Wolf Tracks: Tales of the Were (Grizzly Cove Book 17) Read online

  He left her to go have his conference call—most likely at the mayor’s office—while she headed into the parlor to see Miss Felicity before she did anything else. The old lady smiled when she saw Helen in the archway.

  “Was that your young man who just left?” the old lady asked. Helen realized Miss Felicity had a very good vantage point between the archway to the parlor and the big window that looked out onto the street, with a good view of the front steps, as well.

  “Jim has a meeting. Boys only, apparently,” Helen joked, rolling her eyes as she smiled. “I was wondering if I could keep you company for a little bit.”

  “Don’t let the males walk all over you,” Miss Felicity advised. “They always try, but you can’t let them succeed.” The old woman had a twinkle in her eye as Helen approached. “If you have to bite him once in a while to get him to take you seriously, my advice is to do so.”

  Helen laughed. “If I were a wolf, I would definitely do that.”

  “Come now, you must have your own ways of keeping folks in line,” Miss Felicity suggested.

  Helen thought about it. “I’ll have to think about that. I’m not much of a mage, compared to others in my family.”

  “Even non-magical folk can do it. I’ve seen it with some of the human mates in our Pack. They find the right way to remind their spouses that they have a voice, too, and they use it when necessary.” Miss Felicity nodded knowingly. “You just need to find your way of doing things. I understand the relationship with Jim is a new one, but you’ll figure it out.”

  Helen wasn’t even going to ask how Miss Felicity had come to the conclusion that she was having a relationship with Jim. Maybe it was just an assumption. Maybe there was some way Miss Felicity had of knowing. Or, maybe, she’d heard something last night? Helen felt her cheeks flush with embarrassment at that last thought, but Miss Felicity didn’t say anything more on the topic, which was a relief.

  Helen sat in the chair that was placed at a ninety-degree angle to the couch on which Miss Felicity sat. The dog was not in his basket, nor was he anywhere in the room.

  “No Angus today?” Helen asked, looking around for the little fellow.

  “He’s out prowling around somewhere,” Miss Felicity said, unconcerned. “He always returns for mealtime, when he’s had enough exploring.

  “I’m not sure if you know, but Joe, your Alpha, asked me to have a look at your knees, if you’re willing,” Helen said gently. She would never examine or treat someone who was conscious without their permission and cooperation.

  “Young Joseph mentioned something to me about your abilities and then, of course, I saw what you did for little Angus. I doubt you can do much, but if it’s no drain on your energy, I wouldn’t mind an examination. The Pack healer has done as much as he can for my arthritis, so this is about as good as it’s going to get for me, at this point,” Miss Felicity said, a sad but resigned note in her tone.

  “I can’t promise anything, of course, but…well…let me just have a look, first, okay?” Helen said, leaning forward in her chair. She reached out, putting her hand above Miss Felicity’s knee. “Is it okay to touch you?”

  “Certainly, my dear,” Miss Felicity replied graciously, holding out her legs and tugging the hem of her long dress up just over her swollen knees.

  Helen held back her instinctive wince. Those knee joints looked angry, even without invoking her gift. Swollen and painful, Helen had no doubt. Well, she could probably do something about that, at least temporarily. She’d have to use more of her gift to see if there was a longer-term solution, but first things first. Helen laid her hand on the closer knee and set to work bringing down the swelling and easing the pain.

  When she was done with the initial treatment on the first knee, she went onto the other without pause. She suspected Miss Felicity wanted to say something, but Helen didn’t allow anything to break her concentration. Her energy levels were high after the night spent with Jim. So high, in fact, that the treatment of the swelling and pain didn’t take much of her energy at all. It felt like she had extra reserves now, or something.

  Had sex with Jim given her extra magical energy? Helen had no idea that could even be a side effect of great sex. She’d have to do some research in the family archive when she got home. For now, though, she was buzzing with life-giving energy and able to do more than she’d expected. She took away the swelling, sending the fluid out, into the channels it was supposed to travel to leave Miss Felicity’s body and reduced what pain was left.

