“What the hell would I do with a wolf pack in New York? And what the hell would he do here? It’s not the same. I’m not just walking away because the twins disapprove. We have bigger problems.”
“He’s your match.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“When he touches you, do you feel a connection? Is your magic stronger?”
Cat gasped. “How do you know that?”
“There’s a connection between witches and wolves,” Annie said.
“Yeah, we made them with a terrible spell, and then we used them, and then we slaughtered them anytime they weren’t killing us.”
“Okay, it wasn’t a great start. But that doesn’t mean it can’t have a great ending!”
“Annie…”
“The witches created protectors for themselves. You have to think they cared about each other enough to make that sacrifice? And yeah, we have abused and denied it and tried to sever and hurt it and never managed it. Maybe instead of avoiding each other forever, we could build on that now?”
Cat just smiled sadly. “I love you, you know that, right?”
“I love you, too.”
“I’m so glad I got to be your sister,” she said, and Annie nodded once before running down the path and away. Cat didn’t want to say goodbye, but she’d said it just in case. She’d learned that a long, long time ago.
Was there a magical connection between her and Mateo? She felt it, didn’t she? But that was terrible ground to build a life on. Centuries ago, her ancestors turned him into a wolf to carry around a chunk of their magic. She could not stay with him just to get it back.
She felt more than heard a chime shake the house from the old grandfather clock and took a breath. No, she had made the right decision.
Before they said goodbye, she could make this one thing right and take the power to hurt him out of their hands. She swallowed and headed for the stairs.
As she snuck down them, avoiding the creak in the third step and a squeaky nail on the first, a thousand days in this house flowed through her mind. The stairway held pictures of all her sisters, and even though she couldn’t see them in the dark, she knew each one. How could such a project have gotten so twisted?
On the ground floor, she tried to put it out of her mind as she headed for Siobhan’s room in the back corner of the house next to the kitchen. She had rarely entered it in her childhood. For one, the twins barely spent any time in their rooms during the day, always in the kitchen or the living room, or out at some activity with their kids. If they were in their rooms, it was because they didn’t want to see their family.
She glanced out the back window to see a flickering flame at the edge of the woods. She’d insisted on building the fire for Mateo, not trusting him not to start a forest fire on top of everything else that could go wrong today.
She took a deep breath and got out the flashlight to shine out the back window of the kitchen to warn Mateo she was there.
Cat thought she could walk in, grab the books, and leave, but Mateo had pointed out that she was facing a force witch that could throw her across the room. The idea had been so alien, she could barely countenance it, but he wasn’t wrong.
A witch with receptive magic was basically defenseless, and all the scrying she had done in all the water glasses she could get her hands on in the dark of night just showed a future absolutely roiling, ending in that bright white explosion that had haunted her dreams for weeks.
She stood frozen before she flashed the light. Even thinking about the vision brought it on again for a moment, burning an afterimage into her eyelids. Was this some kind of defensive spell the twins had never told them about? Was it a metaphor?
Whatever it was, it felt closer now. Sometimes visions took on a flavor as they approached. It itched at her hairline and shivered down her spine.
Enough. It was coming whether she stood frozen waiting or moved. She took a deep breath and flashed the flashlight through the back window. This had been the plan Mateo cameup with, insisting that if Siobhan was going to throw someone around, it was going to be him.
She hated that she was putting him in the line of fire, but if Siobhan had hidden the book somewhere in her room, she needed time.
She’d brainstormed several ways to get her out of her room when he just shrugged and asked what would happen if a werewolf stepped on the lawn.
Alarming whoops and multicolored lights blasted from nowhere through the kitchen.
Cat closed her eyes with a groan. “This.” They’d gotten even louder than last time.
She realized she was standing three feet from Siobhan’s door, cursed, and ducked into the pantry just as her door burst open.
