After showering and going through the motions of moisturizing and dabbing healing ointment on my bruises, I should be feeling more like myself, but something is still not right.
I shiver, pulling on a hoodie to fight the odd chill. It’s summer, but I must have set the thermostat too low. I check my phone while I wait for the coffee to percolate.
I purse my lips at the absence of messages from Nemo. I don’t know why I expected anything different. He only calls me when he needs something.
The calls and texts that I’ve missed are from Stella.
I’m running late. Save me a table.
Here. Where are you?
I ordered for you. I swear to the gods if you don’t show up by the time it gets here, I’m sending out a search party.
Starting to get nervous. Pick up the phone.
Fuck! We had plans to try the new noodle shop today. I press the call button at the same time as someone starts pounding on my door. I cancel the call and inch toward the go bag I hide in the false bottom of the chest at the end of my bed.
My adrenaline response is weak, but the options running through my brain help start to kick it into gear. Did Kalos change his mind about the exchange? Have the people threatening Nemo decide to track me down instead?
“Open the fucking door! You better hope you’re home. Otherwise, you’ll be in a world of pain when I find you.”
I blow out a relieved breath at my best friend’s panicked voice.
I undo the chain and unlock the door. “I’m so sorry. I was just about to call you.”
“So glad you’re alive. I can recall the search party now,” Stella replies with snark. When the door swings open, her eyes widen. “Wow. You look like shit.”
“Thank you for that.” My lips twitch. My muscle aches are slightly better than when I woke up, but god am I tired.
Stella doesn’t look like shit. Her sleek auburn hair is in a neat bun, but her blue eyes are bright and awake. Despite her chaotic nature and sailor’s mouth, Stella always looks effortlessly elegant in a timeless way. I attribute it to the fact that there is a hierarchy of witch families that deal in power and money—blue bloods of a sort—and Stella and her mother are from a very old one that fell from prominence.
Stella pushes past me with a raised brow, and I try to swallow my guilt down as I shut the door.
She curiously turns to take in my apartment, leaning to sneak a peek into my bedroom before placing a grocery bag with to-go containers on the round table.
“I half expected there to be a man in your bed with how absolutely fucked you look,” she says.
I blush. “I’m so sorry about standing you up. Something came up last night, and I didn’t get in until early this morning.”
“Kat.” Her eyes level on me, and I want to squirm.
I wince and sigh. Stella has an uncanny ability to see through my bullshit. We’ve only known each other for a couple of years. She’d brought a family painting to me to get restored as a present for her mom and had distrusted me on sight.
The painting was the keystone to their house wards, so she’d needed someone who knew about magic and restoration, and that list is very short. But apparently I was giving her suspicious vibes, and she kept poking until, more as a way to get her to find someone else for her project than because I liked her, I told everything.
My history stealing, the forging, and my attempts to make amends. Obviously, I omitted any details so she couldn’t call the authorities on me. I’m reckless, not stupid.
Instead of this sending her running, she’d brightened and asked more questions. It’s an odd way to start a friendship, but we found common ground.
We’re both rejects of a sort. I’d been raised in foster care with no knowledge of my parents or that I wasn’t human until my teens.
Stella had a different problem. Her father is a shifter of some sort, but she didn’t come out a shifter. Witch genes are supposed to be recessive, so her mother was sent back to her family, and the business arrangement that was the marriage dissolved. The shifter family then took out their revenge on her mother’s family, sabotaging their businesses through backroom dealings.
“Have they never heard of a DNA test?” I ask in disbelief.
Stella only shakes her head, lips thin. “It didn’t matter. I’m not a shifter. So they won’t claim me. It happens sometimes, but it’s super rare. Lucky me.”
“What happened?” Stella asks, though she squints her eyes in a way that communicates that she’s already guessed.
“It was just one last thing,” I concede.
She throws her hands up. “It was one last thing the last time he roped you into something. I don’t have to tell you how dangerous it is to do what you do.”
“He was crying, Stel.”
Stella blows out a breath in frustration, and her face softens. “I’m glad you’re in one piece. What was it?”
My shoulders come up.
“Isn’t it enough that I’m done and safe?” I ask. I avoid looking at her while I take the food containers out. I open the first one—
“Not that one. It’s spicy,” she says.
I peek at Stella, and she’s back to glowering at me.
“That you’re avoiding talking about it makes it seem like this time was bad. Spill,” she orders.
I hesitate for a moment, putting my noodles on a plate and in the microwave. Noodles and coffee, yum.
I shouldn’t tell her… but I like that she cares enough to want to know about this. “It was stealing a figurine from some guy.”
She frowns. “That doesn’t sound too bad. What guy?”
“I don’t really think that’s important.” My voice gets higher. The microwave beeps, and I put her food in next.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Stella says.
I wince. “It was really stupid.”
“How stupid?”
I sip my coffee. “Do you know that Kalos guy?”
“The dragon, Kalos?” Stella screeches.
“Yeah, that one, but I’m alive!” I rush to say.
Stella’s eyes are so wide that I go back to avoiding looking at her as I put both of our plates on the sad table that I found on the side of the street. I’d tried to sand out the gouged word Free, but I’d rather have a carved-up table than an uneven one.
Stella falls into the chair across from me. “Kat, you can’t do something like this again. He could have killed you. He could still do a lot of things to you. Dragons don’t part with their hoard. If rumors are true. He’ll be able to track the piece you took no matter where it goes.”
Well that’s an interesting tidbit.
“I don’t have it anymore,” I say. “And anyway, we kind of traded.”
“What do you mean, you traded?”
“He caught me—”
“He caught you?!”
“As you can see, I am alive. Where was I?”
Stella looks like she’s going to slap me, so I continue.
“Uh, well, he was going through like a heat or something, and I offered my… services.”
I shovel a huge bite of noodles into my mouth.