Evan Bigger looked at George and KitKit who were sitting together on the sofa in his spot, curled around each other. He looked away. Then back to the Bassett Hound and the familiar. He studied them. KitKit hissed at him. George whined softly.
“I know you can understand me. Can’t say how or why I know, but I know. I’ll need all the help you can offer raising the kids. You know that, right?”
KitKit curled her tail up and looked away. It was cat talk for, “Of course.”
George whuffed and sneezed in agreement.
KitKit got up, dropped from the special place where Evan Bigger usually sat, and walked away.
George got up, dropped heavily to the floor and walked to the big witch. He licked his hand. Evan Bigger petted him. As was his due.
Evan Bigger smiled. “All for one and one for all.”
George had no idea what that meant. But it was enough. It was good, good.
Gwendolyn Faith Hunter is an American author and blogger, writing in the fantasy and thriller genres. She writes as Faith Hunter in the fantasy genre, and as Gwen Hunter in the thriller genre. She also has collaborated on thrillers with Gary Leveille, jointly using the name Gary Hunter. Hunter is one of the founding members of the blog, MagicalWords.net, a writer assistance blog, and has developed a role-playing game based on her Rogue Mage series.
To learn more, go to: http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/
Keeting it Real
By Hailey Edwards
WOOLWORTH HOUSE WELCOMED ME WITH A sassy flick of her curtains as I climbed the familiar steps onto the wraparound porch, and a smile overtook me before I reached the front door, which she opened for me.
“Morning, Woolly.” I patted her doorframe on the way in. “I’m here to give you a break for a few hours. I’m taking Keet to the aquarium. Oscar too, if he’s around tonight.”
Warm air embraced me from the floor register, Woolly’s version of a hug, and I sketched a bow. “Eva Kinase, babysitter extraordinaire, at your service.”
No tyke too tough, no pet too predatory, no ghost too ghoulish.
I had been there, done that, wiped its butt, and lived to charge hazard pay.
I also came up with that slogan when I launched my business, when I was like twelve.
The floorboards creaked with laughter at my shenanigans, and I went to fetch Keet.
“I hear Keet chirping.” I scanned the living room on my way to his cage. “Is Oscar home?”
The resident poltergeist, a six-year-old boy, was nowhere in sight.
A firm twitch of the curtains told me Oscar was out.
Poor little guy would mope for days over missing out on a trip to the aquarium, but I had no time to wait until he returned from wherever ghost boys went when they weren’t on this plane.
After this favor for my aunt and uncle, I had a pair of hellhounds to walk before I called it a night.
“Pfft. Pfft. Pfft.”
A banana-yellow parakeet with beady crimson eyes performed a chorus line across his perch. He caught flack for his coloring, but his ruby-bright gaze wasn’t demonic. He was just a lutino.
“Hey, Pumba.” A laugh caught in my throat as Keet attempted to catch my attention. “Ready to go?”
Keet Richards, aka Pumba, was Aunt Grier’s parakeet familiar. A psychopomp, really. He had a body and a soul, but they didn’t line up just right. He was her first attempt at necromancy, and he was…special.
He was also still obsessed with The Lion King, even though my cousins and I were all grown at this point.
After watching it on a loop for so many years, he could quote the whole thing, songs and all, but he preferred making Pumba-esque farting noises. The cartoon warthog was by far his favorite character.
“Did Aunt Grier set out the birdmobile?” I asked the house. “I don’t see it.”
A door opened down the hall, and I went to fetch the backpack from a closet. The pet carrier was one of my better online purchases, if I do say so myself. It made birdsitting less stationary, which suited most of the creatures in my care much better than lying around their houses while they pined for their owners.
The clear plastic bubble on the back opened into a spacious interior that gave whatever pet you carried a bird’s-eye view for their adventure. For Keet, I’d installed a few wooden dowels to give him perch options. He was a picky traveler, but he seemed happy with the setup.
The lights flickered overhead, Woolly vying for my attention.
“What’s up?” I freed Keet, guided him into the pack, then zipped it tight. “Am I forgetting something?”
Footsteps thumped toward me, and the scent of rich leather and fresh copper hit my sensitive nose. There was no point in turning. I knew who stood behind me. I would have known him anywhere.
“Eva-Diva,” Corbin Theroux rumbled in a smoky voice. “I didn’t expect to see you.”
Probably because I avoided my childhood crush like pineapple on an otherwise perfectly good ham pizza. Easy to do, when his job as a sentinel entailed so much travel. And so much secrecy.
“Aunt Grier and Uncle Linus are in Atlanta for the weekend,” I told him, “if you were hoping to catch them.”
“I know.”
He knew, and yet he came anyway?
“I’m babysitting Keet and Oscar while they’re away.”
“I know that too.”
Smug bastard finally irked me enough to face him. “No one told me you were back in town.”
Aunt Grier, who’d resuscitated him into the special snowflake vampire he is today, usually warned me.
Unable to help myself, I looked my fill. I hadn’t seen him in person in years. Almost a decade.
Hair as black as midnight fell in soft waves to his shoulders, clashing with the hard line of his jaw. His green eyes pierced me, and I didn’t want to know what differences he saw in me. His whipcord-thin build had filled out, but he was still wiry. Lean…like he was hungry.
His taste in fashion hadn’t changed, though. Ratty jeans, scuffed boots, holey tee. Very James Dean.
“Only for the weekend.” A smile flavored his tone. “What are the odds?”
None to none.
Damn it, Auntie.
She must have gotten fed up with my one-woman cold war and decided it was time for a truce.
“Well, I have to be going.” I eased on the backpack. “See you around.”
As I brushed past Corbin, he gripped my upper arm in a light hold.
“That’s the thing.” He wet his bottom lip. “You make sure you don’t. See me, that is.”
“I’m a busy girl with a full social calendar.”
As the eldest daughter of the alpha pair of the Savannah, Georgia, gwyllgi pack, I had a full-time job in defending my title as gamma, or third. Many of the gwyllgi credited my high ranking to nepotism. Until I kicked their hairy asses.
“Hmm.” He stroked his thumb down the inside of my arm. “What are you doing now?”
“Save our oceansss,” Keet, the tattletale, sang. “Oceans. Oceans. Oceans.”
“The aquarium?” Corbin grinned, the corners of his smile sharp. “I love the aquarium.”
As I stared at his teeth, prickles raced up the side of my neck.
The night of my high school graduation, I drank enough liquid courage to attack him with my mouth. No one would call what I did to him a kiss, and the cringeworthy details had been burned into my memory.
His frown when I sashayed over to him. His startled expression when I sat on his lap. His grunt of surprise when I claimed his smooth chin in a passionate nightmare of miscalculation that resulted in him laughing at me, scooping me into his arms, and carrying me home, where he tucked me into bed.