Real power can be pretty. If it wants.
“How wonderful,” she says in that supremely musical voice of hers as I draw closer. “I love when friends drop by.”
I try to take her measure the way I would anyone else, but Savi is as unreadable here as she’s always been in Winter’s kitchen, or in any number of interactions I’ve witnessed with her before this fall. “I don’t think that you do.”
“You’re the first,” she agrees. “But in theory I’m not opposed. Necessarily.”
“I should have requested an audience.” Now that I’ve made it all the way here, chased by ... whatever the hell that was, I realize I definitely should have. It’s one thing to run into her organically while she’s pretending to be an ordinary renter of cottages. It’s something else to ambush her at home. I know Ty would not appreciate something like this. “I realize that’s the usual protocol.”
“I think we’re past protocol, Maddox.” I get the impression that’s news to her but that she’s decided to go with it anyway. She smiles. “But if you encounter a sea of my acolytes, don’t tell them. There’s a certain amount of bowing and scraping that’s necessary to their existence, you understand.”
That makes me laugh. Then she turns around and glides into the house, waving her hand for me to follow her. And I might not have been in a sorceress’s house before, but I know not to look too closely at the things I see moving in ways they shouldn’t in the corners of my eyes.
Hell, no.
If I look straight ahead, I see a simple-enough hallway and courtyards that open up to the night sky. I hear the sound of water fountains gurgling. Or perhaps she has a whole creek running through this place, for all I know. Either way, she leads me to a little table set up in one of the courtyards, thick with those impossible flowers, and when she sits down and motions for me to join her, she looks very much as if she was expecting me the whole time.
It’s some creepy-ass sorcery shit, so I pretend not to notice as I lounge in the seat across from her.
“Tea?” Savi asks.
When I look down at the table that was a pretty tile mosaic with nothing on it a moment ago, I find it covered. There are pots of fragrant tea, a selection of plates filled with things I can’t identify that smell both delightful and very much not from Southern Oregon. Some sugary, some savory, and I feel my stomach rumble.
Sadly, I was not raised to take food from magical things. Once you know that most fairy tales are more or less documentary renditions of actual unpleasant happenings, you learn to take a dim view of everything from witches in the woods to some fool with magic beans.
Savi laughs, clearly reading my mind. “If I was going to hurt you, I could have done that at any point over the last two months without bothering to feed you first.”
“True.” I study her for a moment. “But if you’ll forgive the implied insult ...?”
I tap my nose, and she sighs. Then waves her hand. “Be my guest.”
So I shift, then use every bit of werewolf magic I have on my side to determine that she’s telling the truth. There’s nothing on the table that will harm me, unless you count the carbs.
When I settle back into my chair, human again, she lifts a teacup to her mouth. “Besides,” she says before taking a sip, “I have no desire whatsoever to be at war with the werewolf alpha.”
“Whyever not?” I smile at her. “It’s so much fun thatIdo it all the time.”
She laughs at that, a real laugh I’m not sure I’ve heard before. And she doesn’t sit back and watch me eat the delicacies she’s laid out for me. She joins in, and that puts me even more at ease.
“I was married once,” she says. Then considers. “I suppose, technically, I still am. I can’t say I recommend it.”
She doesn’t elaborate, but she doesn’t have to. The fact that she’s been here since long before I was born with no sorcerer husband around is eloquent all on its own.
“A mating isn’t a marriage,” I tell her, sighing happily around a pastry that manages to be savory and sweet at once, but with flavors I’m not sure I’ve ever tasted before. “It’s not a union, and there’s no getting out of it. It’s total immersion. Pack first, pack forever, you get the picture.”
“More than you can possibly imagine,” she replies, and I believe her. I can hear it in her voice. I decided I liked her that very first day we all moved into the cottages, and I’m happy to discover that my instinct then was right.
Like all my other instincts are too, no matter what pushback I get.
We drink our tea. The courtyard is sweet and pretty, with the chatter of birds in the trees that grow here—though I decide not to look too closely to see if they’re real. Just like I don’t breathe in deeply enough to tell if the flowers are, either. Does it matter? This courtyard is a perfect oasis in the middle of a snowy mountaintop. I don’t need it to be real to enjoy it.
When Savi sets her cup back down on a small table, I can sense that the niceties have been dispensed with.
I don’t wait for her to ask me why I tracked her down here. I tell her about the skunk last night. And what felt like an escalation tonight. I tell her about that weird prickly feeling I got around both of those sacrifices, or whatever they were.
Then I tell her what I felt closing in around me on that rock, and all the way here.
She listens as I speak, interjecting nothing. When I talk about that dark terror that chased me here, she gets that considering sort of look onher face again, this time tilting her head back as if she’s interrogating the night sky. I toy with telling her about Winter’s dream starring Briar but dismiss it. If Vinca really does have her eye on Briar, that won’t matter until and unless the bitch escapes the lake.
