“I can kind of sense it. We all can. You can’t sense anything different about me? Something that smells or feels different?” She arched an eyebrow.
“Well…since you mention it, yeah. You have kind of an earthy aroma but in a good way. I can’t describe it.”
“You really didn’t know what you were? Wow.” Juniper leaned forward and stared, fascinated like I was some kind of unique bug she’d never seen before. “Your senses will sharpen if you stay here, and you’ll find out what your magic power is.”
“Wait, stay here?” My eyes widened. “I need to get out of here. I don’t know what to do, guys. I don’t know how to get back to the human realm.”
“Maybe she should stay and we should talk to Melisande? That’s our coven leader,” Fionnulla said, frowning.
Juniper’s lips pursed together thoughtfully.
“Well, if she wants to go, she has the right to go.” She glanced at me. “Here’s what you need to do. When you get in your car and drive back out of town, you need to focus on the spot where you first entered the fog. Imagine every detail. Every tree. That will get you out of here.”
“Won’t people there notice my car suddenly appearing out of nowhere?”
Fionnulla shook her head. “No, there’s some residual magic around the veil which sort of blurs their thinking. They’ll remember seeing your car coming down the road toward them like normal.” I started walking toward the door. She and Juniper followed me, holding the front door for me, and we walked out the front door together, pausing on the sidewalk outside the store.
Juniper pointed in the direction I’d just come. “Just follow along and you’ll see—oh, shiznit.”
A breeze blew past me and carried the dark scent of Royal, Duke and Earl. My sense of smell was definitely sharpening.
I started running. A pickup truck screeched to a halt next to me, doors flung open, and the three evil stooges leaped out, standing on the sidewalk and blocking my escape.
“Bitch!” Earl snarled as his face went furry. “You stole my van!”
Six
Daphne
Panic and fury surged through my body.
Earl lunged at me, face twisted into a snarl.
I fell flat to the ground and managed to hook my leg around the back of his knee. I don’t care if you’re the strongest person in the world, kick the back of the knee and the leg’s going to give.
He fell flat on his butt with a scream of rage and started shifting. I scrambled to my feet and tried to run, but something happened. Something that froze me on the spot.
An agonizing pain shot through my head. My gums were on fire. My skin itched and my ears ached and my face throbbed.
What was happening to me? I felt as if a beast inside me was struggling to escape.
I turned to run and could only stagger. My legs were trying to bend in ways that they were never meant to. A paw raked at my leg, and claws like daggers carved into my flesh. Blood poured from my calf, and I screamed, kicking at the paw.
The next thing I knew, Juniper and Fionnulla were running past me, yelling. Juniper pointed a pistol at Royal.
“Silver bullets, motherfukka!” she yelled. “You are on our turf! Go the hell home!”
“You can’t shoot all of us!” Royal sneered.
The ground shook. A London plane tree, planted in a square of soil in front of the bookshop, quivered. Roots shot up through the asphalt and started swarming over Duke’s legs. He screamed in horror. “Help me!” he pleaded with his brothers. They ignored him, the two of them in wolf form now, pacing and snarling.
Duke shifted, and as his shape changed, he managed to free himself from the roots before they could tighten around his furry legs.
This was happening. I couldn’t deny it.
A howl tore through the air, and an enormous wolf soared over my head and landed right in front of me, standing between me and the three of them.
It was Killian. Somehow I recognized his wolf. And strangely, I wasn’t afraid of the wolf at all.
