Agnes leaned against the door frame, her shoulders shaking with her laughter. “I think she’s drunk off Shah’s power.” She whipped out her phone and aimed the camera at me. “Edith is going to die when I show her.”

Taran stormed over and smacked the phone out of her hand, her blue eyes igniting with rage. “If my sister ends up on YouTube, I swear to Christ I’ll set your ass on fire.”

“Damn, you’re bitchy,” Agnes shot back.

“Sweetheart, you haven’t seen how bitchy or murderous I can be.” She pointed at me. “Does Misha know what you and your goddamn plan did to her?”

Agnes lifted her chin. “No. Celia and Shah’s clashing magic have interfered with our communication system. The only message we received is of the master’s and the mongrels’ arrival.” She shrugged. “We’ll be landing in forty minutes. They’ll know soon enough.”

She pushed off from the door frame and returned to the main cabin.

I spent the rest of the ride bouncing around the plane, so full of energy. My sisters spent it pacing and debating how they were going to tell Aric.

Aric. Yum. I missed my big, bad hotness.

When the plane touched down I skipped to the door, restless to see Aric and mount him like a bronco. Mount him like a bronco? Hee, hee, hee. I’m so funny!

Taran, Emme, and Shayna carefully led me back and sat me down when I continued to giggle. “Celia,” Emme said gently. “Perhaps it’s best if you wait here a moment.”

“Why?”

Taran swore. “Because the wolves may not be ready to see you.”

I pushed out my perfect bosom and grinned. “How can they not want to see all this?”

They had no response other than to just stare back at me. They’d been doing that a lot lately. Hmm. What’s up with that?

Shayna straightened when the cabin door opened. “Maybe I should handle this,” she said.

She scrambled out of the plane right behind Agnes. Emme and Taran began to pace again. I couldn’t understand why they were all so edgy. Everything was damn fine as far as I was concerned. Taran had lent me a small mirror from her purse. I smiled into it, admiring how sexy I looked. Life was good. It couldn’t get any better than this.

“Celia?” Emme said softly. I stared up at her wide doe eyes. She held up a blue sundress. “Um. We were kind of hoping you could put this on.”

I cocked my head to the side. “I don’t think it’s necessary.”

“It is,” she insisted. “Y-you can’t exactly step out of the airplane naked.”

“Why?”

She didn’t seem to know and looked to Taran for help. Taran threw her hands up in the air before perking up and pointing at me. “Because you’ll look even prettier in the dress. You want to be pretty, don’t you, Celia?”

I smiled. I liked being pretty. It was fun. “Of course!”

Aric’s snarls had me peering out the small window. “What do you mean, she’s not herself? Is she hurt?” he shouted. “You said she wasn’t hurt!”

I laughed and rolled my eyes. “Someone’s cranky again.”

Shayna glanced nervously back at the plane. “Oh, she’s not hurt or anything. She’s just not quite herself.”

“If she’s not hurt, what the hell happened to her?” Aric pressed.

“Shah sort of attached himself to Celia,” Shayna explained.

Everyone outside stopped speaking. Aric swallowed hard. “What do you mean he attached himself to her?”

“We better get outside,” Taran muttered. She took the dress from Emme and shoved it over my head. She sighed and shook her head. “Damn. It’s not much better, but it will have to do. Come on, Emme.”

I stood up and spun around in the dress. I didn’t like the feel of it. It made me hot. So instead I ripped it off and skipped after my sisters. The wolves and vampires gathered around Shayna remained quiet as they listened to her explain what had happened when we found Shah. They seemed intrigued with her story. I didn’t like it. Her story took attention away from me.

I waved, jumping up and down until I had everyone’s attention. “Hey. Yoo-hoo! Hi!” I yelled.

Aside from the audible pop when everyone’s jaw dropped, no one made a sound. Their eyes collectively flew open. Danny and a few of the vampires actually jumped back as I bounded down the steps.

“Holy shit,” Tim muttered.

I skipped up to Aric who gaped at me like he’d been slapped with a giant salami. “Hi, baby,” I cooed, throwing my arms around him.

Instead of embracing me, Aric turned his head slowly to glare at Misha. “You fucking bastard,” he said to him. “This is all your fault.”

Misha wasn’t paying attention to Aric. He was too busy taking in my sparkling physique. My nipples tightened under his scrutiny, making a soft tinkling sound as they stiffened. I looked down at them and back at him. “How do you always get them to do that?” I asked him, smiling.

Aric had to be physically restrained from launching himself at Misha.

I stepped back and watched his Warriors struggle to hold him back. “Don’t you like how I look, Aric?”

He jerked in my direction and shrugged off the wolves holding him. Slowly, he edged toward me, his brows furrowed deep. Instead of gathering me to him, he kept his distance, his troubled expression traveling the length of my body.

I smiled and spun for him. For some reason he didn’t appear impressed with how my wavy hair flowed or how my breasts bounced. Instead, I only seemed to agitate him more. He turned his back and ran his hand through his hair, muttering something I couldn’t quite hear.

He couldn’t look at me. What was wrong with him? I was pretty, damnit.

I circled around to face him. He gave me a half-assed look right before he let loose a bunch of growls. Again, he turned his back on me. My heart sank and I almost started crying, but then I thought of the perfect solution to get him to notice me.

Cartwheels!

I placed my hands on the ground and swung my legs over one by one. I was a big hit. “Oh!” the crowd yelled as one.

“Ho-ly, shit,” Tim muttered again.

I was so happy with the response I tried a second cartwheel, but Emme stepped in front of me. Her face was beet red and horror crawled across her features. “Celia, you can’t go around doing that.”