Page 124 of Blue Moon Mistress

“You can always come visit.”

Elaria snorts a laugh and rolls her eyes.

“Introduce me, quick.” She glances over her shoulder at my mother, making her way slowly to us.

“This is Joshua, Thomas, Johnny, and Chase. Guys, this is Elaria, or Elle. My best friend in the whole world.”

She looks them over as if trying to make a decision and then nods. “I approve.”

“Never had a doubt.”

She makes a clucking noise with her tongue and then turns her attention back to them. “It’s nice to meet you. I have a thousand questions. And no time to ask them.”

“I’m sure we’ll see you again.” Thomas says, as the others look a little concerned.

She nods. “Often, I’m sure.”

“Elle tends to come down to visit every month or two. So she’ll be around.”

Nodding, Elaria starts to say something, but her mouth snaps shut as my mother joins us. “Congratulations on surviving the ordeal.”

“If we hadn’t… several of you wouldn’t either.”

“I know you’re mad.” My mother studies Chase’s face. “And I understand. However, it had to be done. And now, barring the birth of a new witch…” This time, she looks pointedly at me. “There should be no reason for you to have to be witnessed by the full coven.”

I ignore the comment. “We should go before the newer, more curious witches get brave enough to come talk to me and realize I’m not the fallen witch their mothers have warned them about.”

“You’re staying with me tonight.” Elaria hooks her arm in mine and she says it to my mother, not to me, but I’m the one who answers.

“I know. If you hadn’t invited, I would have crashed.”

“I’m sure you’d be more comfortable in the guest house.”

“I’m not ready to subject them to dad yet.”

“He will demand to meet them, eventually.” She sighs and looks at the opening in the circle others were still leaving through. “If he hadn’t gone to Alaska to deal with his brother, he would have been here tonight.”

“Luckily, we didn’t need his vote.” Joshua says.

His voice is calm, but I know he won’t relax until we’re out of here.

“The voting was just a formality.” My mother sighs. “They wanted to get a good look at you, they wanted you to know how many of us there are, and Renée wanted to use the opportunity to announce your existence to the rest of the coven. It would have gotten out eventually, this was what she considered an efficient way to go about it.”

I see a few of the other witches inching their way toward us. If they make it to us, we’ll be stuck here for hours.

“We need to go. Now.” I say it with a smile on my face so they don’t hurry to catch us.

Elaria nods, spins me toward the entrance we came through and tells the guys to “follow us.”

But she doesn’t take the path we came from. She takes a branch that was hidden from the other direction, and we come up into a speak-easy type bar.

She opened it five years ago, despite side eyes from the older generation, and it’s been killing it ever since.

Never had any doubts.

But we don’t stay there. It’s going to be way too crowded once the clock strikes over to nine.

She stashes her cloak and grabs her purse. “See you at the house?”

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