Irish Magic (3 page)

Evangeline appeared surprised by her question. Hannah looked to Ippy and found him in the hallway, looking at his shoes. Whether it was out of submission or embarrassment, she didn’t really know. “Ippy wants to talk to him about werewolf stuff.”

Samson frowned. “You two have a teacher for that. Nicholai is a busy man and—”

Hannah shook her head. “Ippy doesn’t listen to the teacher. She has prickly words. Nicholai doesn’t.” They didn’t question what she meant by using Ippy’s description of the woman’s words, likely because they knew better. Hannah might have been less than half their ages, but she didn’t put up with anyone, not even the alpha and his second, making her best friend uncomfortable.

Evangeline looked between Hannah and her brother.

“For how long?”

“Huh?” Hannah asked her.

“How long as the teacher had prickly words? The classes are important, if he hasn’t been listening for the past two years that she’s been teaching that’s an issue that needs to be addressed,” Evangeline explained softly.

Hannah looked to Ippy for the answer. When he didn’t answer she went over to him, standing in front of him so that he couldn’t ignore her. “How long, Ippy?” she quietly asked him, knowing he didn’t like attention and was probably feeling a bit uncomfortable anyway.

Stop looking at me.

His voice was a desperate plea inside her mind and she obeyed instantly, turning her back to him and staring at the wall across from her until he said it was okay to turn back around.

While it was true that no one ever pushed her around, she never did it to Ippy, either. She’d learned the hard way that backing off and giving him some space was the best thing in the world for him when he was close to lashing out. She’d seen him at his worst and knew it could be scary, both for everyone else and for him. There was no reason to do that to him for just a little answer.

Tell them she’s always had prickly words.

“Always,” Hannah told Evangeline and Samson, not taking her gaze off the pale cream wall across from her and the painting of lilies that hung on it. She didn’t need to look at Samson and Evangeline to be able to tell what their expressions were like. She and Ippy were odd to them, and probably to most people, too. But she didn’t care.

“Better?” she asked Ippy.

He came around in front of her and nodded without lifting his head. She smiled, hoping that he could see her expression, and offered him her hand. After a long moment of silence, he took it and she turned back to Evangeline and Samson. “So can Ippy spend some time with Nicholai today? If he’s here, of course.”

Evangeline nodded. “Sure. I’ll go tell him to get his butt out of bed. We stayed over here last night for a horror movie fest. Too bad you couldn’t come.” She turned and headed back up the stairs.

Samson didn’t move until she’d left. “Hannah, Phillip, would you two please join me in my office?”

She swallowed thickly, ready for whatever punishment she’d probably earned, and gave her alpha a nod. She tried to stay out of trouble, but it was hard sometimes. She squeezed Ippy’s hand, hoping to reassure both of them at the same time. It didn’t really help as they followed Samson into his office.

He took a seat behind his big desk and nodded toward the door when they came through. “Close the door behind yourselves and sit down please.”

Ippy closed the door and she pulled the chairs out for both of them. She hadn’t done anything drastic lately, but still she went through a list of her recent offenses to figure out which one Samson had found out about. Not doing her homework didn’t really seem like a big deal. She’d snuck a cookie before dinner the night before. Class had started and she’d likely be in trouble for being late, but being in a meeting with the alpha was a pretty good excuse for missing the usual crap that the teacher went on about.

Samson sighed and leaned forward over his desk. “Hannah, Phillip, you two are inseparable so I thought I’d talk to you both at once about this. Phillip, if at any time you want Hannah to leave the room please raise your hand and I will ask her to go. Alright?”

Hannah nodded and looked to Ippy, waiting for his answer, too. After a moment, he nodded, too, though he didn’t look happy about it as he squirmed in the big chair.

“We’ve never had a child with autism in the pack before, and it is upsetting to me that Phillip has endured for the past few years with a teacher that didn’t work for him. We won’t be changing out the teachers, but we will find a way to make sure that you get what you need, Phillip. I know you do better when Hannah is with you, so if you want her to be in your lessons, too, then we will do that. But without knowing what you need, I can’t help you,” Samson said quietly, his attention switching between them.

