Page 74 of What The Hex (The Family Spells)
Grace, Argent, Spectre, and I had lived here as a young family. There were good memories stamped all over this place, memories that’d been made after she’d been freed from Monster’s influence.
I’d take his non-answer to my question as affirmation; it was his goddamn owl, I’ll bet ya.
Thing was, I didn’t see things quite in black-and-white like Argent did. To him, this guy was nothing but, well, a monster who deserved to be decapitated and sent straight to Hael. For me, though I despised the man, though I planned on doing whatever it took to get him the hell away from Grace, I felt like I just had to ask.
“There’s something goin’ on with you, ain’t there?” I queried, but Monster wasn’t listening to me. He was emerging from the bathroom door on the right side of the fireplace, giving the dusty chandelier above my head a quick look.
“I suppose this will be sufficient. Feel free to take your leave, wolf.”
I smiled at him. Seeing as our first meeting was in the woods of Hael, I didn’t know the guy from Adam, but I also had eyeballs in my fucking skull, ones that he refused to meet. He never looked at me, not directly.
“I’m asking you a question,” I repeated, my voice dropping to a growl. “You’re in love with Graceley still, am I right?”
“It’s an irrelevant question, don’t you think, Caine Wolf?” He swirled a single finger, drawing the leaves in the room together and then, with a flick of that same finger, he sent them swirling out the window and into a gusty breeze. “It makes no difference either way.”
“It makes a difference to me.” I watched him as he plucked the remaining cloths off the furniture and tossed them into a pile near the stairs. When Monster didn’t respond, I gathered them up and took them with me, dumping them into the laundry room off the downstairs hall.
Mahou would do the laundry later, after she was done running around with wreaths and garlands and lights for Grace.
As soon as I emerged into the shop, I saw my wife standing behind the register, thumbing carefully through her appointment book. Bastet sat on the shelf behind her, watching over the shop as she always did.
Spectre and Hex were back at the house with the kids. The latter since he couldn’t leave the property just yet, the former because we weren’t ready to leave the guy alone with our children. Not just now. Eventually, we’d get there. That is, if the little shit-stain was really willing to put the work in.
“We have a lot of appointments backed up,” Graceley commented absently, flipping through the pages. “But I’m in no state to cast just yet. Do you want to take a look at some of these requests and see if you can’t get them done?” She wasn’t talking to me; she was talking to her assistant.
“On it, boss,” Mahou said, working to string the last of the white lights in the store.
I moved over to stand beside Grace. She didn’t look up from the book, casually tossing a question my way as she clutched her peppermint mocha—sans slug slime—protectively in her left hand.
“He’s settled?” she asked, and I gave her a look, slamming my palm on the next page to keep her from turning it and catching her gaze as she lifted her eyes to mine.
“Settled? Fuck no. The man is a pretentious asshat. He looked at the place like it was a wet cardboard box under a bridge. What concerns me is that you even asked about him in the first place.”
“Let’s just get to the equinox without dying, shall we?” Grace offered up with a smile, snapping the book shut and taking a look around the store. Christmas had thrown up in here, that was for damn sure. But at the very least, my wife knew how to make it palatable.
The interior of the shop was done up in gold and white, with the soft glow of lights around the edges of the room and strung across the shelves. Here and there, she’d added green accents in the form of live garland, mistletoe, and wreaths. The only red to be found was in the candles, the poinsettias, and the bows. It was tasteful, more of a winter theme than a Christmas one.
My pack back home left multicolored Christmas lights up year-round, plugged in plastic light-up reindeer on the lawn, and threw the werewolf version of a redneck holiday celebration with fresh venison roasted over a bonfire, football (played as well as watched), and beer. Lots and lots of beer.
Fuckin’ Christ.
There was a reason Pack Citrine Sunrise was the laughingstock of the werewolf community. When the reigning North American Alpha Female had been on the search for an Alpha Male to rule the packs at her side, she hadn’t asked to see a male from our pack.
