Page 10 of Elemental Healer

“Have as many as you want.”

I gave him a thumbs up and opened my book. I’d brought a few, not knowing how long we’d be here. It could be a few days, or it could be a few weeks. The part of me screaming for vengeance hoped it wasn’t the latter. I wanted the job done so I could move on with my life.

Darkness began to fall outside, and Jeff placed more wood on the fire. Nathaniel excused himself to go to bed, but I knew he’d only wanted to call his latest love interest. The fact he was now the Warlock and an old guy didn’t seem to make him want to settle down and raise a family. No, not everyone wanted to have a wife and kids, but Nathaniel was getting a little too old to play the part of the player. In my book at least.

“I’ll be heading for bed now too.” Jeff stood and stretched. He was a big guy. I was tall, but I didn’t have the large build he did. I was tall and on the soft, fluffy side. In a fight, my magic would be the only thing to help me. Physically, the warrior-healer had all the advantage.

Slapping yet another fake smile on my face, I joined the man in standing to leave the room. “Guess I’ll join you. There’s really nothing else to do right now.”

He paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked to the cookie cupboard. Heart picking up pace a little, I fingered the syringe in my pocket.

“Cookies or no cookies tonight? I hate dilemmas like this.” His foot began to move to the kitchen.

I pushed at the man to move him the rest of the way to the stairs. “You eat cookies for breakfast. You do not need them for a bedtime snack as well. Just get up the stairs.”

The man gave an exaggerated groan and took the stairs two at a time to move away from me faster. I didn’t scare the man as much anymore, but little did he know, I was going to become the face he’d see in his nightmares.

I’d successfully hidden my overwhelming fear of the Witch from everyone, including the Witch herself, through the entire meal and evening. Nate didn’t scare me. Of everyone here, he was the one who should scare me the most. At one time he’d tried to kill me. However, my brain couldn’t reconcile the man I knew with that of the Light-offing man he’d once been.

Inside my bedroom, with the world dark outside and the lighting on the dimmer side, it finally clicked into place what was going to happen tonight. I’d be sleeping beside a female, and not just any female, but a Harbor Witch. My heart pounded with an accelerated beat, and I fought to get it back under control. This was just part of the job. Until Tessa felt she could trust me, this was my fate.

Her luggage still sat on my bed. Thankfully, it was a large bed. We wouldn’t touch if we both stayed to our side.

“Nice headboard.” Too consumed with the sleeping arrangements, I hadn’t noticed her admiring the carvings into the wood along the head of the bed.

I stepped forward to take yet another look at the beauty my brother had created. It had given me a new respect for Drew, and while he liked to show us a tough exterior, his gift had shown us the level of love he held for each of us.

“Drew carved a headboard for each of my brothers and sisters-in-law depicting our elements.” My eyes roamed over the wood Drew had stained a light brown. It was adorned with two hands set side by side—the healing symbol—and roses.

“I understand the healing symbol,” Tessa remarked as she drew closer to the carvings, “but I don’t get what roses have to do with healing.”

I stepped up to the other side of the bed and ran my fingers over one of the roses in question. “They don’t. Cal and I are different from our brothers because we each have control over two elements, not one.”

“Which element does the rose symbolize?”

My smile was more for myself, but I was too tired to hide the emotion behind it. I laughed. “It was the most masculine thing Drew could come up with to represent Love.”

“You’re a Love Elemental too?”

Nodding, I moved to the end of the bed again. “Yes.”

“Pardon me for asking,” she moved back to her suitcase and rifled through it. I tried not to look at the underthings she was throwing around so blatantly in my face. “but how does an Elemental whose element is Love become one of the best assassins this world has ever seen?”

Her question wiped the smile from my face. “It’s not something I want to discuss with you right now.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. “Why?”

I raised my eyebrows at her question. There was no way I was revealing my darkest secrets to this stranger. A stranger who wouldn’t trust me.

“You want to earn my trust, don’t you? Start talking,” she said, moving back to sort through her things. “And while you talk, I’ll unpack. So, which drawers are mine?”

My eyebrows shot up my forehead. “I agreed to let you sleep in here, but there is no way you are moving in. No flipping way. You can live out of a suitcase for a few days until you trust me and move into your own room.”

She had the nerve to cluck her tongue at me. “You want me to trust you, but you won’t open up and prove you can be trusted? Not going to fly, Lord Jeff.”

“Drop the Lord,” I growled as I pointed down on the left side of the mirrored dresser, resigned to my fate of having a roommate on a more permanent basis than what I wanted. “These three drawers are empty.”

“Giving up so soon?” A smile as evil as any I could give graced her lips, and a shiver visibly ran down my spine. Her lips drew up further, and her eyes gleamed at my reaction. So much for keeping my fear of her a secret.

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