Logan: Her Warlock Protector Book 3 (2 page)

Once he was resting against her chest the little guy relaxed and started giving small licks to her cheek. Giggling she stroked the smooth, silky fur—seriously about as soft as mink—and kissed the top of his head.
 

“Well, Schnapps, at least I have one man left in my life.”

Schnapps stopped then and quirked his head at her, and she had to shake off that feeling she sometimes had since she’d purchased him three years ago that he actually could
listen
to her
.
Which of course was completely nuts. She wasn’t Dr. Doolittle here. Still, the ferret was chittering a little, his voice low, before licking her cheek one more time. Caitlin decided to take that in the spirit of a message for her, a promise that at least she’d have him to come home to. Still, it could also be “I need more crunchy treats” for all she knew.

“Your will be done then too, buddy,” she said, setting him down to run around on her bedroom floor. “Damn,” she hissed, as she stepped on one of the toy jingle balls she left out for him.
 

Scooping up some crunchy kibble from his bag, she started filling his bowl. That’s why she wasn’t sure when she heard it at first, not when there was the clang of hard food against the metal.
 

“Okay, soup’s on.”

Instead of Schnapps coming to her outstretched arms, though, he just stood stock still, his fur sticking up all over his back. Confused, Caitlin turned her attention back to the door. It was shut between her room and the living room, but she was glad it was when a loud thump came from only a few feet behind the door. Her heart quickened and her breaths came in short little gasps. Sweat started beading down her head and her palms grew slick. Beside her, Schnapps was baring his teeth.

This can’t be. I have to be imagining it
.

Caitlin stood there for what felt like hours, straining her ears for another sound. Just when she thought she imagined the thud, there was another loud thunk and it took everything she had not to scream. Sliding silently on bare feet, she reached down for Schnapps and brought him tightly to her chest. Plan, she had to get a plan. It wasn’t like she had any weapons, not even a baseball bat or a fire poker. Then the thumping turned to a rattle, her door knob moving and she didn’t think the pathetic lock would hold. Clutching Schnapps and reaching for her cell phone, she hurried out her back window and ran.

From the nearest diner a few blocks down the street, she dialed 911, still terrified that the burglar was in her house.

“IS ANYTHING MISSING, Ms. Monroe?” Lieutenant Lucy O'Healy asked.

Caitlin sat huddled on her sofa with a police blanket wrapped around her and Schnapps on her lap. She ignored the way that the tall, lanky brunette was glaring at her feet. So she didn’t have her sneakers on and her feet were bare. Hell, considering the city, she was lucky that she hadn’t stepped on discarded needles on her way to
Dirk's Diner
. Still, she didn’t need the condescension, not that she and O'Healy had the best relationship.

“Nothing looks broken or out of place in here,” Caitlin said, setting Schnapps down and walking to the door to her room.
 

It was still locked from the inside and apparently such a small lock had held or the thief hadn’t actually been a thief and was more interested in rattling her. Caitlin chewed back the nausea at that thought. Then her eyes caught sight of the altar, and it wasn’t right. The candles were there but in the wrong order, the white no longer in the center. The herbs were taken away.
 

“Oh, God,” she said, getting to her knees and reaching for the knotted board. Pulling it back, she wanted to cry when she realized her spell book, the tome that she’d relied on for over six years, was missing. “I’ve been robbed!”

“YOU SHOULD MAKE contact tonight, brother,” Jonathan said, his long fingers running over the pearl pentacle he wore at his neck as a pendant. “It’s more than time. You’ve been watching her for over two months.”

Logan MacCulloch nodded and, unbidden, traced the circles of steel interlocked around the pentagrams that made up his cufflinks. Once, he too had favored the in-your-face style of his commandant and good friend, Jonathan Worthen. Hell, back in the old country and centuries ago, pendants weren’t unusual on men of a certain class. Still, they were trying to blend in now as they searched for untrained witches. In these days in the colonies—no sorry
America
—the cufflinks were the least obvious. It was enough to access his heritage, to proclaim his rank, but not enough to draw attention he didn’t want.

