Logan: Her Warlock Protector Book 3 Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title

  Book Description

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Colin (Excerpt)

  Note from the Author

  Copyright

  LOGAN

  HER WARLOCK PROTECTOR

  BOOK 3

  By Hazel Hunter

  LOGAN

  Her Warlock Protector Book 3

  Caitlin Monroe is used to taking care of herself, thank you very much. After witnessing the grisly death of her parents, she’ll do anything to make sure that she and her sister are safe. But a witch with the rare and powerful gift of seeing the future can’t stay under the radar forever.

  Although General Logan MacCulloch finds Caitlin dealing cards in a casino, her gift of prophecy is no match for his of luck. But as he gets to know her, he realizes they’re both struggling with similar wounded pasts. Not only does he vow to bring her into the Wiccan fold, he can’t help but want to make her his own.

  But a chance brush of their hands suddenly shows Caitlin their sensual and heated future. Confused and frightened, she can only think to run from him, straight into the waiting arms of his arch enemy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “SO DO YOU see wealth in my future?” the older woman croaked, her voice made husky by years of too much smoking.

  Caitlin forced herself to concentrate, letting her gift wash over her, that connection to the unseen world that allowed her to understand far more than others could. Pushing a long red ringlet of hair out of her green eyes, she sighed. It wasn’t hard to see much in this crowd. There was at least something fun when Hopkins or Towson sorority girls rented her out for crystal ball readings at their parties. Also free beer. When she was set up in her nicest silk dress and the old pearls inherited from Grandma Mildred, when she was working for the trust fund crowd as a gimmick at fundraisers, then she mostly saw the boring and predictable. The woman in front of her, easily fifty if she was a day, although the botox freezing her forehead was striving to turn back time, held a future cliché enough for the Lifetime channel.

  The man she was pursuing would marry her. It just wouldn’t last. Someone young and blonde about ten years down the line would see to that.

  However, none of that information would help Caitlin earn her keep, and it wasn’t the kind of dirt she was looking for. She forced a smile to her lips.

  “Madame Monroe knows everything. I see love in your future.”

  The woman pursed her thick lips, already enhanced to life preserver status.

  “Really?” Her voice practically trilled as she glanced over at the tall man in the corner eating his third pig in a blanket. “Is Roger going to finally pop the question?”

  “Not tonight, my dear,” Caitlin replied, playing up the fake eastern European accent she affected for gigs like this. “Within the year, though, I guarantee you’ll be dress shopping.”

  And ten years later looking for a good attorney but that’s another story.

  The woman shrieked again, and Caitlin covered her ears out of reflex. At least the party was almost over, and she could go home. It was important, what she did, and it helped people. Sometimes knowing the secrets of the vapid and rich came with that. The woman stood, handed her an extra twenty for the intel, and sauntered off, ample hips swinging behind her.

  Caitlin had never met anyone like herself, someone who could read futures. When she went into the herbalist shop and found the crystal ball, she’d never expected anyone there to be…what? Witches or psychics? They didn’t really exist. She was just weird—singularly so. It wasn’t like her parents had ever gone around reading palms or looking at tea leaves, and her little sister, Sheila, had never made a peep about these things. Of course, Caitlin couldn’t read Sheila’s future either. She’d sat with her in front of the crystal ball and made her drink enough tea to become as addicted to the stuff as a Brit would be.

  Nothing.

  Anyone else though?

  She could read their futures, see them come to her in clear images, no matter what she used. It could be the crystal ball or playing cards. With concentration and more deliberation she could probably learn other methods, but reading coins, bones or leaves held little interest for her. If she concentrated hard enough, Caitlin could read pasts, see the traumas that had befallen others too, but that was always fuzzier, just beyond her reach.

  She hadn’t always been like this. One morning it started with a flash after college, just glancing at the lines on her roommate’s hand and getting a glimpse of danger, which then revealed itself as a car accident a few days later. Then came the curio shop and the crystal that had been calling her name. Now?

  Now she’d gathered her skills and rented herself out, party psychic.

  Except what she saw was real.

  And, like her roommate long ago, sometimes she saw death. Thank the Goddess that hadn’t been what she’d seen tonight.

  CHAPTER TWO

  STEPPING ONTO HER porch, Caitlin arched her back and stretched. The loud cracks of her spine rewarded her. It was hard work hunching over the table, both on the side and at her regular day job. Sometimes it felt like all she did was read, that her life was at one table or another. It certainly wasn’t based in anything interesting between her sheets. Her keys were turning in the lock when the next door neighbor in her Baltimore duplex stepped outside. That surprised her a little, and Caitlin arched an eyebrow at him. It was past midnight, surely he had more interesting things than to pop his head out now.

  Not that she exactly minded the view.

