The Cougar's Pawn (19 page)

The tension in Ellery’s body retracted. “Oh.”

Agatha nudged her and whispered, “I would have thought you’d want to get rid of him.”

“I do.” Ellery let out a little huff and pushed her hair out of her face. “That doesn’t mean I’m not petty. If I’m going to be someone’s goddess match, I’d like to think I’m not replaceable.”

“You’re hardly replaceable.”

“And I’m not going,” Mason said, oblivious to their quiet exchange. “Someone needs to stay behind, and with Nick here, it might as well be me.”

“Well, then, that’s settled.” Mrs. Foye cleared her throat and looked from Ellery to Agatha. “Will you join us for dinner?”

Agatha’s silver eyes narrowed, and she worked her jaw side to side.

Oh, boy. She’s thinking.
That wasn’t always a good thing. Agatha had few hobbies, but of the ones she regularly indulged in, meddling was at the top of the list. “What time is dinner?”

Mrs. Foye glanced at her watch. “Around six. I’ve got a bunch of meatballs to … well,
ball
. My recipe calls for sausage and Foye beef. Angus. I ground it myself with some bread I’ve left to soak in buttermilk all day. I add parmesan to them, too, but the secret is really the beef. We used to be the best beef raisers in the area until—”

“Mom,” Mason said. “You’re rambling.”

She cleared her throat again and straightened her cardigan. “Well, it is good beef. Dinner’s at six.”

“I’ll be back at six, then.” Agatha disappeared without another word.

Curious, given Agatha didn’t actually need to eat.

The Foyes all turned to Ellery.

“What?”

“You can’t teleport, can you?” Mason asked, his amber eyes narrowed to slits.

“I don’t appreciate the accusation in your tone.”

“I don’t appreciate you holding out on me. Can you or can’t you?”

“I don’t have to tell you everything … or anything, for that matter. I’ve known you two days. I don’t have to bare my soul to you.”

“Hand me the baby.”

Like hell she would.
She took a big step backward. She’d give him back as soon as Mason stopped being an oblivious dirtball. That might be never. Oh well. “No, I can’t teleport, but not for lack of trying. I can fly, though. A few yards, if the wind is right. Dick.”

Hank laughed and walked away. “Wouldn’t it be funny if she could pop out of here all along and just didn’t?”

“That would be funny.” Mrs. Foye followed him and called back, “Come on over after you get cleaned up, Ellery. I’m sure the girls are eager to see you.”

“Thank you. I’ve been begging to see them all day.”

Mason sidled over and fluffed the hair on top of Nick’s head.

“I should kick you in the nuts,” Ellery said.

“Why? I didn’t even get mad at you for having a knife this time.”

She rolled her eyes. “You drove like an asshole with Nick in the truck. Did you forget he was there?”

“No, I didn’t forget, I just—”

She reached up and put her hand over his mouth. “No excuses. Be the alpha in your own household and put his needs first.”

“I—”

“No. Don’t argue with an E.R. nurse about risks.”

He narrowed his eyes again.

Her well-honed sense of witchy foreboding had barely had time to settle in good before her palm tickled from his tongue’s rapid flicks.

Heat pooled in her cheeks, and she dropped her hand.
Oh my Lord
was what she was thinking, but out of her mouth came, “Ew.”

He could probably tongue her into oblivion, and she had one mind to let him. The other mind reminded her she was carrying a sweet baby on her hip. Tiny little wingman.

She started for the truck.

“You wouldn’t really mind me licking you,” he said with a laugh.

She looked back to cast him the stink-eye only to be reminded that he was brazenly, unabashedly, gloriously buck naked. She took in the dirty red curtains, the drapes, and everything in between in once glance.

Oh my Lord
.

Eyes ahead, she quickened her pace. “Uh. I’m not a fan of cat licks in general, though Pumpkin Pie seems convinced she can convert me to her point of view.”

“If she doesn’t manage it, I will.”

Oh, boy.
Sounded like someone was thinking with the Cougar side of his brain again.

Funny thing was it was getting so she didn’t mind either side so much.

• • •

Endure.

That was the best word Ellery could think of to describe what being within the very enthusiastic embraces of Miles and Hannah. They hugged as many Southern women did—aggressively and leaving no route for escape … or even breathing.

