Free Witch Interrupted by Jody Wallace Page A

best, or worst, of all keepers in recorded history. More captures and wipes than anyone outside Hiram Lars, whose record spoke more of longevity and malice than anything else.
    And this small woman, this vulnerable, mortified woman, whose smile was like a star, who smelled like sex and shampoo, was the amoral Chang Cai?
    “You shouldn’t have put a name to my first pass-through.” Her eyes glistened behind her lenses. She fingered the cuts on her throat gingerly. “You shouldn’t have told us you knew about witches. Do you realize what we have to do now?”
    “Kill me?” If anyone could commit murder with magic, it was a convex witch like Chang Cai. The rumors all over the keeper stronghold had left no doubt on one topic—Chang Cai had been powerful and remorseless.
    The gun he’d seen took on an additional significance. What had he gotten himself into?
    “I don’t want to,” Katie said, reminding him how she hadn’t wanted to drop her mask, either. With good reason. The full force of her longing had dazed him, and his wolf had leaped to meet it. He’d barely held out.
    If he would have kissed her, no doubt she’d have bitten off his tongue.
    “How will you kill me?” he asked, rubbing his wrist where the dangling handcuffs scraped him. “Gun? Poison? Death spell? How much magic do you have to use, Chang Cai, to kill someone?”
    Her expression crumpled. “I can’t let you leave here with this knowledge.”
    “My chi says I’m trustworthy.” He laughed. “Change your mind?”
    “I’m not sure,” Tonya said. “You could have hurt her, and you didn’t.”
    “I could still hurt her. I could hurt you both.” He stalked around the foot of the bed. Both ladies stood their ground when they should be scared. But he supposed the Black Widow feared no shifter, and Tonya Applebaum thought wolves were harmless.
    She was wrong.
    “You won’t hurt anyone.” Without further ado, Tonya threw the mint.
    He dodged easily. The spell puffed open, brushing past him with a tingle. She fumbled at her pocket for another.
    Ignoring Tonya and her pathetic candy, he faced the real threat. He halted almost within arm’s reach of her. Black Widow. Whoever she was. “What are you going to do, Chang Cai?”
    “Katie,” she corrected, lifting her chin. How could she be a heartless assassin? Why did he still want to kiss her? “Call me Katie or Katherine. It’s my name now…Marcus.”
    “Will it be painless, or will I suffer?”
    “I don’t know how you heard of the keepers. I don’t know why you recognize Tonya. All I know is I’m not Chang Cai anymore, and I don’t want to do this.”
    “But you can,” he said softly. “You’re convex, and by your father’s admission, alpha. You warp our gift, our magic, in a way it’s not meant to be used. With power like that, how can I not believe everything I’ve heard about you?”
    And even as he said it, he wanted to know. How did a convex alpha use magic? Would she transform if she slept with a wolf?
    If she slept with him?
    “Believe what you want about me. I don’t have to prove anything to you.” Blinking fast, she nudged her glasses up her nose. The woman all keepers had feared quivered with nerves, had terrible eyesight and oozed so much desire for him—a wolf—that he couldn’t wish away his hard-on.
    It didn’t add up.
    Damned curiosity. Why couldn’t he just run? Jump through the window behind him, hit the empty street and go. Why did he have to know everything about everything?
    That’s when it occurred to him he could run.
    And he could take her with him.
    He’d wanted to convince Katherine Zhang to assist willingly. Did he owe Chang Cai the same consideration? She’d wipe him, kill him, to protect herself. She’d admitted it.
    Giving in to the impulse, he pounced on Katie and tossed her slender body over his shoulder. She pounded his back, her fists more like a massage than a defense mechanism.
    Marcus laughed. After a year of living as a