Page 64 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

Jiminy Crickets!My heart slammed inside my chest, or it would have if I had a heart or a chest because I was in a dank, dark cave. Cold—so cold, I saw my breath, which again made no sense because one needed lungs to expel breath. I looked down and saw a man huddled against a woman. Their clothes weretorn. He held a great deal of power, I definitely felt that, so then why wasn’t he using it? This made no sense.

Without a second thought, I drifted down to get a closer look at the couple, and seriously,nothingcould’ve prepared me for this. I gasped. The man looked exactly like me, only in a man’s body. I knew without a doubt that this was Simeon, which meant, the woman he held was… She was…

“Simone?”

I whipped around to see energy shaped like the man sleeping on the ground.

“Simeon?” I asked hesitantly.

He let out a breath as he smiled. “I have to admit, I wasn’t sure if any of this was real.”

I outright laughed. “I’mstillnot sure any of this is real. What’s going on here?”

His energy shrugged. “My guess, astral projection? It’s all new to me.”

“Tell me about it. Is that—” I pointed to the woman with him. “Madigan Baghest?”

Simeon’s energy radiated warmth and love. “Mymate.”

“Her brother is just through that door.” I gestured to the door still hanging midair.

“Her brother is your mated protector?”

“Crazy, right? Thanksgiving at our place this year?”

He shook his head. “If we live that long.”

That brought a damper on this little family reunion. “Why are you sleeping in a cave?”

“It all happened so fast. I was driving past a café and got the strangest urge to go inside. Madigan looked up the moment I stepped through the door and everything in the world made sense. She said, ‘Are you going to sit down?’ and that’s how it started.”

“Not exactly the first meeting for me and Connor. I kind of insulted him and kneed him in the balls.”

My brother laughed loudly, the sound resonating off the walls of the cave, though it didn’t wake the sleeping couple down below. “I take it there’s a story there.”

“You have no idea.”

Then he sobered. “I grew up alone. I knew I was a super, but I wasn’t a witch. It was Madigan who figured out that I’d been bound. A woman showed in my dream. She told me to find my sister, Simone. Clearly, I was taken aback. I mean, I had a sister? After being alone my whole life, I suddenly had a mate and a sister?”

“But you couldn’t find me?”

“I didn’t have the chance. Madi and I were confronted by some men who claimed to work for a man named?—”

“Beetle?” I asked.

Shock spread across his energy’s face. “We barely got away with our lives. More powers show up all the time, but I’m not in control of them. They track us everywhere I use magic, so we’ve had to resort to traveling without it. But our money ran out. We went to an ATM to get more and were ambushed. I have no idea how they’d tracked us. Madi was injured. I had to get us somewhere safe for her to heal.”

“Where are you?”

“Faroe Islands.”

“Can you get to Guilford, in Surrey—um, England?”

“I don’t know.”

“Our cousin lives in the country, outside Guilford. Lily Joy. She’ll help. She has power.”

“I think I’m too weak to carry her there. She’s too injured to shift or walk.”

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