“Are ye sure she wants you to?” he asked. “Things change when an immortal meets their life mate. They tend to—”
“Save it,” Beth interrupted, suddenly amused. Scotty could convince her of a lot of things, but not that Dree didn’t want her around. They had been thick as thieves for more than a century, and friends even before that. “Dree hasn’t changed. She asked me to move here. We’re family, and if she wants me here, then here I’ll be.” Leaning toward him, she smiled sweetly and added, “And since Mortimer is so short-staffed right now, I think you’re going to find it impossible to talk him into not letting me work here, if that was your intention.”
“I had no intention o’—” he began.
“Save it,” Beth repeated with a laugh, and said, “Scotty, I know you tried to talk the Spanish Council out of letting me train to be a hunter way back when, and I know you’ve interfered since then, trying to keep me off certain jobs.” She shook her head. “I don’t know why you trouble yourself like that, but while you seem to think I’m useless and little more than a worm that crawled out from under a rock, Dree doesn’t. She’s a sister to me and—”
“Oh, lass, that’s no’ why I interfered,” Scotty interrupted. “I do no’ think ye’re a worm, and it fair wounds me to think ye believe that when the truth is I—”
When his words ended on a grunt and his eyes widened, Beth frowned slightly, wondering what was up, and then she stepped quickly out of the way as he fell forward. It was like a huge old oak falling. Beth swore the ground shuddered as he hit it, but then she noticed the dart in his behind and her mouth dropped open.
“Ah, hell,” Donny groaned. “He’s gonna be so mad when he wakes up.”
Beth glanced to the younger immortal to see a dart gun dangling from his hand and a grimace on his face.
“It just went off,” he said unhappily. “I swear I didn’t pull the trigger . . . I don’t think,” he added with a frown and then glanced to Beth worriedly. “Just how mad do you think he’s going to be when he finds out I shot him?”
Beth glanced down at Scotty, and then shook her head and walked over to the younger immortal. Taking the gun from him with one hand, she patted him on the back with the other and then began to shoot all the slowly healing immortals on the lawn as she said, “He’ll not be mad at all. We’ll say one of the rogues woke up and grabbed for the dart gun as you were about to shoot, and it went off and hit him.”
“But he’ll read our minds and know it’s not true,” Donny pointed out.
“Oh, we won’t be telling him that,” she assured him.
“We won’t?” Donny asked with confusion.
“No. I’ll call Mortimer and tell him that over the phone so he can’t read my mind. And then he’ll send more backup to collect all the rogues as well as Scotty, Tybo, and Valerian, and they’ll take him back to the house, and Mortimer will tell him our tale, and no one will be the wiser.”
Turning to Scotty now, she shot him again in the butt and enjoyed it so much after all the aggravation he’d caused her over the years that she shot him again for good measure. Swinging back to Donny, she smiled and said, “That’s just to be sure he doesn’t wake up before the backup arrives and we can leave.”
Donny didn’t look completely convinced of the veracity of the claim, but then he relaxed and said solemnly, “Thank you. I appreciate your doing all of this for me.”
“Oh, it’s not for you,” she said with amusement and then pointed out, “I barely know you.”
“Then why are you doing it?” he asked uncertainly.
“For me.”
“But you had nothing to do with it,” he pointed out.
“True. But that’s the first thing to put a smile on my face in decades and I’ll not see you punished for it,” she said with a grin as she walked back to Simpson and shot him, as well. She glanced around the lawn, her gaze landing last on the blonde mortal who had fallen into a faint when Beth had put her sword through Simpson. She would have liked to go check on the woman and see her comfortable, but she and Donny were the only ones there to tend to matters now. They had the rogues to see to as well as Tybo and Valerian and—which reminded her that there was another rogue in the woods who would be waking soon.
Beth headed for the trees. “Grab another dart gun and start getting these guys into the SUV. If any of them start to stir, shoot them again. I have to go check on Tybo, Valerian, and the rogue who attacked them.”
She didn’t wait to see if Donny did as instructed, but headed quickly into the woods.
Two
“What is a bampot?”
Beth glanced at Donny with surprise. They’d been driving in silence since leaving Walter Simpson’s lair. She looked into the back seat before answering, noting that Scotty was sprawled half on and half off the SUV’s bench seat behind them, still sound asleep.
While Mortimer had sent a cleanup crew to take care of the rogues and bring in the injured hunters, Donny had felt so guilty for shooting Scotty, he’d wanted to take him back with them in her SUV. Beth hadn’t argued with the young man. It was no skin off her nose if he got himself caught after she’d got him off the hook with her phone call. So, she’d merely climbed in the passenger seat and left him to load Scotty in back and take the steering wheel. She was just a passenger for this ride.
Beth turned forward in the passenger seat and said, “Bampot means idiot or crazy person.” Glancing at Donny curiously, she asked, “Why? Did Scotty call you that?”
“Yes. Well, he said I was cannie, and then asked a question and said, ‘Don’t be a bampot. Answer me.’”
“Ah.” Beth shook her head. “Using his charm on you, then.”
“He was all right,” Donny said with a shrug. After a minute he added, “He was super worried about you, though. I thought he was going to get us both killed, speeding the way he was to get to the house. I’ve never seen telephone poles blur together like that before.”
That was rather surprising news to Beth. As far as she knew, Scotty didn’t think much of her so shouldn’t have rushed to her aid. Mind you, he had claimed she was wrong on how he felt about her. Unfortunately, he’d been interrupted before he could explain further, but that might be for the best. If the man said he felt sorry for her or something, she would have had to punch him for ruining any future sexual fantasies that might have included him. She could hardly have sex with a man who felt sorry for her, even if it was only in a dream.
“How come you don’t like him?” Donny asked suddenly, and Beth glanced at the ginger-haired man with surprise.
“Who said I don’t like him?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “if you liked him you wouldn’t have enjoyed my accidentally shooting him so much. And you really seemed to enjoy shooting him yourself.”
“Oh, that.” Beth waved the issue away. “It’s not that I don’t like him. I just . . .” She hesitated briefly and then blurted, “The man hates me.”
“What?” Donny asked, sounding shocked, and then shook his head firmly. “He doesn’t.”