A Werewolf, A Vampire, and A Fae Walk Into A Bar (Book 1 of The Last Witch Series) novel Chapter 19

I stare into Karl’s familiar face, snow sticking to his ever-present stubble. His large hazel eyes are full of fear and confusion. The fear I understand because he should know he’s about to die; the confusion doesn’t make sense, because there should be no question as to why he’s about to die.

“Karl…” I let the word hang, carrying all the weight of a full sentence.

“Bernie...” Karl responds in kind, and I listen closely to his tone, hoping it will explain his inexplicable behavior.

It doesn’t.

Darius, lacking the patience to read the man’s facial expression, slams him against the bar, holding his face down on the copper surface.

“Who are you?” Darius snarls, his sharp teeth centimeters from Karl’s pulsing jugular vein. “Who sent you for the child?”

Karl keeps his eyes trained on me, ignoring the vampire’s questions.

“Bernie, you know me.”

“I thought I did,” I snap back. It seems like he’s got some point to make, something to say in his defense, but he’s not getting there fast enough.

“These guys, they aren’t what they seem.” If Karl thought that generic understatement was going to win any points, he’s sorely mistaken.

“Neither are you!” My yell startles Rain and makes her cry, but AJ is at my side immediately with a blanket. In a surprisingly swift motion, I wrap the baby, pop out a boob, begin to feed and then return my fiery stare to Karl. I strut toward the bar, feeling incredibly emboldened with these three powerful men backing me up.

“Have you been plotting this? Pretending to be passed out in my bar so you’d know when the baby came?”

Of course, the answer will be no. Karl’s too much of a deadbeat drunk to formulate a plan and then carry it--

“Yes.”

The word doesn’t come from Karl’s mouth, but rather from Rune’s. The two look at each other, reading one another’s faces and movements, before Karl looks back at me. His silence confirms the fae’s assessment.

“You don’t understand, Bernie.”

Another cliche one-liner, but he’s not wrong. In a day where every single thing has been strange and stupefying, this is somehow the most unexpected event so far. A regular at the family bar for years, a guy who could never manage to drive himself home at the end of the night, a person everyone in town knows, stole my baby. From my window, on the second floor, in the dark, in a blizzard.

“I’m trying to help you,” Karl says earnestly. “We’re trying to save your baby.”

“Who,” Darius asks, stepping menacingly close to Karl’s face, “is we?”

Zev circles around the captive man, sniffing. Rune grabs Karl by the wrist, inspecting his hand. I’m not sure what answers they’re looking for, but they’re looking intently.

Suddenly, Zev growls. At first I think something about Karl has angered him, but then I see his wolf eyes have moved to the front door. I follow his look and seconds later, the doorknob starts to turn. Jesus, who’s here to steal my baby now?

The door opens about an inch, then slams shut and locks itself. As my frazzled brain tries to remember if the bar door has always made its own decisions, I see the vampire’s hand extended in that direction and realize he did the closing and locking. It’ll take a while for me to get used to all the magic.

AJ moves quietly to a window at the front of the bar and peeks out. “It’s Joe and Frank,” she says, then adds with a smile, “they brought flashlights so you can’t make them leave when the candles burn out.”

“Don’t let them in,” Darius says. “There are too many bodies in here as it is.”