Beauty and the Beastmaster - Linda Winstead Jones Page 0,41

damn many of them. Silas could not relate. He’d been on his own for so long that the idea of a big family was alien. And terrifying.

He left his truck and walked to Gabi, who clutched her purse close to her chest as if it were a shield.

“Where are your tools?” she asked, her words too quick and breathless.

“I don’t need…”

“You’re going to need tools.” She glanced toward the door. “When I turned on the light they just went crazy. As I left I turned the light off again, I’m not sure why it was just habit, I guess. Sorry. I should’ve left the light on so maybe they’d hide. It would be better if they hid. What kinds of tools do you need for that many mice?” she muttered, the question not necessarily directed at him.

Silas glanced at Jordan, who just shrugged and said, “I don’t know what’s going on. She won’t let me open the door.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to see what’s going on in there,” Gabi said, her fretful gaze flitting to Jordan.

They’d begun to draw a crowd, if you could call four more people a crowd. In downtown Mystic Springs, seven people definitely qualified. Silas smiled at Gabi and said, “I’ll take care of it.”

He opened the door and walked into the shop. Gabi was there to keep anyone else from entering. She guarded the door, protecting the others from a few rodents.

The first hint that something was very wrong was the sound. There was a rustle in the walls, on the floor, from the back where there was a small office and a restroom. He turned on the light and the mice, not one or two but at least a hundred, swarmed. Some tried to hide in crevices and dark corners, but others ran straight for him. No wonder Gabi had panicked!

Silas held out his hand, and they all stopped. Even the sound, that rustling of an unnatural gathering of rodents, ceased. With a flick of his fingers he guided them away, herding them toward the back door. They went, scrambling over one another, obeying his silent command. Even those he could not see, those who’d hidden from him, listened and joined the exit. He unbolted and opened the back door and herded them out. They swarmed around his feet but didn’t touch him, didn’t run over his boots.

Once they were all outside he guided the mice along the backside of the downtown businesses, through tall weeds and past trash cans that would normally prove tempting. They scurried this way and that, sometimes scrambling over one another, but they obeyed. They stayed together and moved as he commanded. Behind and beyond the library, across Magnolia Street, to the vacant lot where Marnie’s house had once stood. From there it was easy enough to guide the rodents to the edge of the woods, where he silently instructed them to scatter. And they did.

Silas stood in what had once been Marnie Maxwell’s back yard, before a fire had destroyed the house and left a blight on the neighborhood. He watched the woods for a moment, no longer seeing the rodents but feeling them go, sensing their energy as the unnatural magic that had guided them into Gabi’s shop faded away.

Jenna no longer trusted him to get the job done, so she’d either cursed the shop herself or she’d had someone else do it. Not one of the Milhouses, but another witch. Someone who wanted isolation, as she did.

As he had, when he’d first learned of the plan.

Was he going to let one night in a woman’s bed change his mind?

He was such a sap, where women were concerned. The entire animal kingdom would answer his call. They obeyed his commands, they would come to his aid if ever he needed them, he knew what they needed and what they wanted, at all times.

Women, all humans, were a different story.

Silas retraced his steps, back to the beauty shop back door, which still stood open. He walked through the shop and out the front door. When he stepped back onto the sidewalk Gabi was there, waiting anxiously for his report.

“You need tools, right? How the hell did they get in? How do you get rid of that many mice? What am I going to do?”

He’d never heard her sound so frantic, so out of control, not even last night when she’d freaked out on him. Then again, he didn’t know her all that well. Maybe she was an