witches saved Silver Spruce, not shifters. Johnny might be a shifter by coincidence, but he didn’t save Silver Spruce as a bear. He did it by getting himself saddled with Phaedra’s power.
The truth was that all Silver Spruce’s troubles stemmed from the shifter population. Maybe Joseph Novak had a point about that.
“Can we not talk about that?” Grace held out her hand to Garret. “Was there something you came to see me about?”
He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “Holly and I just wanted to visit you and see how you’re doing since the town was rebuilt.”
“You’ve seen me since then,” Grace pointed out. “You see me every other day when you come to do the diner accounts.”
“I know. I just want to make sure you’re okay.”
“That’s really sweet of you.” She patted his knee and squeezed Holly’s hand. “You two make such a nice couple. I can’t wait for my first grandchild to be born. When did you say you were due, sweetie?”
Wyatt turned to the front window and shut all that baby talk out of his mind. He would bet his last dollar that Garret didn’t tell his dear old mother that five other men magically fathered this baby, too.
Grace might accept that her son became a bear shifter. If she lived in Silver Spruce for any length of time, she might be used to them by now. Sharing her grandchild with five other families was taking it a step too far.
Wyatt thanked heaven he didn’t have any relatives who might find out all the ins and outs of the last few months. He wouldn’t want to explain to them how he became a bear shifter, much less any of the other magical shenanigans involved.
Through the front window, he watched townspeople walking back and forth on the sidewalk. Wyatt couldn’t see Main Street from here, but he imagined Joseph Novak running around town blabbing to everyone that the devil spawn was in town plotting to poison the water or some other nutty shit.
He could just picture Novak tearing around, spinning the townspeople’s heads full of wild stories about the witches and the shifters living in the mountains. His wildest inventions probably couldn’t hold a candle to the truth.
They knew about Phaedra Glint and the Lost Souls and the dark shifter army. What would they say if they knew about the vampires and the Fair Dryad and the hydra and all the otherworldly forces hovering around Pearl Smart’s old house?
Wyatt opened his ears for a second to check on his friends. He heard Grace and Jess talking to Holly about baby showers, and Wyatt shut his hearing down again. He didn’t want to hear anything about that.
He didn’t blame Garret for wanting one more happy memory with his family, though. Wyatt didn’t envy Holly, either. If Garret disappeared, she would be the one left behind to explain to Grace and Jess exactly why Garret wasn’t around anymore. Wyatt wouldn’t wish that job on his worst enemy.
While he stood there waiting for the interview to end, Elise migrated to his side. She stood there in silence. The conversation from the couch washed over them like distant music.
Out of nowhere, Elise nudged his elbow. When he glanced over at her, she nodded to one side. He followed her gaze to a group of men standing on the corner down the block.
The instant Wyatt laid eyes on them, he stiffened. They definitely didn’t belong to Silver Spruce. He’d spent enough time around this town to recognize the locals, but he would have been able to pick these characters out of a crowd of thousands. They didn’t come from around here. He saw that in a split second.
They wore dark sunglasses and black leather motorcycle gear, but that didn’t set them apart from the townspeople—at least, it didn’t set them far enough apart to mark them as strangers.
A dangerous tension hovered around them. They stood in a close knot at the intersection, gesturing in different directions. They pointed toward the park and then toward the mountains. It couldn’t be an accident that they just happened to point toward the mountains where Pearl’s house was, where Holly’s party lived. Wyatt didn’t believe that for a minute.
He glanced over at Elise. She stared at him with her eyebrows raised. These intruders might be from Golden Oak, but one look at her expression told Wyatt that they were strangers to her, too. They were something else, so who were they?
She