.” June cradled her wrist. “You mentioned Gavin several times. Do you know him?”

Harry considered how much he could tell her, how much was relevant. “I did a long time ago. He didn't recognize me, so it doesn't matter.”

She watched him with a frown. “It will matter if Bianca picks him. He seemed a lot like Bert.”

Harry recalled Violet's conversation with Charles. “I don't think they want another Bert. I doubt she'll pick him.” If indies like his friends in New York knew to avoid Roanoke, packers would know about the situation there too.

They had to know what was going on in order to cover it up.

“Isn't it unusual,” she mused, “for a werewolf to have a scar?”

“Not that rare,” he lied. Only the strongest shifters could maintain tattoos or piercings between forms because the change healed injuries. Harry didn't know whether Gavin maintained the scar to intimidate people or because he couldn't rid himself of it, but he did know how the bastard had gotten it.

June blinked several times as she considered his words. The gesture struck him, suddenly, as familiar. Sandie always did that.

Everything about her was familiar except her age. And his reaction to her.

“Do you know Douglas too?” she asked.

“Douglas isn't a bad man, but he's weak. Gavin's mother is the only thing that keeps Gavin from going feral.” Probably the only thing that kept him from murdering dear ole dad and stepping up himself—Gavin wasn't Oedipal.

With his own mother.

“That's when you lose control and shift during anger, isn't it?”

“The wolf is a privilege, not a weapon.” Whether they wanted to or not, shifters lived as men in this age of computers and cameras. Secrecy was paramount. Lack of control was a taint that was not tolerated.

“I thought that resulted in banishment.”

“It does.” When Harry and his mother had been with Roanoke, Gavin and his buddies had never crossed that line in front of anyone who could prove it.

Or anyone who could defend herself.

Except the once. His mother hadn't tried to prove anything after giving Gavin that scar. She'd just taken Harry and run.

“How do you know these things about the Householders?”

Old frustrations stirred inside him. Harry shook his head—shook it off. It hurt to rip off scabs, and the edges were softening. “I don't want to get into it. We have to decide what to do, and I vote we run.”

“You already wrecked one of my cars.” She heaved a sigh. “My Caddy won't take your kind of abuse.”

“Free repairs for six months,” Harry offered. “When does my disguise wear off?”

“I can't say precisely,” she said, nibbling her bottom lip. “For me it lasts until the talc and herbs work through my system. The spell wasn't meant for you so it's unpredictable.” Her lip darkened as her teeth brought the blood closer to the surface.

“When will you have the strength to renew me?”

“I don't know.” Now she licked her lips, and Harry wondered how he could be getting turned on at a time like this.

Adrenaline rush? Avoidance? Animal attraction?

“I need definites.” He needed a cold shower.

She frowned. “Don't be so pushy. As long as I get some sleep, we'll be okay.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to toggle his brain back on course. It seemed to have bopped past their dangerous situation and fixated on what June would do if he kissed her. “Can you get your friends to cast the spells we need?”

“I don't want to involve them if I can avoid it.” She reddened. “We're not supposed to let anyone know about us. If they find out how much I told you, I'll be censured.”

The thought of June being punished for helping him got his mind off sex. Some. “Annette likes me. She'd help, right?”

Her mouth opened and closed. “Who said anything about Annette?”

“So Annette's a witch, huh?” he asked, satisfied he'd guessed correctly. He wondered if Annette's family knew. “If you're a Playboy bunny, what does she look like, a supermodel?”

“I don't look like a…” Her cheeks flushed more, and she grabbed his arm, tugging it in frustration. “You swore on your pelt you'd never tell anybody. This has to be our secret.”

“I didn't swear, you just told me to swear.”

“Harry,” she pleaded, “don't tease. This is serious. You know how pack wolves can get voted out—get their bond severed? That could happen to me. We don't lose our abilities like wolves do, but it's grueling to lose your…friends.”

What she was describing sounded like a version of a shifter's social drive. Maybe witches needed a network to feel whole like wolves did. He rubbed his thumb across her knuckles. “Come on. You know I won't tell.”

“So we'll stay here?”

He dropped her hand and paced to the bay window overlooking the driveway. It was steep, gravel and narrow. Behind the house was forest and mountainside, and to the right was a rocky incline to another road.