The door wrenched open, and she saw her sister, Dylan, standing there with a frying pan in her hand. The twins clattered up behind her, gasping for air.
“What do you want?” Dylan demanded and crossed her arms; the frying pan now cocked in her elbow.
Cat clenched her teeth. Everyone else paid lip service to the fact that receptive magic was just as powerful and useful as active magic, but Dylan had never been shy about the superiority of telekinesis. She joined the family in middle school, and Cat was kind of surprised she stuck around now, because she had a chip on her shoulder the size of a mountain and a suspicious streak almost as wide.
“I’m sorry,” Cat said softly, grateful they had no empaths because she was feeling nothing but raging frustration.
“What are you sorry for?” Dylan demanded.
“Never mind that, you’ll help?” Siobhan asked.
Cat’s jaw dropped, but she didn’t know why she was surprised. Siobhan had always taken for granted that the world was as she wanted it to be, especially with her family. What was it with witches and telekinesis that they just expected everything to mold to them?
Cat nodded quickly. “You were right; they’re dangerous.”
Niamh folded her in a hug. “What did he do to you?”
“Nothing! I meaneverything.”
“What?” Dylan said. The frying pan wobbled.
“He threatened me!” Cat added quickly and regretted that they hadn’t spent more time on the plan. Mateo had been certain she would know how to convince her family, but she should have figured out something to say that didn’t paint him as a horrible werewolf.
“Come in, come in,” Niamh said and pulled her across the threshold. Nothing happened, and Cat breathed another sigh of relief. “We’ve been trying to put together enough power, but nobody’s coming home.”
They walked into the living room to find Beatrice, her twin brother Henry, and Hannah in the corner.
Cat took in the assembly. Hannah was doing her master’s online and never came out of her room except to work. Henry, a man without magic, never participated in their 911 drills. This was everyone who lived in the house, except…
“Where’s Annie?”
Niamh rubbed her hands. “We don’t know. She’s gone. She walked out a few hours ago.”
After Cat met Felix in the woods and he had asked her if she was Annie’s sister and if she was okay.
Cat bit her lip. She hoped Annie was where she wanted to be.
She shook that off and focused on the twins. “So, this is everybody? No one else is coming home?”
“Not yet,” Niamh said.
Siobhan just shook her head.
Cat sighed. A week ago, that would have incensed her—that all the women they’d raised were so ungrateful they couldn’t even stop by—but she understood a little more now. Sometimes the twins made it impossible to stay.
“So, what is the plan?” Cat asked.
Niamh pointed to the coffee table where the two grimoires sat innocently among the other books, and Cat took a deep, slow breath.
Siobhan opened one with a flick of a finger, seemingly reluctant to touch it. Cat thought working magic on the thing was scarier than skin touching it, but that was just her.
Siobhan flipped almost to the front of the book where the spell lay.
“There is a way to undo it,” Hannah said.
“You understand it?”
Hannah blinked at her. “Yes? Undo it, strengthen it, redo it, delete it. It’s common to write those options into big spells like this.”
