Spring Rain (The Witchling #4)(5)

Whoever it was that came looking for her, she didn’t return during Morgan’s shift. She left at nine o’clock in the evening, an hour after closing, as she did every day. Decker had texted twice more, and she walked down the well-lit street towards the apartment she’d rented and read through his responses.

Beck is hurting.

She sucked in a breath, her magick sparking around her while sorrow tore a hole in her.

There has to be another way. Lamented the second text.

“I want that, too,” she whispered, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. She tucked the phone away and spent a long moment staring into the night sky over Las Vegas. The trees lining her walk were budding, and the scent of winter was gone.

Warmed by her fire magick, she didn’t notice the chill of early spring and instead began reviewing every option she’d ever dreamt up about how to make it back to Beck.

In the end, it all boiled down to the stark reality that there was no way. She couldn’t simultaneously protect him and fulfill her familial obligation of protecting the soul stone.

She trudged onward to the well-kept, aging apartment complex not far from her workplace. Morgan tugged the scrunchie out of her hair, unleashing a puff of espresso, and climbed the metal stairs to the second floor and her small, but cozy apartment.

The moment she entered, she froze. It was all of five hundred square feet – too small for her not to notice if something was off, even in the dark. She’d taken a large withdrawal of cash from Decker’s credit card before leaving Idaho and used it to buy a couch, bed, and small dining table. The rest was stashed. She had enough for a car, but walking was cheaper. She had no way of knowing how long she’d be on the lam, so the money had to last.

Morgan didn’t bother to warn whoever was trespassing, hunkered down in the corner behind the couch. She pulled off her fire magick. Her hands burst into orange flames bright enough to light up the entire apartment and blind whoever was there – without affecting her. Purple and white flickers in her fire distracted her briefly.

She peered through the flames at the guy crouched in the corner.

“Noah?” she asked, surprised. “What’re you doing here?” She dimmed the flames without releasing them entirely. Noah was Dawn’s brother and the person she least wanted to run into. He had helped her before, but she hesitated to welcome him with open arms, not when she knew he’d once been a lackey of Dawn. “How did you find me?”

“Doesn’t matter. Dawn’s in town.” He shielded his eyes against the light.

Her fire flared, and she looked around.

“She’s not in here.”

“And you’re what? Here to take me to her?”

“No, Morgan. Can you please turn that off?” he complained.

“Tell me why you’re here!”

“To warn you!” he snapped. “Look, I figured out where you were months ago. I’ve been watching, making sure she doesn’t get close again.”

Morgan listened. Noah may have once been his sister’s obedient lackey, but he had also saved her life. She extinguished her flames and flipped the light on. Noah emerged from the corner cautiously. The brooding teen resembled his supermodel mother with his medium length blond hair and blue-grey eyes set in chiseled features. He wore jeans and a leather jacket.

“You followed me,” Morgan crossed her arms. “Explain that.”

“It wasn’t hard. There was a lot of snow around the lake. It showed me where you went. I destroyed the path so no one else could follow,” he replied with a shrug. As a water element, he was able to communicate with, and create, all sorts of weather.

She frowned and tossed her keys and purse on the couch. She had fled Priest Lake, where the witchlings’ boarding school was located, south to Priest River on foot before hiring a taxi to take her farther south. In hindsight, she probably should’ve made sure no one was following her, but she panicked after the events at the lake.

Besides, when she made it to the border of Idaho and Nevada, she’d grown cautious and ensured no one followed her south. At least, she thought she’d been careful.

“Did anyone else follow you?” she asked.

“Not that I saw.”

“Did you get an apartment next door or something?” she asked, a little unnerved someone had been watching her for three months.

“Here?” he snorted. “No.”

She rolled her eyes. Like pretty much everyone else at the exclusive boarding school, including the Turner twins, Noah was wealthy, or had been. There were rumors she’d heard before leaving that his family’s business was headed for bankruptcy.

“I’ve been close, though.”

“Anyway, your sister found you first and then me?” she asked.

“No. I didn’t tell my family where I was going.” A troubled look crossed his features. “Just left. Like you did to your brother.”

The other reason Morgan hurt: her own brother thought she was dead. She didn’t want to know the kind of suffering Connor had gone through. “Okay. So you came to warn me,” she said. “She’s close? She knows where I am?”

“She’s in town, and I’m pretty sure she knows where you work. You might not want to go back.”

Morgan crossed to the tiny kitchen and grabbed a chilled bottle of water out of the fridge. Deep in thought, she considered where to go next. “How did she find me?”