Free The Problem with Promises by Leigh Evans Page A

that doesn’t mean I’m not aware she’s there, waiting like the sister-in-law who really hates you and is just dying to see you do something that deserves a huge, public smack-down.
    And—much harder to deny—I was my mother’s daughter.
    Part of me is Fae.
    Unless someone warned Casperella that she needed to be inside the ward boundaries being drawn at that very minute around the fairy pond, she was going to be forever locked out of her homeland. Which could have been my homeland, if Mom had married a Fae nobleman instead of a Were brewery worker.
    Maybe I could encourage her to move past her walls.
    Head to the light, Casperella. All will be welcome.
    I held the lungful of air for one more resistant second, then let out a long, heavy, why-me exhale. Making a detour to the porch, I picked up my flashlight, and headed across the lawn for the path that led through the swath of mixed woods that delineated the Alpha’s private residence from the pack’s gathering field.
    The second I stepped on it, the kid’s bite mark flared. Pain, sharp as if the little guy’s molars were crushing my skin again.
    “Fae Stars!” I sucked in some breath sharply and bent over at the waist, protectively cradling my arm in the universal “damn that hurts” pain comma.
    Crap. I could smell sweet peas.
    Grimacing, I pulled aside the wrappings. The bite had reopened again. A bead of floral-sweet blood now decorated the deepest imprint left from the kid’s eyetooth. But even worse? The surrounding skin beyond those two oval half rings had a slight—though definite—green fluorescent glow to it.
    My arm’s green. That can’t be good.
    Kind of unsettling. No one wants to look down at their arm and see illumination. But there it was. I’ve been marked. He’d left something on me, that kid—besides a troubled conscience and a bucketload of guilt. When his teeth had pierced my skin in Threall, either some of his magic or some of Threall’s magic had seen an opportunity to find a new home.
    But what was with that sudden, needle-sharp pain?
    I walked to about the spot where the bite had suddenly redeveloped teeth, and then, arm out, I did a blind-man shuffle. Nothing. No crushing pressure. Not even a twinge. I took another step in the general direction of the path, and then another, and then … bingo, the bite throbbed. Acute and rather miserable pain.
    I retreated and the nasty throb ratcheted down to a thrum.
    Merry extended the tip of her vine to snag my jacket’s collar, then did a rather inelegant scramble to my shoulder for a better viewing point. Her body twisted this way and that, as if she was expecting a mage to come strolling out of the woods.
    “I think we just walked across a line of magic, Merry.”
    My amulet had a think about that, then patted me, kind of the way a mum might when she saw the line of D plusses on her kid’s report card. But the heart of her stone was tinged with orange—her color for caution.
    “Yes,” said my Fae impatiently. “Magic.”
    Huh. So, leylines are a mesh beneath the crust of the earth?
    Okay then.
    And now, my arm pinged—or rather, imaginary teeth ruthlessly crushed my flesh—whenever I passed one of those leylines? That was both fascinating—hey Mum, look what I can do!—and frustrating because there was no other path through to the cemetery, unless I wanted to retrace the cliffside walk that Trowbridge had done with Natasha. And to do that? Well, I’d need to use my flashlight, which would definitely highlight the fact that I wasn’t waiting patiently on the porch.
    A roll of thunder. Sounding close, and yet the sky was still clear. There was no blanket of clouds drifting across the waning stars.
    The path beckoned. How quickly could I nip down it? A minute if I walked fast?
    I started off at a brisk trot, which quickly splintered into an anguished sprint. Twelve seconds later, I burst into the pack’s gathering field like I was going for the blue ribbon, arm raised, bite