Page 4 of His Whispered Witch (Witches and Shifters: Scott Pack #6)
Blonds. Plural. There was more than one werewolf walking down the street.
She zeroed in on a family led by an older man with four or five kids.
They were dressed in homemade and perhaps even homespun clothing, rough and beige.
She wanted to ask Annie how she knew they were wolves, because they didn’t look any different from anybody else, but then she watched the patriarch scan the street and looked away.
There was a presence to him and, she realized belatedly, magic.
She gasped. He was overflowing with animal magic—her magic. Well, not hers exactly, but witch’s magic.
“What the hell?”
She wanted to get closer and investigate. Why would a shifter have magic? Werewolves and witches had nothing to do with one another. They were mortal, historical enemies. It was only the peace of a long-dead treaty that kept wolves from slaughtering them.
She almost told Annie what she sensed, but then cowbells rang out like crazy, and everyone’s eyes snapped to the road. How long did it take to run fifteen miles? They were already back.
Penn had to bite her lip to keep from laughing as the first running pairs rounded the corner onto Main Street.
Someone had started playing the theme from Chariots of Fire as exhausted, sweat-drenched runners dragged or were dragged by riled donkeys down the street, clanking with gold mining equipment.
She loved animals. She had always loved all animals, but one dirty little secret was that she probably loved humans the most. Her species came up with by far the weirdest ways of entertaining themselves in the world.
Truly, who did this?
She also laughed to cover her disappointment, because Gary—with his tie-dyed T-shirt, khaki shorts, terrible running shoes, and confused donkey—wasn’t anywhere in sight.
Then she saw him round the corner, beet red from exertion or sunburn.
Then he started passing the leaders dressed in high-tech marathon gear as their donkeys shied from the crowds.
Silver heehawed and spooked the leader’s mount that hadn’t been trained for this at all.
It wheeled in circles, and Gary took the lead.
Penn found herself shouting and whooping as he charged over the finish line.
Annie gripped her shoulders, screaming, “You won! You won!”
“It was all Silver!” Penn shouted.
She scampered down the street to meet Gary near the finish line, where exhausted mammals were staggering across the line on two and four feet.
Gary was in a pocket of people shouting and cheering for him, and she joined the throng.
She was just happy to be a part of it and hoped she could hand out a few more business cards when Gary caught sight of her, and his eyes lit up.
“You all asked what my secret weapon was, and here she is!”
She was pulled forward and only just avoided getting plastered against his horrifically sweaty side. “Penny Young! Donkey psychiatrist!”
Penn winced, both at the nickname and the title. “It’s Penn. And I’m an animal psychologist .” She didn’t know why she bothered. She’d made up that title, too.
“So what did you give him?” somebody shouted.
“Yeah, if you’re a psychiatrist, what drugs do you got?”
“Gary hasn’t won in twenty years of trying. He’s never even finished, and you’re telling me now he wins the whole thing. What the hell did you give that donkey?”
She spun around in a circle, buffeted by accusations with just enough empathy magic to catch the ugly undertones.
“No drugs! I just talked through some things with Silver here.”
Silver ignored his name. Fortunately, the donkey wasn’t fussed by all the shouting humans around it. It had a pretty sweet disposition for a donkey.
“We’ve been training for this our entire lives!” Gary said. “How dare you!”
“We have to test the donkey. And Gary! What did you take?”
Somebody sidled up beside her. “Can I get some?”
The accusations horrified her. “It was nothing!”
She pulled away when she felt a hand on her arm but stopped when she saw it was Annie.
“We have to go,” Annie said urgently.
“I have to explain!” Penn said.
Annie shook her head. “We have to go!”
Penn spun around to see the werewolf and more of his family—blond, tall, and brimming with animal magic—bearing down toward them, muttering about cheaters.
Penn closed her eyes. “How is this happening again?”
If she brought a pack of wolves down on her new coven…
The most unfair part of this was that if there were werewolves racing donkeys, they really were cheating.
You stick a wolf behind a donkey, it’s going to go as fast as you want for as long as it can, but that was beside the point.
If this got worse, she would have to run again. There would be no choice.
She staggered away and lost herself in the crowds. She really didn’t want to test that treaty. She’d read it once in kindergarten and hadn’t thought of it again until today.
“The wolves don’t know I’m a witch,” she muttered. “They don’t know me.”
“Yeah, they know me,” Annie whispered.
Penn looked down at her, surprised. “A pack of werewolves your family avoids at all costs knows you. Personally?” All of Annie’s freckles disappeared in a fiery blush, and Penn couldn’t help looking back over her shoulder. There was a story here.
She sighed. It was one she didn’t have any right to, and Annie didn’t seem at all keen to share.
As they struggled to get to their truck, Penn shook her head. How was this her life?
Six months ago, Penn had a respected position in her coven in Pennsylvania, consulting for huge dairy farms and being paid ridiculous amounts of money as an animal husbandry expert with no need for fake titles or business cards because everyone knew you came to the Youngs if you were having unspecified issues with your herd.
Now she was a fugitive from her own family in a tiny town in the Rockies being accused of giving performance drugs to an ass while evading werewolves.
How had it already gone wrong so fast?
At the moment, she doubted she’d get any new customers out of this day and might get actively banned from ever working with animals again.
Then where would she go?
She shook that thought off.
She’d learned not to ask that question.
But seriously? Where would she go?