Chapter 18 #3
Joell collapsed. Rayna caught her just before she hit the ground. The glow faded from her eyes. Her body was too warm, but she was breathing.
“She’s alive,” Rayna said, barely above a whisper. “She’s going to be okay. Right, Magda? Right?”
Brianna let out a sob. Magda dropped to her knees. Katie sat down hard and cried, hugging her fish bubble.
Payne limped over and crouched beside Rayna, his arm slung around her back. “Is it over?”
Rayna nodded. “It was the last of its kind.”
He glanced at the empty sky. “That almost makes me feel sorry for it.”
“Me too,” Rayna said. “But not enough to let it take her. Or any of us.”
They sat in the settling dark as the sky healed overhead. There would be scars. There always were. But the battle was over. And the doorway was shut.
“Sheesh! Why do we always have to respond to these supernatural emergencies during our vacation week?” Lioness asked as they returned to the mansion.
“Only witches would consider PMS week to be a vacation,” Payne said.
“Why not? We’re not just witches, we’re women!” Rayna snapped. “It’s not like we’re incapacitated.”
“I—I know that.” Payne said sheepishly.
“Besides, that’s when we get our best writing done,” Lioness added. “We have a nice, quiet place with plenty of privacy in the mountains and don’t even have to pack.”
Payne ran a finger under his collar to loosen it. “Well, I just thought… Um…”
“We know what you thought,” Joell said. “And you’re not wrong. That’s why we lock up our weapons and take the week off.”
“Whew,” he muttered under his breath.
“Michael and Daniel would be smothering laughter and trying to hide their smiles if they were here.” Rayna bumped him playfully.
“Listen,” she said. “This is probably more than you want to know, but here goes… Not all of our vacations are during PMS week. That would suck. We have a sabbat, what you’d call a holiday, every six weeks.
Our birth control is Seasonale, and limits our periods to one per season, or four per year.
So, Ostara was a sabbat, but we didn’t have PMS. Next is Beltane.
That’s the one you might want to worry about. ”
“You’re right, that’s more than I wanted to know.”
“Look,” Joell said, “I’ll talk with our liaison Chad and ask him not to send us any more cases for a while. We’ve earned a good rest.”
“Thank you,” all the witches said in unison.
“We should, however, meet for a quick debrief. Everyone, grab a protein bar or electrolyte beverage and meet in the library in five.”
Joell sat on one of the comfortable couches in the library, and her black cat familiar jumped onto her lap. She patted him, absently, while a few logs crackled in the fireplace, lending a comforting warmth to the room and adding the scent of woodsmoke.
The other witches gathered around. Joell leaned back into the cushy sofa and sighed.
Payne and Rayna’s man-pets joined them in the mansion to find out what they’d missed. Michael and Daniel stretched out near the hearth in a welcome moment of détente. The witches had come armed with protein bars, mugs of herbal brews, and one thermos that may or may not have contained whiskey.
“All right,” Joell said, “let’s wrap this up while we’re still conscious.”
Brianna had her legs tucked under her and a bag of trail mix in her lap. “The last glyph on Eli’s arm is still pulsing, but slower now. Like whatever was driving it is winding down.”
“It matched the graffiti Katie saw this morning,” Sahara added, flipping her notebook open. “Same shape, same energy signature.”
“So, the mimic left a mark on the boy,” Daniel said. “Why?”
“Tagging its food supply?” Michael offered.
“Or warning others to stay away,” Victoria said. “He said something about feeling like he was a warning.”
Rayna straightened slightly. “You still think there are more of them?”
“I think the mimic was part of something larger,” Joell said carefully. “Call it a hive. Or a nest. I don’t think this one got the memo to leave, and it wound up being abandoned.”
“Maybe it was hiding out,” Crystal said. “Just trying to survive on its own.”
“Then why track Katie?” Lioness asked. “Why the dreams? Why the graffiti?”
No one answered right away. The only sound was the fire popping.
Eventually, Joell said, “We don’t have enough data. Not yet. So, until we do, we rest. We recover. No summoning, no remote viewing, no late-night wandering into dark forests to have sex…”
“That was one time,” Brianna muttered.
“And no pulling glyph-covered children off the streets without backup,” Joell finished. She gave Rayna a look.
Rayna raised her hands. “Lesson learned.”
Beside her, Payne gave her thigh a quick squeeze. Not possessive. Just reassuring.
“Oh, no! We forgot the kid, again,” Joell practically shouted. “Somebody go find Eli.”
All eyes gravitated to Katie.
“What am I? The babysitter?”
“Yes,” they all said at once.
Katie gave a dramatic sigh and trudged off to the training room, now called the ‘game room’ for Eli’s benefit.
“We’ve all earned a breather,” Joell said, her voice gentler now. “The mansion will return to Tennessee. Let the mountain protect us for a few days. And if something does rise again, we’ll handle it.”
The witches nodded and settled deeper into their seats. Some pulled out notebooks. Others just closed their eyes.
Rayna leaned into Payne’s side, and he shifted to make room for her, his arm falling easily around her shoulders.
“I still feel wired,” she murmured, just to him.
He smiled faintly. “I’ll stay up with you. We’ll burn it off.”
Rayna smirked, lips brushing his ear. “Careful what you offer. I’ve got enough adrenaline to launch a missile.”
“I’ve got enough stamina to ride it all the way.”
She laughed, soft and real. For the first time all day, the tension in her spine let go, and she settled into a comfortable slump.
Behind them, the witches chatted in low voices, and someone passed around a tin of cookies with a mysterious label that read Not for Mortals. Even though no one in the room was immortal, no one asked what that meant.
“Here he is,” Katie marched Eli into the war room.
“Eli, can you remember where you live yet?”
“Yes, it came to me a few minutes ago.”
“Oh, good,” Sahara said. “I was afraid I was going to have to hack into the FBI’s missing persons’ files.”
“Can you do that?” Eli asked, wide-eyed.
“Maaaybe?” Sahara winked.
“I’ve been thinking about what I’ll tell my parents about being missing for four days…”
“What?” a few of the witches asked.
“I’m gonna say I fell down a well.”
They chuckled. “No one is going to believe that,” Adam said.
“Okay, then, should I say I was pulled into a hazy space called the Between by a guy with no face, yanked out by a couple of witches driving a sports car, taken to some kind of traveling fantasy mansion, where they kept me alive by feeding me S’mores?”
After a beat, Rayna said. “A well it is!”
Outside, snow flurries made a last-minute Spring appearance, as if the earth needed a final cool cleansing.
“I think we’ve all earned a rest,” Joell said. “Take a day or two to relax at your various homes away from the mansion, and I’ll meet you in Tennessee before… Well, you know.”
“Before the red tide comes in?” Crystal asked.
“Before Shark Week?” Rayna added.
“Before Auntie Flow comes to visit? Before we have to ride the cotton pony? Before the Red River?” Lioness gleefully chirped.
Joell pinched the bridge of her nose. “Whatever… Tonight, we’re safe on Long Island. Tomorrow or the day after, the mansion will go back to Tennessee. I’ll meet you all there.”
Major Payne cleared his throat. “Meanwhile, I’ll take Eli home, and the man-pets will return to Rayna’s brownstone. She has a front door in need of repair.”
The End
(of part one.)