“Take a seat,” Willemena offered as she closed the door behind her, and gestured to a pair of chairs at a small table in the corner of her dining room. “Tea?”
“No, thanks…” I started, before catching her wicked smile.
“Tea is for pussies,” she added before I could beat her to it. Her grin and sparkling eyes made her look a decade younger—not a day past seventy.
“Right,” I agreed, wondering how out of my league I was. I hadn’t wanted tea because that was one of the rules of bounty hunting, never eat or drink anything a mark gives you. The witch wasn’t a mark, but it was still prudent not to ingest a thing while I was here.
“I see you’re smarter than you look,” she admitted, taking a seat across from me at the small table. “There are a hundred different ways I could have incapacitated you if you’d taken the tea.”
Swallowing, I cataloged that frightening piece of information in my holy-shit file.
“Let’s get right to it, shall we?” she added. “I don’t think it’s news to tell you that you’re in deep trouble.”
“No, it isn’t.” My life was definitely not flowers and flitting butterflies at the moment.
“I hadn’t realized you were pregnant through the smoke though. That definitely adds a certain... complication to things.” She stared intensely at my belly.
I opened my mouth to ask how she knew, when my body hadn’t changed at all yet—on the outside, at least—but I didn’t bother. The magic around this witch was strong, as intense as I’d ever sensed it. She was more powerful than Gran, and that was saying something. Gran was one of the better witches of the Black clan.
“And by a werewolf?” She arched both dark eyebrows. “You don’t do things halfway, do you, girl?”
I shrugged. “Never saw any point.”
“And spunky. I like it. Never could figure out why people bothered being insipid. What a waste of life.” Her eyebrows came back down and the lines of her face softened for a moment. “I’m very sorry to hear of Belinda’s death. There weren’t many like her in the world.”
“No, there weren’t.” The heaviness of my heart was in every single one of my words.
Willemena studied me so intently that I was certain she could see into my very soul. Finally, after far too long for courtesy, she reached across the table and patted my hand. “Belinda was a dear friend. I’ll do everything I can to help you along your path.”
Painfully, I swallowed yet again. “Thank you.” Gran never mentioned Willemena, but then, what Gran had failed to mention was enough to fill a house.
Suddenly the woman was all business. She leaned back in her chair, and pierced me with gray eyes that didn’t miss a thing. “I see that you already know you’re a kitsune.”
“Yes, I do. I only just found out, though.” I’d left my katana in the truck.
“Before or after you became pregnant with a werewolf’s baby?” She raised an eyebrow again.
I chuckled. “After.”
She nodded. “But you’ve shifted already. How many times? Hmm, twice?”
“Yes, exactly twice.” This woman was a mind reader! Goosebumps broke out onto my arms and I swallowed hard.
“And did you sprout a second tail?”
My mouth dropped in shock, though it shouldn’t have. Clearly I was out of my league with this witch.
She smiled sympathetically. “I see you didn’t know that was coming.”
“Not at all. I didn’t know about any of this.”
Willemena’s face was all serious lines again. “You can expect to eventually grow nine tails, assuming that you’ll take the path of your father’s kitsune powers.”
“Nine?” My voice was the faintest of whispers. Was I not freak enough already?
She tilted her head to one side. “Actually, maybe not. I’m not exactly sure how your kitsune magic will interact with your witch magic. I don’t think anyone knows. The mating of a witch and a kitsune is forbidden for a reason.”
“It’s forbidden?”
