Page 103 of Soft Flannel Hank

“Every single day?”

He’d taken a deep breath, the bellows of his ribs rising under Esther’s ear and cheek. She felt the echo of his heart beating fast and hard in that big chest and smiled.

“Every single day,” he’d replied, his voice a hoarse whisper, before he’d bent his head and kissed the top of hers.

Esther could almost conjure the warmth of his body against hers as she sat in Jory’s desk chair. Her intuition hummed contentedly as she stared at the card on the desktop. Esther had expected to pull the Nine of Swords or the Eight of Cups. She’d pictured them in her mind.

It didn’t make sense. The Two of Wands could also mean making romantic plans, relationship plans, long-term love plans. Planning a future with someone else. The Hank she knew would have shut himself down, closed himself off, and waited in the dark cabin with the shades closed until Jamie came to get him. He wouldn’t be making plans, certainly not plans for a romantic future.

She shuffled the deck again. Seven times, she split the deck and felt the cards crackle against her thumbs as she watched them slide together into one deck again. Seven times, she tapped the shuffled cards on the deck to unify them. After the seventh shuffle, she drew again, the card that fairly glowed white hot in front of her.

Two of Wands again.

Just as Esther was about to shuffle the cars again, Jory walked into the office with a tall glass of water and a small, floral mug of coffee, which she handed to Esther.

“So, you never really told me why you’re on the run,” Jory said, taking a sip of her water.

Esther sighed before telling Jory the story, starting with her grandmother’s death. She told her about the club, about the Lucky Charms girls, the vampire feeding den, emptying the till at the end of closing and leaving Savannah straight from the club in the middle of the night. She told her about switchbacking her way all across the country with nothing but her phone’s GPS, her intuition, and Shannon’s psychic visions to guide her.

“I’ve been running for seven months now,” Esther said, taking a long sip of the coffee. It was strong and felt velvety and warm across her tongue. “I guess that I should have known I couldn’t outrun someone like Callum MacLeod forever.”

At the mention of his name, Jory choked on the sip of water she’d just taken. She coughed and coughed, gasping for breath in between.

With a hoarse voice, Jory croaked, “Callum MacLeod, you say?”

“Yeah.”

“And you said he was from Scotland?”

Jory was wheezing slightly, clearing her throat and taking small sips of water.

“He’s got a Scottish accent, so I assume yes.”

“What does he look like?”

“He’s tall. About six foot five, I’d say. Dark blond hair. Blue eyes. He’s big. Not just tall, but built like a brick shithouse, too. Kind of looks like he stepped off the set ofVikingsand into a suit shop.”

Jory had taken another hesitant sip and choked on it again. She coughed and coughed and coughed.

“Jory, what the fuck? Are you okay?”

Jory braced her hands on the desk’s edge as she hung her head and coughed. Her coughing took on a barking quality, a dry, hacking sound, but as the seconds ticked by with Esther sitting rigid and concerned in her seat, the coughing began to sound more like hoarse crying.

After a moment, it became clear that that’s exactly what it was. Jory sat across the desk from Esther and sobbed hard, her head hung between her braced arms, her white-knuckled fingers gripping the edge.

Eventually, Jory lifted her head and looked at Esther. Her eyes, that vibrant, otherworldly green looked dark, like a storm-rocked sea. Mascara streaked down her cheeks, darkening the space underneath her eyes before dripping down across her dark freckles like spray paint. She reached for a tissue from the box next to the laptop and blew her nose. She grabbed another and dabbed at her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Esther asked.

“Aye,” Jory said, wiping her nose with another tissue. She took a sip of her water and swallowed it without coughing this time. Then she took another before draining the whole glass in a few gulps.

Esther’s intuition was screaming at her. When Jory had told her about being a selkie the week before and Esther had mentioned that her hunter was a Scot, Jory had said,“I havenae been there in more than three hundred years, lassie. I wouldnae ken him.”

Esther grabbed her phone from her bag and did an internet search for his name with the name of the club. “Callum MacLeod + Sanguine” led her to a small image search result, one of which was from a story the newspaper had run about the new club. She clicked on the picture to enlarge it and turned her phone around to show Jory.

“Here he is.”

Jory took the phone with careful fingers and cradled it in her hand. Fresh tears rose in her eyes as she looked at the picture.