Chapter 15
The haze of post-orgasmic bliss and a serious jolt of adrenaline were still sloshing through her system as Cat skipped down the stairs. She could still feel him all over her, and her whole scalp tingled from the hairbrush he ran through her hair while never taking his eyes off her.
She tried to tamp it all down as she hit the main landing and headed for the kitchen. Three redheads, Niamh, Annie, and Beatrice, were standing over something on the kitchen island while Siobhan peered over their heads.
“You’re back,” Niamh said with barely a glance at Cat. “We have to get this up immediately. Then we can tell you the plan.”
“What is it?” Cat said and stumbled toward the giant kitchen island. A sealed honey jar shaped like a bear was now filled with a much darker liquid.
“We’ve got to get the alarms back up,” Niamh repeated.
“We almost caught him,” Annie said, sounding strange, her voice heavy with fake cheer.
“But we lost him,” Siobhan said, “and he might know where we are, so thus—”
“We need to get the alarms up,” Niamh repeated a third time.
Cat gulped. “The alarms to tell you there’s a werewolf in the house?”
“Hopefully, they go off before he’s in the house, dear,” Niamh said. “Help me with these, Bea.”
Cat watched helplessly as Beatrice took her mother’s hand, and Siobhan took the other.
In a normal coven, she and Annie would be asked to help by lending their magic to a spell, but they didn’t share blood.
There was no way to help and no way to stop them as the bottle turned even darker beneath Niamh’s fingers.
The moment Niamh opened her eyes and took her hands away, the shriek of a banshee filled the room.
“To the gates!” Siobhan shouted, dove below the counter, and popped back up with an ax. She headed for the front of the house.
Cat closed her eyes as Ducky barked and ran around them all, and Beatrice and Niamh immediately followed Siobhan to the foyer, where presumably they left their weapons. They were more trusting than Siobhan, apparently.
She met Annie’s gaze for a timeless second and then spun on her heels and ran for the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Niamh said from the foyer, where she’d picked up a wicked-looking spike.
“I’m going to try to scry to see if I can find where he is!” she made herself shout.
“That isn’t—” Niamh began, but Cat didn’t wait around to hear her objections.
There were five witches in the house, which meant contingency plan four.
Two would take the front, and two would take the back door.
The windows were wired shut except for a tiny gap for air on the ground floor for just this occasion.
Cat supposed she could break one to get Mateo out and blame it on a phantom werewolf.
She briefly contemplated shoving him out her window, but that would put him directly on the front lawn in view of everyone.
She burst into her room.
He stood up from where he was smoothing the comforter on her bed. He made the bed? That had to be a first. He turned to her and held up her underwear.
She blushed as she snatched it out of his hands and threw it under the bed.
“I take it the wards are back up?” he asked.
“Something like that. Come on.” She pulled him into the hall.
Footsteps clattered on the stairs, and she pushed him into somebody’s bedroom. She didn’t even know whose. She followed and closed the door.
She looked around at four walls full of bookcases and realized this was Hannah’s. Hannah, the quiet and secretive foster daughter who came to them in elementary school and put a spell on her door to know if anyone came into her room.
“Great.” She wished she had a mirror or something to get a glimpse of what was going on, but there was no time.
As the footsteps retreated, she whispered, “Stay here.”
She slipped out the door to see Bea disappearing up the stairs to the third floor. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Trying to get a better view. Or something,” Bea said.
At the very top of the house, there was a small deck that the twins had installed for a 360 view.
“Shit,” Cat said as Bea disappeared. That was usually her job. She opened the door to pull him out of the room. She was surprised there wasn’t an additional alarm going off. Hannah put up a lot of different spells.
She pulled him toward the stairs. Now they had the twins at the front door, Annie at the back door, and someone able to see in all directions at the top of the house, which would not stop him from getting away, but also would not prevent awkward questions.
She tiptoed downstairs, knowing they had to get closer to a way out.
The alarm was louder on the main floor, or maybe it was just getting louder the closer he got to that damn smell.
The spell…
She ran toward the kitchen, where they encountered the giant wolfhound. Ducky took one look at Mateo and stopped barking.
Cat held her breath as she peered into the kitchen and didn’t see anybody. She did not know where Annie was, but she’d take it.
She pulled him into the room and shoved him into the food pantry. “One second.”
Then she headed straight for the mutan honey bear and went to sweep it off the table when a hand landed on hers. Annie had just been crouching down.
“I wasn’t...”
Annie shook her head. “If you break the bottles, the potion is still whole. Pour it out and mix it with water until it’s diluted enough to stop signaling.”
“Where, why are you…”
“Quickly!”
Cat took the bear to the sink and undid the cap to empty it as she turned on the faucet.
Annie went straight for the food pantry and yelped when she found a wolf in there.
“Buongiorno,” Mateo said.
“Um, hi,” Annie said, pulled a bottle off the shelf, and shut the door in his face.
She spared only one glance at Cat as she thrust a bottle of molasses at her.
“What is that?”
“Closest color I could find.”
Cat swiped it and twisted it open as Annie as the honey bear emptied. Cat started filling it with molasses, but it was going too slowly. She poured water into the molasses jug and shook it before trying again. When she put the water on full blast to clean out the sink, the alarm stopped.
She froze, looking between the door and the food pantry when Niamh shouted, “Maintain battle stations! He might come back for another round.”
“Get going!” Annie shouted.
Cat shook her head. “Bea’s on the roof.”
Annie sighed. “Give me a minute and a half, and then he has to run like hell.”
When she clattered away, Cat went to the pantry and wrenched it open.
“Buongiorno,” he said in the same voice.
“What, you say that to every witch who opens your pantry?”
His grin was quick and devastating.