  Helen ran her hands downward toward Miss Felicity’s ankles and took away the swelling, which wasn’t quite as bad, in them as well. She sent her energy out, seeking other places—hips and spine, in particular. She did what she could on this first go-round, noting things for the next treatment, which would come later.

  “You’re probably going to want to go to the bathroom, shortly,” Helen advised as she lifted her hands. “Why don’t you try standing and seeing how that feels?”

  Miss Felicity did as Helen suggested and stood up. She had a cane not too far from her hand, but she didn’t reach for it. She tested her knees and ankles, shifting her weight from side to side.

  “Oh, that feels marvelous!” Miss Felicity walked a few steps then turned. “Thank you, dear. You really have a gift. I’ll be right back.” With a new spring in her step, she practically danced out of the parlor and down the hall.

  Helen had to smile. Miss Felicity seemed so happy to be able to move again without pain. Helen loved it when she could give a gift like that to someone. She sat back in her chair and took stock of her own energy levels, marveling at how much she still had to work with. Helping Miss Felicity didn’t even dent Helen’s energy reserves, which was pretty amazing.

  She heard the door down the hall open, and Miss Felicity came out of the powder room, only to be intercepted by Felicia. Helen could hear the conversation.

  “Where’s your cane, Gran? Do you want me to get it for you?” Felicia asked, sounding concerned.

  “It’s in the parlor, and no, I don’t need it. That Helen did something amazing. Look at my knees,” Miss Felicity said in an excited tone.

  “Wow,” Felicia said after a moment. “They haven’t looked that good in years.”

  “They feel even better,” Miss Felicity enthused. “I feel like going for a run.”

  Helen got up and went to the archway. “Not yet, Miss Felicity. I still haven’t had a look at your arms, and I’d like to discuss further work we can do to make this a more permanent change.”

  “Permanent?” Miss Felicity walked quickly down the hall to Helen. “You mean there’s more?”

  “Much more,” Helen assured the old lady, ushering her back toward the couch. Felicia followed her great-grandmother into the room, standing in the back, watching with interest. “Now, I presume your shoulders, elbows and wrists are also painful, right?”

  “They are,” Miss Felicity admitted.

  “If you’ll allow me,” Helen said, taking hold of one of Miss Felicity’s hands, she set to work. The inflammation wasn’t as bad, but the joints had worn down and showed signs of damage, including thin cartilage and a lack of lubrication, which was probably very painful. Helen did the work of beginning repairs.

  Her gift could actually regrow cartilage and repair soft tissues, as well as mending bones, but it sometimes took repeated treatments. She started work on Miss Felicity, with the idea of doing two or three more sessions to achieve the full effect.

  Helen finished with Miss Felicity’s arms and then discussed the options for further treatment. “I can make these changes permanent in just two or three more treatments. Otherwise, it’ll wear off over time,” she told the older woman. Felicia was still in the room, listening, as well. “What I’m doing is encouraging the cartilage to re-grow and fill in the bare spots where you have bone grinding on bone. I’m also reshaping any areas that have been damaged by the passage of time and repetitive motion. When I’m done, your joints won’t give
you trouble for a good long while.”

  “It’s a miracle,” Felicia whispered. Helen smiled at her.

  “It’s just my particular flavor of magic. Healing is what I do.” Helen shrugged, glad to be able to give Miss Felicity this gift of her magic.

  “And this doesn’t drain you?” Miss Felicity looked hard at Helen, as if searching for any telltale fatigue.

  Helen put both palms on her thighs and thought about it. “Honestly, this is strange. Normally, this kind of thing would take a lot out of me, but for whatever reason—maybe it’s working with shifter metabolism as a boost to my natural abilities—I’m not really feeling drained at all right now.” Helen shook her head in wonder. “I’m not going to question it. I suggest we just use this and get you fixed up as well as we can while I’ve got the zip to do it.”

