Page 34 of Warmongers and Wands
Chapter 11
Bronwyn
Ophelia and Sylvie arrived the next morning, loaded down with supplies. Hadur promptly vanished outside with some mumbled excuse about checking the woods for werewolves. I knew that he was really fleeing the overwhelming chaos of having four witches in one tiny cabin.
Three of which I sincerely hoped would be gone by lunchtime. Or dinnertime at the very latest.
But for now, I had some clothing besides my 1970s paisley shirt and makeshift wrap skirt—mostly dresses that didn’t require too much work to put on over a splinted leg and a few pairs of sweat pants and t-shirts. There was now a portable toilet, a camp stove, several solar chargers, and bags and bags of chocolate, two bottles of wine, and a disgusting two gallons of Glenda’s smoothies.
The battery-operated X-ray machine was courtesy of a veterinarian two towns over who used it for cattle and horses. It made sense. Running half a mile of electrical cord from a field wouldn’t have been practical and some barns didn’t have a readily available source of electricity. Either way, it limited the sort of X-rays my sister could take—which made her very grumpy.
“Yep. Broken tibia,” Ophelia announced, looking at the X-ray on her cell phone. There was no sheet of film with this cool techie device, just a piece of glass that got hooked up via USB. I glanced over my sister’s shoulder and looked at the picture. “Although I’m not a doctor, and I’m strongly suggesting you get airlifted out of here and seen by someone whoisa doctor. But from what I can tell, it’s non-displaced and should heal well without surgery.”
“Guess I should be grateful,” I told her.
She put her arm around my shoulder. “Yes, you should be grateful. When we came down the mountain yesterday and saw your truck…well, I feared the worst.” Her voice choked with emotion.
“The only thing that kept her from panic was that the driver’s side door was ripped off the hinges,” Sylvie chimed in. “We looked inside and saw the blood and the twisted dash, but no dead body. It looked like someone had ripped everything apart with one of those jaws of life things, so we figured someone had gotten to you.”
“I assumed it was the werewolf pack, but Ophelia’s divination said you were in the woods,” Cassie told me. “I’ll admit I was a little scared that meant you were lying somewhere, hurt. Ophelia insisted her divination said you were injured, but alive. We just didn’t know how injured you were.”
I smiled over at her. “Just a broken leg.”
I’ll admit Cassie’s presence was starting to grate on my nerves. She hadn’t been here twenty-four hours and I was already giving her less than subtle hints that she should go home. Normally I got along with my elder sister. We shared a bedroom growing up, and out of the whole bunch, she was the one I could normally take on a long-term basis, but the close confines of this cabin and her mother-hen protectiveness and paranoia were more than I could handle.
Yes, they’d been terrified, afraid they’d lost me. I understood how horrible that must have been. It made me realize that if the werewolves were trying to shake up Cassie, to reduce the power of the Perkins witches over the town and the residents, then killing one of us would do the job. Cassie was a neurotic wreck over my broken leg. If I’d been killed, she would have retreated completely, left the town and the werewolves to their own self-government, left everything to fall apart.
We needed to be careful. And we needed to find out what happened to my truck, and the who and why behind the sabotage—if it were in fact a sabotage.
“Yes, just a broken leg.” Ophelia squeezed my shoulder then started to pull some gauze and supplies from her bag. “Now I’m going to make you a real cast. It’s not gonna be fun. I’ve got to extend it to cover your leg above the knee and below the ankle.”
I grimaced, realizing that this was going to hinder my mobility even more than Hadur’s splint. But I did want my leg to be properly stabilized so it could heal correctly. And I could put up with it for twelve to fourteen weeks. Four if I could manage to choke down Glenda’s smoothies.
Ophelia unpacked more supplies from her bag and got to work gently wrapping a liner around my leg. She then wet the fiberglass cast material and wrapped it around the liner.
By the time she was done, I had a bright pink cast extending from above my knee to below my ankle. It was heavier than Hadur’s splint had been, but it did a much better job of holding my lower leg immobile. No more aches. No more pain every time I moved. And the best thing of all? It was some special waterproof cast that meant I didn’t have to bathe in the tub with my leg stuck over the side.
Once it was dry and hardened, I slid out of the bed and stood, taking the crutches Ophelia handed me. I made my way across the room, put the crutches in one hand, and lowered myself into a chair.
“Thank you,” I sighed. As nice as it had been to have Hadur carry me here and there, this gave me a level of freedom I hadn’t had for days. I could freely move about the cabin without pain, get myself a drink or a book, or even go to the bathroom without assistance. And with those horrible smoothies Glenda had sent, I should be back to normal in a month.
Ophelia held up her hands. “My work here is done. I’ll be back to check on you this weekend. If you need anything in the meantime, send me a message via raccoon.”
My sisters had discovered the no-cell-signal dead spot encompassed far more than just the area around Hadur’s cabin. Pretty much this entire side of the mountain had spotty, if nonexistent, coverage. Cassie would have needed to climb up past the road and up almost to the werewolf compound to get a signal.
And that wasn’t something we wanted to do.
Ophelia had carried in the medical supplies, the clothing, and the portable potty, but Sylvie had the heavier load. She was the one with the books. And the wine. And a bag with who-knows-what in it.
“Here are the journals.” She set a stack next to me on the table. “From the time period you specified, there were six journals. I also have a copy of the genealogy chart of the Perkins family from that time period. Then I grabbed four spell books that I thought might have information on summoning and releasing demons.” She shrugged. “If there’s nothing in there, then we’ll have to start reading through the other books. I’m not too optimistic on any of this, Wynnie. From what I know, we Perkins witches have never been involved with demons. Well, beyond Cassie shacking up with one, that is.”
“What’s in the bag?” I asked, dreading the answer.
Sylvie winked and set the bag on the table. “Oh, just a few things for you and Hadur.”
“Not while I’m staying here,” Cassie protested.
“Yes, well, you’ll be leaving before nightfall,” I countered with the argument I’d been making since I woke up this morning next to my sister and not the hunky demon.
