Wolves at the Door - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,3

was getting to be a little much. You couldn’t even get rid of these two without unnecessary punishment.

I wondered how much the council was manipulating Kiersten and Caleb. Did they even know what they were doing? Maybe they had been enchanted to abandon their newborn. Man, I hoped not. That actually made me feel sorry for them.

Kiersten was fidgeting with the buttons of Caleb’s shirt. I’m not even sure she realized what she was doing. She looked genuinely upset. “I guess you got the best of us, um…”

“Billie.” Billie was tapping on her phone. I thought she was calling Blanche Greenwood. Kiersten and Caleb were walking away, leaving me there with a girl who hated my guts and was about to steal the house out from under my nose.

“Billie—I need that house. Please,” I said, a little desperately.

“Well, you’re rich, aren’t you, Helena? Call Mommy and Daddy.” She put the phone to her ear. “Hi, Blanche! This is Billie. Remember? I want your house?”

This was the last thing I expected. I couldn’t blame Billie for wanting to get the best of me. I hated how I treated her in high school. I just didn’t want to be an outcast myself. It was pure survival. But that didn’t excuse things. “Billie, look—”

“I want to offer you three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for it. Yep. I’m serious. I love the house. Yeah, I’m really serious. So serious that I’m standing here waiting at the settlement office. Uh-huh. Oh, I know. She’s standing here too. But apparently she isn’t going to pay you as much. In fact, it sounds like she was trying to take advantage of you from the start. Good thing you didn’t sell that gorgeous manor for a hundred grand, huh?”

This was a nightmare. I didn’t know what to do.

Billie hung up, crossed her arms, and regarded me with triumph. “Not so smug now, are you?”

“I’m sorry!” I cried. “Billie, I was a teenager! I just wanted to be liked and I was already a weirdo so I was desperate. I know I was a bitch, but teenagers are bitches all the time and I’m not like that anymore. I cringe whenever I think of how we treated you. We could be friends now, I mean, we’re both in the same business, and—”

“We are not friends. We are not the same at all. I worked my ass enough to build up my business brick by brick, and you just jumped in with money from your parents, didn’t you? And now you come down here to my territory and try to buy my houses? And underselling an old lady? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

At that moment, Graham pulled into the parking lot in a rental car. Although he drove a BMW back home, he had gone for the bargain compact here. He was frugal, but I had almost forgotten how much of a feast for the eyes he was. Billie stopped yelling at me just to drink in the sight of him as his long legs swung out of the car and then he gave his hair a quick comb, carelessly, before standing up and tilting down his shades.

He was one of those guys who just seemed cool no matter what the hell he was doing.

“Greetings,” he said, in his low, deceptively polite voice that let you know in an intuitive way that he was a good kisser. “Are you the settlement officer?”

“No.” Billie’s arms were still crossed tight.

“She is a witch,” I said through my teeth, “who is offering more than us for the house. She just spoke to Mrs. Greenwood.”

“Oh, is that so? You’re one of the other offers?”

“I’m the other offer,” Billie said. “I ran the first couple out of town already. You two need to go back to where you came from. You don’t want to mess with my crew.”

“Can I…look at the house first?” I was scrambling for ideas. Maybe we could get the treasure out. Unfortunately, I felt certain she knew there was a treasure in the house and it would be no easy task to get it past her.

“No. I’m not messing around. Take your Habsburg chin back to New York.”

I rubbed my face. “I do not have the Habsburg chin!” Oh god, I sounded like my mother.

“You wouldn’t overpay for this house just to get revenge on me, would you? But I’ll overpay to get revenge on you.”

Graham wrapped a hand around my elbow and led me away from Billie