  Darryl—it was Darryl wasn’t it?—was tall, well over six feet with shoulders like mountains. While his sandy blonde hair had one or two flecks of grey growing in, he was a man who clearly seemed like an athlete in his youth, maybe college football. Hell, now he looked like he could bench press her one hundred and fifteen pound frame with no problem. Sharp, coffee brown eyes looked back at her, belying an intelligence that so far chit-chat over the mail hadn’t quiet drawn out of him in words.

  The fact that his flannel pants hung low on his hips and his white tank top hugged and outlined every muscle was just a bonus. Too bad Darryl didn’t sleep in just boxers. Of course, with the way her stomach was doing flip-flops at the sight of him, and heat was flushing through her, Caitlin might have flat out combusted if he’d worn that little.

  It would have been worth it.

  “Hey Darryl!” she called, offering her nicest smile and readjusting her purse over her shoulder. “What are you doing up?”

  Goddess, please tell me that he’s up alone.

  Sharp eyeteeth glittered back at her with his easy smile, and yet something di
dn’t quite reach the depths of his eyes, almost like there was a mask in place she couldn’t quite pull off. Maybe he wasn’t used to her in evening wear. Usually she was just frumpy in her work uniform. Hmmm. Was she confounding him?

  Cool.

  “Just heard you on the porch. I was double checking it wasn’t a burglar.”

  “Yeah right.”

  “Well it’s Hampden,” he pointed out, leaning against the railing that split their porches into their respective sides. “You can never be too careful with the things that go bump in the night.”

  “Well, I’m a flattered you think I can be tough.”

  His intense gaze was leveled right at her and her breath caught in her throat. “I think you can do a lot of things. Night, Caitlin.”

  “Night, Darryl.”

  He chuckled a little and rubbed the back of his head. “Oh, it’s Darren, but I get it. I never liked my name much either.”

  “Sorry!” she called, wishing she could crawl in a hole. Great, way to embarrass herself in front of hottie neighbor. This was so why Schnapps was the only man in her life. “Well, Darren,” she corrected, offering her brightest smile. “Thank you for looking out for me.”

  “Always.”

  With that, she eased in through the front door and locked the main lock as well as the deadbolt—it was Baltimore—behind her. Maybe some of the locking wasn’t about crime. Caitlin wasn’t sure that she could explain her house aesthetic yet. The few friends she had always met her at their houses or coffee shops. Sure, Sheila came over but she never questioned much about Caitlin’s decorating motif. Caitlin assumed her little sis was thinking she was going through a phase.

  Shuffling off painful high heels, Caitlin sat down on the wood floor cross-legged and started to light the candles at her altar. They were a collection of fat lavender-colored candles of various heights circling a single, thin white candle that blazed the brightest. There were herbs there, aconite and saffron as well as a silver pentacle charm leaning against the tallow of the ivory candle. It was the only other thing besides the crystal ball that she’d purchased at the curio shop. It was as if both items had called to her.

  It wasn’t as if Caitlin would call herself a Wiccan completely. She’d never sought out other practitioners. Most of what she did know, she’d patched together from Google, movies, and a few spell books she’d found deep in the bowels of the anthropology section at Hopkins’ library. At first, she only rented them while in college out of curiosity and because her “sight” was growing stronger. Caitlin had only expected context and not actual spells. Most didn’t work for her; that was true. It wasn’t like she could shapeshift into a puma or fly or astral project. As enticing as those abilities sounded, none of those spells seemed to work worth a damn.

  However, she realized spells that were based around telling the future worked great. The first time that, as gross as it sounded, she’d added the thyme and dill to butcher’s blood to read futures in the bowl, she’d been able to predict the coming cancer diagnosis of a co-worker. Other things worked like that, tea leaves for impressions or chicken bones and incantations for quick flashes. Nothing, however, worked better than the crystal ball for seeing everything in Technicolor.

  That’s where she’d made notations in the spell books, long since stolen from the dusty library shelves. They were hers now and, as ideas came to her for better precognition recipes and remedies, she put them in the book. Reaching down, she moved the false board from the floor directly below her altar. Her forefinger slid easily into the small blackened notch as she set it aside. Pulling out the book, she ran her hands over the pages wishing that she could share this with her sister, but scared she’d never understand the spells. Sheila was sweet, but she could only be so supportive. It was one thing to have an altar and pick up some items from the internet. It was something completely different to have a spell book with handwritten incantations she’d created herself and the complete truth—strange as it was—that she could see into the future.

  At least for some people.

  Some days it’d be nice to do a reading for herself, see if there was anything more interesting in her future. She had a decent job, her craft that she dabbled in, and sometimes a little more with her side work. It didn’t feel like enough. It was hard coming home after long days to an empty duplex and only Schnapps for her comfort.

  Speaking of which…

  Caitlin finished going through the prayers, the sections from earlier in the book that didn’t necessarily work for her but had been written long ago so she assumed must be correct.