  Miss Felicity chuckled. “Whatever the reason—and I think it might have something to do with a certain young male you’ve been keeping company with—I agree with your plan. I feel so good right now, it’s like you took fifty years off. I don’t mind being greedy and saying I’d like to feel this good for as long as possible.”

  “It’s not greedy,” Helen assured her, studiously ignoring the reference to Jim and their budding relationship. “Everybody wants to feel good. I’m just glad that sometimes, I can help them achieve that goal.”

  They made plans to meet up again the next day, after breakfast, and then Helen took her leave. She still had some shopping to do, and she wanted to see more of the town in the daylight.

  Helen’s shopping trip went well, for the most part. She picked up the nifty wheelie bag she’d been eying and a few other things, but the people in the shops and on the street were cool with her. Their reaction to her only changed when she got close to someone, and crazy as it seemed, she thought she caught some of them sniffing her. It dawned on her that maybe these shifters, with their ultra-strong senses, could somehow smell Jim on her, and that’s what changed their attitudes.

  That made her feel weird. It actually felt both good and bad. Good that somehow what she and Jim had done together had left its mark on her. Bad that these people would have continued to treat her somewhat rudely had she not carried that scent mark. It seemed sort of backwards to her. Like, shouldn’t people just assume she was okay if she’d been welcomed to their town by no less than their Alpha and the ladies at the B&B? Why did they seem to look at her as a potential enemy until they got close enough?

  She didn’t like how suspicious they were. Maybe that was a shifter thing. Maybe they’d been burned in the past and keeping their secrets was the only thing keeping them safe in this increasingly human-dominated world. She supposed she could understand their caution, but it still rubbed her the wrong way to be treated so coldly, at first.

  Helen spent the morning shopping and trying to figure out what she could do to bite Jim—metaphorically speaking—as Miss Felicity had suggested. He needed a reminder that she could contribute to the mission. She just wasn’t sure what it was she could do that would get his attention.

  Jim took the conference call in Joe’s office. Better to have the Alpha in on the planning from the start, than to run afoul of something local that they didn’t know about. Shane was also present, putting in his two cents when necessary. Jim was grateful for all the information Ezra and the others had been able to dig up, but he felt like something was missing.

  About halfway through the call, when someone asked how Helen was doing, he realized it was her. She was missing. He’d somehow gotten so used to having her around, voicing her opinions, that he now missed her when she wasn’t present. It was a little disconcerting for a guy who’d always been a bit of a lone wolf. How had he become so dependent on her presence in such a short time? It felt like the answer to that question should be right there, in front of him, but then, Ezra asked a question, and Jim was distracted.

  “Did you see a dark line on the ground?” Jack Bishop asked. He, of all of them, had the most recent experience with black magic wards.

  “Not that I noticed, but it was dark, and I wasn’t particularly looking for anything physical. I was more concerned with the magical effects,” Jim said, cringing a bit. He should’ve looked harder. It just hadn’t occurred to him that there might be a physical sign of what he’d thought was a purely magical construct.

  “That’s understandable,” Jack allowed. “But, with the potion witch, there was a dark line made by whatever potion she used to erect the black ward. Once we broke those lines, the wards were broken. The first time, I used a deer herd. I had them trample across a freshly laid potion line a few times, and their little hoofs obliterated it, wrecking the ward. The second time was when Kiki used those herbs from her fey garden to break the line.”

  “Exactly what happened there again?” Jim asked. He hadn’t been present when the ward came down. He’d arrived a few minutes later.

  “She had the herbs in a cotton pouch. She dropped the pouch on the line of the ward, and it ate through the cotton, releasing the herbs. Once that happened, the ward slammed down,” Jack explained.

  “So, it was sort of acidic?” Jim asked, something occurring to him. “One of the old ladies in town has a little dog that roams around on his own during the day. Last week, he came back with burnt paws.”

  “I bet he got into the ward line. At least a little. Like the deer, he could cross over the line with impunity because it’s probably set to keep werewolves and Others out, not simpler animals,” Jack said.

