Page 46 of Wicching Hour

“Thanks, Dad.” I held out my hand again and slowly drew up a fountain of water. This was harder and required more control. I’d taught myself how to shoot jets of water at my cousins when I was a kid. A slow, measured build was trickier. Once the tip of the fountain was within reach, I unscrewed the top of the octopus bottle and scooped the seawater into it before closing it back up again. Just to be sure, I popped up the starfish and dribbled water over the deck.

“We’re good to go,” I said, snapping the bottle shut again.

Declan held up the backpack. “Do you want to put a sketchbook and pencil in here?”

“Yes.” I jogged to my studio. “I’ll just be a minute.”

Wilbur’s ball was next to my back door. “Wilbur! You’re back.” I grabbed the ball, went to the edge of the deck, and threw it as far as I could for my selkie friend.

Admittedly, that wasn’t as far as Declan could have thrown it, but it still gave me a bubble of joy when Wilbur shot out from under the deck to chase it. Cecil, my best octopus friend, slapped the surface with one of his tentacles, and some of the weight I’d been struggling under lifted.

I went in, opened a door in my wall of storage closets on the hot shop side of the studio, and grabbed a new sketch pad off a stack. I also took a box of colored pencils and one of charcoals. With a sharpener, eraser, protein bars, extra gloves, and a bottle of drinking water, I called it good and went back out to the deck.

Declan and Bracken stood side by side, both leaning on the railing and talking quietly.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

Both men turned. Bracken still looked shaken, but Declan smiled and came to me, taking my gloved hand.

“Of course,” he said. “Are you ready to go?”

“As I’ll ever be,” I responded.

He walked me back to Bracken’s Bronco and waited for me to climb in. “I’m going to follow you. I’m not sure how long this will take, but I’ll probably need to head back to the pack grounds when I leave.”

“Oh.” I secured my seat belt and fought off the disappointment. I was hoping he could stay with me tonight.

“I know,” he murmured and squeezed my hand as Bracken climbed in.

I pushed my hair out of my face. “Trust me, I get it. Yet another reason we have to find my cousin.”

Bracken started the engine and Declan closed my door before returning to his truck. Bracken backed out, using his rearview mirrors while I stared at the rear-facing camera feed. It was so cool.

“Do you remember where Gran lives?”

Still pale, he nodded. “I grew up in the house your mother now lives in. While it’s a very large house, by the time I came around, my siblings had all the bedrooms. I was in the turret.”

“That was my room too,” I told him.

Brow furrowed, he glanced over before returning his focus to the road. “With all the bedrooms in that house, why in the world did you end up on the third floor in a circular room? Wasn’t it just you and Sybil?”

Watching the scenery change from oceanside to woods, I shrugged. “Mom says I just started moving my stuff upstairs and told her that was my room.”

“Something else we have in common,” he said. “I did enjoy the view of the garden.”

I nodded.

“And it was quiet up there. Even then, I spent the majority of my time reading, so I think they forgot I was there.”

“Oh,” I said, turning to him. “I’m sure they didn’t.”

He gave me a quick look as he turned onto Gran’s road. “I’ve lost count of the number of times I wandered downstairs, hungry, only to learn that I’d missed dinner. Mother always put it back on me, that I should have known it was dinnertime, but a shout up the stairs would have proved helpful, especially as there are rarely leftovers in large families.”

I rubbed his forearm. “Sorry.”

“When my sister Martha moved out at eighteen, they offered me her room, but I’d become used to the quiet and solitude. Plus, I liked Martha. I wanted her to move back, so I didn’t want to take her room.” He made the quick turn into Gran’s drive. The entrance was hidden, but he remembered where to slow and drive between large, sheltering trees. Declan was right behind us and parked beside Bracken.

“Sam told us about Martha,” I told him.

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