Still, you couldn’t give advice to a higher ranking officer as a rule, and no one told Jonathan what to do. You didn’t survive five hundred years locked in the war they fought and excelling at it by being indecisive.

Or stupid.

Logan took his scotch and leaned back in his chair at The Club Regent casino. He’d been staying at one of the harbor front hotels for two months while keeping his eye on Caitlin Monroe, one of the Black Jack dealers and a clear uninitiated and untrained, fledgling witch. She was one that his brotherhood wanted desperately. From what he’d gauged of her and what their own empaths had felt from her, she was a divinationist. Right now, she could glimpse the future enough for the next few days or sometimes a huge life event in a decade or so, but with practice and tutoring, they could have the ultimate edge in their constant war. If you could read every move the enemy made years before they even
thought
of making it?

Game over.

Still, Logan wasn’t ready to approach her yet. He’d sought and trained young witches before, even recaptured more than one rogue in his time. Something about that vivacious redhead with the perfect curves tugged at his heart and, tide-turning gift or not, he wasn’t sure he could drag someone so damaged already into battle. Lately, he wasn’t sure he had any authority to lead anyone in a battle, let alone a novice.

“I don’t think it’s time yet, old friend.”

Jonathan’s eyes went from their usual green to a dark red as his friend gathered his power.
 

“It wasn’t a request, General. It’s more than time. You’ve established that she has the gift, have even been to some of the party’s she moonlights at. You’ve researched her daily work pattern, and we can both feel the presence of our enemies here. There’s a Knight looking for her too. If we hold off any longer, they’ll take her and kill her.”

“Isn’t that what happens eventually?”

He blinked and forced the Scotch to his lips again. Logan hadn’t meant to be that direct. It was hardly his style, never being the most loquacious under the best of circumstances, and in the last year, the joy and color had seemed just drained from everything. Yes, he and Jonathan were great friends and brothers-in-arms but some things he’d wanted to keep private.

His superior’s eyes blinked back to their normal verdant shade, mollified. “You’re thinking of Adam again. Logan, you did everything you could.”

“I miscalculated. He was trying to save my life and that monster sliced through his neck as if it were butter!”
 

Drops of scotch spilled onto his hand and Logan realized then his hand was shaking. Taking deep breaths, he concentrated, saying inner prayers to the Goddess, anything to calm himself. After a while, his hands were steady and he set his glass back on the table. Amber liquid still spilled as he did it, staining the polished black granite.
 

“I mean that I should have been better.”

Jonathan didn’t say anything for a few measured moments. “We’re in a war.”

“I know this speech. I give it to my own lieutenants.”

“Not recently.”

Logan paused and pushed his ponytail back over his shoulder. “I needed time.”

“And we gave you ten months and now you’ve been working on tailing Miss Monroe for us. This is a tamer assignment than most generals would have and you know this. We need you out there in the field again, really in the field. You are one of the best generals I’ve ever had the privilege of serving with. Time’s up.”

“So Adam means that little? Everything he did for us for over a century, his skill as a conjurer, all of it? It’s just one more pawn down and moving on.”

Jonathan’s jaw clenched, and he stroked his long auburn beard.
 

“You know that’s not true. You know that I miss him too, just like it grieves me with every Wiccan we lose—man or woman—and especially those in the Corps. I’ve had to learn to adjust. I can’t grieve for five hundred years as freshly as if it was the first day after a loss. You used to understand this.”

“And maybe I’m tired of one more loss, old friend. Maybe I’m not made for the Corps anymore.”

“You’re too invaluable to lose. I can’t allow it.”
 

That spark of purple was in the commandant’s eyes again, but Logan loathed his life. He’d thought he’d succeeded in hardening his heart in three hundred years of battle and loss. But now when he was forced to close his eyes, all he saw was the arc of blood splashing across the night and the glassy stare from what was left of Adam’s head. Maybe even now there were losses too far to recover from. Damned if he wanted to drag Caitlin into this as well.

“I’m tired.”

