Page 71 of Last Witch Attempt
“You’re just afraid.” Thistle looked smug. “Two Aunt Tillies is a sign of the apocalypse. Do you think it will be zombies or plague?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Or maybe it’s a bunch of Bigfoots.” She turned to me for confirmation. “Right? We’re due for one of those.”
I shook my head. “Why are you getting her going?”
Evan ignored both of them and walked to the playpen, where Calvin was watching the scene with wide-eyed wonder. “You guys are going to get him riled up.” He tossed the baby in the air and caught him, causing Calvin to giggle. “He can sense your emotions. You’ll make him neurotic, Clove.”
Clove pinned the vampire with a glare. “You get more and more like Aunt Tillie every day.”
Evan shrugged as he moved to the floor with Calvin. There was a small play area set up for the baby. “I’m just saying that if you freak out, the little guy will freak out. You don’t want that.”
I’d never really seen Evan interact with the baby. He was good with him. He had Calvin in hysterics as he made faces and moved so fast that it looked as if one of the stuffed animals was dancing on its own.
“You’re good with him,” I noted, not realizing I was going to speak aloud until it was already out of my mouth. “Do you want kids?”
Evan shrugged. “At one time I did. I don’t really think being a day-walking vampire will work for raising a child.”
“Not even with Easton?”
He shot me a cool look. “Did Scout put you up to this? I don’t want to talk about Easton.”
Did that mean there was trouble in paradise? “I was just asking.”
“I know this is difficult for a Winchester, but maybe you should mind your own business.”
“Yeah, I’ll get right on that.” I strode over and flopped on the couch. “I take it you’ve been informed of the new development regarding Aunt Tillie.”
Clove’s expression was dark. “There can’t be two of them.”
“I think there are.” I focused on Thistle. “It’s the only thing that explains everything.”
“You talked to her,” Thistle said. “What is she like? If she’s cooler than our current version, maybe we could trade up.”
“Don’t.” I jabbed a finger at her. “This is serious. We have Feds in town—right now they’re with Landon and Chief Terry looking over the cabin again—and we cannot explain two Aunt Tillies. We need to find Millie and…” I had no idea what we were supposed to do with Millie.
“You think Aunt Tillie created her,” Thistle pressed. “That’s the only way this could have happened.”
“We have a few holes to fill in,” I hedged, “but that makes the most sense. She told me Aunt Tillie had her out once before. Maybe she’s from a mirror world or something, because the alternative is that Aunt Tillie created a doppelgänger to serve a specific purpose and kept her locked inside herself for years.”
“Do they look the same age?” Thistle was focused on the mechanics of it all, and I couldn’t blame her. “Does Millie look younger?”
“When the spell first occurred, there was a younger version of Aunt Tillie that appeared. I saw them both together and freaked out for a second. When we got the spell under control, the younger Aunt Tillie disappeared. I assumed it was just a memory but maybe it wasn’t. As for how she looks, she looks the same as Aunt Tillie.”
“But you’ve only dreamed about her,” Thistle said. “You haven’t actually seen her. Maybe she wanted to fool you in your dream.”
“We saw her yesterday,” I argued. “Millie had the four-wheeler—which suggests she’s been at the inn at least once—and Aunt Tillie had the scooter. They looked identical except for the color of their capes.”
Thistle tapped her bottom lip. “Well, what’s the plan? How do we catch her? More importantly, what do we do with her when we find her?”
“We need Aunt Tillie to tell us exactly what she is. We don’t know where she came from at this point and theorizing does us no good because we can’t come up with a firm plan until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“I take it Aunt Tillie isn’t talking.”
“She ran out of the inn when I posited my theory. She was angry, which tells me she believes I’m right. Evan saw her leaving the greenhouse with a sword.”
Thistle was bland. “Well, that can’t possibly end badly.”
I shrugged. “We have another problem.” I leaned forward. “Evan and I were just out in the woods where the bodies were found. He had the idea of flipping the runes on the trees around, so they were mirror images. Then he recognized them.”
Thistle’s eyebrows hopped. “You tell a story like Aunt Tillie,” she complained. “Tell us what the rune is.”
