I raised my eyes and gave her a questioning look. She was a witch, and witches didn’t give away stones without a specific reason.
“It’s tiger’s iron,” she explained. “It wards against evil magic. ”
I laughed. “Am I expecting to run into a lot of evil magic out here?” The strange wolf flashed to mind, and my laughter died away. “Am I?”
“Never hurts to protect yourself, baby. ” Her halfhearted smile said she wasn’t telling me everything.
Taking her hands in mine, I gave her a comforting squeeze. “Thank you. ”
“Let me help you put it on. ” She was up from the table in a flash, with the necklace already in her hand. For a senior, she sometimes exhibited supernatural speed.
Her rush to have me guarded against evil made me feel more anxious than anything. She pulled my hair off my shoulders, and for a moment she hesitated. My heart stopped, because in spite of how impossible it would be, I worried she might see Holden’s bite mark from my dream on me.
Talk about a guilty conscience.
Grandmere clasped the necklace, and the stone hung around my neck with a foreign weight. It was a big pendant, roughly the same width as an oyster shell. The color was disconcerting, making it look like there was a splash of gold-infused blood over my heart. I held the stone up, and the gold winked at me under the kitchen lights.
“It’s pretty. ”
She let my hair down and placed a kiss on top of my head. “I won’t keep you. I know you had plans tonight. ”
Drinking at a dive bar with a bunch of surly farmers. Some plan. I didn’t argue with her, though. I got up from the table and went to the back door to find my shoes, still fiddling with the necklace. From the kitchen, Grandmere cleared her throat. Seems she had decided to say everything on her mind after all.
“Secret, sweetie, you know I love you, right?”
“Of course. ” I stopped what I was doing so I could get a better look at her as she spoke. She was staring out the kitchen window over the sink and didn’t turn to face me when I came back into the kitchen.
“Then try not to take this the wrong way. ”
I raised a questioning brow.
“Baby, I think it’s time you went home. ”
I made the walk to the bar without any supernatural encounters, but this time I was prepared for them. In spite of the necklace to ward off evil, I felt better when I was armed. My Sig 9mm was tucked in the waistband of the black shorts I was wearing. I’d covered the weapon with my yellow tank top, which had just enough give to camouflage the gun. I’d tried to make the casual ensemble into a coordinated outfit by wearing matching yellow flip-flops, but my tangled blonde curls were in a messy bun on top of my head.
The Elm Tree was a slim two-story building whose front window was decorated with neon beer adverts, and whose main sign misleadingly referred to it as a hotel and bar. When I walked in, my flip-flops smacked against the sticky hardwood floor like a sloppy kiss, announcing my presence as the only female in the room.
Howard, the sweet, lumberjack-sized bartender, looked up from the beer taps and smiled at me. At least I assumed he smiled because his bearded cheeks moved in an upward direction.
“McQueen,” he acknowledged, his voice so rough he might have been swallowing crushed rocks every night.
I loved that no one here called me Secret. To the men of the Elm Tree, who admired machismo and masculinity above all else, there was no need to call me anything but McQueen. Sharing a name with Steve McQueen, King of Cool, gave me an instant pass with these guys, and that suited me fine. I sidled up to the bar and sat next to a man known only as Bear. He weighed about three hundred pounds and stood almost six-foot-eight whenever he found use for his feet. He had a beard so grizzled it made Howard look clean cut.
“Bear,” I said with a nod.
“McQueen,” he replied into his half-empty pint glass.
I’d often hoped part of Bear’s size and appearance was due to genuine ursine shapeshifter DNA. Having never met or even heard of a were-bear, I longed for a story to share with Lucas and Desmond when I saw them again. Selfishly, I also wanted to know I wasn’t the only freak in Elmwood. Alas, in three months I hadn’t gotten the slightest hint of a supernatural trigger from him. He was as human as they came.
“Rickard’s,” I requested to Howard, who was already filling a glass for me, tipping it to avoid a heady draught. He slid it down the bar to me, partially because he loved minute attempts at flair bartending, and more so because he knew I’d never miss. “Thanks. ” I held the drink in one hand and surveyed the room via the large mirror behind the bar.
“Hey, Howard?” I asked. He turned his too-kind eyes towards me. “Who’s the crew cut by the jukebox?”
Considering I spent almost every day at the bar, even the irregulars were known to me, along with most of the gossip about the town and surrounding area. I also knew all about the summer forecast for wheat, canola, flax and sunflowers—mediocre to superb, depending on the number of drinks in the farmer doing the predicting.
There wasn’t a face that passed through the bar I didn’t recognize, or so I’d thought.
Next to the jukebox on which Bruce Springsteen was singing “Thunder Road” sat a man in his mid-thirties. He had an olive complexion, thick black eyebrows over dark black eyes, and his hair was cut short.