Page 12 of Witch Unexpected
I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Yeah, cos he might sing me to death.” Wait. “Can you do that?”
Wren shook his head. “Wren only make small childrensies sleepy. Better be sleepy than scared.”
There was nothing but sincerity in his eyes, and my cold, withered heart melted just a little. I unlocked the cage and held out my hand. He climbed out and hopped up into my arms.
He was warm and soft, and my instinct was to hug him. He made a low chirping sound and rubbed his head against my cheek.
“If you’re done snuggling the dangerous fae creature, can we go?” Jasper drawled. “The sooner you put your amulet back on, the sooner you can take it off again.”
The oath was suddenly a rock on my chest.
There had to be a way around it.
And I knew just the person to help me with it.
Jasper adjusted the children in his arms. “Grab hold of me,” he ordered.
I obliged, because shifting out of here was much more appealing than trekking back to the rift. As the world fractured, taking me with it, my mind was decided.
It was time to call in some warlock assistance.
Chapter Four
“You did what?” Elijah said over the phone.
His voice sounded gruff and unused, as if he’d just woken up and I was the first person he was speaking to.
Considering it was predawn, I guessed that was exactly the case.
“I’m not repeating myself, Black.” I tucked the phone between my shoulder and ear while I spread mayo on my chicken sandwich. “I need you to get me out of it.”
“You need me to—” He cut off his words with a sigh of exasperation. “You took an oath with a malevolent spirit after I specifically warned you not to.”
I stifled the pang of shame his authoritarian tone evoked. He might have slipped into mentor role, but he wasn’t the boss of me. No one was.
“It’s not like I had much choice.”
He sighed again.
I got the impression I was testing Mr. Black’s patience more and more of late. A warlock shouldn’t be my first point of call when it came to all things magical, but going to my local coven would mean way too many questions about my abilities.
Elijah worked for the Grimswood Coven, a different breed of coven that used an alternate power source to miasma to practice magic. To tap into it, they needed an anchor witch, one born under the sign of Ophiuchus.
Someone like me.
There was a whole deal about some ancient threat being kept at bay, and dire wolf packs, and goodness knew what else. To be honest, I hadn’t paid too much attention when he explained it all. A: because I’d been too busy staring into his blue-green eyes and wondering how an older dude could be this hot, and B: because as soon as he’d said the wordanchor,I’d switched off. Being tied down to anything or anyone was a hugenofor me.
Which brought me back to my current predicament. “Can you help me or not?”
“You want my help, and yet you refuse to help us.”
Usas in the Grimswood Coven. Elijah was an anomaly of a different nature. A rogue warlock working for witches. Warlocks and witches didn’t, as a rule, mix. From what I’d gleaned, they didn’t even like each other. I mean, you wouldn’t see a witch and a warlock getting it on, which was weird because surely bloodlines would be stronger that way. Still, there was a ton I didn’t know about the witch and warlock world. Deliberate, of course, because learning too much might drag me into their world, and I was all about the not-being-dragged and not-being-tied-down. Unless it was for fun sexy times.
I digress.
I cut the crusts off my sandwich. “You don’t need me, Black. You have several potentials capable of being your anchor.”
“You’re special, Cora.”
