Page 99 of Wicching Hour

“Arsonists?” Mom repeated. “Bracken, what is she talking about?”

While he explained, I caught up with Declan. He was leaning against the railing, looking down at the real me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah. It’s very weird, standing here talking to you while I’m watching you bob in the water down there.” He studied the me on the deck a moment. “You don’t have the hair right. This is more of an all-over brown.” He pulled one of my curls. “And it’s not soft enough. Your hair is an amazing mix of colors. It’s like every hair is a touch different from the one beside it.” He rubbed the coil between his fingers. “Maybe because my sight is better, I know what it should look like. You can’t duplicate what I see because you don’t see it the way I do.”

I looked down with him, considering the hair flying around my head up here versus what I could see on the real me down there. He was right. This was weird. “I’m going to need a strong conditioning pack tomorrow.”

Laughing, some of the tension left his shoulders. “At least I know for sure this is you.” He wrapped an arm around me and looked toward the marina. “I see lights in the distance. That’s probably them.”

“Been a pretty big day, huh?”

He met my gaze. “It’s been a lot. I’ll give you that.”

“So? Arsonists?”

He looked back out over the water. “They were arrested. Jake and Tyler went in to give their statements. I told her if we survived tonight, we’d send her the security footage tomorrow.”

I leaned my head against his chest. “Bracken insists on coming.”

“I heard. We’ll need him. No one spots details like he does. And my guess is he’s hell on maps too. We’ll watch out for him. You and I both will.”

“No doorknobs! If at all possible, don’t touchanything,” I told him, squeezing my arm around his waist.

“I heard that too. Have you been practicing your magic?”

I held out a hand and a ball of blue fire rolled on my palm. “What would you like me to do?”

He thought about that. “Can you levitate?”

“Only one way to know.” I stepped away from him, the fire evaporating. The spell for levitation was ready in my mind. I felt my magic thrum through me—the me in the water. My fingers flicked—below water and above—and I was hovering a foot off the deck.

Declan laughed. “That answers that question. Yes, you can, even after kissing me.” He pointed over the water. “See them?”

I saw tiny lights reflecting on the waves. “Yep.”

“You’re going to need to get out of the water so you can get in the boat.”

“Right. On it.”

FORTY-THREE

A Fox in the Hen House

We watched me swim toward the rope. Declan moved to help me up.

“Darling, I still don’t know what this plan is. Bracken hasn’t told us,” Mom said.

I looked up at Declan from the water, forcing the other me to jump off the deck. I didn’t want to disappear in front of Mom and scare her to death. When he started pulling me up, Mom leaned over the railing.

“For goodness sake, Arw—how did you get to the rope so fast? He was pulling before you went over?” Clearly confused, she kept looking between the two of us.

Declan gave the rope a final tug and then grabbed hold of me and lifted me over the rail. “You good?”

I nodded, scared witless about what was coming.

Looking around Declan’s shoulder, I noticed Gran standing in the doorway, watching us. Her expression was strange, almost calculating.

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