CHAPTER FOUR

Marcella appreciated that Drea had covered every travel contingency…or had at least tried. She’d booked Marcella and Soren seats on opposite ends of the plane for their short flight, booked them in motels across the street from each other and had even set them up in two separate rental cars.

The problem with the flight was that the guy in the seat next to her took up more space than even tall, broad Soren would have, and he kept elbowing her. Her anxiety had been cranked up to eleven for the entire duration, made worse by the fact that he wouldn’t stop talking.

She hated when people talked too much. She hated when people touched her without her preparing first.

When the plane landed in Atlanta, Marcella bolted off the aircraft, shaking out her hands and arms, and trying to rid herself of the contamination to her aura.

Soren stood in the gangway tossing his phone from hand to hand and giving her a crooked grin. “Can’t remember the last time I flew with an empty seat beside me.”

“You had an empty—ugh.” She stormed past him, turning on her phone as she went and scanning the terminal’s signs for baggage claim. They hadn’t brought much, which was apparently atypical for Shrew missions. The ladies normally traveled with a treasure trove of weapons that could have made a mobster weep, but that wasn’t an option when flying commercial. Drea was going to have some “essentials” couriered down the next day, supposedly.

“Not my favorite airline.” Soren kept an easy pace beside her with his long stride. “Low-frills. No legroom. They’re usually on time, though. That matters more.”

“I would have rather been a little late and had a bigger seat.” She shuddered again and shook out her hands once more. She couldn’t blame Drea. Drea couldn’t accommodate what she didn’t know about.

“I’ve got tens of thousands of frequent flyer miles. Could probably fly first-class on a couple of different carriers for no added cost.”

“Did you inform Drea of that?” Marcella stepped around an oblivious clump of assholes who apparently weren’t going to disperse in time for a pair of people to get around them.

So much for Southern hospitality.

“I don’t expect special treatment,” he said.

“Right. I’m sure you’ve programmed yourself quite well with some of that mind over matter garbage to get yourself through some very tough jobs.”

“A necessity in my line of work.”

“Also in mine, but if I had my druthers I’d drive, not fly. I don’t like having to sit so close to people.”

“They all bother you?”

She wasn’t surprised by the query. He would have probably known such a question was safe to ask a woman like her. After all, he’d spent nearly a lifetime negotiating Tamara’s moods, and then came to work with the Shrews who were, by their own admissions, poor at socializing.

“No,” Marcella said. “Some people trigger my discomfort more than others. Usually, I do fine if people’s energy is neutral enough, but there’s very little I can do if they’re in my bubble.”

“What happens if they get in your bubble?”

Marcella sped up, not that the pace did her a damn bit of good. Soren could probably run a half marathon without breaking a sweat.

She darted onto the tram seconds before the door closed with him right on her heels.

Shit. So crowded.

She clutched the closest pole, teeth grating as bodies squeezed in around her. They were all so oblivious, going about their business with ordinary cares, and she stood paralyzed, fearing one touch that was too long or too rough would make her lose the always-tenuous hold she had on her body.

She couldn’t fall apart there. She could do that later in a bath. In fact, she was overdue for immersion.

A man, yammering away on his cell phone about stock prices bumped her as the tram took off with a jerk toward the next terminal, and she gasped.

Perhaps there’d been some note of distress on her face, or maybe he was pushing his luck in the way he always did, but Soren moved his big body between Marcella and the businessman and gripped the pole over her head.

“I can’t be worse than him,” he whispered.

He wasn’t.

He was…exactly what she needed.

She wanted so badly to press her face against his chest and take a few breaths to calm herself, but couldn’t—wouldn’t—lead him on that way.

“So you’re a buffer,” she muttered. “Big deal.”

“I’ll have you know I get paid good money to be a buffer sometimes. People don’t like scrawny bodyguards unless those scrawny bodyguards are Shrews.”

Marcella’s cheek twitched into something that threatened a smile. “Not that kind of buffer.”

“What, then?”

“Never mind.”

In spite of what she’d told him, his ability was actually a huge deal. She’d only ever encountered a few people who could so effectively block her from aura pollution, and they were all related to her.

She was about to get really pissy about the twitching originating from near his crotch and thrumming against her lower rib cage, but then she figured out that was his phone.

“Can you wriggle that out of my pocket?” He cut his gaze downward to the left, then right, indicating the people packed beside him. “Can’t move my arms.”

She scanned down his chest to the vibrating lump against his solid thigh. And then she spotted the other lump just to the left of his fly because her gaze was already in the vicinity and she was that sort of opportunist.

He was certainly an opportunity of sorts. One that might make her walk with a limp.

