Page 31 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

Charlie didn’t even hear her. “So a Circle of Abbott witches and wolves, and then Goldie, you’re gonna have to be right next to me in the Scott Circle.”

“My favorite place on earth,” Goldie said flatly. Penn’s eyes bounced between them. It was obvious the hostility was long-standing, but Penn couldn’t decide if they were giving it up for her or if it had already mellowed with time and marriage.

“‘Cause then we can get to all the Scott wolves through your mate,” Charlie said, drawing a second circle.

“That’s how I did it,” Quinn said.

Kathleen turned to her. “You’re not doing it.”

“Why not?” Quinn asked.

“This is a beast of a spell. We’re not putting a fetus in the circle.”

Pregnant women still did Circles. They’d never field a Circle if they waited for all witches to not be pregnant at the same time, but they tended to stick to the well-known spells Circles did all the time, like warding the land, and not experimental werewolf surgery.

“The whole thing is a charm,” Quinn said. “You’re not doing it without me.”

“We’re trying to change it,” Moira said. It was the first thing she’d said in an hour. “We’re not trying to make it last.”

“We’re trying to make the wolf last,” Quinn said. “We’re excising a piece of the spell. We better make damn sure the rest of it stays stable. And that’s my job.”

Kathleen’s eyes swung to Charlie. “Is there a charm witch in the Abbott coven?”

“She’s in Philadelphia, but I can ask…” Charlie did not sound confident.

“She’s not as good,” Quinn said. “Of everyone in this room, I’m the only one who’s actually messed with this spell or joined with a bunch of witches I’m not related to. The bean is gonna be fine.”

Penn closed her eyes and was grateful they’d sent the wolves out of the room two hours ago. Their hilariously misguided suggestions about how to do magic were amusing but distracting. And they would never go through with it if he knew they were risking an unborn child.

She couldn’t think about it.

Penn had also been mostly silent through this process, trying not to betray her ignorance.

She’d had no idea group spells were so contentious.

Growing up, she’d come to Circles every two weeks and stood on the sidelines.

Thirteen women joined hands and chanted words, and magic filled the air.

It all looked so clean from the outside.

She took a deep breath. “So now we know where everybody’s standing, how the hell do we make this happen?”

She looked over the lines again, searching for the magic words—literally—to unravel one part of a spell without destroying the whole thing.

“It’s gonna put up a fight,” Moira said, her bright red hair a halo around her head. She’d undone her braid around the time the sun had set.

“I mean, we can unhook the snake from the charm,” Quinn said. “We’ve got that far. A wolf and a snake are different. I’m reasonably sure we can get it out .”

“But the redhead’s right. It’s gonna put up a fight,” Charlie said.

“Then we have a magical snake loose inside my boy,” Kathleen said from her perch on a stool in the kitchen. “Our boys.”

“I can’t write a spell to say don’t put up a fight,” an older Abbott said. She was the spellcaster of the coven. The only detail Penn could remember about her was that she had a truly insane number of children. She could host the Sound of Music in her living room, except they were all boys.

You can’t spell a predator not to fight… “But I can!” Penn shouted, then bit her tongue.

“You can do what?” Kathleen demanded.

“You can’t get a snake to trust you, but I can.” That was her talent. She’d been treating the snake as a foreign invader hurting the wolf, but it was also god’s creature, and more importantly, subject to her magic.

Witches perked up around the room.

“What can you offer that’s better than eternal life in a shifter?” one of the Abbott witches asked.

Penn shook her head automatically. “Animals don’t think like that. Only we worry about eternity.”

“So what do we got that’s better than what it has right now?”

Moira held up a hand. “That I can help with.”

Everyone swung her way. She stood out like a sore thumb in a room full of dark-haired beauties. “They want to be fed. They want to be warm. They want to be safe.” Her job was raising snakes. Penn didn’t even know that was a job.

“They have all that where they are,” somebody said from the back of the room.

Penn held up a finger, trying to think back to what it had felt like to touch Asher. She’d been so focused on the distress of the wolf that she hadn’t considered the distress of the snake.

“They’re not safe.” She looked around the room, meeting as many eyes as possible. “They’re not safe. As much as the wolf hates snakes, the snake hates wolves. They’re a threat. We offer it life without the wolf.”

