Would it be so wrong?
Grayson swallows. He has one hand on his knee, his fingers tapping out some rhythm I can practically feel in my bones. “Olive, I?—”
And then we hear it.
The squeak of an unoiled door easing open.
Someone is breaking into the show barn. And I have a pretty good idea just who that person is.
CHAPTER 14
Grayson whips around, crouching between me and the door, one hand braced on the table leg, the other on the ground in front of him like a runner getting set for a race.
This, I realize, is just the kind of person is he—putting himself between me and the danger without even thinking about it.
But he’s also the civilian here, and so I put my hand on his shoulder and lean forward to whisper in his ear. “It’s okay,” I say, and he jumps as my breath hits his earlobe. “I’m trained for this.”
He hesitates but then gives a curt nod, scootching back a little to let me in front.
The door opens enough to let a person through. And though it’s dim with only the emergency lights on in the barn, I can just barely make out a pale, thin face, a hood covering what I’m assuming is long, dark hair. She’s alone, but she’s got something in her arms.
A box. Like exactly what one might need to carry a bomb.
The second she’s fully inside the barn and the door closes behind her, I spring into action.
“MBI! Freeze!” I shout, bursting from beneath the table as quickly as I can given that my right foot is apparently half asleep.
The woman whirls in my direction, and I get a stunning spell off before she can react.
Unfortunately, the box deflects most of the spell, and instead of being fully stunned, she winds up only a little slowed down.
Which, considering the pins and needles jabbing my foot, is just great.
She turns to flee, and I lunge as best I can, covering the distance between us quickly if not exactly gracefully. Then I throw myself at her legs, which buckle under her as we both collapse onto the soft dirt floor of the barn. The box goes flying.
“Grayson!” I say, hoping that he understands I need him to secure the box and make sure there’s nothing in it that could hurt us. Because I apparently have a fight on my hands.
The woman may be thin, but she’s feisty. She manages to flip over under me, punching and kicking as much as possible under my weight.
“Let me go!” she shrieks, getting a pretty good elbow jab in to my stomach as I pull myself up her body.
“Stop fighting!” I order.
“You stop fighting!”
I try to get her hands pinned, but she gets a fistful of hair before I can stop her. I see stars as she yanks, but there’s no way I’m letting go. If she is The Witch, this is the most important collar of my career.
“Uh, Olive,” Grayson says from a few feet away.
“Gimme a second.” I realize she’s coming for my face with a pretty decent set of fingernails and whip my head to the side just in time. “Stop resisting!”
“Then let me go!” Her eyes are wild but not crazed, and she’s breathing hard.
“It’s paint, Olive.”
It takes me a second to realize Grayson is reporting what’s in the box, and in that second, the woman manages to rear back and bash her forehead against my nose pretty hard. “Crap,” I say as I hear a crack and blood spurts out.
Honestly, it takes every ounce of training I have not to roll off her and let her go while I heal my nose.
