“What do you feel when you look at it?” he aimed his question at Alice, watching her like a predator spotting prey.
I tensed.
“I want to touch it,” she answered simply, unafraid of him. “Like I’m physically restraining myself from doing it, but I’m not sure I’ll hold back much longer. My fingers are twitching for it.” She wasn’t lying. Both her hands were tucked under her legs.
“Touch it,” Dominic encouraged. “But don’t lift it off the table.”
“Ummm, I’m not sure I can promise that.” Alice twitched visibly, straining to hold back. I wanted to put the pendant back around my neck just to save her from the torment. I knew it was a bad idea, and I should’ve listened to my instincts. “I really, REALLY, want to touch it.”
“Do you trust me, Alice?” As if using her name would make things better when asking a question like that.
“Yes,” was her instant answer, while I shouted, “No” at the same time.
“Touch it.” Dominic ignored me like I wasn’t there.
Alice slapped her hand on the stone before I could snatch it from the table. Glaring at Dominic cost me, and hopefully it would be a lesson for another time. As soon as her fingers wrapped around the pendant, she gasped, and her eyes rolled to the back of her head. I jumped off the chair, or tried to, but Dominic barred me from reaching her with a tree trunk arm across my chest. When my friend’s head snapped back, turning her face up toward the ceiling, I was ready to bite Dominic’s arm off. I’d chew through his limb to help her.
“She’s not hurting,” he said it from the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off her. “Stop fighting me and look at her. She’s not hurting, Brooklyn. Even the wolf is calm.”
“Don’t tell me what could happen when she touched it didn’t faze you, you prick.” I was fuming, although he did speak the truth about the mongrel. “That’s why you stood here next to me, to prevent me from interfering.”
“Is that what you think?” Finally, he faced me, and whatever emotion was brimming in those green irises was like a punch to the gut. “I’m standing here to stop you?”
My eyes darted around and over him, noting for the first time how he was placed a foot in front of me, which had me right at his back. Dominic was not trying to block me. He was actually in a perfect position to protect me if anyone attacked. Like Alice, for example. My mind glitched and repeated that a few times. Dominic was protecting me from Alice.
My human friend Alice.
“The two of you fight like a cat and a dog,” Alice told us calmly, and both our heads snapped in her direction. “If you are done, can one of you please give me a pen and paper? I think I saw them in the living room at some point. If I go myself, I might not make it. I’m little dizzy.”
“What happened?” I crouched next to her, elbowing the wolf when he got in my face, while Dominic went hunting for pen and paper. “Why are you dizzy?”
“It’s not bad, Brooklyn. My head is spinning because I feel like I was sucked through a straw when I touched the stone.” A smile started forming on her lips. “But I do remember the symbol that was etched above a cave.” She beamed at me.
“A cave?” The blood in my veins turned into icicles.
“Yeah, a large cave, and the path led deep underground after you pass the symbol.” Alice was getting back to her animated self, but I couldn’t move.
Dominic cursing up a storm from behind me relayed exactly how I felt at that moment.
15
“No.”
“I’m not asking for permission, Dominic.” Arms across my chest, I glowered at him.
“Good, because you’re not getting it,” he snapped back, blocking the hallway.
“Dude, never argue with a pissed-off woman.” Alice was whisper-yelling advice to the stubborn shifter from behind me. “Even if she was human, the possibility that she’d bite you would high.”
“Maybe you don’t know what that symbol means, but I do.” The symbol Alice drew would’ve told me everything even if she didn’t mention the cave. “My answers are there, and I’m not asking you to come with me. I go alone.”
“How do you know that wasn’t planted there to lure you back to the cages?” Something must’ve shown on my face because Dominic laughed with no humor. “It doesn’t take much intelligence for a lowly shifter to know you’ve been there, Brooklyn. It wasn’t your words that gave it away, either. It was your eyes. No one gets that look without staring death in the face more times than they can count.”
“I don’t think you are not intelligent.” Okay, so I deflected the rest of what he said because I wasn’t ready to open that can of worms. “Actually, I think you are too smart for your own good most of the time.”
“He did make a good point,” Alice chirped. “About the symbol being planted, I mean. I’ve never done that before, so I can’t guarantee what I saw was some supernatural phenomenon. Look at Dominic, he turns into a huge panther for God’s sake. How do we know there wasn’t some magic juju slapped on the stone? Anything is possible now that you opened Pandora’s box for me. If you tell me unicorns were singing Macarena and zombies had a “Say yes to the dress” show, I’d believe it.”
Not just me, Dominic was eyeing her like she finally snapped from everything she had seen so far, as well. After she drew her vision, I asked them for some space so I could think about things. Instead of being a normal human and getting some rest or just waiting in another room, Alice convinced Dominic to help her protect the house. From the kitchen, I watched the grumpy shifter schlep bags of salt outside for her. Where she found so much of it was anyone’s guess, but she took advantage of Dominic’s strength and poured not one, but two circles of salt around the house, belching something about all evil and negative energy and entities to be forbidden from crossing over it. As if the more dramatic she made her voice sound, the better it’d work.