Chapter 20 #2
The mirror was the worst for this. The surface of the glass reflected everything. Everything in the room, everything currently in her life, everything in her vision. Finding something useful was like searching for Waldo in crowds of Waldos, a tiny future in a sea of other futures.
That was if she could even get a vision at all. All she could feel was her pounding heart, which was going so fast it was honestly a little disturbing.
Calm down. You have to calm down.
Because saying that always worked.
He’s out there getting shot at by now. You have to focus.
Because that was going to be conducive to focus.
She took a deep breath and let it go, recalling a memory of the time when the house was safe, and Siobhan was nothing but kind, a patient mentor, her savior.
All of that was broken, but she remembered safety.
She was shocked to realize that safety now came from Mateo. He gave her security and boundless support.
The chaos focused, and she could see a vision of herself tearing through the room, opening the closet, opening every drawer—finding nothing—and then reaching under the bed for a box that said Christmas that was strangely dust-free.
She tore across the room and skidded to her knees, yanking at the box just underneath the bed. Sure enough, it said Christmas.
She ripped open the lid, and all hell broke loose.
Louder alarms flared; the overhead lights flickered, and items started flying across the room. She stuck her head into the box as earrings, necklaces, socks, pillows, pens, and pencils all went flying.
“I’m one of you! I’m a Griffin!” she shouted, but she wasn’t a Griffin, not by blood, and despite all of their spells and all of their work, the magic did not recognize her as family.
She cried out when something sharp dug into her kidney and reached for the books. She had to get out of this room.
They were heavier than she remembered, but she managed to juggle both of them as she stood up. She turned toward the door just as Siobhan flung it open.
“Did you summon them?” Siobhan said with venom in her voice.
“Turn it off!” she shouted as a dangling crystal earring almost got her in the eye.
“Are you working with them to steal the spell?”
Cat babbled something. It was exactly what she was doing, but not for the reasons Siobhan thought.
Siobhan waved an arm, and the heavy mirror flew off the wall toward her.
She braced for shattering glass, hiding her face behind the books.
Glass did shatter, but none of it touched her, and she realized it had come from behind her.
Cat whipped around just in time to duck as a 200-pound wolf landed directly on the bed with a snarl, blood streaming from little cuts all over its snout and head.
Siobhan screamed. Cat screamed, and Mateo howled.
Cat dropped the books to plaster her hands over her ears as the unearthly sound rang out.
It was unbelievably loud in the confined space, meant to echo through the hills, and she realized there was magic in that howl.
It charged already charged air. It was the scariest sound she’d ever heard—even knowing it was on her side—until the rest of the wolves answered, far closer than the other side of town.
Had he called the pack? Had they followed? Had she led a pack of wolves right to her family?
Screams sounded from the kitchen along with reports of one, two, brown, white, all over the yard.
Siobhan seemed to gather herself. “This is war!”
Every object that could be moved in the entire room lifted into the air and headed straight for Mateo.
Cat dove straight under the bed with the books, and even then, it felt like she’d been hit with a BB gun, as a shotgun spray of debris peppered her legs.
Mateo leaped off the bed toward Siobhan, and gory visions flashed through Cat’s head. She didn’t know if it was magic or her own fear supplying them.
“Don’t hurt her!” she shouted hopelessly as Mateo chased Siobhan into the kitchen.
“One’s in the house!” someone shouted.
“Don’t hurt him!” she shouted as the vision shifted and sparked, and every knife in the kitchen headed toward Mateo in her mind’s eye.
She crawled out from under the bed, bracing herself, but nothing else attacked her. She headed toward the door, books in hand.
Then she paused. Mateo would fight for her. The witches would fight to defend their home even against their own daughters. If she went out there, the fight would get a hundred times worse.
She dove for the broken window above the bed. She had to get the books destroyed. Everything stopped the moment these books were gone.
She needed her hands. She looked around and grabbed a pillow. She ripped the pillow out of its case and stuffed the two books into it. She slung that over her shoulder and examined the jagged remains of the window.
You couldn’t have told me to bring gloves? she asked her magic hopelessly.
She tried to knock the biggest pieces out of the bottom frame as quickly as possible before grabbing the abandoned pillow and wedging it over the window. She vaulted up and through the hole.
She winced as something sliced deep into her thigh and her palm before landing hard in the bushes outside the house.
She lay there with the wind knocked out of her for a second.
As she rolled over, she saw sharp spikes inches from her body.
She snickered, imagining the giant wolf walking daintily over the spikes.
Clearly, they hadn’t studied werewolf anatomy closely enough before they designed their defenses.
She was aware she was slightly hysterical, and the fact that she had nearly impaled herself moments ago was not a laughing matter, but she couldn’t stop.
She staggered to her feet, and one spike brushed against her leg, far sharper and more painful than wood should be.
“That was my one good leg!” she scolded the spike, feeling the blood coursing down her other leg from the glass.
She couldn’t worry about that now.
She staggered to her feet and came face-to-face with a werewolf. For a second, she was relieved that Mateo was out of the kitchen, but then she saw the scar.
She froze as a growl rumbled through its chest.
“I’m trying to help,” she whispered. Then pulled the only card she had, though she hated to do it. “Mateo would be really mad at you if you ate me.”
He snarled.
“Do you want the witches to take these books and rip your wolf away from you?”
He stepped forward, and she plastered herself against the crinkly bushes.
Maybe she shouldn’t have explained.
“I’m stopping them. We’re stopping them. That’s what we’re doing. Let me help you!”
For a timeless moment, she stared into black eyes and was vaguely aware of some advice she’d heard to not meet a predator’s eyes, but she couldn’t look away.
Then, bizarrely, she felt a connection snap in a place between her and Mateo, far away, focused in the kitchen, taking fire, and happy to help.
Stop sacrificing yourself, she sent through the connection.
He didn’t, and the wolf before her seemed to change in her sight from menacing and huge to a friend weaker than she was, which made no sense whatsoever. It blinked and slipped away, which also snapped her connection to Mateo.
Get out of there! she sent hopelessly.
She didn’t waste time. She weaved through the spikes, trying to avoid the tips. There were other wolves around her and the occasional flying crossbow bolt, but she didn’t duck or stop for those either, even as one sliced her arm.
She had to get to the fire. She had to get rid of the books, and all of this would stop.
She saw one wolf get hit and winced, realizing what the past few centuries looked like before the treaty.
Maybe there was a reason witches and shifters should never be in the same zip code together, if this is what they did to each other.
She couldn’t think like that. She had to go on. She made it to the edge of the lawn, feeling dizzy and weak, but she didn’t stop.
Finally, she reached the fire, sputtering now without anyone feeding it.
She remembered the first one she built with him in that tiny cabin far away, teaching him how to layer kindling under logs to get it to burn hot.
She would miss him. She would probably miss him every minute of her life, but at least she could do this for him.
She threw the grimoires into the flames, pillowcase and all, and fell to the ground, unable to stand up with so much blood lost.
The move saved her life.
The pillowcase lit immediately and flared, and then the flame hit the books.
For a moment, they crackled away, flames blackening leather and licking at parchment.
Then without warning, a white diamond of light speared into the atmosphere, blindingly bright. If she’d been standing, it would’ve cut her in half. From the ground, it merely seared her eyes.
Pine trees blew sideways; everyone standing and fighting in the backyard flattened.
Consciousness slipped away.