Black Magic Bear: Tales of the Were (Grizzly Cove Book 16) Read online

  Whoever was doing things at the paper mill, though, they were doing it in stealth mode. That set his senses on alert. This just might be a trickier mission than he’d thought, but he felt sure he was up to the challenge. He just hoped he could keep Kiki out of it and safe, if worse came to worst.

  Then again, she might be the one hiding her true nature and dabbling in black, unseen magic. He hoped to the Goddess she wasn’t the one causing the trouble. He was already attached to her and would hate to have to shut her down.

  His instincts said it couldn’t possibly be Kiki. No way. But black magic was like that. It hid in plain sight. It wore innocent clothing to disguise evil behind layers of darkness. It was the utter lack of Light, and the true winter of the soul.

  Could Kiki really be hiding that kind of evil behind her innocent façade? It made Jack’s soul hurt to think it could even be a possibility, but he had to be ultra-cautious. Those who dealt in black magic could be some of the most deadly and deceitful. Whoever it was, he would have to be on his guard, at all times, and on his toes. He was all alone out here, the only one to stand against this evil. If Jack fell, his brothers wouldn’t be there, this time, to pick him up.

  No, if he fell this time, it could very well be all over for him. It was a sobering thought, and he vowed to be careful as he got ready to sleep. Morning came early, and he had a lot to do tomorrow.

  He couldn’t help but think about Kiki as he drifted off to sleep. She was just so darn pretty and came across as breathtakingly innocent. It would be a real shame if he wound up having to kill her.

  The next morning, Kiki was already in her office when Jack walked past her door. He peered in unashamedly and waved hello on his way to Bob Boehm’s office, just down the corridor. She looked delicious, and her pretty face immediately flushed with heat as he strode past. Good. He liked her reaction. He just hoped it was real.

  On that troubling thought, he knocked perfunctorily on Boehm’s office door before opening it and walking in. Bob looked up angrily at Jack’s intrusion but held back whatever angry words were dancing on the tip of his tongue. Seeing the man’s struggle to be nice, Jack smiled.

  “I noticed an empty office up front as I passed by,” Jack said brightly. “I’m going to park myself there, unless you have any objection. I’ll be calling for certain files, now and then. I’d appreciate it if you’d give the clerical staff a heads up.”

  Not really giving Boehm time to answer, Jack backed out of the doorway and went back to the office he’d spotted. It was right next door to Kiki’s. Oh yeah, that would suit him just fine.

  He went in and started to rearrange the basic furniture, that had clearly not been used in a while, to suit his own preferences. For one thing, the desk had to be pushed out a bit to accommodate his big frame. He was a bear, and on top of that, he was one of the larger North American grizzlies in existence. Larger than both his brothers, he was the muscle in their trio. Or he had been.

  A little pang for the loss of the camaraderie of his siblings hit him, but, he reminded himself, Ace and King were much better off. They had mates. They might soon be starting families of their own. The wild bachelor days of the three of them traveling and working together were over, but Jack couldn’t really begrudge his brothers their happiness.

  He rolled the tiny office chair out from behind the desk and went in search of something larger. He’d seen an executive style chair in the conference room that would work for him much better than this tiny thing. He made short work of switching out the two chairs and rolled the bigger one back to his new digs.

  All the noise next door must’ve alerted Kiki. She peeked out of her door, and her eyes widened in surprise when she saw him rolling the larger chair down the hall toward the office next to hers. He grinned at her.

  “Hi, neighbor.”

  Chapter Seven

  Kiki gasped when she realized the new noisy neighbor was, indeed, Jack Bishop. He’d commandeered the vacant office next to hers and was apparently rearranging things to suit his tastes. Including snagging Mr. Boehm’s conference room chair. She’d accidently sat in it, just once, and had learned not to do it ever again. Mr. Boehm was very particular about his things, and he’d staked a claim on that big chair in the conference room for himself. She’d almost pay to see what happened when he found out that Jack had taken it without so much as a by-your-leave.

  Kiki went back into her office and tried hard to ignore the sounds coming from next door. She couldn’t help hearing when Jack called various people, asking for paperwork to be delivered to his new home away from home, and within a half hour, folks were dropping by next door, bringing files he’d requested. She heard it all because, throughout, he kept his office door open, and she realized, she was listening intently.

  When she figured out she was intentionally eavesdropping, she shook her head and told herself to mind her own business. She had more than enough work of her own to do without keeping tabs on her new neighbor. That thought firmly in mind, Kiki set about untangling another mess her predecessor had left and knew no more until lunchtime.

  The only reason she knew it was lunchtime was because Jack knocked on her doorframe and leaned in, smiling that devastating half-smile of his that made her tummy clench. Damn. He was just too good looking.

  “Lunch?” he asked. The simple invitation set her nerves aflutter.

  “Sure. I was just going to go to the cafeteria,” she told him. “I don’t have time for much else because I’ve got a conference call with the state inspector at two.”

  “No problem. I was going to check out the cafeteria, too. I wouldn’t mind having company, if you’re willing to be seen with the big bad wolf from corporate.” He included a wolfish grin with his remark that made her want to giggle.

