Page 18 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

There were two kinds of magic: one that let you receive information and one that let you act.

That’s why a coven was only effective when it was complete with a full complement of active and receptive talents.

A receptive talent was pretty much useless for anything except informing the decisions of the witches with more active defense spells at their fingertips.

Her animal magic was mostly receptive, but it was a gray area, since she could also make animals do things if she was convincing enough. It meant she could technically act on the world through magic, giving her a mixed talent.

“Yeah, divination.”

An icy shiver ran through Penn. Divination witches told the future. Did she know?

It was also too good an opportunity to pass up. Could she find out?

“So you do believe in fate. Here, let’s get out of here,” Penn said, loath to stay amongst the extreme violence any longer than she had to.

They retreated to one of the forward sitting rooms stuffed with upholstered furniture of various makes and models. Somehow, the eclectic collection went well together.

“If you mean, are things destined to happen no matter what we do? No, I don’t believe that.”

Penn frowned as she chose a spinning upholstered chair in a cheery yellow, and Cat sat near her at the end of a chaise longue in cream fabric with little embroidered flowers.

“I don’t think there’s any force overseeing any of this,” Cat continued. “Like if this happens, that is always going to happen? No way.”

“Then how does your talent even work? This is all just random?”

“Cause and effect is still a thing. So once a cause happens, do I believe the effect is coming? Oh boy, hell yeah.”

It was a bizarre philosophy coming from a woman who could literally see the future, but Penn didn’t want to get distracted. “So you don’t believe that there are two people destined for each other?”

“Maybe.” Cat shrugged.

“But you just said?—”

“No, I know. Cause and effect could be: I bought a load of groceries, and now that’s the only food available.

I also mean: who our parents were and the choices they made, and how we’re living out those choices now.

There can be a generational cause-and-effect or even multigenerational.

What looks like destiny might just be a whole lot of causes all tied up together. ”

Penn sat back, thinking of that spell in that terrible room. They did that to a human being. Did the first shifters consent, and even if they had, did they truly know what they were getting into?

Because of that, millennia later, were there two people running around with each other’s magic?

“Do you want me to check?” Cat asked hesitantly.

Penn opened her eyes. “Check?”

“See if I can see a future for the two of you?”

“How do you check?”

“I scry. Mostly in water. Technically, I could use a crystal ball, but those are expensive and break if you look at them wrong.”

Penn took a deep breath. “So you can only see the future if you’re looking for it?”

Cat sat back with a wave of her hand. “Thank god, yes! I know witches with enough strength to get visions whenever they want, or rather, whenever they don’t want. Sucks for them. But unless it’s like, the end of the world, I don’t just randomly see things.”

“Since the world hasn’t ended yet, I take it you haven’t literally seen that?”

“When the twins took me out of that orphanage, I saw that. I dreamed of that for years before it happened.”

“That was the end of the world?”

Cat traced the edge of her chair. “It felt like it at the time. But I guess it was also the beginning of the new world.”

Penn took a deep breath to ask more and then let it out. This wasn’t a casual story to pull out of someone in small talk.

“Anyway,” Cat said, “if you want me to. No guarantee I see anything or I understand what I see.”

She couldn’t resist. “Okay fine, if you don’t mind.”

Cat grinned and then looked around and pulled an abandoned glass of water sitting on the coffee table toward herself.

“You might mind, though,” Cat said, and her grin faded.

Penn rubbed the back of her neck. Her previous experience with divination was with a great aunt whose house smelled of denture cream and cedar.

There hadn’t been another Young born with the talent since.

Penn only visited twice in childhood. Everyone was terrified of the old woman.

She read tea leaves, and until Penn had met Cat, she hadn’t known there was any other way to do divination.

To Penn, it always looked like a soggy mess at the bottom of the cup, and she half thought the old woman was just making up the things she said.

She said that Penn would be a natural witch, which was accurate, but she had a 33% chance of being right on that.

“May I?” Cat said, and Penn glanced down to see Cat reaching toward her.

Penn took her hand and nodded.

“You want to try and direct things?” Cat asked. “Or should I just see what I see around this dude?”

“What dude?” What had she given away?

Cat scoffed. “You asked about, and I quote, ‘Fated, um, partners.’ There is a particular tone of voice people get when they ask a seemingly general question that’s actually about one specific person.”

Penn took a deep breath. What was she doing? Seriously? Would she change the rest of her life based on what Cat’s magic saw? Wasn’t that as insane as trusting fate? “I don’t want to know if we live happily ever after or anything.”

