Raven Ridge (Witches of Sanctuary Book 2) (13 page)

“What do we need to do now?”

Sera sighs as she walks over to open the windows, allowing the puffs of steam to escape. “Now we wait.”

I run my hands down my face, the stress from the day wearing me thin. Sera takes my hand. “Go on home, Willa. We’ll call you as soon as we hear anything.”

Abby pokes me in the ribs. “Listen to her. Don’t give that boy any loopholes.”

I grin back at her. “You have to promise to call if you hear anything from Delphine. No matter the time.”

“Sure. Sure.” Abby shoves me toward the door.

“I’m serious.”

Abby gives me one more long, stern look and then shuts the door in my face. “Go home, Wilhelmina,” she demands from the other side.

Chapter 13

The Changing

The house is dark. The lights are completely out. The low hint of music trickles through the door. Did I leave my radio on? Maybe Reid isn’t home yet. Maybe he meant his old home? Technically, he might not think of this house as
our
house yet. A soft light flickers around the corner from the kitchen. I step to the edge and peek around the trim of the doorframe. Reid stands at the sink, draining something out of a large pot as steam billows out around it. A candle sits on the counter next to him. “The electricity is out,” he says without turning around. “It must be the storm.”

Of course he heard me coming in the door. He and his highly tuned magic skills that keeping getting stronger and stronger. I lean against the frame watching him. The long, lean lines of his back. Sometimes I forget how strong he is even without the magic. A whiff of deliciousness catches my attention and it goes back to the food. “How did you manage to cook? Can you fuel the electricity now with your awesome skills?”

He smirks over his shoulder at me before sitting the pot back on the stove. “You have a gas oven, Willa. No magic required.”

“Oh.” I guess I should have known that.

I walk in the room, sniffing the air. The sauce bubbling on the stove smells like heaven. My stomach grumbles as Reid pours the creamy white mixture into the pot of noodles. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’s the only thing I can cook without causing a natural disaster in the kitchen.”

“You didn’t have to cook tonight.”

He stirs the giant wooden spoon around the rim of the pot slowly. “Of course I did. A guy doesn’t fulfill an ultimatum without making a good solid effort to plead his case first.”

“What do you mean?”

He dips out a large portion of his noodles and sauce into a bowl and grabs two forks from the drawer. “Grab the candle. Let’s go sit down.”

I follow him into the dim living room. The storm continues to roar outside. Limbs from a nearby tree scratch against the giant bay window, the wind whipping the rain against the glass. We sit on the couch crossed legged, facing each other. Reid holds the bowl of noodles between us. He twirls a large fork full and lifts it toward my mouth.

Delicious. It actually melts on my tongue. “Oh, man, that’s good.”

His satisfied grin is instant. “It’s the only thing I can cook that you’d be willing to ingest.”

“Maybe so, but for a one hit wonder, that is amazing.”

His smile broadens. “It’s your mother’s recipe. She taught it to me when I moved out of Mom’s house. She had this insane notion I would starve to death, and it was the easiest thing she thought my sub-par cooking skills could handle.”

I grab his hand at that. Sometimes I forget how close my mother was to Reid. It used to make me jealous, but now it only makes me love him more. He has this part of her that he carries with him, and he shares it with me. He looks back down at his bowl and takes a large bite before handing the fork over to me. I immediately dig in.

His thumb grazes across my knee. “As you have probably noticed these last couple months…I’m not exactly an easy person to live with. At some point I’m probably going to turn your clothes pink or shrink your favorite sweater. I use up all the hot water every time I take a shower.”

“Reid…” I pause, trying to swallow the giant bite of noodles in my mouth, “you realize a relationship doesn’t come with an application, right? And if it did…your cooking skills, laundry habits, and hot water consumption wouldn’t make the list of questions.”

He smiles down at his hands that now clasp together in his lap. “I felt something weird in the cave while we talked with the Raven.” He glances up, his eyes stern and serious. “I couldn’t hear your thoughts, but it was like I could feel what you were feeling in that moment.”