Hannah bit her bottom lip before answering him. “I don’t always think Ippy knows what he needs, though.”

Samson nodded and his gaze focused on her for a moment as Ippy stopped moving beside her. “But you seem to know. I need your help to be able to get Phillip the education he needs. You’re both teenagers now, and there are things you’re going to need to know before you become adults.”

Hannah turned her attention to Ippy. He was looking at her and she offered him a smile. “What do you think?”

Don’t leave me.

“Never,” Hannah promised him.

“So what are you both learning right now?” Samson asked them, his expression going soft.

Hannah shrugged. “Not much. I’ve read all the books and I guess Ippy hasn’t been listening. I’m not good at math and Ippy knows all the science stuff.” How was she supposed to tell him what she didn’t know?

Samson’s face pinched. “Obviously I need to meet with each of the students individually. This is not the kind of headache I needed this morning.”

Hannah flinched. “Sorry,” she mumbled, knowing it wasn’t her fault their teacher wasn’t good, but feeling like she’d had some part in it anyway.

“You’re fine. Wait here, I’ll get Nicholai and he can at least do some stuff with you today. Tomorrow we’ll sit down with everyone and figure out a lesson plan,” Samson replied, rising from his chair. Hannah offered him a tentative smile which he returned and she felt instantly better. Once he was gone from the room, she pulled her phone out of her bag.

What are you doing?

She worked quickly, knowing that she wouldn’t have much time, but wanting to get this post up there anyway. “Posting on the forum about the boy.”

Saying what?

Hannah typed as she talked. “Hello. I hope someone out there can help me. You see, six years ago I was in Ireland and saw a little boy on a train platform. He was wearing a sweatshirt and was with an older man. I think he was a shape-shifter and that he was in trouble. He looked hurt. I want to know that he’s safe.” She frowned down at her phone, wishing that she could describe him more or talk about how his brown fur was hurt or how he wasn’t a wolf like the rest of her family was. Her post sounded so vague.

You stopped talking.

She nodded. “I’m not sure what more I can say without giving us away. I mean, I want to find him, but I’m not going to put the people I care about out there, either. These people will probably go ballistic enough with the mention of me saying I think I saw a shape-shifter.” She rolled her eyes. This wasn’t the first forum she’d joined trying to find him over the years, or even the twentieth, and sometimes there were idiots among the curious people. The problem was that she usually didn’t know they were idiots until after talking to them and getting her hopes up. Sighing, she pressed send and figured that she probably wouldn’t get an answer until the day after tomorrow, at the very earliest. It was a big forum, after all, and her post was just a little one asking for information. She tried not to get her hopes up as she put her phone away.

Her dads had warned her not to expect too much. They didn’t mind her joining the forums or posting on them and they had access to all her accounts, even this new one. She didn’t mind giving them that, since they allowed her plenty of freedom and Christopher, Samson’s partner, was a cop and had sat all the kids down the year before and told them the dangers of making friends online. She was safe—it was the little boy she was worried about. Well, now that she thought about it, he wouldn’t be that little anymore.

If he was even real to begin with.

She pulled her legs up under her and faced Ippy. “You okay with this? Doing something different about class?” He nodded and she relaxed as they waited for Samson to come back with Nicholai.

By lunchtime Hannah had received so many responses to her post on the forum that Nicholai had taken it away from her for being a nuisance and vibrating in her bag. He promised that she could have it back at the end of the day, but she really wished he’d give it to her now so that she could read all those messages while they ate the peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwiches Christopher made for them. The other kids in the class were giving her dirty looks, but she really didn’t care. Okay, maybe she cared a little. They were the only people she knew around her age, after all.

She handed Ippy a pretzel from the pile that had been placed in front of her and watched Christopher and Samson talking quietly in the corner of their large kitchen. She couldn’t hear them, but the way they both looked upset told her it was something serious.

