A Little Green Magic (The Little Coven #1) - Isabel Wroth Page 0,32

herself away and ran from the room, stumbling over the pile of their shoes, nearly falling flat on her face, tripping on the hem of her skirt when she scrambled to get outside where there was more air and away from the letter that changed everything.

Everything she was, everything she thought she knew... everything. Ivy fell to her knees in the grass, her fingers clawing deeply into the thick carpet, feeling the ground ripple beneath her.

“Ro, just give her some space,” Kerrigan advised. All of them had followed her to make sure she was okay. Ivy heard the soft murmur of their voices as they talked amongst themselves, but Ivy rolled to her hip as she tried to process the bomb Le Doux dropped on her with that damn letter.

Ilsa Greene hadn't used up all her magic in order to have a baby, leaving nothing special or magical to pass on to Ivy. She hadn't died as the result of a fire. She’d been murdered.

All this time... all these years of believing she was a failure, the truth was her mother had given her last breath to bind Ivy's powers.

It was the only explanation for what Le Doux hadn't apparently been able to say outright, and if the binding was somehow tied to the Headmistress, her death three days ago would have cut the strings holding Ivy's magic back.

She distantly heard the roar of an engine and raised her heavy, spinning head expecting to see Uriah coming for her. The man who unfolded himself out of a white truck was most definitely not her mate.

He had on dark green cargo pants and a khaki shirt, a heavy belt circling his trim hips with a sinister black pistol holstered on the right, a brick-sized radio on his left.

His tawny hair was shaggy around his square jaw, his golden eyes piercing in their intensity as they touched on her. He was almost as tall as Uriah, leaner, cutting it close to being pretty instead of handsome.

In spite of his beauty, there was a blatantly supernatural and otherworldly energy swirling around him, ominous and dark, like a thundercloud sliding across the sun.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Juliet demanded rudely, her feet banging against the stairs as she stomped off the porch and down to stand in front of Ivy.

The man narrowed his eyes on Juliet, his nostrils flaring slowly. “Jules, always a pleasure.”

“Don't call me that, Ranger Dick,” Juliet snapped. “How did you even get past the boundaries?”

The ranger gave a droll hike of his eyebrows. “What boundaries? You don't even have a fence around the place to keep critters out.”

Ivy dashed the tears from her cheeks in time to see and hear Juliet take a huge breath, no doubt to let some scathing retort fly, but Rowena intervened. She came down off the porch to pull Ivy to her feet, keeping her arm tight around Ivy's waist.

“Care to introduce us, Juliet?” Rowena said.

Juliet gave a dismissive click of her tongue and defensively crossed her arms over her chest. “Park Ranger Abel McManus, Lion Pride Enforcer, aka a major dickhole.”

A shiver went down Ivy's spine, and with her arm around Ivy's waist, Rowena felt it and tensed. “I see. Well, to what do we owe this unexpected visit, Ranger McManus?”

Kerrigan stepped up to flank Juliet, forestalling whatever answer McManus might have made, speaking to Juliet as though the guy wasn't standing there.

“Girl, please tell me this isn't the same Ranger Dick who begged for a date, wined and dined you out by the falls, then ghosted you like a bitch after you put out.”

Ivy rolled her lips under her teeth and bit down to keep from laughing as a lick of embarrassment turned the ranger's cheeks ever so slightly pink.

Juliet gave a disdainful sniff, also going on to pretend McManus wasn't there. “Unfortunately, it is.”

Kerrigan curled her lip and looked at McManus as though he were covered head to toe in shit. “What a pussy.”

He gave a deep, rattling growl, probably meant to be intimidating, but all it did was make Juliet and Kerrigan snort and turn their noses up.

Rowena, much more tactfully, cleared her throat to get his attention. “We're handling a bit of an internal crisis right now, Ranger McManus. Your business here is...?”

McManus opened his mouth to answer, but another roar sounded and like meerkats, they all looked down the driveway to see a familiar black truck rolling up. Uriah barely got the door open before his bear