I drop the fork back down in the bowl. “I noticed it too. I thought it was fluke or I was just imagining things.”

“I’ve been noticing it for a while now.” He scoots forward and points at my necklace. “Do you mind?”

I pull the chain with the silver moon out from beneath my blouse. He takes his chain and pendant out of his pocket and puts it on. He holds the sun circle up, and like a magnet, the two circles immediately clasp together and a ring of white light bursts out of the edges.

“That’s never happened before.” I stare at the glistening white light. “What do you think this means?”

“I think I didn’t read all of that spell, or I forgot part of it.”

I give him a short look and he shrugs. “What? I was like ten, and I wasn’t even supposed to be reading that book. I rushed through it.”

“Reid. What does this mean?”

“I think it means the spell didn’t completely end at dawn like I thought. I think we are still connected. I think that’s why our powers have suddenly grown stronger.”

“I can’t hear your thoughts, though.”

“Are you sure? I mean we haven’t tried since that first night, but we’ve accidently made each other feel things lately.”

I try to think of something, but I know it doesn’t come through. Reid takes the bowl of noodles from my hands and places it on the coffee table next to us. “Concentrate.”

I close my eyes and his hand runs up my thigh, pressing his palm against the soft denim of my jeans. Suddenly the spot on my hip, the copy of my pendant that the spell carved into my skin, starts to burn.

Do that again.

Okay.

My eyes pop open and I’m met with his smile. “I knew it.”

I shake my head. “Okay, so the spell is still in effect. What does that have to do with us? Relationship-wise.”

He scoots closer to me on the couch.

I have difficulty expressing how I feel in words. But if I could show you?

His body moves above me and I lean back, further back, until I’m on the pillow. He looms over me, his green eyes searching mine for my answer. I nod. It’s all I can manage, especially with his lips so close to mine. I take hold of his shirt and pull him down the remaining inch. He smiles against my greedy lips.

Always a damn tease.

That’s when I see it. The flash and then the vision. The first moment he met me, here in this house, barely a few feet from where we are now. My chest grows tight, and it’s hard to breathe. I’m nervous, and furious. My every thought a jumbled mess. Then my face comes into focus. Just my face.

I never knew my eyes were that bright.

I open my eyes to find Reid’s closed, his forehead against mine. Those were his thoughts and his feelings from that night. I thought he hated me. He wanted me to leave so badly. Turns out he didn’t want me to leave at all.

I waited for you so long. And you didn’t even know my name. There was no way you could have known it, but I guess I felt a little ridiculous…waiting all that time.

I touch his chin. “Look at me, Reid Thomas.”

He opens his eyes and I kiss him. Gently. Slowly.

I want him to feel it. The longing. The loneliness I felt sitting out on that dock the night he first left my house. I want him to know how much I needed him to come back. How much I needed to stay here in Frog Hollow. Everything I wanted…everything I searched so long to find…I got the moment he unknowingly broke in my house.

I pull back. “I love you.”

His hands grasp in my hair. His lips find mine.
I love you too.

An adrenaline burst ricochets between every nerve inside of me. He crawls up my body. My hands slip beneath his shirt searching for the warmth of his exposed torso. I can’t manage a breath. Something between joy and euphoria clogs my every thought. Is it him? Me? Or maybe it’s a combination of both us that causes a back and forth swell of emotion. Reid’s lips stall at the corner of my mouth and he looks me dead in the eye. “Be mine, Wilhelmina. Forever.”

I smirk at him, sliding my hand further up his shirt. “Is that a question?”

He laughs and his teeth tug at his bottom lip. “You’re seriously going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

I lean up and take a small nibble myself. “Definitely.”

He kisses me back into submission. My head falls onto the pillows and he tilts my chin up, allowing him full access to everything he craves. I know only because I keep getting flashes of the urge he fights. To move faster. Take more. Soft, subtle traces of the barest of contact makes its way down the nape of my neck. “Will you be my girlfriend?”

Yes.

