Page 21 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

A sher broke off the crossbow bolt wedged in his shoulder with a grunt, and Penn swallowed against sudden nausea. He examined the fletched arrow with a shake of his head before tossing it out the window. She tried to think of what to say.

“And you call us the bad guys,” he said.

She glanced over at him, stung, but he was smiling. “Says the guy with the snake!”

“And whose fault is that?”

She dug for humor, trying to match his tone. “Also witches, according to you.”

She closed her eyes, thinking about that grimoire tucked into the twins’ fortress werewolf room with a recipe for making shifters. It wasn’t just according to him.

She thought about the snake inside of him and that recipe and what she wanted to do if she ever had a chance.

“Shit,” she murmured.

“What?”

She hadn’t thought she had spoken loud enough to be overheard. “We need to make a stop.”

“Okay, where? What did you forget?” he asked immediately, and she smiled when his eyes flicked to the lizard.

“We have to go back to Silver Spring.”

“You mean the town with even more witches who are trying to kill us?”

He rolled his shoulders, and she braced against the sight of more blood, but his wound already looked half healed.

“It’s probably the one day that there aren’t going to be any witches in town,” she said.

“Oh yeah, they’re all getting carried around by mooses. Or is that meese?”

“I think it’s just moose.”

“The plural of moose is moose?”

“Would you just drive?” How could he be joking at a time like this with a hole in his shoulder, fleeing with everything they owned?

Would it have been better if he was freaking out? She had seen what happened when he freaked out.

“Silver Spring in ten minutes,” he said with another roll of his shoulder.

She was unspeakably grateful to him for trusting her. He didn’t ask what they were picking up or chastise her for forgetting something; he just put his foot on the gas.

When he missed the turn to Silver Spring, all her good feelings evaporated. “Where are you going?”

“Shit, was that the turn? I’ve only ever driven there in the dark.”

They were on a back road hauling a horse trailer. It was another ten miles to another road into town. Had they just lost everything because she wasn’t paying attention?

He didn’t even hesitate, just drove into the bushes and began what turned out to be an eight-point turn. Halfway through, the horse trailer was mostly off the road dangling over a steep drop, but he didn’t even blink.

She paid attention after that and told him where to turn and turn again to get into the town she thought she’d call home for the rest of her life and would never see again.

She directed him up Main Street even as she questioned her sanity, but it was the straightest and therefore fastest route into the city.

They passed the one gas station, the shuttered tax preparation front, the coffee shop, and the bank.

The Cauldron and Broom was coming up on the right.

She got a glimpse of the sign and a face in the window.

Not all the witches were out of Silver Spring.

“Take a left.”

He jacked the wheel, and she hid her face, wondering if they’d recognized her. It was too late to do anything about it now.

“Right at the next corner.”

The house would be warded, but she was part of the wards now. Would they have spared the time to remove her? Or perhaps the magic would know already that she was a danger to the coven.

I’m not a danger! she said uselessly. Any witch who tried to have a conversation with magic would never not be a fool.

“Park here.”

He did as she ordered and looked at the nondescript house on the corner with a frown. “That’s a witch’s den?”

“No,” she said and got out with a whispered note for Oz to stay out of sight. The bearded dragon slithered off the dash. Asher twitched and got out of the truck. She smiled, amused by his fear of the harmless creature, and then thought of the other reptile within him and stopped smiling.

She spared another wash of calm for the donkeys in the back, but they weren’t panicking.

Donkeys didn’t really do that, as she’d learned in her recent work with them.

They just kind of buckled down, believing they could last through anything.

She didn’t want to think about what would happen if ever they stopped believing that they were equal to any suffering that came their way.

Even magic couldn’t bring an animal back from that, humans included.

“What?” he asked as he came around the truck.

“Oh, hell no, you cannot come in.”

“I’m not leaving you to walk into the heart of the enemy alone!”

“Okay, as of yesterday, these were my family, not the heart of any enemy…”

He spread his hands wide. “Okay. You tell me where the boundary is. I will stop an inch away, and I will be at your side in less than a minute, boundaries be damned, if you say the slightest word.”

They did not have time to argue. “Fine.”

She jogged up the street and stopped in front of the Gothic purple monstrosity.