“We’re betting everything on a spell that offers the snake a choice?” Kathleen asked incredulously.

Penn slumped back. “We have to. Any kind of fight is going to be too dangerous. The only way this ends peacefully is that once it’s loose, it wants to go where we want it to. And you’re right, it’s got food. It’s got warmth. But it’s not safe.”

“It won’t be safe out here either,” Moira said. “Everything about this is going to be terrible for it.”

“That’s the last part of the spell,” Penn said. “We have to make the most inviting, safest, best metaphorical environment for a snake possible, so there’s no hesitation. There’s no chance it chooses to stay.”

Moira rubbed her hands together in delight. “I’ve been training my whole life for this moment. I just didn’t know it.”

Penn swung to Kathleen. She had a feeling that if the old woman didn’t want this to happen, it didn’t matter what the pack or the witches said.

“It’s not a completely terrible idea,” Kathleen said, and Penn went weak-kneed with relief.

“I pick apart the charm,” Quinn said. “You and Moira do your snake magic to make him magically want to get off the bus, and then I put it back.”

“And I make sure his heart still beats,” Becca said.

Okay, maybe they did need the healer. Maybe she had the most important job of all.

“That’s it?” Penn asked.

“And everybody else pours as much raw power into me, Penelope, and Becca as witchly possible,” Quinn added.

“But you just said Moira would help.”

Moira smiled. “What I know about snakes comes from thirty years of work, not my telekinesis. I can only lift heavy objects and feel what people are feeling. Snakes don’t like anything big looming over them, so you don’t want me in on the spell itself.”

Goldie snorted. “Except this one has had a giant carnivore looming over him for millennia.”

“Exactly,” Moira said, sounding so happy.

“What else doesn’t he like?” Penn asked.

“It’s an asp, so it also doesn’t like being in water or high up. It likes mice and small vermin. It likes a temperate climate, indirect sunlight, and a place to hide. Think European forest floor, which is probably where they picked him up in the first place.”

Charlie squinted. “So we have to heat the wolf, douse him in water in direct sunlight.”

Penn shook her head. “Wolves don’t like heat either, but they’re fine with cold, and the snake isn’t.”

Goldie snorted. “So we get him really cold and wet and build something nice and warm and dry outside of him, and pelt him with dead rats.”

“With somewhere to hide,” Moira said, “so he feels protected from above, and yeah, with a rat. Great idea.”

“That was a joke,” Goldie said faintly.

“And hungry,” Quinn said.

“What?”

“Asher needs to be cold, wet, and hungry, and the box we build needs to be warm, dry, and full of snake food.”

“And all our words have to be about saving the snake,” Penn said. “Getting him free, warm, safe, dry, and better.”

Becca nodded. “We’re changing the spell for his benefit.”

Goldie snorted. “You’re good at that.”

“Goldie,” Charlie said with a warning note in her voice.

Goldie flung her hands out. “What? That was a compliment! She lies to her patients all the time. The needle is only gonna hurt a little bit, and then you get a sucker!”

“It’s better than telling them the truth!” Becca said.

“That’s exactly my point!”

Moira cleared her throat. “Wow, I forgot about this charming feature of covens: the ability to argue while agreeing with each other. You’re right. All of you. We’re building a lollipop for a snake as we do a lot more than stick it with a needle…”

Penn nodded. They could do this. She could do this.

Often her job didn’t sound that different from Becca’s: lying through her teeth.

Penn spent a lot of time figuring out how what the owner wanted would also work for the pet, twisting bizarre demands like not sitting on the comfortable couch cushions around the home and instead choosing the tiny, considerably less soft bed in the corner of the room into something palatable.

She’d wanted to tell the owners they were insane for shrinking a kept dog’s world even more, but that way lay madness.

She stared at the scribbles of black Sharpie on the wall opposite the table, two Circles of witches connected through marriage and wolves.

She thought of the twins but let it go. They had their path to walk, and she had hers.

She could have this world where multiple covens mixed, and she wasn’t even sure of how they were all related, where two different packs mixed and didn’t want to kill each other, because their mates were sisters, and that would make for really awkward Christmases.

She almost laughed at herself. Here, she realized she could have a genuine home.

