Page 65 of Bait N' Witch

Memories came flooding back, along with a slam of fear, and a lance of pain spiked through Rowan’s head. Oh, my… The wolf shifters. Grey. She’d…died.

Adrenaline spiking through her veins, Rowan peeled her eyes open to find Delilah sitting beside her bed in her room in Grey’s basement, appearing her usual elegant self in a cream-colored cashmere sweater over black slacks, her dark hair coiled at her nape, loose tendrils framing her face. “What happened?”

Delilah hitched her lips in a half smile. “Grey’s girls are ghost whisperers. They got someone named Essie to pull you out of there.”

Essie? Grey’s grandmother’s ghost? How was that possible?

“No time to explain now, I have to get you to this meeting. Your fight’s not over, Rowan. Time to confess all to your people.”

The cold claws of fear reached in and rendered her numb and terrified at the same time. Grey was going to hate her, and she was about to be imprisoned or killed.

“I won’t let them hurt you,” Delilah said.

And that was the only reason Rowan allowed the other woman to tug her out of bed. In a whirlwind of movement, she was handed clothes and shoved into the bathroom.

“Wait.”

Delilah paused in the act of closing the door and raised her eyebrows.

“Where’s Grey?”

Delilah’s lips thinned, her expression grim. “Already there.”

…

Rowan clenched her hands against the shaking, which wouldn’t stop. She wasn’t entirely sure if the tremors were part of recovering from being mostly dead for a while or confronting the truth of who she was in front of the Covens Syndicate, particularly without having had a chance to talk to Grey in private first.

Couldn’t be helped now.

She’d teleported them to the location Delilah provided and now walked the halls of the ultramodern building where the Syndicate apparently held their meetings. She’d gone from mountain cabin to alien spaceship, though in the Sierra Nevadas now. Maybe she was still a ghost, and this was all a weird vision?

Delilah stopped at a mahogany door and rapped her knuckles sharply against it. Before Rowan could collect herself, a deep male voice called to come in, and Delilah dragged her inside.

A group of witches and warlocks of various ages, their faces all cast in blank judgment, sat at a long metal and glass table facing the doorway. Behind them a wall of windows showed the mountains in all their splendor. But she couldn’t appreciate the view over the treetops when her life hung in the balance. She sought and found Grey, seated off to her left beside a man with black hair and eerily piercing blue eyes so pale they appeared almost white, reminding her of dragon shifters from the White Clan. Glacial. Her heart shriveled at the hard stare Grey directed her way.

Okay. This wasn’t going to go well, then. She tried not to let the crack splitting her heart break it wide open. Not here in front of everyone.

“Ms. McAuliffe?” the man beside Grey asked, his deep tones almost bored.

Rowan nodded. His unusual gaze shifted to the woman at her side. “And you must be Ms.?”

Rowan glanced over to see Delilah give him a cool smile. “Delilah.”

“First or last?”

Delilah said nothing, merely held her polite smile and the man’s stare. There was someone in a position of power who didn’t know her? If Rowan wasn’t terrified, she’d have been more interested in that byplay.

After a long, intense moment, he let it go, turning back to Rowan. “I’m Alasdair Blakesley, current head of the Syndicate. Greyson has filled us in on the situation and”—he flicked a glance at Delilah—“supplied us information provided by various witnesses.”

Okay. She chanced a glance at Grey, who regarded her with zero expression. What had he told them?

“Now we’d like to hear from you.”

Right.

She took a big breath, ignoring the way her hands shook uncontrollably, and tipped up her chin. “My name is Rowan McAuliffe. As a child I took on the last name of Tanya McAuliffe, the woman who raised me after my parents died. My birth parents were Cormac and Evelyn Balfour.”

A ripple of movement shifted through the group before her. No surprise there. Balfour was one of the oldest names among their people.

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