She thought it was ridiculous when she first saw it, then had fallen increasingly in love with the eccentric pair that ran it, and now she kind of hated it and them.

Because of their fear, she would never have this, and she didn’t think she could forgive them for that.

She pointed to a tree at the edge of the property. She knew it was one anchor of the wards. They were often anchored in living trees as relatively long-lasting and self-powering boundary markers. “Stay on this side of the tree. You walk halfway round, you’ll set them off.”

“ That is a witches’ den,” the wolf said, staring up at it. What did he see when he looked? Delusions of grandeur? Unexpected violence?

“Asher!”

He focused on the tree. “Got it.”

She took a breath and stepped across herself. Nothing happened. That didn’t mean that nothing actually happened, just that they didn’t have a blaring alarm on their front lawn.

She jogged toward the house and froze when she heard a yip.

“Ducky, it’s just me,” she said to the huge Irish setter that came loping into the front lawn, the defense the sisters had against normal intruders. It would have worked for everyone else.

She was surprised to realize how tired she was when she tried to send him a wave of magical calm.

The dog was on edge because his people were missing, and they rarely went missing at the same time.

He thought, of course, that the reason one of them was always home was him, so something terrible must be happening elsewhere.

“They’re fine.” She closed her eyes at the vision of the truck barreling right toward Siobhan and bit her lip. “They’re fine.”

She did not explain that she was the one menacing them and the one keeping them from him.

She jogged onto the porch and tried the door.

It was locked, and she cursed. The door was never locked. This was the heart of the coven. There were witches in and out all the time. Was she going to be thwarted by a damned human lock?

She was going to have to break a window, which would definitely set off an alarm and give them even less time, but there was no way around it.

The lock clicked, and the door swung open. Annie stepped into view and met her gaze.

Penn couldn’t think of a single thing to say when the younger woman stepped back to let her in.

Penn hesitated on the threshold.

“I mean you no harm,” Penn said slowly.

“I know,” Annie said.

Penn eyed the threshold. Even if there was a trap, at least she’d be one step closer. She stepped over the threshold. She felt the air ripple around her, the wards adjusting to her presence. They didn’t seem to be upset or trying to keep her out.

“There’s something I need,” she said.

“To help him.”

Penn swallowed. “Why are you helping me?”

Annie licked her lips and tucked copper blonde hair behind one ear; she didn’t meet Penn’s gaze. “You’re not the only one.”

They were out of time. They’d been out of time from the moment she left this house as the twins muttered about crossbows. The witches weren’t going to keep fighting a crowd of feral creatures from the horror version of Bambi when their prey had already gotten away. She did not have time for this.

She didn’t move.

“The only one what?” she asked.

Annie swallowed. “The only one who doesn’t want to hurt them. Who doesn’t think they’re evil.”

Annie put her head down and shuffled toward the library.

Penn swallowed and followed in a daze, thinking not of Asher, but of the first werewolf she’d ever seen at the donkey races.

Annie had stared across the road, unable to take her eyes off the little cluster of wolves.

Penn had chalked it up to paranoia, but what if it wasn’t that at all?

“Do you know one?” Penn said, halting in front of the library for a moment.

“No!” Annie said quickly and grabbed the statue. She pulled it toward her, and nothing happened. She pulled a couple of times. Penn could hear the click, but the door didn’t open.

“Shit,” she said and spun in a circle.

Annie looked shocked. “I didn’t know they locked it against me. This has never happened before.”

“How many times have you tried to go digging in their secret werewolf murder stash?”

“Never.”

Penn reached for it, though she stood as far away as possible, imagining all sorts of booby traps, but nothing happened for her either.

Her merry band of forest creatures would be useless here.

“Can you force it?” Penn asked.

“I can just talk!” Annie said helplessly.

“What?”

“I’m a spellcaster. All I can do is talk.” She held her arms out wide.

What could they do then?

“Dammit,” she said. “You have to get out of here.”

“I said I’d help. I said I didn’t think of them like the twins!” Annie said, hurt in her voice.

“No, I’m about to set off every ward in the entire territory, and if you don’t want to lose everything too, you need plausible deniability.”

Annie’s eyes rounded in her head. “He’s with you.”

“We’re talking about it.”

“I mean, he’s outside.”