Read Online The Reluctant Goddess (The Montgomery Chronicles Book 2) by Karen Ranney - Free Book Online Page B

leaving,” I said. “Get over it. Follow me if you want. I don’t give a rat’s ass.”  
    The worm, she was turning.  
    Both Dan and Mike looked surprised. Good. Let them see me angry for once, not sweet little Marcie Montgomery trying to be all pleasant and tolerant.
    Dan was lying to me and I knew it. He knew I knew it, too, because he didn’t say anything. He just got that watchful look in his eyes that made him be all Ranger-y, like I was some sort of enemy.  
    If that’s the way he wanted it, fine.  
    I no longer cared. Okay, maybe I cared a little, but I was doing everything I could to tamp out those burning embers.  
    I wanted to find out what he was, but first I had to find out what I was. It wasn't enough to live day by day with this big cloud hanging over my head. I had to know the truth, rightly or wrongly, for good or ill, for better or worse.
    Nor was I going to sit back and let somebody decide when it was time for me to know, like my grandmother finally revealing that ever since I was born I was a changeling. I was a little tired of being passive in my own life. I was going to be active from this moment on.
    I drove out of the gates of the castle with Charlie riding shotgun, nose into the wind. I’d opened the passenger side window half way.  
    "Don't drool on the glass," I said.
    He grinned happily at me, then resumed his pose half in and half out of the window.
    I wasn't sure Charlie was simply a dog. Of course, my paranoia might be put down to the experiences of the last month or so. I wasn't quite a vampire. Niccolo Maddock wasn't just a vampire, either. I knew Dan wasn't just a former Ranger. I knew my grandmother wasn't just Nonnie.  
    Nobody was just simply a human being anymore. No, they were one of the Brethren or they were a vampire, or they were something I’d never heard of before, like a Dirugu. So it was to be expected that I was a little suspicious of everything and everyone that crossed my path, including my canine companion.
    "If you are more than a dog," I said to Charlie, "now's the time to let me know. Feel free to shift into what you are.”  
    I glanced at him. All I got was a few pants in response.
    "No, seriously, what are you? Shape shifter? Werewolf? Werewolf hybrid? Witch hybrid? Elf? Something I’ve never heard of?"
    Pant, pant.
    He didn’t shift. He only slobbered against the glass.  
    "Okay, then."
    We got to San Antonio in record time, which wasn't a surprise, since it was between the morning and lunch rush hours. When I entered Alamo Heights, I made sure I was two or three miles below the speed limit of thirty five.
    Alamo Heights didn't have a large police department, but the one they did was devoted to monitoring the speed traps.
    Alamo Heights was our answer to 90210. An incorporated city within the geographic confines of San Antonio, Alamo Heights was about as preppy and overpriced as you could get. A two bedroom cottage with warped floorboards and a sagging roof could go for a quarter of a million dollars, easily.  
    Yet for all of its pretentiousness, Alamo Heights had a certain small town ambience. People really did know each other and were cliquish in a way that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
    I’d always been odd man out in high school, one of the last ones picked to join a team or the girl in the back of the room at any function. School was for learning, not trying to adjust socially. That's a lesson I learned from my grandmother. I should have been a little more like my mother who, even to this day, was a social butterfly. She was probably charming all the fanatics at The Militia of God.  
    There are only a few main streets in Alamo Heights, Broadway being one of them. Hermonious Brown’s bookstore, cutely named Ye Olde Bookshoppe, was located on Broadway. I parked around the side of the building, looked at Charlie, and realized that I’d probably made a mistake in bringing him.
    Well, Mr. Brown was simply just going to have to