Charmed and Dangerous by Lindsay Buroker

2

As Morgen steppedout of her car in the parking lot of the vegan bakery, a twinge of nausea came over her. Lucky was in the back seat, so she assumed he wasn’t sending her a vision, but maybe something was happening back at the house and Zorro was. She braced herself with a hand to the hood, rain pattering on her head, and waited. But the expected vision didn’t come.

Lucky stuck his head out the back window and barked at a dog in another parked car. His whip of a tail smacked the seats with the vigor of a drummer performing a rock solo.

“Put your head back inside and be good,” Morgen told him, “or I won’t bring you anything.”

Lucky tilted his copper short-furred head, long ears cocking, and looked at her. Since she’d inadvertently made him a familiar, he seemed to understand her better. Whether or not he would obey was another matter.

“I know how you feel about scones.” She pointed at the steaming mug of coffee and frosted scones painted on the window of the bakery.

Lucky sniffed the air, then looked across the street to a fifties-style drive-in restaurant that served burgers and battered chicken drenched in fryer oil.

“Don’t push it,” Morgen said. “No self-respecting vegetarian would go to that place. A scone is the best you’re going to get, and only if you’re good.”

Lucky wagged cheerfully.

Willing the nausea to abate, Morgen went inside, telling herself she would only get a couple of scones, make coffee at home, and keep her order to five dollars. Until the business took off, she couldn’t afford to make extravagant pastry purchases.

But when she spotted the fall line-up in the display case, complete with a mouth-watering vegan pumpkin cheesecake, she couldn’t refrain from getting a couple of pieces. They would be her reward for cleaning up the tannery—the jewelry and woodworking shop, she amended. She and Amar would have to brainstorm a name for it, one that didn’t bring to mind its unappealing past.

Her phone rang as she was heading out of the bakery.

“Hello, Sian,” Morgen answered, always worried when her idle-chit-chat-hating sister called. Usually, little short of an emergency could prompt her to pick up a phone.

“I called to issue a warning,” Sian said without preamble.

Monkeys hooted in the background. Presumably she was at work, her new laboratory research job at the university in Seattle.

“Is everything okay?” Morgen asked warily.

“Caden called to pump me for information. Gavin and Rhett were with him.”

“Information on what?” Morgen hadn’t heard from their brothers since early in the summer and wondered what they’d wanted and why they’d called Sian and not her. Were they still grumpy because Grandma had left the estate to Morgen and nothing to any of them? If they’d had any idea how much trouble inheriting the old farmhouse and Wolf Wood had turned out to be, they wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with it.

“They were attempting to be subtle, but I gathered they are worried about your new witch lifestyle.”

“How did they hear about it?”

“How much have you been talking to Cousin Zoe lately?”

Morgen’s stomach sank. “She came up a few weekends back to scope out the hot men of Bellrock, as she called it, and I… may have mentioned a few things.”

“What prompted you to open up to the family gossip?”

“Zoe gave herself a tour of the house and wanted to see the root cellar. The potions, cauldrons, and pentagram tend to require explanations.”

“Well, she’s your snitch.”

Morgen continued to the car, feeling the need to lean against it for support. It wasn’t that she was ashamed or embarrassed about the witchcraft she was learning—if anything, she was starting to feel like she fit in somewhere for the first time in her life; many of the witches in the coven were book-loving, quirky, and struggled to connect with normal people. She now considered the nineteen-year-old witch Wendy a good friend, and Phoebe had been invaluable in giving advice on mastering the power Morgen had never known existed within her until that summer.

All that said, she had no desire to explain any of that to her extremely normal brothers. Before coming up to Bellrock, Morgen hadn’t known magic existed, and she was positive they didn’t either. They would never believe her if she spoke of it, nor would they think witches and werewolves were real. They would think she was a kook. Sian was learning witchcraft on the weekends, had seen men turn into furry predators, and was quasi dating the werewolf Dr. Valderas, but even she was skeptical of half the things Morgen told her.

“I thought she was too busy ogling werewolves to pay attention to the witch stuff,” Morgen muttered when she realized her sister wouldn’t go on without being prompted—or maybe Sian had been distracted by some experiment that required her attention. “As I recall, she hooked up with Juan Martín.”

“I have no interest in hook-ups,” Sian said. “I merely called to warn you that you can expect a visit.”

“From Caden?” Morgen groaned.

“I believe from all of them. Again, they weren’t blunt, but I believe they feel the need to show up en masse to stage an intervention.”

Morgen groaned again, the nausea returning to her stomach. She slumped against the car and rested a hand on her abdomen, glad for the cool rain moistening her cheeks.

Lucky stuck his head out the window, looked at the bakery bag in her hand, and whined. He peered at the German shepherd he’d been barking at earlier, as if to point out that he’d been a good boy.

She made herself walk over to pet him, but that nausea continued, and she wondered if she would have to run back in to use the restroom. She wasn’t getting sick, was she? The flu?

With that thought, inspiration struck.

“Tell them they can’t come,” Morgen blurted. “I’m sick.”

“Sick?” Sian asked.

“I’ve had some nausea start up. I’d hate to give the flu to all of our brothers.”

“Maybe you’re pregnant.”

“I’m not pregnant.” At least, Morgen didn’t see how she could be. Since she’d never had kids, she wasn’t positive what the experience would feel like, but it was far too early to think that could be the reason for her illness. So far, this felt similar to the nausea she got from her visions, so she was more inclined to blame the witch world. “Amar and I have only been sleeping together for a month.”

Technically, more like six weeks. Hell, when had her period been due? Was she late? She’d been so busy working on the witch database app and charms so she could open her business that she’d lost track of time.

“It only takes once, genius,” Sian said.

“I know that, but that’s when you’re young and fertile. I’m forty.”

“True, and you do eat all that soy.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” Morgen eyed her bakery bag, suspecting the cheese in the pumpkin cheesecake was made from soy.

“The isoflavones in it mimic estrogen, and animal studies suggest that eating large amounts of them may reduce fertility in women.”

Morgen rolled her eyes but also said, “See? I can’t possibly be pregnant.”

“Perhaps your strapping werewolf lover has virility that overrode your reduced fertility. I trust he doesn’t eat soy.”

“No, he devours wild elk whole and uses the antlers to clean his teeth afterward.”

“If he enjoys an organic snout-to-tail diet, he could indeed have substantial virility. Numerous researchers have found that such eating habits have been linked to higher-quality sperm, including overall count, motility, and morphology.”

“Have I mentioned how delightful it is to have an encyclopedia for a sister?”

“Not as often as you should, and I’m quoting scientific journals, not encyclopedias.”

“So very different.”

“They’re peer-reviewed, thus superior resources. For your information, such beliefs about the benefits of eating the whole animal predate the modern era. In medieval times, infertile men were advised to consume ground-up pig testicles in wine.”

“I’m getting nauseated again,” Morgen said.

“Perhaps you should take a pregnancy test.”

“Perhaps I should stop talking to my sister about testicles.”

“You can do both. Good-bye.”

Morgen put her phone away and tore off a piece of scone for Lucky. He chomped it down, his wagging tail hitting the back of the seat again.

“I may need to stop at the pharmacy, buddy,” she said.

He cocked his head, as if to ask what she would bring him from there.

“Nothing good,” she mumbled, hoping flu medicine was all she needed, but maybe it would be best to pick up a pregnancy test too.

If she somehow was pregnant… what would she tell Amar?