Page 102 of Last Witch Attempt
Aunt Tillie made a face. “I told you; in a barn.”
“What barn?”
Aunt Tillie was unnaturally evasive. “A barn is a barn.”
She was so full of it. She’d mentioned the Finch farm. At least I thought she had. Things had happened so fast the previous evening. “Aunt Tillie?—”
“I’m handling Millie.” Aunt Tillie’s eyes flashed. “She’s my responsibility. I don’t need you stepping in.”
My smile was a flat grimace. “We have a lot going on today. You might have missed some of it because you were dealing with your doppelgänger. You need to be part of it.”
“We should play our own zones,” Aunt Tillie countered. “I’ll handle Millie—I’m really looking forward to it—and you handle the rest.”
“What if I have a way to handle Millie and the naiad at the same time?” I challenged.
Confusion had Aunt Tillie leaning back in her chair. “What would that look like?”
I glanced at Steve, who was watching me, then back at Aunt Tillie. “There’s a plane door in the lake. The naiads were trying to open it when the attack came.”
“You’re going to have the door opened so you can shove the naiad through it,” Aunt Tillie realized.
I bobbed my head. “You created Millie. You might not have realized she would be able to mark the passage of time when you put her … um … wherever you put her. But she did, and she doesn’t want to go back in the box.”
“Is that what she told you?”
“Those were her exact words,” I said. “I don’t want to put her back in the box, and the naiad just wants peace on a plane with other members of her species.”
Aunt Tillie eyed me for a long time. “I had planned to kill Millie.”
She was a bold talker, but I didn’t believe it. “You were going to put her away again because you can’t bear the idea of killing her. Besides, she’s obviously sentient … whatever you did to create her.”
“We’re not talking about that.” Aunt Tillie was firm. “It’s none of your business.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I assured her. “It’s done. But we can give her a chance. She’s lost. So is the naiad. Maybe they can help each other once they’ve crossed.”
Aunt Tillie worked her jaw. “I guess I can be convinced to go that route. How do we get the naiad and Millie to the lake?”
“I thought we’d provide some bait.” I flashed a flat smile. “There’s one more thing we need to discuss.” Now I turned to face Steve. “I had a visitor last night.”
Steve looked confused. “I’m not sure what that means.”
“The naiad came to me in my dreams.”
“She can do that?” Steve was flabbergasted.
“Apparently, she tapped into my dream magic.”
Aunt Tillie bobbed her head. “Naiads can glamour, and dream magic is on the same wavelength.”
“Bay, I know you have sympathy for this creature,” Steve said, “but she killed three people.”
“Three people who tortured her and killed her sister.”
“Is that what this thing told you?”
“You keep referring to her as a thing,” I noted. “She has feelings … and a soul.”
Steve looked caught off guard by my fervency. “I didn’t think of it that way,” he said.
