His mouth curved. “I’m definitely okay with it.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“What is she doing?” Hadley asked Carter in a whisper as they watched Kat kneeling on the floor in the back room of her magic shop, carefully carving a perfect circle into the otherwise smooth concrete. Unlike the main part of the store that had crystals, potions, spell kits, herbs, and candles, among other things, this section was mostly filled with shelves of supplies along with a small area for Kat to create all those potions and spells.
Carter could only shrug, not even wanting to guess what the slender, dark-haired witch might be up to at the moment.
Knox had asked Carter to stop by Kat’s shop this morning to keep an eye on Lydia and Kamden while they continued to work on a possible solution to the skinwalker’s problem. When they’d arrived, Kamden had tried to convince Carter there was no need for protection, not when they were with Kat, but Lydia overruled her boyfriend. Not that it mattered. Knox wanted Carter here, so he was staying.
Hadley had come with him, of course, since it wasn’t like he was going to leave her alone at his place. Even if he assumed that Strickland had no idea where he lived, Carter wasn’t taking any chances. Besides, Hadley had been thrilled at the idea of visiting Kat’s shop, hoping they might see some magic, too.
“I’m making a warding circle,” Kat said, standing up and taking a few steps back to get a better look at her handiwork as Lydia and Kamden came over to join them. “Or it will be once I finish filling in the groove with gold.”
Carter tried to wrap his head around how much gold it would take to fill the quarter-inch-wide channel Kat had magically chiseled into the concrete floor. He had no clue how to do the math, but the circle had to be at least ten feet across, so it was going to take a lot.
“You’re going to use gold in your warding circle?” Lydia asked, her lavender eyes bright with excitement. “I’ve never had a chance to do magic in a circle like that. Well, I’ve never had the money to buy that much gold, either, but that’s beside the point.”
Hadley looked back and forth between the two witches. “What’s a warding circle and what’s the big deal with the gold?”
Kat turned away from her work, stepping forward to greet them. “You must be Hadley,” she said with a smile, giving her a friendly hug. “When Hale told me how much you’re helping Carter, I couldn’t wait to meet you.”
And just like that, Hadley and Kat started chatting like they’d known each other for years. Lydia immediately joined in, and for a moment it seemed like the warding circle would be forgotten as they talked. Carter stood off to the side with Kamden, not wanting to intrude since it seemed the three women were bonding.
Carter couldn’t help smiling as he watched Hadley get so animated about magic. Today she was wearing jeans and a flowing flower-print top paired with tennis shoes. It was the most casually dressed that he’d seen her, unless he counted the borrowed shorts and T-shirt she slept in.
He was still amazed at how easily she got him to talk to her about stuff—especially when it came to anything related to being a werewolf. All his pack mates knew the story of how he’d changed, but he’d never told them about the part that had turned him into an omega. Confiding in Hadley had been a cathartic experience and lifted a weight from his shoulders he hadn’t even realized had been there.
“So, warding circles?” Hadley prompted Kat, interrupting his musings.
“Oh, yeah! I completely forgot you asked about that,” Kat said with a laugh. “Anyway, in the world of magic, a warding circle is a method of establishing a barrier between what’s inside and what’s outside. For example, it can be used to keep negative influences outside the circle to prevent them from tainting a spell, charm, or invocation being cast inside. Or conversely, it can keep that negative influence inside the circle away from magic being cast outside.”
“A circle can also be used to physically protect someone by trapping the bad guy in the circle or keeping him from getting to someone inside,” Lydia added.
“And the gold?” Carter asked before the two witches could wander off into a conversation on magical theory again. “Does it make the circle more powerful or something?”
Kat nodded. “The short answer is yes. Technically, you can make a basic warding circle out of anything. Simple table salt is used frequently, or even plain dirt. I once even heard of a coven who did it with cocaine to trap a drug dealer, which was really inspired. But in those situations where you need the circle to hold up under severe stress and strain, the purity of the matrix material matters. And while salt has a symbolic purity all its own, nothing is better than gold. I’d been planning on creating a high-quality warding circle in the shop ever since I bought it, but have been putting it off for one reason or another. This situation with Kamden changed my priorities though.”
“You finally came up with a spell to help me then?” Kamden asked, suddenly displaying some excitement of his own.
Kat made a face as she considered that. “Not quite yet. But what we’re trying to do is more than a little dangerous, so a strong warding circle is going to be key in you surviving the whole process.”
“What do you mean, surviving the whole process?” Lydia asked, a panicked look on her face as she moved closer to her boyfriend. “You’re the most powerful witch in the country, maybe even the world. Can’t you just protect Kamden yourself?”
“I’m going to try,” Kat promised. “But what we’re trying to do is complicated and there’s a good chance Kamden’s body will resist what we want to do. That’s where the circle will come in. I’m hoping it will protect his human side once we start pulling out the skinwalker part.”
Kamden frowned. “Why would my body resist that when it’s what I want more than anything.”
Kat regarded him thoughtfully. “How old are you and how much of your life have you been a skinwalker?”
Kamden didn’t answer right away, clearly caught off guard by the unexpected question. Then he glanced at Lydia like he was worried he’d say something to hurt her.
“I’m over ninety years old,” he finally said, looking down at the floor. “I wish I could say exactly how old I am, but truthfully, I can’t remember it’s been so long. But I do know that I’ve been a skinwalker for seventy-two years. I remember that day in vivid detail.”
Carter wanted to ask how Kamden had become a skinwalker. He’d honestly thought it was like the werewolf thing and that it was a genetic switch being flipped that brought on the change. But based on what Kamden had just said, he got the feeling the change wasn’t anything like that at all and asking would have been in that category of a social faux pas.
At least Lydia didn’t seem bothered that she was dating a man old enough to be her grandfather, even if Kamden didn’t look like it. Carter decided to put it all in that other category of you do you.
“So, you’ve been a skinwalker for over seventy years,” Kat said. “After that much time, there’s no dividing line between your human side and your skinwalker side anymore. There’s no part of your human side that isn’t intimately mixed with the skinwalker part, along with every person you’ve walked in over the past half-century or so. What we’re doing is the metaphysical equivalent of gutting a fish. Your body’s going to instinctively fight it.” She shook her head. “There’s nothing to say that I might not take too much. Or that I might take everything that makes you human. Or that I could kill you. When I talked about your body resisting, that’s what I meant.”
