Neely shot me a saucy wink. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”
Two
Woolly, as it turned out, was a bit of a traditionalist. Each step I took up the stairs creaked to the point I worried about boards snapping, even ones that hadn’t squeaked since I moved in as a child. She was tattling on me, and I had had about enough. “Stop it.”
The old house slanted her steps in a way that promised to send me slipping down them like I was running up a freaking kiddie slide at the park.
“I give up.” I took one cautious step back. “I won’t spy on Linus. Happy?”
The stairs realigned themselves, the light above me brightening with the glow of her approval.
Much to my delight, the commotion lured the groom-to-be out onto the landing.
Linus had secured his dark-auburn hair at his nape, and the black frames of his glasses turned his navy eyes a richer blue. He wore a fitted tee that all but concealed the ink covering his chest tucked into black tuxedo pants that did amazing things for his butt and made me want to run my hands over…the fabric.
Yeah.
The fabric.
A tiny smile perched on his mouth when he caught me ogling him. “What’s going on out here?”
“I heard a rumor you were half-naked and came to investigate.”
“I’m trying on my tux.” He gestured down his pants, which were zipped but not buttoned. “For the wedding.”
Zipped.
But not buttoned.
“Hmm?”
“Grier,” he said dryly. “My eyes are up here.”
“Darn stairs.” I tilted my head back, forcing my gaze higher. “I can’t help they put me at crotch height with you.”
The wood groaned beneath me at the weak joke, but it was Woolly’s fault I had missed the show. He probably zipped those pants before coming to investigate. A few seconds earlier, and I might have gotten lucky.
Literally.
“Tradition states the bride can’t see the groom before the wedding.”
I whipped out my best pout, the one that had let me get away with murder as a kid. “Not you too?”
Linus, who had known me since I was six, was resistant to my charms. “You don’t care about tradition?”
Slowly, I dragged my teeth over my bottom lip. “I care more about half-dressed grooms.”
For two years, he was a part-time fiancé. There was no helping it, and I didn’t hold his absences against him, but it was hard having Linus split his time between Savannah and Atlanta while he trained their respective potentates. We came out stronger on the other side of it, but I never wanted to do it again.
I was ready to start living a life where the longest we had to be apart were the four hours we spent at our respective jobs each night before we hit the streets to patrol. And even then, his tattoo studio—The Mad Tatter Too—occupied the top floor of the building he bought me for my ghost tour business on Abercorn Street.
A low moan came from Linus’s old room, and Cletus drifted to hover between us, obscuring my view.
“Not you too?” I curled the end of his tattered cloak around my finger. “Since when is it a crime to want to see your fiancé naked?”
Tempted to fib about checking on Oscar to slip past Cletus, I surrendered before trying my luck. Cletus kept tabs on all of us. He would have noticed the ghost boy had gone wherever it was ghost boys went to recharge. Oscar had big plans, secret manly plans I was too girly to know, and he wanted to have a full battery when Corbin arrived for the wedding.
Goddess help us all.
“We showered together at dusk,” Linus reminded me. “And then an hour ago—”
“Hey.” I huffed the bangs out of my eyes. “I can’t help if your clothes fell off halfway to the carriage house.”
Until we tied the knot, if anyone asked, he was living there. Though we used it for storage these days.
Tucking his chin, he cleared his throat. “The garden is lovely this time of year.”
“Isn’t it just?” I put my weight on a stair one step higher, but Cletus kept up the buffer act. “Spoilsport.”
Backing down the way I had come, I snickered as Cletus ushered Linus back into his old room to finish his solo dress rehearsal. At least I wasn’t the only one getting bullied around here.
I was trudging toward Neely’s office to report my failure when I heard the thud, and then…a moan.
The old house lit up in a panic, and I sprinted for the kitchen, skidding through the doorway in my socks.
“I don’t know what happened.” Leslie clutched her tablet to her chest, her eyes wide and her fingers trembling. “She was sampling Jordan almonds, and she…”
“Did she choke?” I hit my knees beside my unconscious friend. “Lethe? Can you hear me?” I checked her pulse. “Lethe.”
“S-s-she didn’t make a sound,” Leslie stammered. “She couldn’t have choked. She couldn’t have.”
Woolly brought Linus racing down the stairs, and he nudged me aside to examine her. “Call the doctor.”
Doctor? What doctor? No one treated gwyllgi except for…
Oh.
The pack’s healer. That’s who he meant. He was speaking in code because of the human gawking at us, and I was losing my cool because the off-white buttercream on Lethe’s mouth was darker than her skin.
“Okay.” I botched the number on the first try, got it on the second, then waited for Jaya to answer. “Lethe’s down.” Buzzing filled my ears until all I could hear was my best friend’s labored breathing. “I don’t know, I…” I lost my patience. “Just get over here.”
“Grier?” Neely ducked his head in the room then lifted a hand to his throat. “I heard…”
Thank the goddess for backup arriving in the nick of time.
“Neely, get Leslie out of here.” I fumbled in my pocket for the small knife I had stolen from Linus forever ago. “And somebody call Hood.”
“On it.” He grasped Leslie by the elbow. “Come on, sugar. I’ll walk you out.”
“I could—” The phone she wrestled out of her pocket shot through her fingers. “Should I call 911?”
“Grier just did.” He caught the phone, returned it to her, and nudged her along. “Help is on the way.”
“It’s going to be okay, Lethe.” I trusted Neely to get the baker out of the house, and I didn’t spare her a second thought after she left my sight. Blade pressed to my left palm, I cut my hand for ink to mark healing sigils across Lethe’s forehead and cheeks. “You’re going to be fine.” Drawing on the genetic memory passed down to every goddess-touched necromancer, and from my study of the Marchand collection, I set to work. “Be fine, and I’ll buy you your weight in bacon.”
“Hood is teaching a class today,” Linus said once Neely returned. “He won’t hear the phone ring, so I sent him a text.”
Since Hood and Lethe’s daughter, Eva, couldn’t attend public or private school thanks to her accelerated growth, he began homeschooling her. One thing led to another, and the pack had entrusted its children into his care as well so that she could make friends for every stage of her development and enjoy a more normal school experience.