Jennifer automatically looked at her work shirt and sniffed. Sure enough, she smelled like stale liquor. One of the cheap asses from the table of seven had spilled his whiskey on her. “I wasn’t drunk.”
“Jennifer was wondering why no one thought to take her to the hospital,” Maura told her brother.
“It was late, and we thought ya just needed rest. Maybe we should have,” Rory said. “I’m sorry if ya think we didn’t do right by ya. I did ask my sister to keep an eye on ya. I didn’t want ya waking up in a motel room with a man hovering nearby. I’ll take ya to a hospital now if ya require a doctor. Or our ma is a healer.”
“Maura told me,” Jennifer said.
“Our ma’s cheaper,” Maura added.
“Free,” Bruce corrected. “Ma don’t charge.”
“I don’t need a healer,” Jennifer stated.
“That’s right. We were getting ya coffee.” Maura turned to head toward the back.
“Out,” Bruce said.
“What?” Maura frowned at him.
“We’re out of coffee. Ya need to go to the store,” Bruce answered.
“I need to go to the…” Maura arched a brow and crossed her arms over her chest. She was shorter than her brothers, but Bruce instantly straightened his shoulders.
“I was just about to go to the store,” he said.
Maura nodded. “That’s what I thought ya were saying.”
“It’s all right. I should head home. I have a double shift today,” Jennifer said. There were too many people in the small lobby, and she couldn’t get rid of the urge growing inside her to attack Rory.
“Hey, go buy her a coffee and drop her off, would ya?” Maura said to Rory. “There is no reason to make her walk.”
“I’ll be fine,” Jennifer stated.
“I don’t mind.” Rory instantly went to the door and opened it for her. “I’d love to take ya for coffee.”
His tone dipped, and he made it sound like they were about to go on a date. Jennifer glanced down at her smelly shirt. “I’m…”
“Perfect,” Rory grinned.
Jennifer glanced at Maura, who nodded enthusiastically at her.
“Okay,” Jennifer agreed. “Thanks.”
“Since you’re working tonight, I’ll stop by to try those nachos I keep hearing about,” Maura said. “I haven’t been there yet.”
Jennifer smiled. She genuinely enjoyed Maura and Bruce’s conversation. They were friendly and easy to like. She wanted to like Rory, but something inside her tried to explode each time she looked at him. She couldn’t figure out why. His smile was kind. Objectively, she could say he was handsome. He didn’t stare at her chest or make inappropriate comments. There was nothing untoward she could put her finger on.
And still, she wanted to deck him.
When she walked by him, she detected the faintest trace of cologne. He stood against the door, holding it open. It caused her to pass close to him, and she noticed the heat radiating from his body. She felt the warmth inside her as if it tried to soothe the coldness of the rage she suppressed. None of her emotions made sense.
Rory moved past her into the parking lot. She stood on the sidewalk, cradling her apron against her waist while deciding what she should do. Finally, she jogged a few paces until she fell into step next to him.
“Do you mind if we make the coffee drive-thru? I don’t want to go in anywhere,” she said. “Not smelling like I work in a bar.”
He actually looked a little disappointed, and she again had the impression this was some kind of a strange date for him.
“Sure. We can do that,” Rory answered.
The 1966 black Mustang that he led her to looked as if he’d driven it off the lot that very morning. She knew it was a ’66 because it said so on the front license plate. He went to the passenger door and pulled it open. The etiquette took her by surprise.
“Um, thanks,” she said, slipping into the car.
She watched him walk around the front of the vehicle. Their eyes met through the windshield.
“What am I doing here?” she whispered through clenched teeth. “None of this makes sense. Who are you, Rory MacGregor?”
Chapter Five
Rory knew this wasn’t a date. It was drive-thru coffee suggested by his sister with the woman who had tried to kill him the night before with an ancient blade.
Still, he felt his heart beating a little faster when he looked at her. His magick tingled beneath his flesh, filling him with awareness. He wanted to be here, next to her, with her.
There was also a sense of danger.
Rory needed to believe the look in her eyes when she gazed at him with a cross between confusion and innocence. How could this be the same woman who’d tried to attack him? Maybe she’d been possessed by a wood spirit? Or perhaps someone had cursed the blade she found. Stranger things had happened in Green Vallis. He didn’t want to consider that behind her beautiful brown eyes lurked something darker.
Though they had not lived there long, it was clear that Green Vallis was a special place. All of the MacGregors had felt it the second they drove into the city limits. A convergence of ley lines beneath the surface created a powerful vortex that fed their magick. Like all things, magick needed fuel to work. Normally that energy came from nature, which had been difficult in their previous home.
New York City had a lot of metal and concrete, and very little by way of plant life. What it did have was large crowds, which made it easy to hide in plain sight. No one really paid attention to a man walking around in a kilt, and foreign accents didn’t tend to stick out as they did in their current Midwestern home.
Although the family had thrived in many ways in the city, their magick had starved. They could only take so much power-infusing life from Central Park and community gardens before they killed every plant in Manhattan like a magickal plague.
In contrast, the mansion his extended family had purchased in Green Vallis came with eighty acres of forest. Here, they could take the energy they needed from the woods as a whole without killing a single tree. There was more than enough to keep their magick healthy. They could live at peace with nature, taking care of it as it took care of them.
He glanced at Jennifer, letting his gaze slide down to her legs to where she clutched her apron. There was another way to fuel magick, one they’d had to resort to quite often in New York City—sex. Sexual energy could give a quick infusion, much like a rush of adrenaline. It wasn’t sustainable and didn’t last all that long, but damn, it was fun.
Unfortunately, Green Vallis’s power also attracted unsavory supernatural creatures. The ley lines pulsed like a beacon, welcoming good and evil without discrimination. In the few short years they had lived there, they’d fought a psychic entity called a lidérc, numerous ghosts, gremians, trolls, goblins, leprechauns, a banshee, possessions, demon spawns, and a couple of regular sick-ass murdering humans.
There were even a few non-threatening supernaturals living in town, like Jefferson, Jennifer’s boss. He was a third-generation dhampir, the product of a vampire and human pairing. The family was keeping an eye on him. The last thing they wanted was vampires coming to town, but the man didn’t appear connected to a den.