Page 75 of Wicked Witch of the Wolf

His hat flattened again, so I gave him my cell phone to play Angry Birds while he waited. He greedily snatched it out of my hands, and he and Fennel took off to lie low until I needed them.

“Keep the sound off,” I whisper-shouted at his retreating back.

When they were out of sight, I walked the perimeter of the house, chanting a single word, over and over.

“Reveal,reveal,reveal.”

Nothing showed itself.

“It’s just like Desmond said, Aldrich. ‘She’ll be easy to beat because she relies on spoken spells instead of her element,’” a shrill feminine voice said.

I stopped. Shot a quick look over my shoulder.

Carolina Foster stood behind me, arms crossed over her chest. Aldrich Redding was on her left, flashlight in one hand, both arms hanging loosely at his side. He was dressed in traditional coven robes and leather sandals, and his beard was white and scraggly.

“Turn around and face us with your weak magic, Betty Lennox.”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m fine looking at you this way.”

Carolina had big brown eyes, smooth olive skin, and perfect white teeth. She was young and pretty and looked like she knew it. Aldrich was elderly and much less pretty. He looked like he had no idea where he was.

I despised them both for different reasons. Mostly, Carolina was an annoyance. I wasn’t worried about her in the least. Aldrich was experienced and cruel. He might have difficultly locating his car at the mall, but he could easily whip up a spell to incapacitate me.

“Weak magic,” I said.

“Exactly. We know why you want to sell your trashy little trailer park and leave town. Desmond told us you can’t connect with your own soil. And what good is an earth witch with no connection to herelement?” She smirked, tossed her long hair over her shoulder. “You have to rely on learned magic, and you aren’t a made witch, like me. You haven’t trained your whole life likeIhave.”

“Weak magic,” I repeated, rolling the words around my mouth.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Fennel and Cecil duck behind the remains of a dead Mesquite tree. They weren’t afraid of Carolina or Aldrich. They were afraid of splash damage from me.

“Leave or we will attack,” she said, her high-pitched voice comically threatening. She sounded like an angry mouse—in fact, in her black capri jeans and red polka dot top, she kind of looked like a certain famous mouse. “This iscovenbusiness, and you aren’t one of us.”

“Kidnapping and murder is coven business?” I asked, all the while spooling the wordsweak magicin my brain.

“How did you know about—” Carolina elbowed Aldrich in the gut. He let out a pained grunt.

“There’s no murder or kidnapping here,” she said. “Only a coven leader challenge. Again, none ofyourbusiness.”

“Maybe I want to challenge the coven daddy next,” I said.

“You’ll have to go through us first.” She moved so close behind me her breath shifted the small hairs on the back of my neck. I hadn’t heard her move—had barely seen it.

Carolina had leveled up since I last ran into her. Margaux’s doing? Definitely not Desmond’s.

She gripped the nape of my neck and chanted a prayer. Some taught witches chanted words into the universe, like me, and some chanted prayers to the gods. Either worked.

“Goddesses,I call upon the power of the— Ouch!” She shoved me away. “Why is your skin sohot?”

I whirled slowly around and rested my gaze on the elder of the two witches.

“Weak magic,” I chanted. “Weak magic.”

Aldrich dropped his flashlight and stumbled back, his sandals sliding halfway off his feet. “Your eyes.”

“Repello.” Carolina thrust her hand into my chest, palm forward, fingers curled. Her spell dissipated like smoke blown into a fan.

I didn’t move a muscle. “Was that supposed to do something?”

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