Page 147

Her magic dragged me toward her. I tried to fight, but my magic was bound tight as I tried to call it forward. I was helpless. She stepped back, and I was pulled into the cottage.

The door slammed behind me; the bolt sliding in place.

“Why are you doing this?” I struggled against her hold on me.

She walked to a large pot hanging over an open fire and stirred it before she looked up. “Because I want to live again, of course. I want what I’d been destined for before my sister and her tedious husband murdered me.” She was suddenly in front of me again, and her hand was cold as it cupped the side of my face. “The resemblance is remarkable. Even this…” She dragged her nails over my cold cheek. “Penny warned me, and I thought I was prepared to see this face again, but I find looking at you makes me…angry.” She gripped my jaw tight, her pointed nails digging in. “Very angry.”

“I’m not her. I didn’t hurt you, Charity.”

Her grip didn’t loosen. “You’re certainly as cunning. But she was also sweet, like you. She loved my mother and me and trying to protect us was all she cared about. She’d do anything for us. It was pathetic.”

“Like trap Draven and his warriors, tying him to a rock with your hidden dagger for over three hundred years?”

“The wolf?” She laughed. “Yes, and she let me do it, but only because she’d planned to free him as soon as my back was turned. She saw I’d grown stronger, had worked out that I’d turned to dark magic. But my sister was a terrible liar, and I knew what she had planned. She was going to use voltafaccia on me—she was going to plunge the ancient dagger into my heart, and change me, try to save me.” She laughed again as a low, deep sound echoed in the distance. Her form wavered, becoming less corporal for a moment. “So I locked it away, guarded by your wolf and his warriors, then used hemlock on her and a very special spell that made sure she forgot he and the dagger ever existed.”

She’d wiped Draven from Selene’s memories. Selene hadn’t betrayed him, she’d been betrayed by her sister. “She did love him.”

Her grip on me grew tighter, her eyes filling with fury. “Of course not. She never planned to stay with him, we needed his strength to destroy our enemy, that’s all. She was Keeper,” she said with a sneer. “She had things to do and staying with a wolf who wasn’t even her mate wasn’t one of them. My sister had a conscience, that’s all.”

“You thought you should be Keeper?”

“I was a far better witch in every way.”

“But she bested you. She found out what you were doing and she stopped you. In the end, she won.”

The sound came again from somewhere outside, louder, a boom echoing through the room, making the ground shake. I grabbed for the table.

Charity’s form flickered again, but she ignored it. Her face twisted, her mouth opening wide, and she screamed. “She lied! She tricked me. She didn’t win. I’m going to win.”

Howling echoed in the distance and my heart soared.

“Iris!” Draven’s voice roared from beyond the cottage.

“Draven saved me last time. He got me out of that cave before you could take my soul, and he found me here as well.”

“I trapped him once and I’ll do it again,” she said.

I pulled from Charity’s grip, yanked the door open, and ran outside. Draven stood there with my body held limp in his arms, Asher and Dirk in wolf form beside him. He called my name again.

“Draven!” I ran to him as he called for me.

But he looked right through me.

Oh goddess. He couldn’t see me or hear me. I screamed his name again.

Charity laughed behind me, held out her hands, and used her magic to drag me back into the cottage.

Draven continued to call for me, the panic growing in his voice.

I spun around as the basement door opened, and three women climbed out, beautiful and powerful. The elder crones. Not old or ugly anymore but beautiful—and pure evil.

Penny came up behind them, no longer outside the cottage’s magic. Her soul was here in limbo, like mine, while her mortal body was still on the other side.

Penny grabbed my arm. “You need to come down to the basement with the others.”

Amy, Marina, and Kristi had to be down there, or at least their souls were.

The boom came again, closer this time, knocking several cups from the table and causing dust to rain down.