Page 26 of Harnessed in Gold

I groan, “Can we justnot?”

“Whatever,” he mutters, no doubt with a roll of those bright blue eyes. There’s a we’ll-talk-about-this-later tone to his voice that I don’t have the energy to disabuse. He shifts gears. “By the way, you might want to talk to Liv. Braden’s being a whiny bitch about the Sweetheart thing.”

My stomach lurches and I shoot to my feet. “Hell, no! No way.”

The guy trying to study jerks and looks up at me with big, scared eyes.

“No take-backs!” I yell into my phone. “He asked her. It’s official. He can’t change his mind now!”

“Betts, Jeez. Chill.”

Chill? I whored myself so Liv could be Sweetheart. If the brothers take that away from her, each and every one of them is going to have to answer to me. I’ve never punched someone before, but I want to right now. I eye the guy cowering behind his laptop. Yeah, dude, you’d better be scared.

Zander uses that tone he always does when he thinks I’m being irrational. “No one’s taking Sweetheart back, babe. Relax. I’m just trying to tell you that Braden’s losing interest in—you know?—”

Oh, I know all right. He’s losing interest in pretending to be Liv’s boyfriend while he’s screwing her and any other hot girl who comes along.

“Yeah,” I bite out. “I get it.”

I’ll talk to her and warn her to stop being ‘clingy,’ but not for Braden or for Zander. They can go fuck themselves. The only person I’m worried about is Liv, and if there’s anything I can say or do to soften the blow, I’ll do it. Because it’s time for both of us to stop moving backward.

CHAPTER SIX

So far,this has been a year of firsts. First ancestor ritual, first fight in a library, first time getting it on with a guy from another realm. And tonight, for the first time in my life, I’m going to a fire hall to play bingo.

Fortunately, Liv is meeting with her lab partner this evening and won’t be back until I’m gone. I know I’ll eventually run out of excuses, and honestly, I’m tempted to tell her everything—the whole shebang. But I don’t want to burden her. She has more than enough on her plate right now.

After dinner, I head out to the west parking lot to find Avery and Leo’s cars parked side by side.

Avery rolls down her window. “Hop in, witchling.” Beside her, in the passenger seat, lounges Rime. As I round the car to climb in behind him, Aaron waves to me from the backseat of Leo’s car. Topaz sits in front of him, arms folded like a pouty teen, and Leo stares stubbornly out the windshield, offering me nothing but his profile.

His absolutely perfect profile.

Fortunately, on the quick trip to the other side of town, Averyand Rime distract me with their speculations about what I felt at the river.

“That’s gotta be the old settlement,” Avery says.

“It could be anything,” I argue. We shouldn’t get our hopes up or jump to conclusions.

“With musket fire?”

“They were still using muskets in the Civil War.”

“When was that?” asks Rime.

“Eighteen sixty-one to sixty-five,” I tell him. “Two hundred years after Browne.”

Avery points out, “But muskets were quicker and more efficient by then. And you said you think people were killed there. If that happened in the late 1800s, it would be in the books, but Leo says it’s not.”

Rime agrees. “He couldn’t find anything about it.”

So, no massacres, slave revolts, or skirmishes along the French Broad in Alderford.

At least none on record.

We turn at the station and follow the line of cars parading past the fire engine garages. Around back, people trickle from the parking lot to the building’s double metal doors. Avery pulls into a space and waits for Leo to come to a stop beside us.

“Y’all ready?” she asks as we emerge from our cars.