“We can replace you. I have Eric up in Philadelphia. After he’s done with his novice there, he can come for Miss Monroe,” Jonathan replied, shrugging as if he were discussing nothing more emotional than the positioning of troops for a battle.

That wasn’t this. This was something else, something bigger and more meaningful. Already, even from glimpses from afar, Logan could tell how much Caitlin mattered.

And not just as a weapon of war.

“No, I’ll do it. I just…there has to be a way to leave this life.”

“Five centuries of experience here says otherwise. We are who we are and our mission matters. There’s only one way out.”

“And it isn’t pretty,” Logan rasped, holding up his tumbler and taking a final sip. “To Adam.”

“To Adam,” Jonathan acknowledged clinking his glass in cheer. “And to our newest acquisition.”

Logan tried to ignore how badly the liquor burned his throat on his final swallow.

“DEALER HAS EIGHTEEN,” Caitlin said, unveiling her hand.

Logan smirked back at her and flashed her both a grin and his cufflinks, teasing her with the symbol of their shared heritage. He’d been giving Caitlin those little glances since he sat down at her table fifteen minutes ago. The first time he’d done it, he’d noted her reaction closely: the slight gasp, flare of her nostrils, even the way her eyes widened just a bit before she recovered. She might be a novice and untrained, but she knew enough about the craft to know what a pentacle meant to them.

Since then, he’d been enjoying taunting her with the symbol as well as cleaning up at her table. They’d played four hands in a row and so far he’d manipulated his luck to have a perfect twenty-one combination each and every time. By now, the other two players had left, leaving her and him alone. Just the way Logan preferred it.

“Well, lass, looks like I won again,” he said, playing up the Scottish accent he’d long ago let be buried by his acculturation across the pond.
 

He’d grown up in the 1700s in the Scottish Highlands but been in the United States since the Civil War. He only poured the accent on when he needed to, and he’d been able to seduce more than one woman with his guttural pronunciations. Maybe he owed Sean Connery for that. He definitely felt like James Bond tonight with his two-thousand dollar tux and the Armani silk shirt. Small trinkets compared to his actual accumulation of wealth, but enough to let her and everyone else know he was a whale of a high roller.
 

“So, fancy another round?” he asked.

Eat your heart out 007.

Despite the flush of red coloring her cheeks, Caitlin leaned over and collected the cards to begin a new shuffle, a flirty smile playing on full, pouty lips.
 

“You need to show me the rabbit’s foot you’re using. This is quite a run you’re having.”

He shrugged as she gave him the first two cards. He checked the bottom one and then looked at the three. So far he had a twelve.
 

“Hit me again, lass.”

She rolled her eyes. “You ever heard of the expression quitting while you’re ahead. I know that you’ve had an epic roll but that always changes. They mean it about gambling. Sometimes people do fine when they walk away but a house like
The Club Regent
? We are always going to win.”

“Do you care?” he asked, nodding again at the five of clubs placed before him.

 
A four of whichever suit would invariably be next. Idly, Logan swept the sweat back from his brow. Each witch or warlock had their own special area of expertise. Jonathan harnessed lightning almost like a god of old. Caitlin was an augur and reader futures. His own gift was luck. With enough concentration, he could manipulate it for a time to bend to his will. He was the most dangerous man the lottery or a casino had ever met. The only problem was that using any of their abilities took extreme amounts of energy. A healing ritual based around enough herbs or communing with nature could reinvigorate them. The preferred method was a shared sensual experience with another Wiccan, the ultimate sharing and renewing of life energy.

That wasn’t always possible.

Still, Caitlin wasn’t wrong about his hot streak, but it wasn’t for the reasons she assumed. Luck was fickle for humans, a cruel bitch that much was sure. For him, she was a lover but like a vampiress or succubus that took as much as she ever gave. Even after a few hands of manipulating the odds, he was beginning to sweat. Soon, he’d be breathing in shallow breaths and after that the lightheadedness would set in. It was all that cosmic balance that they learned to work with via training. They couldn’t draw on power forever. It was why he hadn’t simply lucked their way into winning the war or Jonathan couldn’t create the largest lightning bolt in history to eliminate all of the Knights at once.