Ellery pushed out a little cough and wheezed as she tried to squirm out from them. “Y’all are going to kill me. I thought you didn’t want that,” she said in a rasp.

“Oh, honey!” Miles let go first, sniffling, and propped her hands onto her hips. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Ellery scooted away from Hannah, who with her teary eyes and exaggerated pout looked like she was about to attempt Smother 2.0.

“Tell you what?” Ellery curled her legs beneath her on Mrs. Foye’s taupe, ultrasuede sofa and gave the soft material an appreciative rub.
Nice. Need to look into that for my next set.

“About the woo-woo stuff.” Miles sank onto her knees in front of the wood coffee table and leaned her forearms onto the glass panel.

It was a wonder Mrs. Foye had managed to keep such a table in such pristine shape with four Cougar children to tend to.

Ellery squinted at it. Perhaps she hadn’t kept it that long. It may have been new. She’d seen Foye Woodworks products—had seen Mason assemble furniture with the ease of a magician and marveled at his talent. For Mason, that table might have been child’s play. She’d never been with a man who made things. Not even sandwiches. There was something undeniably appealing about a man who thought in three dimensions. She’d been practically hypnotized watching him in the woodshop. His easy movements and methodical precision had had her leaning against the open double doorway into the shop and staring. She hadn’t stopped staring until Hank passed by her, gripping a work order.

“You’re making that face,” Hannah said.

Ellery let her meandering thoughts drift away and turned her attention to the friend perched on the sofa arm. “What?”

“The face. The Colvard
trouble
face. The one you and Gail make when you’re plotting something.”

“I’m not plotting anything.”

“Really, witchy woman? You don’t have a plan to get us out of here?”

Ellery rolled her eyes. “Unfortunately, no. I’ve been too busy to think the past couple of days.”

Hannah nodded sagely. “I bet you have. I’m sure that Cougar has been all up in your
busy-ness
, hasn’t he?”

“I don’t appreciate the insinuation.” Ellery ran a hand over her smooth, sopping wet hair and sighed. She hadn’t had a chance to dry it. Worse, she’d taken the fastest shower since living in the dorms during college because Mason still hadn’t fixed the bathroom door and she couldn’t exactly luxuriate knowing he was milling around. He
probably
wouldn’t have intruded, but knowing her luck he would have given her the kind of fright that ended in bathtub concussions and cracked tailbones.

“You’ve been in the house together for two days,” Hannah said. “So, Miles and I made assumptions.”

“That I’d let him all up into my
business
”—Ellery made air quotes—“because we happen to be in close quarters? You think I forgot I was abducted?”

“Hannah was the one who thought that y’all were over there sharing some business. I thought the idea was kind of romantic.”

Ellery looked at Miles. “What?”

Miles shrugged. “He’s cute.”

“I wouldn’t call him that.”

“What
would
you call him?” Hannah’s grin bore a bit too much
tell me so I can judge you
about it for Ellery to want to answer that. Of all the things she’d call Mason,
cute
didn’t come close to being one of them. Obnoxious? Yep. Doting father and tolerant big brother? Definitely. Mind-numbingly sexy? Mm-hmm. Talented? Interesting?

Yes to both.

And maybe that was the worst thing. She could have ignored him if he’d just been attractive. But for him to actually have some things about him that made her think of him long after she stopped looking at him?

Well, that was freakin’ unforgivable.

“Come on. We’ll have a hell of a story to tell when we get home. That’d make the trip to Utah worth it.”

“That’s assuming we
get
home.” Hannah tossed a throw pillow in Miles’s general direction.

Miles harrumphed. “Go with the flow. Look on the bright side of things.”

“Your optimism is nauseating. You’ve been hanging around the babies on the maternity floor for too long. You might need to spend some more time around grown-ups.”

“I thought that was what we were doing with this trip.”

“What have you been doing with Mrs. Foye?” Ellery asked. If she didn’t steer the conversation more aggressively, her two friends would start arguing without realizing they were both on the same side.

Hannah shrugged. “Oh, you know. Watching television. Eating a lot of sour cream pound cake. Staring out windows at one of my best friends doing woo-woo stuff with motherfrickin’ Were-frickin-cougars. You know. Stuff like that.”

Her face may have been neutrally blank, but Ellery wouldn’t have been a very good friend if she’d missed the hitch in Hannah’s voice.