Her throat suddenly went very tight and very dry.

“Could be my mother,” he sang.

“Ugh.” Marcella squeezed her eyes closed tight and shuddered. Thinking about his cock and his mother in the same sentence made her feel the wrong kind of dirty. “You can call her back.”

“She worries if I don’t answer. Answer it.”

The phone stopped buzzing.

Marcella let out a breath.

Off the hook.

But then the buzz started up again.

“Damn it,” she spat.

“Grab and answer, please.”

“We’re about to stop. You can answer your own phone.”

He could grab his own phone from his pocket, and she wouldn’t have to risk nudging his other bulge.

“If I make her wait, she’ll be angry at me for making her fret. Would you do that to your mother?”

“My mother knows not to call me.”

The phone buzzed again and, frustrated at how much time she was spending staring at the two lumps in his pants, she dug her hand into his right pocket to root out the lump that wasn’t attached to him. “Hello, this is Soren’s phone. His hands are tied at the moment.”

“Literally? I shouldn’t be surprised with that one. What do you want, ransom? How much?”

Huh?

The woman had an accident much like Tamara’s when Tamara got tired, only thicker. That made immediately understanding her difficult.

“Um, no,” Marcella said after the words had disambiguated in her head. “We’re on a packed tram. He asked me to answer because he doesn’t have a full range of motion. We’re about to step off.”

“That is why he did not answer?”

“Yes.”

“Who are you?”

Marcella sighed. “Who am I?”

The tram slowed to a crawl, approaching the terminal, and Marcella thought she could toss the phone at Soren and run, but Mrs. Ursu said, “Hello, are you there?”

“Yes, sorry. We’re disembarking now. Have a good da—”

“I believed I asked you a question.”

Marcella didn’t quite manage to stifle her groan.

Soren chuckled and nudged her out of the tram through the throng of people. He could probably hear every word his mother was saying with his extra-receptive shapeshifter ears.

“Marcella Bailey. I’m on a job for Shrew & Company.”

“Oh. I see,” Mrs. Ursu said in an undertone.

Marcella could imagine her tapping her chin and wearing a squint of curiosity.

“I’ve never heard of you. I know all the girls.”

“I imagine you do. I’m new at the agency. I’m Maria’s half-sister.”

“I see.”

As Soren guided Marcella toward the baggage carousel, she mouthed, “What should I say?”

Soren shrugged.

Thanks a lot, jackass.

“Soren is on this job with you? He’s not working with Peter?” the lady asked.

Marcella settled right in front of the machine where the bags were spat out and scowled at Soren.

He smiled that sinful grin that made clear he was having a good time at her expense.

“The job is mine,” Marcella said into the phone. “Soren is your backup, or something.”

“What sort of job?”

She mouthed, “Take the phone.”

Soren put his booted foot up on the ledge of the conveyor, leaned his forearms onto his thigh, and watched the belt cycle past them.

She took that as a no.

“I don’t really know how much I can say,” she said through clenched teeth. “I’m sure you can understand why confidentiality would be necessary.”

“Is the job involving individuals who are supernatural in nature?”

“Yes.”

“Then say as much as you like. Dana won’t mind. My husband has been doing this work for longer than Soren has been alive.”

“And what kind of work is that?”

The first suitcase from the flight landed on the belt in front of Soren. Bright green with a plaid ribbon tied around the handle. Cute, but not Marcella’s.

“You know the sort. Finding people. Sometimes moving people. Occasionally, getting rid of them.”

Lord, help me.

“More often than not, though, just investigating.”

“Well, that’s good, I guess?”

Three black bags in a row drifted past. Not hers. Marcella’s suitcase had a strip of fluorescent blue tape at the top.

“Dana only works with weird people,” Mrs. Ursu said. “You weren’t in the SHREW Study, and I don’t believe you’re one of the psychics she contracts or one of the Catamounts her husband organizes. What qualifies you to be in the company? Do you have—”

Soren took the phone then. “Hello, Mamă.”

Marcella couldn’t make heads or tails of what came out of his mouth next, only that the words weren’t English, and that they were probably about her. Fortunately, she was used to being talked about and wasn’t going to obsess over what he might have been saying.

She pointed her attention to the conveyor belt, tuning out Soren’s scolding tone, and watching for the bag she’d stupidly checked. She’d gotten used to traveling light, and living light, for that matter. Sometimes, she thought her life was merely a nonstop series of errands, the same as her mother’s. Moving from one job to the next.

Soren, still talking a mile a minute at his mother, grabbed his duffel off the belt.

Marcella had never wanted an itinerant life. Her mother had one simply because of the nature of her job—going from one small town to the next, being the traveling obeah woman. And her father…

Well, her father went where Jah led him.

