Wolves at the Door - Lidiya Foxglove Page 0,31

burger wrapper and tucked it inside the fry box, and then got up. “Can I have the fancy toilet and turn it into a planter? I’m not usually a fan of the toilet planter, but that one barely looks like a toilet.”

“Uh…sure,” I said. Weird transition.

How dangerous was this going to get?

If I was going to choose Helena as a mate, I needed to protect her from danger, and I knew Jasper would think the same thing.

Jasper stared back at me as she left the room. “Are we just going to let her…?”

I didn’t know what to say.

Chapter Fifteen

Helena

That morning, Graham flew back to Pennsylvania and it was time to dig in. I was actually starting to feel nervous about his election. I couldn’t help hoping he lost, but on the other hand, he probably would be a great congressman. If the council cared about people as much as Graham did, we wouldn’t be in our current mess. And I knew a loss would have to hurt. I knew what it was like to work hard on something and fail. He would probably blame himself for spending time with me; maybe deep down he’d even blame me too. I hadn’t actually discouraged him from abandoning his duties.

Shit. Relationships are so complicated. I’m not used to all this worrying about other people…

It felt so right to have someone to miss. I couldn’t help liking it a little bit even though it was messing with my concentration.

Before long, Jake and Jasper and I were back in our work groove gutting rooms over the next few days while Billie got started on the walls…and then quickly found herself something else to do instead. She got it in her head that she was going to turn the old detached kitchen into an artist’s cottage, fancying up the old wooden cabinets with new paint and who knew what else. It was a lot easier for her to work on that because it didn’t involve dealing with layers upon layers of old paint. I could tell Billie wasn’t used to doing the unglamorous stuff.

Fine by me, really. I liked working alone with the guys. But we were really short of hands, especially with Jasper still recovering. And I was itching to look for Deveraux’s diaries. There seemed to be no time for anything.

I would have to make Bevan work. Unfortunately. I knew he was going to be deeply annoyed at getting roped into any part of this. He was such a rule-abiding familiar that I might have shipped him back to my family if I didn’t also know he would die for me without hesitation. Familiars earned their right to be extremely annoying by being loyal.

“This isn’t what familiars are supposed to be doing!” he grumbled as I told him to search the library and the attic and all the bedrooms and look for loose floorboards.

“Familiars are supposed to be doing whatever their witch tells them to do!” I yelled back.

“You really are a baroness, aren’t you?” Jasper was slowly pushing along a dresser that was strapped to a dolly, determined to pull his weight despite the limp. He was working up a sweat, the flannel shirt abandoned somewhere, and I leaned in the doorway to watch him wipe his forehead with the corner of an old band tee.

“I just talk to him like that because he’s so cheeky.”

Jasper shrugged. “We don’t have magical slavery in the wolf shifter world.”

I knew he was just messing with me, but I was pretty sensitive after my brother’s familiar actually did sacrifice herself to save him. “We’ve just always had that sort of relationship. But I would never put him in danger.”

Jasper let the dolly thump against the ground as he paused for water. He glanced behind him like he was looking for his twin. “No…’course not.”

We were knocking out the old bathroom and bedroom first. The Sullivans rented a truck and hauled Deveraux’s waterbed to the dump and we found a local antique dealer to take the old bathroom fixtures. I wanted to weep over the wooden framework around the tub. If only it was in better condition! It would have made a really cool bookshelf or coffee table or something, but it was just too rotted.

“Look at her face,” Jake said as the van from “Trash or Treasures” had driven away. “Someday you will just let it all go without thinking twice.”

“Never!” I cried. “I just love old things. I can’t help it.”

“Can I entice you with