“I don’t know what to say.” Ellery pulled a throw pillow closer and fiddled with the zipper pull.

“You didn’t think you could tell your best friends that you’re … a … ”

“A witch?”

Hannah cringed.

“You can say it out loud. I was born a witch in the same way I was born female. It’s part of my identity like any other thing.”

“But you’re so …
normal
,” Miles said.

Well, Ellery’s family might debate that.
God.
She rubbed her eyes to push back the tears. “Right. Normal.”

“You could have told us,” Hannah said.

Ellery nodded. “You’re right. I could have. And would you have believed me, or would you have told me I’ve been working too much and that I’d feel better after a good night’s sleep? There’s a reason people like me don’t go around blabbing about what they are. It’s not always safe. People don’t always understand.”

“But we’re your friends.”

“Don’t take it personally.
No one
knows, Hannah. No one except the pocket of hooligans Gail married into, and they’re all weird, too.”

Miles’s eyes went wide. “Claude?”

“Witch. Amongst other things … ”

“And his brothers?”

“Also weird. Almost everyone out there is different in some way, and that’s why they all live so close. Why they … cling to each other.”

Mortonville was the perfect place for a witch, but it wasn’t Ellery’s place. Gail had her own busy life and didn’t need her, and Ellery’s witch friends had abandoned her. Depending on where she was, she was either a third wheel or an outcast. So, why was it that she was so eager to go home? Besides her job, she couldn’t think of a good reason. She could be anydamnwhere and feel the same way. Out of place.

“Wow. That’s about all the surprises I’m fit to take today,” Miles said.

The air in the room thinned, crackled, and Ellery took a deep breath preempting Agatha’s arrival. She always seemed to suck all the air out of a closed in space when she teleported, but her energy didn’t bother people who weren’t tied in to weather magic. While Ellery always felt like she’d been tossed into a cold lake upon her arrival, most others didn’t notice anything … until they saw the woman standing there.

“Holy shit!” Hannah shrieked, flailing and falling back from the sofa.

Mrs. Foye ran in holding a spatula and holding up a poised fist—likely full of the same kind of salt she’d been throwing at the genie earlier—and Mason raced in on her heels.

“What happened?” Mrs. Foye asked.

Groaning, Hannah rolled onto hands and knees.

Agatha unbuttoned her trench coat, calmly shrugged it off, and hung it on the rack by the front door. “I believe I may have frightened her.”

“Well, duh,” Hannah said. “Folks can’t just pop in and pop out of places like that. Regular folks walk and use doors!”

“We’re not regular folks, Hannah,” Ellery whispered. She hadn’t been anything close to regular in a year, and she still wasn’t sure if she missed it. At the moment, she
thought
she did, though.

She looked up at Mason in the archway between the foyer and the living room.

He held a towel in one hand and wrench in the other. His mother had put him to work fixing a dripping pipe the moment he’d walked through the door. She’d scolded him for leaving it undone for so long. He’d sighed and mumbled his apologies like any good son would.

Normal. Painfully normal, in spite of everything. It was the kind of normalcy she craved because it came with acceptance.

“Ellery, you’re making that face again,” Hannah said from the floor.

“Yeah,” Ellery said, her gaze locked on the man in the doorway. What was wrong with him?

Nothing.

Not a damned thing.

He could accept her as she was. Maybe even learn to like her as a person and not just as a mate his cougar half found to be suitable.

Mason furrowed his brow and canted his head. “What’s wrong?” he mouthed.

Everything.

She looked at her nails and nudged a couple of her cuticles back. When she looked up again, he gave a little
come here
wave. She shook her head.

“All right.” He crooked his thumb toward the cellar door as if to indicate where she could find him, and left the room.

“Can you get us out of here or get us a phone at the very least?” Hannah asked Agatha, getting as close to the goddess as she dared.

Miles giggled nervously.

Mrs. Foye mumbled something about karma biting her in the ass for how she’d treated her mother-in-law and left the room.

“Her hands are tied,” Ellery said.

“Bull-caca.” Hannah shook her head violently. “You’d really have me believe that an entity who can teleport across half a gee-dee country can’t haul our asses up to take with her? If you believe that, I’m going to have to give some serious thought as to why we’re actually friends, because I’m not convinced you’re not on the right side of this dealie.”