Witch Interrupted by Jody Wallace Read Free Book Online Page B

Marcus was out cold; wolves were highly susceptible to lavender.
    “I kept some for emergencies,” Dad said. “Good idea, huh?”
    “We shouldn’t poppy him until he’s alert.” On one hand, she wanted to postpone the spell because it was fraught with peril. On the other hand, since Marcus couldn’t truly be in her bed, she wanted him out of it ASAP.
    “Then we should definitely wait,” Tonya said. When Katie glared at her, she waggled a finger. “Waiting would give us a chance to find out more about him.”
    “I’m not sure we need to know more.” Katie hadn’t told her about Dad’s snooping yet. Tonya wasn’t going to be happy he’d gone digging. “Let me just peek in the bedroom.” She headed for the door and turned the knob quietly.
    Marcus, sound asleep, sprawled on her bed like a deep, dark fantasy of a man, his wrists handcuffed above his head and his face relaxed.
    Supine. Harmless. Nothing stopping her from…
    Shutting the door and vowing not to check on him again for ten whole minutes.
    Katie turned and found Tonya right behind her. For a large, not-exactly-youthful woman, Tonya moved like a cat.
    She winked. “What’s he look like? Is he hot?”
    “Tall.”
    “Everyone’s tall to you, honey.” Tonya bumped Katie out of the way and opened the door. Almost immediately, she whistled. “Good Goddess in heaven, do you suppose he looked like that when he was a witch?”
    “Put your tongue back in your mouth,” Dad said.
    Katie didn’t want to consider Marcus as a witch or it would make him too relatable. A dangerous path to tread. “I doubt it.”
    Wolves, along with cracking good health, had two things going for them—high metabolism and the magic of the shift. Witches believed wolves subconsciously altered their forms when they changed. It was simplest way to explain why many were at the top end of the physically attractive scale while witches were not—or no more so than humans.
    The last time Katie had skimmed a region newsletter, Millington coven had been putting Harry through his paces. Answers about wolfish mysteries might come out of Harry eventually. Tonya stayed abreast of goings-on in the coven network, but Katie was content to live quietly and try to forget her first pass-through had ever happened.
    She counted herself lucky she’d escaped alive. Most keepers didn’t.
    “He looks familiar.” Tonya, in addition to being big-hearted and cheery, had a mind like a steel trap—not a politically correct simile around wolves, but the only wolf here was unconscious. “What pass-through was he on?”
    “He looks about thirty. Second, tops.” Their kind aged at the same rate as humans until they mastered the magic in their late teens, when the ageing process slowed down. Way down. For wolves, it slowed too, though not as markedly.
    Tonya clucked her tongue. “I say we interrogate him.”
    “He doesn’t get to talk,” Dad said.
    “I suppose we could ask a few questions,” Katie agreed. “He wasn’t, ah, disobliging.” There had been a moment or four that she’d wished he’d drop the politeness and grab her. He hadn’t.
    Damn, she should date more. It had been too long since she’d had sex. Was that why Marcus affected her twice as strongly as she remembered other wolves doing?
    “I bet he wasn’t disobliging.” Tonya waggled her eyebrows at Katie and slipped the mints into a pants pocket. “How obliging were you?”
    Dad held the pint jar up to the light. “I held a gun to his head. How obliging do you think we were?”
    Katie wasn’t going to take Tonya’s bait…in front of Dad. “Marcus didn’t seem upset. He wanted to discuss his research.”
    “Research he’s been doing since he changed or before he changed? Depending on what he studied, we could find out who he was. I swear he looks familiar.”
    Katie fiddled with the hem of her T-shirt. Her tunic and Marcus’s shirt were soaking in cold water to remove the bloodstains. “Have you heard of any