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Hecate’s gaze is still dipped toward her tea, almost as if she’s fixated on the curling steam over the china’s Greek key pattern. “Has it, now?” She lifts an equally quixotic smile. “And we’ve barely completed the…interesting…repairs on your cottage from yesterday.”
Her riff on my words isn’t missed—by myself nor Kara. Though my woman manages a bashful giggle, I focus on making our handclasp into a stronghold. Demonstrating a deeper truth to her.We’re doing this together.
“The cottage is fine,” I state. “And if it weren’t, I’d be capable of making the fixes myself. But we’re not here to collect hardware supplies.” I pivot, moving closer to the table. “We need to talk, Hecate. And this isn’t light mealtime chatter.”
That earns me a glance up from the tea steam. The goddess’s light laughter is, I hope, the highest volume of sound this conversation will warrant.
Until Circe runs in like she’s got fire on her heels.
“We have a breach!” she yells. “Northeast perimeter.”
Hecate is drained by three skin tones in just as many seconds. “Morgana,” she calls.“You are needed now.”
But the summons is unnecessary. The tall enchantress, already shedding her kitchen apron, is already sprinting across the room. “What’s happened?”
“The perimeter. We’re breached.”
“Are you sure?”
“Northeast perimeter,” Hecate intones. “Investigate immediately. And thoroughly.”
“Yes, Goddess.”
With one downward sweep of an arm, Morgana leaves only a dusty silhouette to represent the spot in which she just stood.
The moment doesn’t earn a second of my admiration—or even Kara’s notice.
“What is it?” she demands, twisting her fingers against mine with hot anxiety. Sure enough, I turn to see twin bonfires rising in her wide eyes. “What’s going on?”
“Not sure, sweet one.” Hecate is a little less earth mother and much more mama tiger. She reaches and clutches Kara by the shoulders. “But keep your energies at one with your light. We will find out. Soon.”
That might as well go down as prophecy. A few seconds later, the sala’smain door flies open. In the doorway, a pair of figures are outlined by the sunlight that’s now broken past the clouds outside.
All too swiftly, they gain form and features.
Faces that I’ve readily shoved to the back of my mind—and have had no intention of dredging back up for a long while.
Certainly not here. Certainly not like this.
“Kara.” I jerk her close. “Get behind me.”
Without hesitation, she obeys.
“We intend no harm,” the man utters.
“You have to know how rich that is from your lousy mouth, Arden Prieto,” I snarl.
The coal-eyed woman beside him speaks next. “We truly haven’t come to stir up trouble.”
Hecate moves up with a pair of gliding steps. “Words that are equally as nebulous from you, Veronica Valari.”
“And I care more about a fabricated headline in theDaily Spill.” Veronica hitches her hip with a sleek extension of a stilettoed boot. “Which provides great piddle paper for my dogs’ crates and little else.”
It would be stupid to assume that the demon mother of Hollywood would be close friends with the mage mama of Olympus. With so many veils lifted, I see that glaring truth.
Kara steps around from behind me. “Funny. That’s not what you say to theSpill’s editor in chief when he visits every month.”
The faintest blush creeps across the woman’s cheekbones. “I do what I must to keep you kids in their good graces.”
