Page 61 of Bait N' Witch

Rowan took a second to shake off the splinters of cold remaining inside her, even as she wondered what the hell had just happened to her.

Essie, likely tired of waiting for her to reorient, shoved her face in front of Rowan’s. “Grey is outside.”

“What?” Rowan tried to whip her head around, though her floating form took a second to keep up. Still, he was nowhere in sight. “Where?”

“Out front. He’s protecting the girls…and you.”

Fear shot through Rowan like a bolt of electricity.

Before she could do more, another howl went up outside, followed by a low rumbling she took a second to identify as a growl. From all the wolves. If she’d been in her corporeal form, the hairs on her arms would’ve stood up at the terrifying sound.

A blinding flash of blue lightning split the night sky, preceding a slam of thunder so deafening it seemed to shake the entire mountainside.

Grey.

The cacophony of fighting reached her in an odd reverberation of sound, like hearing the noise through a tunnel.

“Follow me,” Essie said.

Rowan floated after Grey’s grandmother to the windows showing the back yard. “They’re in the woods now. I can go no further. My spirit is tied to this house. You must help him. Protect him.”

Already, Rowan’s life force ebbed away with the effort she’d already expended, leaving her numb and oddly untethered, as though she had no reality, no anchor. If she did much more, she risked becoming a permanent ghostly resident of the Masterses household. If she returned to her solid form, she risked being controlled and used against Grey.

Nothing could’ve stopped her. Without a word to Essie, Rowan closed her eyes and pictured herself in the woods near where the girls always went in their trance.

When she opened her eyes, she found herself surrounded by pine trees and granite boulders, facing a battle of one against many.

She froze at the vision of Grey doing what he’d so clearly been born to do as he fought the wolves. Even through her terror for his life, Rowan was still mesmerized by the powerful display.

Three wolves already lay on the ground, one body still aflame. A sandy-colored wolf ran at Grey full tilt. His face a study of fierce concentration, Grey whispered a single word, and another bolt of blue lightning shot from his hands. The creature howled in pain before the lightning disappeared and it collapsed to the ground, tendrils of smoke rising from its body.

Rowan didn’t have time to watch more as she caught sight of the black wolf. Kaios’s lover had snuck around behind Grey, using the trees and her coloring as cover, but Rowan could see the green glow of her eyes in the radiance Grey’s lightning had briefly cast in the small clearing.

Grey, busy with another two wolves, one of which went flying through the trees at his whispered word, didn’t see the she-wolf behind him. Rowan couldn’t yell out to warn him, or the wolf he faced would attack. But she didn’t have enough magic left to stop the black wolf.

At that moment a tiny hummingbird came darting out of the trees. It hovered in front of Rowan. “We’re here.”

Before she could ask, animals of all kinds—elk, deer, mountain lions, even chipmunks and birds—stampeded into the clearing, going after all the wolves.

“What the—” Grey lowered his hands. But his back was still turned to the black wolf.

The bitch gathered herself, muscles bunching, to leap.

With an otherworldly sound that sent fear cascading down Rowan’s spine, even in the spirit realm, she lunged.

But Grey spun to face her and knocked her back with a blast of energy. Blue lightning in an orb that should’ve fried her ass.

Only she stayed on her feet, lips curled over her teeth, eyes glowing, and lunged again.

Again he knocked her back.

But she just kept coming.

And with each spell cast, Grey wasn’t just losing ground, he was using up his energy.

“Fuck,” he muttered, his expression a cast of concentration.

Another lunge, only this time, he tried something else. Making a spinning move with his finger and with a whisper of words, a miniature tornado of wind whipped the wolf up, casting her about wildly.

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