Page 11 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

The Griffin twins were famous in the local area for being witches, another thing she couldn’t believe.

Of course, everyone thought they were the normal kind that practiced some kind of new age spirituality and not the genetic kind with actual magic, but she had never been anywhere near a family who wore what they were on their sleeves so loudly.

For two women obsessed with defense, it was a strange move, but she supposed there was also protection in hiding in plain sight.

She sighed, trying to put Asher out of her mind.

She’d searched for an hour last night, tramping around the woods in the dark with only a full moon to guide her, trying to find a werewolf who’d fully admitted he was not in control of his wolf.

She’d been torn the whole time between terror of and for Asher.

Ultimately, she’d finally caught a glimpse of gray fur in the moonlight; he was curled up at the base of a tree. Her terror of the wolf won, and she slunk away to try to get some reinforcements.

She was never going to tell two old witches obsessed with the evil of wolves that she was trying to help one, but she was definitely planning on taking advantage of that obsession.

They bragged repeatedly that they were the best-researched witches in the world.

It was time they proved it. She marched up the crumbling sidewalk when the old-fashioned sprinkler watering the beige lawn changed direction and knocked on the purple door before she could talk herself out of it.

A deep bark sounded, and Penn sent out a pulse of magic. Nothing’s threatening your home.

A raccoon sleeping in the tree woke at the sound of the dog, and she soothed it, too. Nothing’s threatening your home, either.

She hadn’t touched the doorbell, just the wooden door, but a chime sounded throughout the house, and Annie wrenched it open with a look of terror on her face that immediately collapsed into relief.

“Oh, thank god it’s you. That’s a chime for a member, but not one I recognized!” Her arms flew up as a huge head pushed her to the side and burrowed into Penn’s abdomen.

“It’s a, um, nice melody? For me, I mean,” Penn said. She was pathetically grateful that she’d been accepted into this ragtag coven of leftover witches, but that was not the same thing as being trusted—on either side.

“Yes, my dude, I’m glad to see you, too.” The Irish wolfhound was huge, the size of a small horse, with a coarse curly coat of gray and brown. He was making his slow way to old age, even though he was only seven. Big dogs and big hearts seemed to have a hard time.

“How does he like you better?” Annie said, watching her dog fawn.

“Animal witch, remember?” Penn said truthfully. She’d had this conversation with a lot of grumpy owners who saw their pets transform the moment she stepped through the door.

This was only the second time she’d been to the house. The first had been a welcome reception and an honorary Circle, though they couldn’t actually join together. Penn had spent the night wandering around examining the new world “antiques” littering the house.

Abruptly, the dog abandoned her and loped toward the back of the house.

“Ducky, no!” Annie said desperately and dove for it.

“Stop,” Penn said, throwing magic into the command.

Ducky stopped.

“It’s just, we’re cooking. We stuck him in the living room, but then we thought this was an attack.”

Penn hated that people expected their dogs to protect them. She knew many dogs expected it too; they’d been bred too, but had anyone ever considered they’d like to be protected too?

“Where do you want him?”

“Living room again. It was working.”

“Where?”

“Second door on the left.”

Ducky protested wildly, explaining why he needed to be in the kitchen.

Penn just raised a metaphorical eyebrow, and he scrambled away.

“Ducky!” Annie shouted.

“He’s going.”

She followed Annie and the dog straight down the main hallway that bifurcated the house. The dog peeled off at the correct door, stepping daintily over the gate meant to keep him in. He parked himself on a rug with a grumble.

“Oh, you’re fine,” Penn said as she glanced into a tiny library opposite the living room. So far as she could tell, no one ever hung out in either of them except the dog. The twins seem to spend their whole lives in the kitchen.

Annie pulled her toward that kitchen and a sunroom full of plants at the back of the house. Fortunately, the black and purple theme had not continued inside. Everything was still wood but stained a dark mahogany and covered in hand-stitched lace doilies. It was overwhelming yet oddly comforting.

“It was just Penny!” Annie called out.

Penn hated the nickname and had firmly quashed it in her old coven, but one of the twins had called her that the day she arrived, and it had unfortunately stuck.

She’d been too insecure to correct her, and it was increasingly too late with every repetition.

