Page 33 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)

P enn surveyed the hastily cleared ground they stood on next to a waterfall.

They chose this place for two reasons. One, because it was the halfway point between the Abbott Coven and the Scott Pack lands and therefore neutral territory, and two, all animals like to be near water.

Not in the water, although one of the blonde witches from the land, whose name she’d already forgotten, was standing literally in the water with her hand against a gnarled lightning-scarred tree.

Moira, the snake charmer, hoped that this place out in the open under the warm sun, close to cool shade and easy access to water, would feel very inviting for the snake they were trying to charm.

“Everybody, stop moving so we can get a look at this!” Charlie, the leader of the Abbott Coven, shouted, and men and women stumbled to a halt, though the chattering didn’t die down.

The configuration they landed on was, to her mind, an infinity sign. A ring of witches surrounded by wolves connected to a ring of wolves surrounded by witches. The Abbot Coven had brought eight witches—all that approved of werewolves—and six wolf mates.

Penn and Asher stood just behind Goldie in the Abbott Circle and her mate Aiden in the Scott Circle. Their linked arms joined the two, so Asher was as close to the center of power as possible.

He looked around grimly, but when he noticed her watching, he summoned a smile. “A guy could get a complex, everybody here for me.”

Malcolm grunted from just behind him. “Good, if the complex means you stick around.”

Asher’s eyes flared and then met hers again. “That’s the plan.”

She could lose him. Why did they even suggest this? It might not be the snake. He could live for years. They could have years together. What was she thinking?

“Circle up,” Charlie shouted.

Penn knew most lives were lived in repetition of the same day over and over and over again.

The significant moments where you could genuinely change the course of your life were few and far between.

It was strange to realize she was doing the most important thing in her life right now, maybe the most important thing in any of their lives.

They were on one side, gathering all the power they could, and the fear stole her breath.

She mimicked Goldie and put her hands on Asher’s shoulders, and the connection snapped between them. His shirt was wet with freezing water, and he hadn’t eaten in twenty-four hours, trying to make his body as inhospitable as possible.

She knew now that this was an exchange of magic; their whole spell was depending on it, but to her, this didn’t feel like magic; it just felt like home.

“You ready?” Sonia asked Asher.

Asher broke their staring contest to meet the older witch’s eyes. “No. But go ahead.”

“Don’t help,” Charlie said.

Penn spun toward her. “What?”

“Don’t add your magic to this part,” Charlie clarified.

Penn fought down outrage, but Asher just shrugged. “Got it. I am the patient, not the surgeon.”

Penn nodded and breathed.

“Everybody ready?” Charlie shouted, and the murmuring finally wound down.

Most of the group had varying levels of a Southern accent, and Penn bit back laughter to hear their nervous chatter in a relaxed drawl.

She felt like she’d stepped into a historical drama about the Civil War on the eve of some huge battle.

Her home in Pennsylvania felt like a thousand miles away, but it wasn’t.

It was just over the border, and she lived forty-five minutes from the Gettysburg battlefield.

She shared a history with these folks that most people out West just didn’t understand.

They knew about the Civil War, but it was ancient history, something that happened to somebody else.

Out here, it lived in their vowels and every historic marker from here to the ocean.

She looked between the two branches, the wolf pack and the coven. Today was the end of a different civil war, wasn’t it?

The end of a couple of different wars, she thought, looking at Asher.

It had to be.

“Everybody connected?” Charlie asked.

“We’ve been for like a half hour,” a woman shouted from the back.

“Do you wanna rush this?” Charlie demanded.

“No, I was just saying we’re ready!”

Penn bit her lip. Some things were exactly the same.

Charlie surprised her by disconnecting and moving to Penn, Moira, and Quinn, who were standing next to each other behind their mates.

“You guys ready? ‘Cause this is your show.”

Sonia would be saying the spell, but it would be Quinn and Penn who would work it. Quinn was to loosen the charm temporarily, and Penn to free the snake.

Please, god, let it be temporary.

Moira was there not because telekinesis or empathy would be particularly useful in this situation, but because she knew snakes and she’d helped Penn construct their snake bribe.

It was the clearing, with the sun and the water, as well as a half dozen mice she’d released from her snake breeding facilities that were currently burrowing in their first taste of freedom in their lives.

