Jack is silent as he powers down the engine. A horrible thought occurs to me: what if this is the thing that pushes him over the edge? At what point will he, Aiden, and Ty decide I’m not worth the hassle? My family wanted nothing to do with me after I became too much of a bother. It would be so much easier for Jack to leave me here and cut ties completely.
Well, they’d have to get Princess Penny here somehow.
Surely, they wouldn’t separate me from my dog, right?
“Skye.” Jack’s voice breaks through my spiral of negative thoughts. “Look at me.”
“Hm?” I force myself to meet his gaze. His gray eyes are so kind and understanding, I want to throw my arms around his neck and have him hold me forever.
“We’ll deal with it,” he says. “Whatever shit your family cooked up, we’ll figure it out and beat them at their own game, I promise.”
His words heal a small scar on my heart, smoothing away the gnarled tissue that I’ve built up in order to protect myself. And I fall a little more in love with him. But that doesn’t mean I have his blind faith in me.
“How?” I moan in despair. “They’ve got all the knowledge and experience. And I’m just a newbie. I don’t have a clue about how any of this works. I mean—” I shake my head, too overwhelmed to find the right words. “I never thought it would come to this.”
He unsnaps his seat belt and takes my face between his palms. Then he leans in and presses a soft, slow kiss to my lips. It melts some of my fear, and I clasp his wrist, unwilling to let go. He doesn’t deepen the kiss—doesn’t allow me to lose myself in him.
“Come on,” he says. “We can’t avoid this forever. If we want to fly back before dark, we need to hurry.”
He’s right, of course. We’re two days from the fall equinox, and I’m planning on using the energy of the celestial event to help me boost my spell. If I can figure out what to do in two days, of course. No pressure.
I take a deep breath, inhaling through the nose, and exhale loudly through my mouth. If there’s one thing that would be completely useless right now, it’s me panicking. No time for that. Not when the lives of an entire village are at stake.
We hop into the sturdy truck that we use for driving around Anchorage and speed off to the computer store. I really want to stop at the café where I had breakfast with Ty, but now is not the time to linger over French toast. We’re on a mission.
At the computer store, Pete is kind to us—if a little less enthusiastic now that he’s seen my new companion. As though Aiden hadn’t staked his claim loudly enough the last time, Jack does so by kissing my neck and calling me “babe.” Sea dragons, man. Who knew they were so territorial?
Oh, wait.
Of course they are.
If the old stories about dragons are true, I’m their equivalent of a maiden they’re guarding in their secret lair.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes and smile sweetly at Pete, who rings up our purchase. It’s hundreds of dollars of equipment for a project that might not even work. My fingers tremble as I put away the receipt and the warranty papers. There’s so much riding on this. If I fail, there will be no reason for Aiden to keep me around—I’ll still have the payment from the website I did for the Lodge, sure, but it won’t be enough.
I need to figure out how to ground the protection spell in the village. To create some sort of magical barrier that would prevent outsiders from coming in, I’d have to tie the magic to something…an enchanted anchor of sorts.
I wish I knew whether I’ll still be welcome in Amber Bay in a week or so.
Godsdammit, Skye, get your shit together. It’s as though the strain of the past weeks has liquefied my brain.
“Are you all set?” Jack asks me as he hefts the two boxes containing the tech.
I only manage a nod in return. We do a quick stop at the post office to empty the clan’s PO Box, then return to the airfield. There’s no need to pick up other supplies yet, and we need to get moving. The less time we spend in Anchorage, the less chance we have of being spotted.
I mean, maybe I’m being paranoid. If I could only bring myself to call Alice and confront her about the tracker, she might tell me that she’s still in San Diego and that this was all a big misunderstanding. I still can’t quite believe my sister would stoop to such methods because she wanted to figure out where I was.
But I can’t afford to think like that. So I keep low on the truck seat and tug my hat on to cover my curls and remain as inconspicuous as possible.
At the airfield, the security guys wave us through. But just as Jack is about to drive forward, one of the two guards lifts a hand to stop him.
“Listen,” he says, “I almost forgot to tell you this—we had a couple of trespassers here a few days ago.”
“Oh?” Jack says, keeping his voice casual. But I see how he grips the steering wheel, how his shoulders tense under his windbreaker.
The guy rubs a hand over the graying stubble of his beard. The sound is weirdly loud, or maybe it seems that way because I’m holding my breath.
“Yeah, we caught them sniffing around your hangar. They didn’t say why they were here, and they scampered off before we could call the police. We checked the perimeter and your locks, and nothing’s out of the ordinary, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.”
