On the Prowl by Kate Rudolph

36

Andre could feelthe moment something changed within Em through their mate bond. He and Vi burst through the door to the small ballroom to find Em climbing to her feet, her hands shaking a bit and her eyes glowing an impossible blue. "I know where he is." She swept by them and down the hallway.

Andre and Vi followed her. The shadow beast was nowhere to be seen, but that was to be expected. If Vi's magic had worked as it should, then the beast would be gone.

But what had the magic done to Em?

There was a concern at the back of Andre's mind, but he didn't have time to follow it up. Once this was done, once the witch was taken care of, he would figure out what Em needed and give it to her.

But not now. Not yet.

There were plenty of crew hanging around the hotel, and some of them must have seen Em. It would give lie to the story that Andre and Vi had spread around about her suffering from food poisoning. But that was another issue for tomorrow.

Em was moving fast, almost inhumanly so. And Andre and Vi had to run to keep up with her.

She turned another corner and stopped in front of the door, waving her hands in front of her until the door flew open as if a giant gust of wind had hit it.

That was new.

And it didn't have anything to do with being a werewolf.

"There!" Em pointed in the room.

Vi went in first. They were dealing with a witch, so it was a witch who needed to face the problem. But there wasn't much of a problem to face.

One of the musicians from Em's band was slumped over next to a small table with two candles and a piece of clothing that Andre would've bet a hundred dollars belonged to Em.

He looked at the man for a moment. "I thought witches were women," Andre said.

Vi gave him a strange look and a faint shake of her head. "Don't be sexist."

Was it sexist? It didn't matter. Andre just filed away the information in his head. Men could be witches too. He could feel his wolf stalking under his skin, demanding that he shift and rip the man's throat out.

"Jerry?" Em took two steps into the room, but didn't get within touching distance of the musician. "He seemed so nice."

"Apparently he was obsessed with you." Vi picked up a small diary that had fallen to the floor and started paging through it. There were cutouts of newspaper articles and magazine photos of Em. There were drawings and notes and plenty of information to show just how obsessed Jerry had been.

Andre’s wolf growled, and he had to flex every muscle in his body to keep from shifting. The man was unconscious. He was out of the fight. And Andre wasn't going to hurt somebody who was already down.

"What do we do with him?" They couldn't exactly call the cops. The diary was disconcerting, but not illegal. And they couldn't really explain that Jerry had used magic to summon a shadow beast to attack Em.

But Vi was already kneeling down beside the man, her hands glowing as she waved them over him. "Witches have ways of dealing with people who abuse their powers," she said. "I will have someone come and take care of him." She turned to Em. "He won't bother you anymore."

Em closed her eyes and nodded, and her shoulders sagged as if all of the tension had finally left her body.

Andre stepped close to catch her if she was about to fall. He couldn't resist touching her and placed an arm around her shoulders. His skin prickled where it touched hers. It had never done that before, and he didn't think it had anything to do with the mate bond.

"You used magic," he said, and he wasn't talking to Vi. "I saw you open the door." It frightened him a little, but he wasn't scared of Em. He was scared for her. He knew how disconcerting it was to have a change like that thrust upon him, and he didn't want her to suffer.

Em shook her head from side to side, but she didn't say anything. She seemed exhausted, and Andre wanted to take her back to their room and watch over her while she slept.

"Did you do this to her?" It came out harsher than intended, but Em had been through enough, and Andre would do what he needed to do to protect her.

"Did I do what?" Vi challenged, eyebrows raised and fingers splayed, as if she was ready to defend herself with her magic. "Did I give her magic powers? Did I make her into a witch? No." She turned to Em. "What happened?"

Em took a few steadying breaths. "Can we talk in another room? I… Looking at him… It's just—" She couldn't get the words out.

Andre backed her out of the room without another word, and Vi left a moment later, doing more magic to ensure that Jerry could not get free.

"Go up to your room," Vi told them. "I'm going to make a call and then I'll join you. We'll see if we can figure the rest of this out."

It felt like shirking his duty to trust Vi to see Jerry taken away. But the witch had been nothing but trustworthy thus far, and Em needed him more. Besides, Andre didn't exactly have someone he could call. As far as he knew, Gibson wasn't running a secret prison for magical creatures.

"I'll have them send you a text when he's in custody. They'll have a picture and everything," Vi offered while Andre hesitated.

It was good enough. Andre nodded and shepherded Em back to their room. She sat on the couch and didn't look back towards the bedroom. Andre couldn't sense any tension in her from the memory of what had happened earlier, but he stayed close to her, just in case.

Comfort went both ways, and the relief that his mate might finally be safe made him weak.

It was about fifteen minutes before Vi made it back. Andre’s phone buzzed, and he had a picture of Jerry tied up in very thick chains, sitting in what looked to be the back of a cake delivery van.

Did witches have secret prisons? Andre didn't know, and at the moment, he didn't care.

He and Em hadn't said a word to one another since getting back. They had just sat on the couch and he had held her as she tried to get her breathing under control.

When Vi got there, she let herself in and took a seat at the kitchenette table.

"What happened?" she asked, wasting no time with niceties.

And this time, Em was more ready to talk. "I threw the second vial down when it got close enough. And there was a lot of red smoke and it seemed to dissolve the beast. And then I breathed in all the smoke. I didn't want to. But I couldn't get away from it. What did it do to me?" Her eyes pleaded with Vi for answers.

Vi's face was grave, and she nodded once. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about that possibility. That potion was attracted to magic. That's why it wanted you to inhale it. It might have been strong enough to awaken any sort of latent power you have. Or it will all go away in a couple weeks. Just be careful. Don't try and explode anyone with your mind."

Andre was too tired to be angry that Vi had kept that possibility from them. He doubted it would have changed anything, and he was starting to learn that Vi only gave information out in bits and pieces.

"I could do that?" Em sounded both excited and terrified at the prospect.

That broke Vi's grave expression, and even Andre smiled. "I've got a couple ideas," he said.

"Please refrain," Vi interrupted before they could start planning anything. "I'll give you a couple websites to go to. But if things don't look to be regulating within two weeks, give me a call. We may need to figure something out."

"Could I be both a werewolf and a witch?" Em asked. "Oh my God. What has my life come to?"

Andre tightened his grip on her. He wasn't sure if she was about to laugh or cry. Hell, he wasn't too far behind himself. This was fucking absurd.

But Vi didn't seem to find it strange. "I don't see why not. There's nothing incompatible with those two magics."

"What do you know about werewolves?" Andre finally asked. Now that they were safe, he needed to know. His pack needed to know. And Vi might be their only hope.

But she gave him a withering look and a disappointing response. "More than you, clearly. But that's a conversation for another day. We'll talk."

Then Vi got up and left them alone.

There was a lot more to know. But Andre felt closer to the prospect of knowledge that he had in more than two years. At the moment, he didn't care.

He had his mate beside him, and it was time to convince her that everything was going to be all right.