“You have about forty-five seconds before you have to bolt out that back door and run like hell.”
He didn’t argue or even say a word; he just pulled her into his arms and kissed her like they would never see each other again. She lost track of time and gravity, and so was immediately devastated when he pushed her away and headed for the back door.
“Arrivederci,” he said with a final grin before he seemed to fly off the back porch.
The woods were always close in Silver Spring; he vaulted the back fence and disappeared.
It was the last time he would kiss her.
She felt as discombobulated as she did when he brushed her hair, but fortunately, looking wind-swept and overwhelmed fit the moment as the women filtered back into the kitchen.
Niamh was lecturing Annie. “We’re going to go over the entire plan again. I said, ‘Man your battle stations.’ And yet you went to join the lookout post in the attic, which Bea already had, leaving our back door undefended. We have a place for everyone in every configuration of witches.”
“Yes, Mom,” Annie said, looking penitent. Niamh squinted at her because Annie’s look was common throughout high school when she was sneaking out and getting into huge amounts of trouble while looking like an angel.
Niamh spun to Cat. “Don’t think you’re off the hook. Scrying for information? In the middle of a battle?”
Cat opened her mouth and then closed it. For the life of her, she could not remember where her assigned role was on a five-man team. Scrying was her job if they had enough witches, but apparently, four weren’t enough, so that left her with…which job?
“You were supposed to take the tower,” Bea said quietly.
Cat sighed. Oh yeah. They put the divination witch as far away from the action as possible. Bea was a healer. She should’ve been on the ground floor if anything went down.
“I’m so sorry!” she said.
“Well, they didn’t get in this time,” Niamh said.
“But you should’ve seen it downtown,” Siobhan said with something like awe and disgust in her voice. “This wolf had a scar that snaked from its snout all the way down its back. You could see the skin.”
“What must it have taken to wound a shifter like that?” Bea mused.
“Let’s not get distracted,” Niamh said. “We’ve got a ward, so we’re good for today.”
“We’ve got to start thinking of offense,” Siobhan said.
“We’re not strong enough to fight them,” Annie said.
“Right, so maybe we shouldn’t be on the offensive?” Cat risked adding.
Both twins frowned at her, and Cat winced.
Historically speaking, she’d been all in on the werewolf offense project.
Most of her sisters participated half-heartedly, but it always seemed like the height of logic to her to have as much protection around her as possible.
She couldn’t square the rabid version of herself with Mateo’s arms around her.
“I just mean we should be strategic,” Cat said, echoing Siobhan’s favorite word, even though she was still not sure what it meant, even after all these years.
“This is the perfect strategy,” Siobhan said. “Because it will not be a fair fight.”
“What is the strategy, exactly?” Cat said.
Annie shook her head, pale beneath her freckles.
“We nip it off at the source.”
“What are you talking about?” Cat asked.
“We have a couple of grimoires with the original spell. We just undo them,” Siobhan said.
Cat blinked. She could not have heard what the woman just said. “Undo the original spell?”
“Exactly. Then we don’t have to worry about anything anymore.”
Cat gaped. “Undoing the original spell would pull every wolf out of every shifter.” She didn’t actually know that, but she could not take the chance. “You can’t do that!”
“I thought you would be the most enthusiastic!” Siobhan said, baffled.
“You’re taking something from them without their consent.”
“They were never supposed to exist,” Niamh said softly.
“If anything, we would just be righting an ancient wrong that has been causing so many headaches and problems,” Siobhan said with a shrug.
“I think you might actually be insane,” Cat said.
“Catarina!” Niamh said.
“No! You’ve let your fear push you into genuine supervillain territory. These are people!”
“Exactly, we will return them to what they should be. People! Who could not do a lick of harm to us,” Niamh said.
“Let’s get started,” Siobhan said and strode back toward the library.
Why didn’t Cat take the grimoires out of that room? Why had she hidden them on the bottom shelf to come back to later to learn more? She should’ve tossed them in the nearest fire.
“You can’t do this,” she said as she trailed after Siobhan.
“What has gotten into you?” the older witch asked.
A vivid vision of the last hour of her life flashed in her head, and Cat let out a high, manic wheeze. “This isn’t right! Or good! They’re not evil just because they’re wolves.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“There are no sides! Not anymore. There’s just people.”
She tried to move past Siobhan, but a wall of force threw her into the clock in the hall. Her head hit and sang with pain as Siobhan stared at her, not the least bit sorry.
“I guess that answers my question,” Siobhan said.
Cat felt herself being forced toward the front of the house as Siobhan marched behind her.
“What are you doing? You can’t just kick me out!”
“My only goal has been to protect my family,” Siobhan said.
“Aunt, stop!” Bea shouted.
“She cannot be trusted,” Siobhan said.
“Siobhan!” Niamh shouted.
After a timeless moment, Siobhan sighed. “Fine.”
The force lessened, and Cat’s feet drifted back to the floor.
“Go to your room,” Siobhan said. “Don’t come out.”
Cat remembered that tone of voice. In fact, this entire conversation had felt very much like when she was a teenager and questioned one of the twins. They were generally loving and supportive with traumatized young witches, but there was a line you did not cross.
Cat suddenly wondered how many of her sisters had chosen to leave or whether they had found themselves literally thrown from the house.
She’d never examined closely the fact that the twins would hang the moon for you—until you disobeyed.
She could not believe that loving her was less important to her family than hating them.
She took a deep breath, watching the two paths open before her almost like a vision: marching up to her room with its squeaky bed, or walking out of the house right now without even a pair of underwear.
It was no choice at all.
“You will never be safe,” Cat said. “Violence will never protect you from your fear.”
She stopped only long enough to shove on a pair of shoes before she walked out of the house.