  “I don’t mind,” she said, coming out from behind her desk. “Truth is, I don’t know many people here yet, and I usually end up just getting something to go and eating it at my desk.”

  She closed her office door behind her, and they started walking down the hall toward the rear of the building. The cafeteria was at the halfway point between the office and lab area and the plant itself—which consisted of several areas and a giant warehouse, as well as the log yard out back where the raw materials came in—so it was a bit of a walk from where they were at the front of the office building.

  “Nobody invited you to join them?” Disbelief rang true in his tone.

  “Not so far,” she replied, shaking her head.

  “What is wrong with these people?”

  Kiki enjoyed the light banter and his teasing as they walked through the office area. She noted quite a few heads popped up from within the cubicles as they passed by, nosy gazes following Kiki and Jack’s progress toward the door leading deeper into the building. She felt a little conspicuous, but she wouldn’t let their rudeness ruin her enjoyment of the moment. Jack made her feel special. It had been a long time since a man been so nice to her. Even if it was just some ploy of his to get the information he needed for his own job, she didn’t really care. It was nice to feel special, even if she knew it wouldn’t last.

  How could it? Jack was a man of the world. A heartthrob. Probably a heartbreaker. She was just a farm girl from rural Pennsylvania. Unremarkable except for the fact of her education. In her neck of the woods, her family was thought odd and much too progressive for allowing, and even encouraging, their children to go and study at colleges and universities.

  The fact that some from every generation returned to work the farm was seen as an aberration, rather than as the result of someone choosing farm life over city life after having experienced both. Kiki didn’t begrudge her neighbors their beliefs. They were good people who did their best, but some of their ideas about education were a little backward, in her opinion. That didn’t stop her from being friendly toward them and helping out when she could. Her family had never forgotten their roots and the fact that hiding within that religious community for many years had probably saved them all f
rom being killed as witches in the old country.

  Kiki often wished she had just a little touch of the magic that ran in her family. It would have made life easier, she often thought, though her more gifted siblings claimed the opposite was true. Regardless, she had to do the best she could with the plain old human senses and observations she could make, and her conclusion about the office staff was that they were a bunch of nosy ninnies.

  Jack opened the door for her at the far end of the office section and politely held it for her. She felt like a queen being escorted by some kind of noble courtier who made every polite gesture and kept her laughing all the way to their destination with astute observations about the things they saw along their path.

  By the time they reached the cafeteria, Kiki was feeling totally relaxed in his presence, as he’d probably intended all along. He ushered her to the serving area where they both picked up trays and wound through the line of serving stations.

  “What is Carol doing back there?” Jack asked in a low voice that didn’t carry beyond the two of them. All amusement had fled from his voice as he looked at the situation evolving behind the servers, in the kitchen beyond.

  “I think she runs tests for cleanliness and the presence of bacteria, on occasion. I was told they pride themselves on the cleanliness of the kitchen.” Kiki shrugged and grabbed a prepackaged muffin and a small carton of milk. She generally didn’t eat a large lunch, and nothing they were serving today appealed to her.

  She noticed Jack bypassed the hot food as well, which seemed odd. Judging by their dinner together, he ate a lot. She’d thought for sure he’d pile his tray high with meat and potatoes, but he didn’t. He grabbed a banana and some prepackaged cereal along with a matching small container of milk and a bottle of apple juice.

  He didn’t say anything further until they were seated a good distance from anyone else. He’d chosen the table. He’d also paid for her meal, over her objections. He was still polite and charming, but she couldn’t help but notice how distracted he’d become since discovering Carol from the lab doing something in the kitchen. Why was he so interested in that?

  Jack got a very bad feeling about the entire cafeteria setup. The fact that the lab hag was behind the counter, doing something with the pots on the stove made every alarm in his arsenal start flashing big warnings. Only the prepackaged foods felt normal to his senses. Everything else had a faint magical taint.

  The taint of black, hidden magic.

  Damn.

  He’d hoped he’d been wrong, but the truth was staring him in the face. That lab woman should not be in the kitchen. That was his first clue. The second was the feeling that each dish on offer had a magical miasma flowing in and around it.

  The logical option would be some kind of magical poison that was being fed into everyone in the plant via this cafeteria. How easy it would be to take control of everyone, all at once, with them none the wiser. It was subtle. Concealed. Like all black magic, veiled to all except the one who wove the spell.

  The fact that the magic was secreted in the food told Jack he was, in all likelihood, dealing with a potion witch. And the most likely candidate for that was Carol, the lab hag, who was still doing something in the kitchen that she should not have been doing.

  If she’d really been running tests, she would have taken a few swabs and been gone in a few minutes. The reality was, she was actually stirring pots on the stove. It looked to him like she was cooking. No way was that part of any test he’d ever heard about. There was no reason for Carol to be cooking while the regular kitchen staff stood by and let her. Unless…

  Unless they were already under her spell.

  Jack looked around the cafeteria, trying to be casual. Sure enough, the dead gazes of the people eating the cooked foods was obvious, now that he knew what to look for. They were all being slowly—magically—poisoned by whatever it was Carol was doing back there in the kitchen.