“Yeah, my timeline is so not ‘ever after.’ We’re talking weeks, maybe months on a good day.”

“Right. I just want to know if there’s some kind of tie between us that goes beyond what’s, um, normal.”

“Honey, there’s no normal.”

“But—”

“But I got you. You want to see if it’s fate.”

“You don’t even believe in that, so?—”

“Remember, fate’s just a word we used to label long-term effects of really annoying, stupid causes. You and he could be living out your grandparents’ screwup.”

Penn let out a high, long whistle of air. How many greats would get me to that damn book?

“You okay?”

Penn bore down and fought for calm. “I’m good.”

“Tie between you?”

“That. Is there something like that between us?”

“Got it.”

Cat closed her eyes, and Penn braced for a pull on her magic, but they weren’t related. Though they were pretending to be in the same coven, their magic didn’t believe them. She felt nothing.

She almost laughed. The difference between this and her connection to Asher was kind of all the answer she needed. There had to be something between them beyond an addiction to his lips.

Cat opened her eyes, but she wasn’t in the room. She was focused on the middle distance and looked a little like she was hypnotized. Penn fought off a shudder.

Slowly, Cat’s gaze swept downward toward the tiny glass of water.

Penn knew the water was a crutch, just like the tea leaves.

The magic didn’t live in them, but Cat had to focus on something.

Nothing happened for a tense and endless sixty seconds, then Cat’s eyes flew up, and she wrenched her hand away, flinging herself back in the chair.

“What?” Penn demanded.

“Wolf,” Cat said, sounding rough.

“What?” a voice asked, and they spun to see the twins standing in the door to the parlor with identical looks of shock on their faces.

Cat scrubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands as if she could erase what she saw.

Penn didn’t have time for the freak-out. She’d already had her freak-out. “What did you see?”

“Oh yeah, there’s a tie. It’s like you’re the same person? Except not a person. I don’t know.”

“What are you talking about?” Siobhan demanded, stomping into the room, her black hair fanning out like a cape behind her.

“Nothing!” Penn said.

Cat met her eyes. She seemed to come back to herself and look around, noticing where she was and what was happening.

“Nothing,” she echoed weakly.

Siobhan spun to Penn. “The wolf with the snake venom wasn’t hypothetical. Where is he?”

“Nowhere! I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She sees you connected to a wolf. You’ve brought him to our door!”

Everyone froze as they heard the click of claws on hard wood but sagged when Ducky rounded the corner and butted into Niamh.

“Do you smell him, boy?” the old witch asked.

Penn rolled her eyes. She was the only one here who could actually talk to the dog.

Ducky just stared up at her adoringly. Niamh started searching the room as if Penn had stashed him under a sofa.

“There’s no wolf!” she shouted.

“There won’t be when we’re done with him.”

“Hey, we’re not killing anyone based on my visions,” Cat said. “You’re the one who taught me that. They’re only possibility.”

Penn spun to her, feeling her frustration rise. “It’s just a possibility?”

Cat paused but then shook her head, white and grim-faced. Penn didn’t think so.

“Annie was talking about the land with the metal gate!” Niamh said.

Penn closed her eyes. Did Annie tell her mother everything?

“I went to help a client with his donkeys on that ranch. Yes, I was asking about werewolves, but that was because of you! You’re the one who told me how dangerous they are!”

Penn had run from him, yet the moment he was challenged, she started lying through her teeth to the women who had taken her in to protect him.

The old women met each other’s eyes, and one of them nodded. “Get the crossbow.”

“Maybe don’t do that,” Cat said, but the twins dashed out of the room.

Cat sighed, her eyes on Penn. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I didn’t tell you, so you didn’t know.”

A faint smile crossed Cat’s face. “Well, yeah, but that’s kind of supposed to be my thing.”

“No, even I know it doesn’t work like that. You don’t just see what you need whenever you need it.”

All amusement leaked out of Cat’s expression. “No. That is definitely not how it works.”

“I have to go,” Penn whispered as the old women clattered to their room of torture.

“I think you do,” Cat said.

“You really saw that, some connection between us.”

Cat shook her head, and Penn’s heart crashed before she added, “Connection is too weak a word. It’s the same magic. Somehow, it’s living in him too. I don’t know how.”

At the door, Penn turned. “Ask the twins how shifters came to be.”

She ran before she heard a response.