Page 51 of His Whispered Witch

“Take a left.”

He jacked the wheel, and she hid her face, wondering if they’d recognized her. It was too late to do anything about it now.

“Right at the next corner.”

The house would be warded, but she was part of the wards now. Would they have spared the time to remove her? Or perhaps the magic would know already that she was a danger to the coven.

I’m not a danger!she said uselessly. Any witch who tried to have a conversation with magic would never not be a fool.

“Park here.”

He did as she ordered and looked at the nondescript house on the corner with a frown. “That’s a witch’s den?”

“No,” she said and got out with a whispered note for Oz to stay out of sight. The bearded dragon slithered off the dash. Asher twitched and got out of the truck. She smiled, amused by his fear of the harmless creature, and then thought of the other reptile within him and stopped smiling.

She spared another wash of calm for the donkeys in the back, but they weren’t panicking. Donkeys didn’t really do that,as she’d learned in her recent work with them. They just kind of buckled down, believing they could last through anything. She didn’t want to think about what would happen if ever they stopped believing that they were equal to any suffering that came their way. Even magic couldn’t bring an animal back from that, humans included.

“What?” he asked as he came around the truck.

“Oh, hell no, you cannot come in.”

“I’m not leaving you to walk into the heart of the enemy alone!”

“Okay, as of yesterday, these were my family, not the heart of any enemy…”

He spread his hands wide. “Okay. You tell me where the boundary is. I will stop an inch away, and I will be at your side in less than a minute, boundaries be damned, if you say the slightest word.”

They did not have time to argue. “Fine.”

She jogged up the street and stopped in front of the Gothic purple monstrosity. She thought it was ridiculous when she first saw it, then had fallen increasingly in love with the eccentric pair that ran it, and now she kind of hated it and them. Because of their fear, she would never have this, and she didn’t think she could forgive them for that.

She pointed to a tree at the edge of the property. She knew it was one anchor of the wards. They were often anchored in living trees as relatively long-lasting and self-powering boundary markers. “Stay on this side of the tree. You walk halfway round, you’ll set them off.”

“Thatis a witches’ den,” the wolf said, staring up at it. What did he see when he looked? Delusions of grandeur? Unexpected violence?

“Asher!”

He focused on the tree. “Got it.”

She took a breath and stepped across herself. Nothing happened. That didn’t mean that nothing actually happened, just that they didn’t have a blaring alarm on their front lawn.

She jogged toward the house and froze when she heard a yip.

“Ducky, it’s just me,” she said to the huge Irish setter that came loping into the front lawn, the defense the sisters had against normal intruders. It would have worked for everyone else.

She was surprised to realize how tired she was when she tried to send him a wave of magical calm. The dog was on edge because his people were missing, and they rarely went missing at the same time. He thought, of course, that the reason one of them was always home was him, so something terrible must be happening elsewhere.

“They’re fine.” She closed her eyes at the vision of the truck barreling right toward Siobhan and bit her lip. “They’re fine.”

She did not explain that she was the one menacing them and the one keeping them from him.

She jogged onto the porch and tried the door.

It was locked, and she cursed. The door was never locked. This was the heart of the coven. There were witches in and out all the time. Was she going to be thwarted by a damned human lock?

She was going to have to break a window, which would definitely set off an alarm and give them even less time, but there was no way around it.

The lock clicked, and the door swung open. Annie stepped into view and met her gaze.

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