  “Goddess protect this house and everyone in it, and help me make the best decisions I can to help the universe, so may it be.”

  Picking up the small silver cup, she used it to smother out each flame in a clockwise circle until she reached the center one.

  “By three times three, I’ll follow thee,” she said, then put it out and finally stood.

  After her book was properly hidden again, she walked into her bedroom and smiled. Being so exhausted and busy, she’d worked on just slipping on a comfy sweatshirt to do her rituals and hadn’t come yet to see the man in her life. The cage in the corner smelled a bit, and she knew she’d have to change the litter box before she collapsed in her bed. Totally worth it. Opening the door, she reached in and picked up the rotund ferret inside. Schnapps was a sable, darkly furred with a little face mask that made him look like your average Ranger Rick raccoon.

  Once he was resting against her chest the little guy relaxed and started giving small licks to her cheek. Giggling she stroked the smooth, silky fur—seriously about as soft as mink—and kissed the top of his head.

  “Well, Schnapps, at least I have one man left in my life.”

  Schnapps stopped then and quirked his head at her, and she had to shake off that feeling she sometimes had since she’d purchased him three years ago that he actually could listen to her. Which of course was completely nuts. She wasn’t Dr. Doolittle here. Still, the ferret was chittering a little, his voice low, before licking her cheek one more time. Caitlin decided to take that in the spirit of a message for her, a promise that at least she’d have him to come home to. Still, it could also be “I need more crunchy treats” for all she knew.

  “Your will be done then too, buddy,” she said, setting him down to run around on her bedroom floor. “Damn,” she hissed, as she stepped on one of the toy jingle balls she left out for him.

  Scooping up some crunchy kibble from his bag, she started filling his bowl. That’s why she wasn’t sure when she heard it at first, not when there was the clang of hard food against the metal.

  “Okay, soup’s on.”

  Instead of Schnapps coming to her outstretched arms, though, he just stood stock still, his fur sticking up all over his back. Confused, Caitlin turned her attention back to the door. It was shut between her room and the living room, but she was glad it was when a loud thump came from only a few feet behind the door. Her heart quickened and her breaths came in short little gasps. Sweat started beading down her head and her palms grew slick. Beside her, Schnapps was baring his teeth.

  This can’t be. I have to be imagining it.

  Caitlin stood there for what felt like hours, straining her ears for another sound. Just when she thought she imagined the thud, there was another loud thunk and it took everything she had not to scream. Sliding silently on bare feet, she reached down for Schnapps and brought him tightly to her chest. Plan, she had to get a plan. It wasn’t like she had any weapons, not even a baseball bat or a fire poker. Then the thumping turned to a rattle, her door knob moving and she didn’t think the pathetic lock would hold. Clutching Schnapps and reaching for her cell phone, she hurried out her back window and ran.

  From the nearest diner a few blocks down the street, she dialed 911, still terrified that the burglar was in her house.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “IS ANYTHING MISSING, Ms. Monroe?” Lieutenant Lucy O'Healy asked.

  Caitli
n sat huddled on her sofa with a police blanket wrapped around her and Schnapps on her lap. She ignored the way that the tall, lanky brunette was glaring at her feet. So she didn’t have her sneakers on and her feet were bare. Hell, considering the city, she was lucky that she hadn’t stepped on discarded needles on her way to Dirk's Diner. Still, she didn’t need the condescension, not that she and O'Healy had the best relationship.

  “Nothing looks broken or out of place in here,” Caitlin said, setting Schnapps down and walking to the door to her room.

  It was still locked from the inside and apparently such a small lock had held or the thief hadn’t actually been a thief and was more interested in rattling her. Caitlin chewed back the nausea at that thought. Then her eyes caught sight of the altar, and it wasn’t right. The candles were there but in the wrong order, the white no longer in the center. The herbs were taken away.

  “Oh, God,” she said, getting to her knees and reaching for the knotted board. Pulling it back, she wanted to cry when she realized her spell book, the tome that she’d relied on for over six years, was missing. “I’ve been robbed!”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “YOU SHOULD MAKE contact tonight, brother,” Jonathan said, his long fingers running over the pearl pentacle he wore at his neck as a pendant. “It’s more than time. You’ve been watching her for over two months.”

  Logan MacCulloch nodded and, unbidden, traced the circles of steel interlocked around the pentagrams that made up his cufflinks. Once, he too had favored the in-your-face style of his commandant and good friend, Jonathan Worthen. Hell, back in the old country and centuries ago, pendants weren’t unusual on men of a certain class. Still, they were trying to blend in now as they searched for untrained witches. In these days in the colonies—no sorry America—the cufflinks were the least obvious. It was enough to access his heritage, to proclaim his rank, but not enough to draw attention he didn’t want.