answers.
“Are you on your way out?”
He tossed his head toward the sliding glass door leading onto my patio, indicating the edge of the dark forest.
William kept to the woods whenever Tess came home. He couldn’t bear to see the reflection of his fate, and the feeling was mutual. Even Ben, the kindest man I had ever known, found it hard to look at his brother-in-law. That left me the sole anchor for Will, and I hated I wasn’t allowed to be angry with him too.
But it wasn’t his fault the girl he had been dating turned out to be a witch with a flair for curses. Breaking up with her had been the right thing to do. After he found out the truth, he had no other choice. Too bad she hadn’t seen it that way.
Brianna had been convinced he was dumping her for another woman, and Will’s reputation hadn’t done him any favors in that department, but that didn’t excuse the way Brianna stormed into his yard that miserable day to find him swimming laps in his pool while a blonde in a bikini sunned on her stomach on a lounger. Or how she cursed them both into their wylde fae forms as punishment for their imagined crimes.
Thanks to a flat tire, I arrived late to the planning party for Ash’s upcoming birthday. Because of that, I escaped the curse. Because of that, they didn’t. Because, if Brianna had spotted me sunning too, she might have hesitated long enough to get an eyeful of our faces. She might have remembered he was a triplet. Or, as my best friend was quick to point out, she might have cursed all three of us out of spite.
Until I found Brianna, or a way to give them back their lives, I would never know if I had been saved or cursed in my own way.
“See you in a few days then.” I kissed his soft forehead, right between his antlers. “Be careful.”
I owned enough land now that my siblings could roam without stumbling across hunters, or each other. Humans had been known to cross property lines after glimpsing their extraordinary fur, but it’s amazing how much hurt a paintball gun can inflict when you know where to aim, and I hit the range two days a week.
With a slight inclination of his head, he turned and walked into the yard, disappearing into the gloom. I watched him go, rubbing my throat like that might help me swallow the lump forming there.
“You’re pushing yourself too hard,” Ben murmured from behind me. “You can’t break the curse if it breaks you first.”
Startling at his voice, I spun to find him standing in the doorway. “How did you know I wasn’t in the shower?”
Stupid and wrong and hateful to—even for a second—imagine him wanting to join me.
“I heard you talking to Will.” He laughed under his breath. “I figured it was safe to assume you weren’t prancing around the bedroom naked with your brother.”
A hot flush chased the word naked around in my head. “No fear of that.”
Ben was still standing there, staring at me, and I started fidgeting. “Did you need something?”
“Do you need help washing out the cuts?”
Another time, another life, that offer would have involved his hands on my bare skin. These days, it meant him mixing a bowl of sudsy water using his daughter’s tearless shampoo to soak my hands in before I scrubbed off the rest alone.
“I’m good.” I flexed my fingers, and the tender skin split. “It looks worse than it is. Edgar was in a particularly foul mood today, that’s all.”
“Edgar,” he repeated, creases lining his forehead.
“The client from 44B? I’m up to cleaning his rooms biweekly.”
Last week, he dumped the contents of his refrigerator on the floor the second I finished cleaning his suite. Irked beyond reason, I left him to gloat over the mess he’d made, happy to envision him living in squalor for a week. But the joke was on me. Food still smeared the floors and walls today, most of it speckled with white or black mold. Only now the wendigo had grown territorial over his rancid stash, and I had to knock him unconscious before I could wipe up the mess. Given the filth he lived in, and his nasty disposition, I felt good about lifting the numbers from the scrap of paper with blood-red ink from his safe, the only clean spot in his entire apartment.
The set of Ben’s jaw told me