  And there was nothing Jack could do about it at the moment. He bit back a curse and ate his cereal with deliberate motions. Thankfully, Kiki hadn’t chosen anything that was tainted. If she had, he would have had to come up with a way to get her to choose something else, but as it was, she’d gone for the prepackaged stuff, as he had after one quick, sickening look at what was being offered on the chow lines.

  “I don’t think I like this cafeteria,” he muttered at one point. He’d asked Kiki some questions about her work that had kept her talking while he’d been thinking, but she’d wound down, and it was his turn to make conversation. Unfortunately, his stomach churned at the feel of the black magic being consumed—and consuming—all around them, and his heart wasn’t in small talk. “Do you want to go outside and take a walk?” he asked, standing when he noticed she’d already finished her muffin.

  She looked surprised but quickly sipped the last of her milk and followed him to the big trash cans set up on one end of the large room. They disposed of their trash and headed outside, much to his relief. The mood in that cafeteria had become oppressive to his magical senses. He breathed deep of the clean outside air and headed them off toward the woods that bordered the property.

  He felt like he’d just had a narrow escape, and after a few deep breaths to clear his head, he realized that Carol had, most likely, been actively working a spell. What kind of spell? Something to trap him? That felt right, but was it to trap him, specifically, or everyone, in general?

  The latter made more sense based on how many people were eating that tainted food. She had probably done the math and realized there were going to be a few that escaped her net. She had to have some kind of contingency plan to get them later. Which put both himself and Kiki in deep danger. He turned to her, keeping his voice low and urgent.

  “Remember what you told me about the warehouse?” he said, trying to make his words oblique, just in case someone could hear, though nobody was around that he could see. Still, he wouldn’t take chances.

  Kiki nodded slowly, her face heating slightly. “I’m so embarrassed. Forget I said anything, okay? It was probably just my imagination running wild.”

  “That’s the thing,” he told her, turning to meet her gaze, trying to impress upon her how serious he felt about what he was about to say. “You weren’t imagining anything. I don’t want you to eat or drink anything anyone gives you from that cafeteria.” Her eyes widened, and he revised his instruction. “You know, to be on the safe side, just don’t eat or drink anything anyone gives you here. Something is definitely off in that cafeteria, and it’s possible you and I are both in danger because we’re outsiders.”

  That was as good a reason as any he could come up with on the spot like this. She was looking at him strangely but nodded slowly in agreement.

  “Honestly, something about the food they offer has never appealed to me,” she said quietly, almost experimentally. As if she were testing the words as they came out of her mouth, putting sounds to the more nebulous thoughts in her mind. “I’ve never eaten anything they make in the kitchen.”

  Relief flooded him. “Good. Best if you keep it that way,” he told her.

  “You think someone’s tampering with the food or something?” she asked, frowning up at him.

  He nodded gravely. “Or something. Look, I can’t explain why I feel the way I do, but Carol should not have been back there that long if she was just running a test.”

  “You suspect Carol?”

  “I have to,” he said. “She was in a place she had no right to be, and was doing something with the food. Stirring pots and adding things to them. I was watching her.”

  “You were?” Kiki shook her head. “I didn’t realize.”

  “I’m glad. I was trying not to look as if I was watching, but I was. She was back there the entire time we were in that room. No test swab—even a series of them—takes that long to perform. And, like I said, she was messing with the food, itself. I don’t know what she was doing, or what she hopes to accomplish, but she’s definitely up to something. For
your own safety, you should steer clear of her, whenever possible.”

  They had reached the woods and walked along the dirt path that ran the perimeter of the property in this area. Jack had noticed it the night before on his scouting expedition and, he realized today, that people from the plant walked this path during their breaks. Even now, a few people could be seen walking some distance from them, on the pathway.

  “Do you think she’s drugging people? And, if so, to what end?” Kiki seemed thoughtful rather than scared, which surprised him. She was made of tougher stuff than he’d thought.

  “I’m not sure what she’s doing,” he hedged.

  “Surely, it’s not poison!” She kept her voice low, but he could hear the shocked disbelief.

  “I didn’t say that,” Jack clarified. “It’s probably nothing lethal, but more likely, something to influence people.”

  “A drug, then,” she said, nodding to herself. “It would have to be something subtle, but being drugged would tend to explain what I saw that time.”

  He noticed she was cautious about saying exactly what she’d seen. Kiki was better at intrigue than he would have credited.

  “It’s surprisingly comforting to think that they were all high,” she went on when he didn’t say anything. “That’s probably why they participated in…that.”

  The look on her face was something Jack thought couldn’t be faked. It held just the right amount of suppressed horror and disgust that she tried to conceal from anyone who might be watching, but the fear of what she’d seen was clear in her eyes. No way could she hide anything sinister behind those baby blues. Right?

  Jack realized he’d already made that decision. He was trusting Kiki. For better or worse, he’d taken her into his confidence. Whatever happened, he’d gone with his instincts that said she was an innocent in all this. If he was wrong…well…he’d deal with that when it happened. He just hoped and prayed to the Mother of All that he wasn’t wrong. It would break his heart if that turned out to be the case.