The woman flashes me a smile full of white teeth. “Perhaps I can help you there, too.”
She comes out from behind the register and walks to the front door, where she flips the Open sign to Closed and locks the deadbolt. Then she crooks a finger at me and leads me through a door in the back of the shop.
A short circular table sits in a prominent place in the center of the room. I recognize many of the magical tools on its surface, not because I’m familiar with witchy shit, but because I recently stayed in a witch’s house after we killed him.
I’d be sure to not mention that to this witch. As long as she doesn’t try to sell me into slavery to another witch—or try to kill me—I have no beef with her, unlike with Erik.
“You are packless,” the witch observes, motioning for me to have a seat in a metal folding chair at the side of the room. Two chairs flank a small card table covered in a woven cloth. A velvet bag rests atop the table, about the right size to hold a pack of tarot cards.
Sitting in the chair she indicated, I raise an eyebrow and ask, “How’d you know?”
“Shifters with a pack tend to carry a dozen or more auras with them,” she explains, crossing to the corner of the room where a tiny kitchenette is built into the wall. “Tea?”
I shake my head in response to her question. “You’re a covenless witch?”
She inclines her head as she pours water into a mug for herself. “Indeed. I like my privacy.”
“I need a tracking spell.”
The witch returns to the table and sets her mug down next to the tarot cards. She smooths her skirt around her legs as she sits across from me. “For a person?”
“For a shifter.” I unzip my pack and dig deep for my wallet, then peel out the clump of Frost’s white fur and slap it on the table. “Will this work?”
The witch stares at the fur for a moment before she raises her deep, dark eyes to me. “Surely you could track whoever it is by scent?”
“Unfortunately, there’s more to this wolf than meets the eye,” I grumble, feeling entirely too called out, as if my skills are in question. “Can you use this or not?”
“I can.”
“How much?”
The witch sips from her mug. There isn’t a tea tag hanging out, which makes me think she’s drinking loose leaf the old-fashioned way. “Two hundred.”
“One-fifty.”
She grins, her smile wide and white in her dark face. “One-seventy-five.”
“One—”
She holds up a hand and shakes her head once. “No. No lower. You want my help, you pay for it. I’m not a charity, wolf. Do we have an accord?”
One-seventy-five will wipe out pretty much every bill in my wallet. But I don’t exactly have any other options.
“Yeah. We have an accord,” I reply, echoing her words as I offer her my hand.
Her fingers are soft and cool, tipped by black nails. We clasp hands, and she says, “You may call me Rue.”
“I’m Amora. How long will it take?”
“At least a day. No more than two.”
A prickle of unease works its way up my spine. The last time a witch asked for two days to complete a spell, I was attacked by shadows and almost sold off to a crazy shifter woman named Felicity.
“Make it one,” I say firmly.
Rue nods. “I’ll do my best.”
With that settled, I stand and head out of her shop. I stash my bike in a Wal-Mart parking lot, just in case by some chance it gets noticed or someone comes looking for it from Red River. Unlikely, given there are a dozen different places I could have gone after leaving the shop in Red River, but better to be safe than sorry.
I shove my hands in my pockets as I cross the street to a little local inn.
Now that my plan is in motion, I feel better. Stronger. More angry and less hurt, which is a good thing in my book.
After checking into the cheapest room they have and officially emptying out my cash supply, I carry my pack upstairs. The place is surprisingly nice, with the same Mexican theme going on that I’ve seen in the rest of the town, and when I get to the room, it’s clean. Maybe the nicest place I’ve stayed at in years.
I can’t afford more than one night here, but there isn’t a cheap-ass motel in Taos.
Tossing my bag down on the floor near the door, I glance around at the two double beds, the en suite bathroom, the flatscreen television. A generic room, just like the one I was sleeping in when Frost snuck in and we were poisoned by shadows. A generic room just like the one I almost shared with all three shifters the night Erik the mad witch sent shadows after us.
Just like the one I shared with Kian on the fateful night he first crashed into my life and turned my world upside down.
My rage grows exponentially as I stand here alone. It grows stronger with every minute that passes. But my smile does too.
And if the curve of my lips is a little bloodthirsty, well, that’s as it should be.
Those wolves have no idea what kind of hell I’m about to bring down on them.