More than the clearing, they needed the world Penn constructed in her head, an absolute paradise for a pit viper, while Asher shivered and suffered, cold and hungry in comparison.

She thought back to the conversation that she and Moira had had last night.

A snake is an animal, too. He’s not the enemy.

He doesn’t like this any more than the wolf.

You have to be on his side. You have to be convinced this is for him.

And it is. He deserves this as much as the wolf. He’s been suffering just as much.

Penn had visited the snake house, a hermetically sealed cabin at the edge of the land.

The clamoring of reptilian desire within had nearly overwhelmed her, and while she was able to tell Moira that the anaconda’s humidity was a tad too much and the green tree python needed a bigger branch to dangle from, she hadn’t really gotten into the mind of a snake. There had been too damn many.

Instead, she’d gone home and cuddled her dragon.

A bearded dragon was not a snake, but its needs were similar, and not so different from her own in all ways but one.

It wanted water, food, and safety, but it also craved warmth and coolness like she craved food.

Cold-blooded creatures had a drive around temperature that was even more acute than their need for food.

Temperature mattered to mammals, especially the hairless primates a long way from their natural temperate climate in Africa, but it just wasn’t the same.

Death waited at the extremes, but there was an acre of wiggle room between too hot and too cold.

Death for the cold-blooded was always a few degrees away.

I can make it better.

She tried to think of the Rottweiler that had savaged a child in one of her last jobs in Pennsylvania. It didn’t think of itself as the villain. Nobody thought that of themselves.

She hadn’t found it hard to empathize with the dog, even though all she could do at that point was help it die peacefully. It wasn’t a super villain. It just got confused and made a terrible mistake relying on instincts as old as time.

I can make its life better, she thought firmly.

She opened her eyes and realized everyone else’s eyes were on her.

She squeaked, and Asher squeezed her elbow. They were still connected. She’d barely noticed.

“I’m ready,” she said.

The chattering voices of doom and failure in her mind were just that. They meant nothing.

Sonia closed her eyes and said, “We of the?—”

Penn felt a force stir immediately within her and then die off as Sonia looked around. “Oh my god, what do we call ourselves?”

Penn couldn’t help but laugh. In all their preparations, no one thought of this?

“What do you say normally?” one wolf demanded.

“We’re the Abbott coven. But this is not the Abbot Coven.”

“And the Scott Pack?”

“Hey,” one of the wolves connected to an Abbott witch said. “What about us?”

“And us,” Quinn said.

Malcolm gazed down at his mate. “You’re part of the Scott pack.”

“This is a magic thing, not a mate thing,” Sonia said, exasperated. “How many different covens do we have?”

Penn’s giggle escaped. She couldn’t help it. She’d been balanced on a razor’s edge for days and was ready to start. This waffling was too much.

“We are the witches and wolves of West Virginia,” Charlie said, and Penn heard the ring of power in her words.

It was a measure of how insane the spell was that the divination witch was third back in the line of power today, because Penn couldn’t believe the juice behind those words. Who was that woman?

“I mean, there are others of both in West Virginia,” someone muttered.

“Eastern West Virginia, technically,” someone else added.

“Guys. If she said it, that’s what we call ourselves,” Sonia said, exasperated.

“What are you talking about?” Malcolm demanded.

“Divination witch,” Charlie said, her voice back to normal, which was still the loudest in the clearing.

“What does that mean?” Malcolm muttered.

“It means sometime in the future, that’s what we already call ourselves.”

The huge shifter shuddered, and Penn didn’t blame him.

Sonia took a deep breath. “Okay, then. Everybody ready?”

No. She wasn’t ready. She would never be ready.

“We, the witches and wolves of West Virginia, call on twelve talents, not twelve talents, however many talents we have here. It doesn’t matter. Moving on. To summon this magic.”

Penn closed her eyes. This was going to be a comprehensive disaster. What were they thinking?

“Two, Three, Six, Twelve or One Two, essence, jewel, life, beast, two conjoined and the last of four, all one on hallowed ground.”

“Mama!”

They all spun to see a three-year-old Abbott running for the circle, her dark hair streaming. She latched onto Becca like a barnacle.

“No, honey!”

“I can’t stop this now,” Sonia warned.

“Just hang on,” Becca said, but the kid would not let her go. “Shit, now her magic is in this.”