Page 61 of Cowboy Wolf's Secret Baby

“Good morning, Sunshine,” Beth said when Savvy answered the phone.

“Really? Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“I’m sorry. I know that you worked late last night, but I had to talk to you. I’m so excited. This is the best day ever.”

“You won the ten-million-dollar lottery and we both can retire.”

“Better, at least for me,” Beth said. “Conner stayed the night last night and we made love.”

“Nothing new.”

“I told him that I was still in love with him. He told me that he loved me, too,” Beth said. “He said that he was going to stick around and we were going to be a family.”

“Beth, that is so wonderful,” Savvy said, now fully awake. “I know how much you’ve been hurting over the last few years.”

“I don’t feel like it’s real. I’m terrified that at any moment, I’m going to wake up and it’s another one of my dreams. Taryn will be asking about her father and why he disappeared before she was born, and I will have a huge hole in my heart.”

“Speaking about the fact that he disappeared before she was born, what are you going to do about your mother? You know she isn’t going to stop trying to hurt Conner and be like, ‘Yeah, okay. He’s back, they’re in love, so I should just let them live their lives’.”

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do about her. Actually, she might be an even greater threat than just to Conner. She was wearing the Amulet of the Shadow Realm.”

Savvy, who was also a witch, knew exactly how profound that was.

“I’m sorry. I guess that I’m still asleep and misheard what you said,” Savvy said. “I could have sworn that you just said your mother was wearing the Amulet of the Shadow Realm.”

“Yes.”

“Is it the genuine article?”

“I’m afraid it is,” Beth said.

“How did she get ahold of that? The last time it was seen was in the year 562 when it disappeared from the witch’s neck when she was being burned at the stake.”

“My guess is that the reason it disappeared is because Mother managed to create some kind of spell to grab it and history changed itself.”

“That’s dangerous magic in a million different ways,” Savvy said. “Not only can going back in time and breathing differently change the world but for someone like her to have such an object…”

“I know. If she figures out the sigils around the crystal, there’s no telling what she could do. We could be looking at an epidemic that rivaled the Black Plague or something even worse.”

“What are we going to do about it?” Savvy asked.

“I don’t know. There’s no way that she would give it up, short of me killing her and taking it from her. That would put me on a dangerous path and give the amulet even more power.”

“Can it even be destroyed?”

“I don’t know. That may have been why they chose to let her wear it while Matilda was being burned. They hoped it would burn with her.”

“That obviously didn’t work, did it?” Savvy asked sardonically. “They might have been too afraid of Matilda and the amulet to try to remove it.”

“I had thought of that, too,” Beth conceded. “I’ve always wondered why she didn’t use it to fight back against her captors. She could have killed them all.”

“Maybe she had the power of foresight. Matilda may have seen that your mother would take the amulet and figure out how to use it. The devastation that your mother could cause in today’s world far outweighs anything that could have been done in the past. The old Matilda could have caused the death of a few hundred people. Your mother could go to Denver and wipe out three-quarters of a million people.”

“Hopefully, we’ll figure out how to nullify the amulet’s power before she can use it.”

“I hope so. I guess we have a lot of research to do to figure out what those sigils mean and then develop counter spells,” Savvy said.

“Yes,” Beth said.

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