Becca even sounded excited about setting up an office for her in Harper’s Ferry, where the tourist traffic alone would keep her in business for years.

Penn had the home she’d been searching for forever, and all she wanted was him.

They could live their lives alone at that rest stop in the middle of the country amidst endless grass and nothingness, and it would be all she ever needed.

To ask for both felt extravagant and strange, but she was asking. She wanted him and his family; she wanted this land and her lover. It seemed insane to fight for both, but if she didn’t, how the hell could she live with herself? What else would she do with her life?

There was a shout from out on the lawn, and nobody even twitched. The pack was on the lawn; they’d been arguing all day. The front door slammed, and Malcolm stepped inside.

Okay, this was different.

Penn held her breath and laced her fingers together, surprised to find they were shaking.

“Do it,” Malcolm said.

“What does that mean?” his mother asked. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Everyone agrees. Worth the risk.”

“Everyone?” Kathleen asked as she stood up. It hardly made a difference. She was only a little taller than the stool.

“Unanimous.”

“I don’t believe it,” Kathleen said.

“We trust you,” Malcolm said.

Kathleen closed her eyes again. She was doing that a lot.

Penn wanted to protest that they shouldn’t trust her, but this was what she’d wanted. They needed to be worthy of that trust.

Kathleen spun back to her son. “It’s not unanimous.”

“What?”

“Asher hasn’t agreed.”

“Asher?” Penn whispered. She wanted to dash into the clearing and take him in her arms, but Malcolm’s restraining hand stopped her.

It had taken a week. A week of ten to twelve-hour days with endless coffee and increasingly simple meals as the women came together to build a spell to free a snake.

That was how they came to think of it: not a spell to help the wolf, which would only be a threat to the snake, but a spell to help the snake with the best, most beautiful fake world it could ever want to live in.

None of them mentioned the bizarre code at the top of the spell, which no one had cracked, but they’d agreed to recite at the beginning, just in case. The meat of the spell they wrote should do it.

Penn had all been for Circling up and trying it the moment it was finished, but Kathleen made everybody go home and sleep.

As they worked, the wolves had played.

Yes, they had agreed, but they weren’t unaware of the risks, so they were taking full advantage for as long as they could. They spent almost the entire week as wolves. There was hardly a time she looked out the window without seeing a mini-pack run by.

There was howling every night, until Game, Fish, and Wildlife had come around, and Malcolm had told them they were hosting a White Fang movie marathon on the lawn.

They’d stopped howling but had kept partying long into the night on the off chance it was the last time they would get to.

Their courage and unwavering choice humbled her. They had to be scared. They had to doubt their decision and the witches’ power. After all, they were deliberately putting themselves at the mercy of a coven, something the wolves had sacrificed quite a lot and fought for millennia to never do again.

The Abbott Coven scribe had brought more history books about witches and shifters.

The books didn’t have the spell, but they described it in detail, as well as gruesome tales of the shifter wars as wolves snapped their leash and fought for freedom.

Penn wondered if the book she’d stolen held the only spell left.

Now the shifters were giving that freedom and power back, at least for a morning, for a very good cause.

All the caveats in the world didn’t change how vulnerable they must feel, but not one of them spoke it. They just hardly ever shifted back, sleeping in a big pile of fur on the front lawn and spooking the horses as they ran.

But now it was time.

When nothing else moved in the clearing, Malcolm released her arm, and they walked a little closer.

“Asher!”

Penn braced; it smelled like rotting meat. Her heart nearly stopped. Until this moment, she hadn’t considered the fact they might already be too late.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when she met two glowing eyes in the dark of a tiny cave in the wall of rock. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to summon a smile. He wasn’t crazed or rabid, but she couldn’t tell if he was human at all.

Malcolm threw a pair of jeans in the dirt without ceremony. “Can you shift?”

The eyes blinked, ignoring the jeans.

“I can make you,” Malcolm offered casually.

The wolf took one step out and ignored Malcolm. It walked toward her.

She braced, trying not to show fear as it stopped a foot away, its head cocked like a dog’s.

“Tell him to shift,” Malcolm said.

“Can you shift?” she asked.

“Tell him.”

“Please, shift back, Asher.”