Page 14 of The Witch's Werewolf
“I won’t let them.”
He grunts, “If you stand in their way, they’ll take you out, too. No single witch can stand against the entire town of normies once they’re worked up into a frenzy.”
“You need to study up on the history of this town,” I counter.
All he does is sigh and squeeze me tight. “I know all about it. Anything can happen tonight. It often does on the full moon. And on Halloween.”
That’s right. It’s Halloween!
I pull back and look up at him.
“Tonight is bonfire night on Colony Hill. The witches throw the best costume party, and I can’t miss it. I have to go.”
He growls. I smile.
He taps my nose playfully. “Promise me you’ll go to your grandmother’s house before sundown and have her do a protection spell. And stay close to the other witches. Don’t wander away from the fires.”
I blink up at him, not promising anything.
Instead, I roll up on my toes, and Timber lowers his head to kiss me.
“I’m starting to wonder if I’m a witch at all,” I say. “I can’t shake this urge to be close to you. It doesn’t make sense.”
Timber cups my face in his hands.
“You’re a witch all right. The wolf in me sees it. The man in me recognizes who you are.”’
“I’m just a New York City girl lost in a hick town cosplaying at being a witch and getting kinky with someone not quite human.”
Timber’s dark eyes sparkle. “You’re not lost. You’re right where you’re supposed to be.”
The cider is pipinghot at the annual Samhain celebration, and so is the tea.
“I saw that Finnegan Frost skulking around Alma’s house last night,” says the elderly Birdie, sipping from her steaming mug of spiced goodness.
The witch called Sara ties her colonial bonnet under her chin and replies, “Well, even if she did invite him in, all those unnecessary protection spells will make him implode on the spot.”
“Agreed,” says Birdie. “These baby witches, they can’t get enough of those protection spells.”
Sara rolls her eyes. “You only need one! Stop hogging the salt!”
Alma, who’s about my age but grew up here among her kind, knows she’s being gossiped about. But she seems more occupied with trying to gather wood for the bonfires. “Some of us have our reasons. Once bitten, twice shy, as they say.”
Birdie and Sara exchange a look of guilt, having been caught gossiping.
“Finnegan,” I say, repeating the name I heard them say. “Does he go by Finn to his friends?” I ask.
Alma ignores me and sets to work stacking the wood in a cone shape, then stuffing the space underneath with newspaperand kindling. I’ve tried being friendly to her, as there seems to be a dearth of witches my age.
The elder witches all stare at me, then Birdie cackles, “Goddess be praised if that dusty old vampire has any friends.”
“I know. Imagine being stuck at age 18 forever,” Sara says.
“That would suck,” says Birdie.
“Although I’d never not be naked, if I still had my 18-year-old body at 102,” Sara says.
I sit and marvel at that. Finn, Timber’s friend, is a vampire? Those texts make so much more sense now.