  “Makes sense,” Joe said, joining the conversation. “So, we know the ward has been up at least since the dog was injured.”

  “That’s before my target got back to this area—if he is, indeed, actually here—so, that means there’s someone else at that feed mill with the skills to cast black wards,” Jim told them all. Silence met his words. Nobody was happy to hear there were more evil mages out there practicing black magic.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Jim’s conference call went on much longer than he’d expected. When he finally emerged from the mayor’s office, the sun was overhead, and he was thinking about lunch. He was also thinking about ways to break a black ward, but that was a problem he’d have to solve later. Lunch was just slightly more important, at the present moment, so he went back to the B&B in search of Helen.

  He found her in the kitchen, working alongside Felicia at the counter, with Miss Felicity sitting at the kitchen table, sipping a cup of tea. Jim was enchanted by the domestic scene and wondered what the women had gotten up to while he’d been in conference.

  “You all look very industrious,” Jim commented from the doorway.

  Helen turned, a smile on her face. Felicia turned more slowly, a handful of lavender in her hands. “Helen has been teaching us things we didn’t know about our garden,” she explained, a bemused look on her face. “Did you know lavender could purify evil magic?”

  Jim remembered hearing about how Helen’s sister had used herbs to unwind the magic that had been used on the child they’d found imprisoned. He hadn’t thought much of it at the time, but Helen must have been taught the same things as her sister. She probably had a vast knowledge of herbal magic. Wolves knew earth magic was potent. They used a lot of it in their daily lives, but he had no doubt that Helen’s knowledge was of a different—and, perhaps, even more powerful—kind than theirs.

  “I heard something about it on my last mission,” he said, walking into the large kitchen.

  “We have an herb garden out back,” Felicia went on, “as well as a vegetable patch. I had no idea, when we took a little stroll in the garden, that I was going to learn so much.”

  “It’s good of you to share your knowledge,” Jim said, walking right up to Helen. He couldn’t resist bending down to place a quick kiss on her lips. He’d been wanting to do that for hours.

  “It’s all simple stuff, really,” Helen insisted, “but there’s lots of very useful things out there in the garden that could be put to good use in warding this
house and others.”

  “We’re making decorative flower sprigs that have the added benefit of preventing evil from passing wherever they’re placed. Doors, windows. I’m going to put one on every opening in this house,” Felicia said, nodding to herself as she tied a little twine bow on the bundle of flowers and herbs in her hand.

  “And they smell good, too,” Helen added, finishing up and wiping her hands on a dish towel.

  “Can I interest you in lunch?” Jim asked Helen, then looked at the other two women. “You’re invited as well, of course,” he added politely, but both Felicia and Miss Felicity declined. Felicia wanted to work on her flower bundles, and Miss Felicity said she was going to go for a run.

  Jim thought privately that Helen must have been successful in treating Miss Felicity’s joint pain if she was thinking about running. Helen picked up her bag from where it lay on the chair next to Miss Felicity and waited for him at the doorway while he made his farewells to the other women. Then, they were out of the house and walking down the street.

  “Barbeque again? Or should we try someplace else?” Jim asked as they walked.

  “Let’s do barbeque again. They had pulled pork sandwiches on the menu that would be perfect for lunch, I thought. We can try someplace else tonight, if you’re available for dinner,” she replied.

  He liked that she was already thinking ahead to when they would be together again. He found it hard to concentrate on his mission, knowing that Helen was nearby. He wanted to be with her, not running around after evildoers. He promised himself that, once he was done with this mission, he’d spend a good long time with Helen, so he could find out where this relationship was going…if anyplace. He had a feeling it was, but he wasn’t entirely certain, yet.

  Some wolves knew the moment they scented their mates, he knew. Some took a bit longer to figure it out. Jim suspected he was going to be one of the latter, much to his annoyance, but being with Helen felt really, really right. If that’s how it felt when you found your mate, well, then, he was already there.