She read, “Two, three, six, twelve, the essence, the jewel, the life, and the beast for each. Two conjoined, the last of four, all on one hallowed ground.”
“Mysterious,” he said with a hint of humor.
She shook her head and stepped away. “I’ve heard that before. Where have I heard that before?” She thought back. “I’ve said it before!”
“I think most people have done the six times table,” he said gently.
She couldn’t help but grin at him, falling a little bit in love. “I think you’ll find most people have immediately blocked it from their memories before they leave third grade. That’s not what this is. I don’t know what it is, but I foresaw this.” Again and again, those words swept through her mind at the start of other visions.
Normally, she needed a medium, and she needed quiet and time to summon her talent. It was only the most powerful prophecies that ever broke through without her seeking them.
She gulped when she remembered the whole of it. “It was the day the first wolf came back to the land. Your minion who was setting up the house.”
“Matt? The one who took a vacation and disappeared?”
“I said this sequence. I didn’t know what it referred to.”
He kept reading, his hand skimming down the page. “This is a spell to make werewolves.”
“What?”
He pulled the other book from her hands and scanned through the pages to the front of the book.
“Careful!” she hissed as one almost tore. She didn’t believe, like some witches, that grimoires gained sentience from so much magic over so many generations literally carved into them, but she also didn’t believe they were just random, mundane objects anymore either.
“It’s in here, too. No, not quite the same.” He held a book in each hand, and she goggled at his casual strength.
He squinted at the dusty pages. “But it’s got a similar code. It talks about a stone instead of a jewel and a tree instead of a flower, but it’s similar. What is this?”
Before she could answer, he snapped the book closed. “You know what this means?”
“I have no idea.”
“Witches made shifters. There’s no other explanation. These spells create shifters. These books have to be at least a couple of hundred years old, right? We’re talking Middle Ages or earlier. I’m not saying that there are no other ways to make a shifter or no other ways it happened, but...”
She couldn’t take the implications. “But we were enemies. We fought each other for centuries.”
“I don’t understand. How did we lose this piece of our history?”
Cat glanced at the towering shelf of books. “I don’t think it was lost. I think it was hidden. I still don’t believe it.”
“Find me another explanation. Two different families of witches have two different ancient spells to turn a man into a wolf. Why the hell would they do that?”
This she knew. “Why does a coven do anything? They were scared of something. It wasn’t really safe to be a witch in Medieval times. It had to be for protection.”
“I hope you’re right. That might be the least terrible reason.”
She laughed humorlessly. “Oh, good, I’ll take some version of my history where I was the least bad.”
He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I didn’t say good.”
“Right.”
“Do you know what it means?” he asked again, tapping the book.
“That witches made shifters? Didn’t we just go through this?”
He grinned. “I meant the numbers and flowers and everything?”