Before Marcella could reach for her bag, Peter had already grabbed the handle.

“I guess you’re always paying attention,” she muttered.

He pulled the phone away from his face and said, “I get compensated well to pay attention.” Into the phone, he said, “Goodbye, Mamă. I will call you later, perhaps.” He ended the call and stuffed the phone back into his pocket before hauling one bag up to his shoulder and grabbing the other by the handle.

“Have you been to this airport before?” she asked.

“I think by now, I’ve been to most.” He started moving toward a sign that read Rental Cars. “At least, I feel like I have. Always on the move.”

“This one’s not so bad. I think Miami is one of my least favorite larger ones, followed by LAX and LaGuardia.”

“You get around that much?” He slowed his gait, ostensibly for her to keep up, and she realized how silly that was. He was carrying an extra eighty pounds of luggage, and all she had was her backpack of essentials.

She shrugged. “Word gets around about what I do. Mostly, people call looking for my mother, but my mother won’t fly, so I’m the next best thing.”

“What are they looking for you to do?”

“Generally, things that I can’t do. Love potions. Revenge magic. Shit like that. I get enough legitimate work that’s either white magic or neutral that I don’t touch the dark stuff.”

“You’re a natural witch.” His words were a plain statement of fact, not an accusation, which she appreciated. Even in her line of work, she encountered people who turned their noses up at the fact she’d come by her gifts through birth and not through practice.

“Comes from my mother’s line. That’s why Maria doesn’t have the same ability. I suspect she gets some things I also have from our father, though.”

Soren edged them to the front of the shuttle line, and the people they were cutting in front of didn’t even complain. That was probably due to a combination of Soren being large and imposing and Marcella’s occasionally useful gift of psychic compulsion. She’d been hoping they’d keep their mouths shut.

They did.

“What sort of things did you inherit from him? Is he like your mother?”

“No, not at all. At least, not to the same extent. I think like tends to gravitate toward like, and maybe my mother saw something in him. Kindred spirits, or whatever.” At least for a few nights. A few nights was all he ever stuck around for early on, though no one could debate the fact that he tried to keep up with his multitude of children. He knew all the names, all the birthdates, and where they all were…for the most part. Maria had spent too much of her teen years as a moving target for him to have any meaningful connection with her.

Marcella instinctively moved to the back of the train car. She didn’t like having people behind her.

Soren eyed the spot next to her, then the one ahead and, glimpsing the crowded queue of travelers awaiting spaces nearby, he started easing into the one in front.

No.

Better him than a stranger.

“Soren.” She canted her head slightly to the adjacent seat, and the SkyTrain took off before he’d even gotten seated.

Twining her fingers, she stared out the window at the airport as the train zipped around the tracks. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been good at small talk. I always work alone.”

“Why?”

“Because I can never tell if people are talking to me because they want to or because I’m making them.”

The woman seated in front of them turned slightly and cut Marcella a side-eye over her shoulder.

Marcella sighed and looked out the window again.

Soren nudged her with his elbow and held out his oversized phone. The screen showed an open notepad app.

“Seriously?” she asked.

“I want to know.”

“Why?”

“Who else can you tell?”

The man had a valid point, so she took the phone from him, being careful not to skim his palm with her fingertips, and tapped in: The ability isn’t something I can turn off and on. It’s built into my nature, like the way I smell or sound.

Or the way she could vanish in a pool of water.

He took the phone and typed: Can people tell when they’re being compelled?

 

Eventually, they figure out something isn’t quite right, and that I’m the one who’s causing them to act out of character, she said.

 

I don’t think it’s working on me.

 

You haven’t been near me long enough to tell.

 

I know magic. Whatever you’ve got isn’t touching me. I’m a born alpha Bear. I’m difficult to assault for the most part.

 

Except during full moons and mating seasons.

 

He shrugged and whispered, “That’s hormones, not magic.”

Every time the man leaned in close, she feared she’d vanish and leave behind a pile of wet clothes where a woman once was. Perhaps when he got off the train, scratching his head with confusion about where she’d disappeared to, she’d be able to pull herself back into her human shape again.

“You’re chittering,” he whispered.

“What?”

“You’re making the sound that cats who spot birds on the other side of windows make.”

She swallowed and leaned more toward the wall to get his sultry air off her damned neck. Her skin was prickling and nipples hardening, and she was finding her lack of control utterly humiliating.

The train came to a stop, and she grabbed her suitcase and hurried through the open doors before he had a chance to force his bigger body through the mass.

Drea had even set them up with vehicles from two different rental car companies.

Let’s see him catch up now.