“Where are you going?” Niamh said from the foyer, where she’d picked up a wicked-looking spike.
“I’m going to try to scry to see if I can find where he is!” she made herself shout.
“That isn’t—” Niamh began, but Cat didn’t wait around to hear her objections.
There were five witches in the house, which meant contingency plan four. Two would take the front, and two would take the back door. The windows were wired shut except for a tiny gap for air on the ground floor for just this occasion. Cat supposed she could break one to get Mateo out and blame it on a phantom werewolf. She briefly contemplated shoving him outher window, but that would put him directly on the front lawn in view of everyone.
She burst into her room.
He stood up from where he was smoothing the comforter on her bed. He made the bed? That had to be a first. He turned to her and held up her underwear.
She blushed as she snatched it out of his hands and threw it under the bed.
“I take it the wards are back up?” he asked.
“Something like that. Come on.” She pulled him into the hall.
Footsteps clattered on the stairs, and she pushed him into somebody’s bedroom. She didn’t even know whose. She followed and closed the door.
She looked around at four walls full of bookcases and realized this was Hannah’s. Hannah, the quiet and secretive foster daughter who came to them in elementary school and put a spell on her door to know if anyone came into her room.
“Great.” She wished she had a mirror or something to get a glimpse of what was going on, but there was no time.
As the footsteps retreated, she whispered, “Stay here.”
She slipped out the door to see Bea disappearing up the stairs to the third floor. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to get a better view. Or something,” Bea said.
At the very top of the house, there was a small deck that the twins had installed for a 360 view.
“Shit,” Cat said as Bea disappeared. That was usually her job. She opened the door to pull him out of the room. She was surprised there wasn’t an additional alarm going off. Hannah put up a lot of different spells.
She pulled him toward the stairs. Now they had the twins at the front door, Annie at the back door, and someone able to see in all directions at the top of the house, which would not stop him from getting away, but also would not prevent awkwardquestions. She tiptoed downstairs, knowing they had to get closer to a way out.
The alarm was louder on the main floor, or maybe it was just getting louder the closer he got to that damn smell.
The spell…
She ran toward the kitchen, where they encountered the giant wolfhound. Ducky took one look at Mateo and stopped barking.
Cat held her breath as she peered into the kitchen and didn’t see anybody. She did not know where Annie was, but she’d take it.
She pulled him into the room and shoved him into the food pantry. “One second.”
Then she headed straight for the mutan honey bear and went to sweep it off the table when a hand landed on hers. Annie had just been crouching down.
“I wasn’t...”
Annie shook her head. “If you break the bottles, the potion is still whole. Pour it out and mix it with water until it’s diluted enough to stop signaling.”
“Where, why are you…”
“Quickly!”
Cat took the bear to the sink and undid the cap to empty it as she turned on the faucet.
Annie went straight for the food pantry and yelped when she found a wolf in there.