“What are they talking about?” she asked Ippy in a hushed whisper, knowing that his hearing was much better than hers would ever be.

He answered without looking away from the sandwich in his hands.
Your phone and the messages on it.

Hannah was out of her chair before he finished talking. “Did someone reply?” she asked them excitedly when she was close enough.

Christopher blinked up at her, appearing surprised by her appearance at this side. “How did you…”

“Phillip,” Samson answered for her before Hannah could tell him. She nodded, confirming his assumption.

“Was there a message?” she asked again, nearly bouncing on her toes as she struggled to hold still.

Samson frowned at her. “Nothing too important, a lot of wackos. Nicholai gave it to me, but I can’t figure out how to silence the damnable thing and it keeps going off and making it impossible for me to work so, if you can do it and keep it from being a distraction for the rest of the day, you can have it back.” He handed it to her and she quickly did as he asked, lowering the volume all the way before waving to them both and going back to her seat with Ippy. She nearly tripped over a younger kid that had his legs stretched out since she wasn’t looking up from her phone.

Anything?
Ippy asked her when she was back in her seat.

She shook her head and kept reading. “A lot of the usual. People wanting to know where I was, what the boy looked like, how did I know he was different compared to normal people, that sort of thing.” She rolled her eyes. She couldn’t exactly say that it was because she could see him as he was, just like she could see the wolves around her as they were. The teens around her were harder to see than the adults. Like Ippy’s wolf, theirs were just shadowy forms around their heads because they couldn’t shift yet. Samson, though, was a massive fluffy wolf in the corner. His wolf was watching her, even if Samson wasn’t. She could feel his gaze like heat on the back of her neck, and she looked up to glare at him, letting him know that she saw him, too, and wasn’t the least bit challenged by him. He put his ears back and she went back to reading the dozens of messages she had received.

“Wow, Samson was right,” she said.

Ippy finished off his lunch.
Huh?

Hannah put the phone aside as she read the last of the messages. None of them were helpful in the least and it frustrated her. “Lots of idiots. Wanna go for a walk before Nicholai comes to find us again?”

Ippy nodded, and after they cleaned up their trash and put their plates in the dishwasher, she led them out the back door to Samson’s expansive back yard. He had the largest house and the largest yard in the whole neighborhood. Daddy Liam said it was because he’d bought up all the other lots when they were starting to be developed. Whatever the reason was, she was happy that he had, since it meant the pack had somewhere to go and roam that was completely private. Hannah took off from the back deck and shivered, wishing she’d remembered to get her jacket before they left. They wouldn’t be out long, though, so she supposed it wasn’t a big deal.

Once they were in the yard she let Ippy lead. He liked the woods behind the house and they crunched through the leaves for a while until he plopped down in a big pile and she lay down next to him, her head resting on her forearms as she rolled over onto her belly.

Why do you want to find him?
Ippy asked her.

Hannah shrugged. She’d been doing it for so long that it just felt right. “In a way because I want to know what he was. Don’t you? He wasn’t like you, and Daddy Liam said there weren’t any other kinds of shifters aside from werewolves. At least as far as he knew. Plus I’d like to make sure that he’s okay. When I saw him he wasn’t. Maybe he was just having a bad day, but something didn’t feel right to me.”

Ippy shrugged and pulled his knees up to his chest.
Dangerous.

She nodded. “Probably. But once I know something, I’ll give it to Samson and he can send out a rescue party. Like he did two years ago when I thought I’d found him.” She hadn’t, obviously, and the guy that Samson had found had been a creep. But he’d still gone to check it out for her. She pulled out her phone, curious to see if there were any more messages. A weather warning popped up and she smiled down at it. “Snow storm coming tomorrow night.”

I like snow,
Ippy said, lying down next to her to see it, too. He brought his feet back over his hips and she lifted hers as well, lightly touching his feet with hers.

“I know you do. I do, too.” She looked through her messages and, seeing that she had a private message, tapped on her phone to read it. “He’s fine. Stop looking,” she read aloud. Hannah frowned down at it. “What do you think that means?”