She contemplated the fact that meant she was going to be Penny until she died.

“Actually, it’s just Penn…” she began impulsively as they reached the kitchen, and the words died in the face of the utter chaos within.

The huge kitchen island was covered with flour and endless loops of dough.

Someone had their head deep in a lemon-yellow fridge from the last century.

A cast-iron pot half the size of a bathtub bubbled on the huge stove next to the fridge.

The wall was covered with a lot more cast-iron in every size and shape.

A counter along the wall had been cluttered with laptops and papers, but today, it was also covered in dough.

Annie went back to kneading some of the dough on the island.

Niamh pulled her head out of the fridge and waved. She looked like a carbon copy of Annie with red hair and freckles, though they weren’t related.

“Actually, it’s…” Penn began again when something clattered in the greenhouse, and two witches pulled an even bigger cauldron in from there.

One of them was Siobhan, the other twin.

She towered over everyone, with pale skin and shockingly black hair.

She looked like the woman holding the other side of the cauldron with the same black hair and striking features; however, Penn knew they weren’t related either.

They’d rescued Cat from some kind of terrible European orphanage, one of the many strays they’d pulled into their orbit.

Penn didn’t have the exact story, but the woman was fiercely loyal to the twins.

Cat loved that she could be mistaken for Siobhan’s daughter.

It was even more true today, because the flower dusting her hair matched the salt and pepper of Siobhan’s.

“Penny!” Cat said with a smile. Her hair was long, flowing down her back, and she wore a peasant skirt in bright colors, accompanied by beaded necklaces and bracelets on both wrists.

She looked like someone had picked a hippie out of the sixties, along with the fridge, and deposited them in the twenty-first century.

She swiped her forehead, leaving more flour behind.

Penn gave up trying to correct her name. “What is going on?”

Niamh waved a ladle from the stove with a smile. “I’m trying to see how solid they can get.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Niamh scooped up a ladleful of unidentified liquid from the pot and then pointed to the dough.

Penn realized there wasn’t just one kind of dough.

There was every kind of dough from liquid pancake batter to near-solid pastry on the counter.

Niamh was a potion witch, which normally meant magic cooked into liquid .

“If I can get it stable without a stopper, wouldn’t that be cool?” she said enthusiastically.

“Yeah, it would,” Penn said, thinking of her aunt who would’ve given her left arm to make her potions last longer and not require a container. It also would’ve never occurred to the older woman to experiment and try to make it happen.

It was definitely something Penn was still getting used to.

The kitchen had all the hallmarks of an insane seventh-grade science fair.

She’d never met anyone pushing the boundaries of what was possible with magic like the two women in front of her.

She loved them a little for it and hoped she wasn’t going to wreck everything.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Penn twisted to see a new witch in the doorway, Tori, another adoptee who ran her own business in town helping rich people get their second homes ready for habitation by importing caviar from the tropics and other absurdities.

She was one of four force witches in the coven, caught lifting things without touching them as a child.

She was a compact woman with shoulder-length brown hair and heavy muscles under an expensive leather jacket gifted by a client.

“Experiments!” Niamh said triumphantly.

“Well, I need a potion to get cat piss out of a million-dollar Persian rug.”

Penn perked up. How much was the cat worth if that’s what they spent on the rug? “Need any help with the animal?”

Tori gave her a tight smile. “Cat’s long gone, sorry. They rented out the place over the summer. I told them not to, but they spouted some bullshit about investments.”

Penn sagged. “They should have just sold the rug.”

“Right?” Tori said with a grin.

“Just use a Lift Me Up, dear,” Niamh said, waving vaguely toward the pantry. “The potion won’t know it’s cleaning up burned money.”

“What?” Penn asked.

Niamh turned to look at her and blinked twice. “I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, dear? The rich with money to burn?”

“I have…”

“So what is all that taradiddle but burned money?”

Tori grinned. “I mean, she’s not wrong.”

“If that’s what you think, how do you do what you do, helping them?” Annie asked as she flipped her dough into a loaf pan.

Tori shrugged. “They can’t burn all of it.”

She ducked into the pantry and immediately came out with a bottle labeled with an arrow pointing toward the stopper.