As she worked, she considered the reinforcement witch power she would need to help. Two were old friends she kept up with on Facebook and Twitter. They knew the circle Linc had described because they’d been part of the larger group of witches who had closed and sealed the underground Coraville circle long ago. Moonrise would be perfect for Mable. Clara Anne had buried some stones at north. Bedelia had buried things there too: three focals tied to the circle and to a marble outcropping below the earth not too far away. If she was lucky, the rosemary plant she’d gifted to the previous owners two decades ago would still be growing there. Assuming they hadn’t killed it, she would have all her best elements on hand.
The prybar broke through the drywall, exposing the space between her closet and the bedroom on the other side. “Yessss,” she hissed. She grabbed up all the magical amulets. Moving fast, she bagged the stuff she’d hidden, pulled leggings on under her housedress, added wool socks and hiking boots, and layered on two shirts. She stuffed the bagged items from the back of her closet into a small shoulder bag and snatched a bulky old-lady sweater off a hanger. The sweater belonged to her mother. Linc would hate it.Good.
Quickly she set up a conference call between Mable and Clara Anne to explain the problem. Both witches agreed to meet at the buried Coraville circle. They would help to call the enemy witch. Good friends. They always had each other’s backs.
She grabbed up her keys and strode back through the kitchen. She stopped when she saw Linc still sitting at the table. “What,” she demanded, wondering why he was still here.
“Bedelia, my darlin’. You left before I could complete my commentary. Shania Mayhew has likely made a pact with the rogue werewolf pack. There may be more of them waiting for you at the rental house, knowing you would track Shania down.Werewolves, Bee.”
She stopped short. “Well, that’s athrice-bedamnedsituation,” she said.
He smiled slightly. “I have three of my best Mithran fighters in an SUV on the road down from your property and another watching the house Shania rented. They’re weaponed up with silvershot. Vampires don’t go furry. You and your witches will, however, if they get to you. We’ll followyou to the house Shania rented and keep watch while you call and fight the witch. We’ll kill any wolves that attack.”
Bedelia tried to think a way through this. When she was younger there were no were-creatures in the area. She had never been forced to think in terms of battling them. She didn’t want to accept Linc’s help. But.Werewolves... anddemonsand—
She shook her head violently. “I accept.” Formally, she said the words that would bind her to him. “I accept this help offered to the Everhart Clan witches by the Master of the City of Asheville. What boon will I owe you?”
A slow smile pulled across Linc’s face.Thatsmile. If the devil had a smile it was that one. “Dinner with me,” he said. “At a time and place of my choosing.”
“No blood-sharing.”
“One sip each,” he bargained.
“Wrists. Not throats.”
“Done.” He turned and left her kitchen. Cursing under her breath, Bedelia placed three small wood discs on the table, discs that could be used to reactivate the wards. Her human daughters would be here soon. They could drop the wards and get inside fine because their blood was attuned to the wards. But they would need to start the wards up again. She looked around at the kitchen and checked in again on Mama. All was well with her, at least. She had slept through the hammering.
Bedelia stopped at the hallway closet door, turned to the side, and prayed. It was a prayer of desperation and fear; tears pricked her eyes. When she was done, she pulled open the hallway closet door, picked up a second bag of tricks, and walked to meet Lincoln Shaddock. Linc, who was the “father of the body” of most of her daughters. The father of Liz and Cia. He had a right to be there to save them. God help her.
“We’ll take my car,” Linc said when she met him at the door.
Linc
Linc didn’t take her hand as he led her to his vehicle. Those days were long gone and all his fault. He’d been a vampire predator first and a loversecond. And to use Bedelia’s mother’s spoken judgment at the time, he’d been a “thrice-bedamned fool.”
He opened the door to the car, and she slid in. She smelled of chamomile and his barbeque and that faint aroma of roses in her blood. No other woman in his entire long life had smelled so sweet.
He shut the door and went around to the driver’s side, waving away the driver. “Contact Alex Younger. Keep track of what we know about the scene with Elizabeth and Eli. Update me regularly.” If anyone could keep his daughter safe, it was the former Ranger. But he was only human. The last communication he’d heard was that they were safe for now under ahedge of thorns, the demon was free, and the werewolves were most probably on the way to the campsite. It was a trap, and part of that trap was the result of his error for allowing Mayhew to live after his wife died. When the vampire got away during a breach of his clan home, Linc had known it would come back to haunt him, but it hadn’t occurred to him that it would result in danger to his daughter.
Alex Younger had found the Mayhew witch at the home she’d rented and had been tracking her activities via credit card use over the last week. It was not a fast job, even using the programs he’d created to access security cameras, bank records, and the GPS of her vehicle. Mayhew had met several times in restaurants with men who, three months ago, had quit their jobs and changed their lifestyles radically. Alex said their appearances in public matched when the moon was not full, and when full, they disappeared. There was no proof that they were a small rogue werewolf pack, but he assumed so since Brute indicated a rogue rabid pack was in the vicinity.
Law enforcement and all the necessary wildlife and park rangers had been notified, but there was no way any human agency could provide support in the dark in that terrain against a demon and a rogue pack. Worse, they could be infected. His people couldn’t. Jane Yellowrock, the Dark Queen of the Mithrans, had a call in to the necessary elected officials, informing them that her people were handling it. But he and Jane both knew it was his job and his failure that led to this. He would owe her a great deal when this was over, and Lincoln hated owing anyone anything.
Linc got in and started the vehicle. Silent, they pulled out of the drive and headed toward Hot Springs, Paint Rock, and the enemy of his beloved.If Bedelia had any trouble dealing with the Mayhew witch, he would draw on the energies of his people, walk into the witch’s home, and rip off her head. No one hurt his family.
Bedelia
She had no idea what to say or how to say it. Not to Linc. But she could plan for the working. She hadn’t trapped a misbehaving witch in years. It would be a challenge; just thinking about it made her pulse rate rise and her breathing deepen.
Linc
He watched as she redialed Mable and listened in unabashedly. “Hey, Mabs. I’ll be there in forty-five minutes. You and Clara Anne stop at the bottom of the hill and call. If everything’s okay, you can come on up. I’ll have vampires at the perimeter to fight off the werewolves.”
“Ohhh, vampires? The pretty one?” Mable asked.
Bee glanced at him from the corner of her eye and grinned. It was just a little wicked and his heart actually beat once. “Oh yeah. The cutie-pie Master of the City, as you called him once.”
“Is he still single?”