The breath he held tickles across my skin. Crazy boy. Like I would have said no.

His eyes narrow down at me.
I’m glad you find it so amusing.

“I can’t help it. I’m like a muddy puddle of take-me-now over here, and you’re all nervous and shy.”

“I’ve waited a long time for you. For us like this.”

I cup my hands around his ridiculously perfect face. “So have I.”

He sinks into me, and now, even after he heard me confess that I loved him, and then agreed to be his girlfriend, his relief is overwhelming. I run a finger down the soft fabric of his t-shirt. “Now that we have all the logistics straightened out, why don’t you come back here and show me more of those flashes I saw earlier.”

He tries not to smile. “You saw those, huh?”

I hum contently. “Yes, and I’m pretty sure you weren’t wearing this.” I tug at the front of his shirt. “You know the drill.”

“Chippendales it?”

“Exactly.”

Reid rises up on his knees above me, his fingers twisting around the hem of his shirt. He gets it barely past his navel and pauses. His gaze diverts to the window. I follow it, watching the angry raindrops crash against the glass. “What?”

“Nothing.” He shakes his head and starts to pull at his shirt again, but stops. His attention goes back to the window. “Okay. That time it wasn’t the storm. I sense something wrong out there.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

He cups his hands on my cheek. “Listen again.”

The trees shift in the gust of wind that rushes through them. Twigs snap off and leaves billow along the ground from one place to the next. The raindrops are louder. I hear each individual one as it hits the glass, the porch, and the bare trees. A voice. It’s small. It doesn’t move. I can’t quite understand the words. I sit up a little more. “Someone is out there in the storm.”

He stands, listening intently. His head jerks around to me. “Your name. They just said your name.”

I scramble off the couch. “Are you sure?”

I move toward the door, listening, allowing my every sense to ignite in search of the voice again. “Wilhelmina.”

My eyes pop open and I claw at the handle to the front door. Someone needs me. I run out the front door barefoot without looking back. I make it to the edge of the porch when Reid catches the hem of my shirt.

“No, Willa. Stop!”

I fall over the edge of the first step and stumble to a halt. At the end of my long driveway, on his knees in the pouring rain, one hand gripped in his hair, roaring louder than the thunder above him, is a man.

Julien Cote.

I stagger backward up the steps, unable to take my eyes off him. His clothes are soaked and muddy. His black hair glistens as the rain leaks down his face. His features are so familiar. I point a shaky finger at him as Reid grabs me. “That’s real, right? I’m not imagining that?”

Julien is in my driveway.

Reid grips me tightly, holding me on my feet. “No. That is definitely real.”

“Wilhelmina!”

That voice. I recognize that voice. It’s
my
Julien. That voice doesn’t belong to the monster who consumed him, but that sweet, contagiously charismatic friend I risked my life to save. I clutch Reid’s arm. “It’s a trap.”

Once transformed by the curse, there is no return. The monster inside of them takes control forever. This can’t be real.

Julien fights to get to his knees like someone keeps kicking him back down. He stumbles forward, his back snapping until he drops back on the ground. He jerks and twists in pain as the madness sears him alive. “Wilhelmina!”

My heart cries as my own knees buckle completely. It isn’t fair. Julien’s pain isn’t fair. Reid lets go of me, allowing me to sit down on the porch. “Stay behind me, Willa.”

I look up at him, and his face is stone cold. “Promise me. If this is a trap, then he isn’t going to get to you. Stay behind me, or I’ll kill him right now.”

It can’t be my Julien. This is some desperate, maniacal torture that monster thinks will lure me to him. I won’t fall for it. I nod at Reid.

Reid slowly walks down the steps and into the rain. Julien lies writhing on the ground. I stay behind, but close enough to see his face. Flashes of black take over his eyes, but quickly disappear. That shouldn’t be happening. Julien is fully consumed by the curse. “What’s wrong with him?”

Julien flips over on his knees, his face against the ground with his arms tucked under him. “Something happened.” He gasps for air. “It keeps happening.”