Emma’s gaze was filled with so much empathy that I wished I could curl around her. Instead, I continued holding her gently, diving into those eyes of hers. At last, her sweet voice came. “I’m so sorry. That had to have been awful." We both fell quiet for a moment before she spoke again. "I, uh. I’m going through a messy divorce. I've tried to keep it from Travis, my son, but he's picking up on more of it than I would like. Smart ass kid.” She rolled her eyes and fixed her stare on me. “Rick, my husband, cheated. Bad. It was awful, left me pretty much a total wreck. It may or may not have had something to do with me coming back to Mystic Hollow.”
My blood boiled. How dare this Rick guy treat her like that? Emma was sweet, kind, and joyful, and for someone to stomp all over that made me want to show them exactly what my bear thought of the situation. My bear paced within me, eager to be released so he could wreak some havoc. I could hardly suppress the growl that wanted to vibrate out of me as it was. “I’m sorry he did that to you. If you’d like, I can kill him and make it look like a bear attack,” I offered.
She burst out laughing. I spun her and lowered her into a dip. As she arched her back and let herself relax, I heard a ripping sound. Emma gasped and her eyes widened. “Oh, no,” she whispered, one hand suddenly clutching her stomach.
“What was that?” I pulled her close again, gently taking her hand that had been resting on her stomach and putting it around my waist as we began to sway again.
Her cheeks reddened. I could tell even in the low light, which meant they were probably actually flaming red in the right lighting. “My girdle.”
It took all I had not to burst out laughing. She would probably think I was laughing at her though, which I wasn't, just the situation. “Emma, you don’t need that. There’s nothing wrong with curves.” Hell, I’d thought she looked a little stiff. “Relax. Really, I—”
“Sir?” A voice behind me cut me off suddenly. Emma jerked away and looked at the guy behind me with wide eyes.
Turning slowly, I faced one of the vampires I knew guarded the door to the VIP section downstairs. “Yes?”
“The boss would like a word,” he said.
After nodding at the stooge, I gave Emma a small bow. “Next time,” I said, then followed the crony toward the downstairs door.
Time to do my job.
17
Emma
“This has been the longest three days of my life,” I said with a long moan as I pushed the book away. We’d been researching nonstop, but there wasnotmuch info to be found about sirens. All we knew for sure was what Beth had gotten from her contact. They came inland to the beach to do their ceremony every full moon near the waterfall. The internet said the sirens lived in massive mansions on tiny unplottable islands off the mainland. They also had a flotilla of sorts, but that was spoken about even less in the books.
“So, we’re going to do this,” I muttered. “We are.” I took another bite of the brownie Deva brought for courage. The rich, chocolaty square practically melted on my tongue. It was so gooey and delicious. “Why can’t we see their tiny islands?” I asked.
“Because their magic prevents it.” Beth took another brownie, too. "It's like impenetrable fog."
“This is our only chance.” Deva set out a plate of cookies now that the brownies were demolished, the scent of the warm chocolate chips and macadamia nuts making my stomach growl quietly even though it was full of brownie and should be satisfied with that. “But they aremean, Emma. This could go very wrong. They might even kill Henry as soon as they see us. They're unpredictable at best and their moods seem to shift as quickly as waves coming in to the shore from what I've heard.”
“But you’re sure Henry should be safe until then?” I asked, my pulse picking up.
“Yes. They need a living sacrifice for this to work,” Beth said, and there was only a small note in her voice that reminded me I’d asked the question a thousand times already.
“And we still don’t have any idea why they grabbed Henry out of everyone and if this had anything to do with his gambling?”
Deva sighed. “We’ve all been following up with every contact we have, and no one has a clue.”
Still. I swore with their phones always going off, I constantly felt a strange kind of hope that one of their texts or calls would be with valuable information to make any of this make sense. Unfortunately, so far it’d been a bunch of supernaturals who didn’t have a clue about Henry’s disappearance.
I grabbed a cookie, deciding it was better to focus on the food than my waning hope. Was I comfort eating? Maybe. Not that my friends were judging. “Why are you doing this to me? Sweets are my weakness.”
Murmurs of agreement came from the other women around mouthfuls of cookies. We were all at our wits end when it came to research and, personally, I was getting impatient for the full moon, when this weird ceremony was supposed to take place. I just wanted Henry back safe and sound.
A man walked by the storefront and dropped his gum wrapper right on the sidewalk in front of us. He couldn't see us because of the tint on her glass, but we could see him fine. He hadn't accidentally dropped it either. It wasn't like it fell out of his pocket as he was trying to tuck it away. No. He barely even crumpled it up before he dropped it.
“Asshole,” Buster said with a growl and a flick of his tail.
I’d been practicing my magic every moment we weren’t researching. This wasn't the first moment I'd encountered like this, but it still gave me a thrill to intentionally use my magic. I waved my hand and the man stopped and bent over, coughing hard. A few seconds later, he coughed up a gum wrapper. He turned back in our direction to stare down at the wrapper he’d thrown on the ground.
Looking around in panic, he rushed forward and picked up his discarded wrapper and stuffed both in his pocket. He practically ran away after that. I vaguely remembered hearing about weird stuff happening when I lived here as a kid, but I'd always chalked it up to adults being paranoid or not smart enough to realize what was actually going on. I was such a brat. All the arrogance and invincibility of a typical teenager.
“Hmph.” I nodded. Served him right.
“Nice,” Buster said, then stretched in his patch of warm sunshine. The sun highlighted that he wasn't just a black cat but a tabby cat. The warm light made the dark brown stripes stand out against the rest of his black fur.
