The plump older woman turned from the stove and greeted me with a warm smile. “Piper. Look at you. You’ve changed so much.” Releasing the handle of the spoon in the pot she had been stirring, Gretchen hurried over to me, pulling me into a tight embrace.
I hugged her back tightly, enjoying the comfort of an old friend. “I’m so happy to see you, Gretchen.” I glanced over her shoulder to meet Darren’s gaze. arching a brow at him. He simply offered me a mysterious smile before popping a slice of cucumber into his mouth from the tray on the table.
Gretchen released me to go back to her pot, which had begun to boil. She picked up the wooden spoon once more and turned down the heat. “I’m so glad to see you and Darren have grown so close. I was worried for you two, out here all alone without the masters.” She gave us a knowing look before winking.
I flushed and slid onto the stool next to Darren. He placed his hand on top of mine, bringing it to his mouth to press a kiss to the top of it. What happened between Darren and me hadn’t been planned. It’d just happened. One night, I was freaking out about being left here and determined to hunt down the others with or without his help, and then next thing I knew Darren and I were kissing. It kind of spiraled out from there.
“So...” I reached out to the vegetable tray and snatched a carrot stick off of it, dipping it into the bowl of ranch beside it. I slid the carrot into my mouth sucking off the ranch. Darren grunted beside me, his eyes fixated on my lips. With a suppressed grin, I chomped down on the carrot. Turning back to Gretchen, I asked, “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what made you come all the way out here?”
Offering me a far sassier than normal smirk, Gretchen turned the stove off before wiping her hands on her apron. “Do I need a reason to come visit my two favorite people in the world?”
I exchanged a look with Darren. “Of course not. Just we’re not the safest people to be around right now. Shouldn’t you be keeping a low profile?”
“Pfft.” Gretchen waved me off as she sat out three bowls. “I’m old enough to know when I should be hiding and when I should be helping.” She gave me a pointed look, then began to fill the bowls with what she’d been mixing in her pot.
My nose had me focusing more on what Gretchen was serving than what she was saying. It was some kind of goulash, and my stomach agreed it was far more important than her impromptu visit. A little more greedily than I should have, I took the bowl from her before she could even finish pushing it toward me. Dipping my spoon into the bowl, I wasted no time popping it into my mouth.
Big mistake.
“Ho…hot!” I swallowed painfully, my eyes watering as I waved a hand in front of my mouth. Gretchen pushed a glass of water to me with a shake of her head.
“See what happens when you get ahead of yourself?” Gretchen gave me a chastising look before handing Darren his bowl and taking her own to the last seat at the island next to me. “Which is one of the reasons I have come. I know you’re trying to find a way to help the masters, and I don’t want to overstep my bounds, but are you sure you want to get involved?”
My brows shot up and I turned in my seat to face her. “What? Of course I do. I’m not just going to wait around here for them to do something. We’ve been stuck here for a year now, and what has that gotten us? Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Darren asked, a bit of hurt to his tone.
I twisted quickly back to the man at my side, grabbing his arm before he could close down. “That’s not what I meant and you know it.” I sighed heavily, holding his arm with both hands. “You know I love being here with you, but you have to admit this wasn’t supposed to be a permanent situation. We won’t age, Darren! We’ll stay the same as long as Antoine is alive and that could be two thousand years from now or two seconds. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a more definite future than that.” I took a breath and closed my eyes for a second. When I opened them again, I was staring into Darren’s dark orbs. “I love you and want to be with you, but I love the others too. I can’t just leave them to their fate. Especially when it’s tied so closely to ours.”
Darren inclined his head slowly, cupping my face with one hand. “I know. We will get them back. Won’t we, Gretchen?”
A soft hand rubbed my back and I shifted toward the older woman.
“Don’t worry, dear, I’m not just here to feed you.” Gretchen smiled sadly. “I have some news.”
“News?” Now that had my full attention. “What kind of news?”
Gretchen stood and walked across the room. She picked up her purse and pulled out her phone, bringing it back over to us. “While you’ve been hiding out here and with the masters on the run, I’ve been watching the house. Checking the mail, looking for break ins, the like. Nothing has been stolen, thankfully, but there have been a few suspicious characters lurking about.” She brought up a video on her phone, which I recognized from one of the security cameras. There were three figures dressed in black with far more firepower than they should have for solicitors, especially in the middle of the day. “Three times I have caught them on camera. They haven’t broken into the house yet, but this last time I went to check the mail, one of them showed up.”
I gasped, clutching her arm. “Are you okay? They didn’t hurt you, did they?”
“No, no.” Gretchen patted my hand, setting her phone down. “They didn’t hurt me. Though, they did want to know where my employers were.” Her eyes grew hard at that statement.
“What’d you tell them?”
“Nothing, of course.” She leaned back, her brows raised. “What kind of person do you take me for? I’m not going to tell the bad guys where my family is. Even though they offered me tons of money to do so.”
I frowned, pursing my lips before asking, “Why wouldn’t they hurt you for it when you said no?”
Darren spoke then. “Because it’s against their code. They don’t hurt humans. At least, not the non-human servant kind.”
“So, they’d hurt you or me to get to them though,” I pointed out, my stomach rolling with anxiety and growing anger.
“Yes. Which is why we must stop them at all costs.”
Darren’s words surprised me. I looked between Darren and Gretchen, my brows furrowed. “I thought you were against me going after them. It’s too dangerous for such a breakable woman such as me,” I mocked, repeating his words to me several months ago.
“But you’re not so breakable anymore, are you?” Darren scanned over my form, his fingers trailing across the muscles I’d gained over my time working with Billy. “Nor are you unable to protect yourself. In fact, you may be more formidable than even me.”
I snorted. “Yeah, okay. That’s all good and well, but it doesn’t help us find the hunters, and without them we’re pretty much stuck here.”
“Except,” Gretchen pulled my attention back, “I know where they are.”
My brows rose. “How’s that?”
With a sly grin, Gretchen pulled up an app on her phone, showing a blinking red dot on a map of Atlanta. “You didn’t think I was just hired for my cooking, did you? I slipped a tracker onto one of those hunters while they were contemplating what to do with an old woman. And now…” The red dot moved across the screen and then stopped on a large estate.
“We know where they are,” I finished for her. Plans formed in my mind, and all of sudden my time in Seabrick seemed to be short-lived. Soon, my life might be back to normal. Or as normal as it could get.