I stared at her. “You’re bluffing.”
A stubborn glint showed in her eye. “If we are going to be partners, we have to be partners. We can’t just be part time partners when you want to be in the bedroom.”
There was a little gasp from the two young witches as they snickered, but everybody else stared at me waiting to see what decision I would make. Caroline wasn’t really giving me much of a choice.
“Fine,” I said.
“If one of us goes, all of us goes,” Eunice said. “That was the deal we made when we decided we were going to fight this together.”
“This isn’t really my style,” I said.
“We’re working on a new style for you,” Caroline said. “Apparently it includes all of us.”
“We still need someone to stay here and mind the map,” I said. “You can’t go against that.”
“How about the two young witches and Laney?” Caroline suggested.
“Fine,” I said.
“Fine?” they exclaimed.
“It’s not fine with me,” Laney said. “If you’re accusing my boyfriend of being the one who’s wreaking all this havoc, then I want to be there to see it.”
“What about the two young witches?”
“It’s not possible. We’re a coven,” Lady Albright said. “We operate together.”
“Looks like we’re all going.” Caroline said, looking at me determinedly.
Ratchet looked at me. “Let’s just go. If we don’t get there soon, these monsters are going to do some serious damage on the island.”
Caroline pulled me aside. “I know you want to protect everyone, but you can’t do this alone. You can’t exclude the people who can help you.” She moved up against me, pressing her chest against mine and gazed up into my eyes. “We are all going to go and support you. We’re all going to go and you don’t have anything to worry about. We can take care of ourselves as a unit, each of us helping the other.”
My gaze moved around the circle as they all stared at me expectantly.
“Fine,” I grumbled, turning to Ratchet. “Make the portal. Let’s go. We need to stop this before my brother destroys Hawaii.”
Ratchet turned and raised his hands, shooting fire from them and creating a new portal for us to pass through, but his words of warning made it clear. “Havoc has already started.”
Chapter 32
I had always wanted to travel to Hawaii. It had been my wish that Ryder and I would go there for our honeymoon. I had planned the trip out and mapped out the different islands we would go to, even arranging the details of a private cruise so we could visit more of the islands in one visit. When I had brought it up to Ryder, he had just put it off and put it off, saying we weren’t ready to do a trip like that yet.
Finally, I’d given up on the idea and all of my notes and pictures and ideals of Hawaii had been stashed away in a folder on my desktop. The last thing I’d ever imagined was that I’d find myself standing in a mountain stronghold on the top of Mount Diablo with a glowing portal of fire in front of me and eight people waiting to go through. The witch’s coven was coming with us. The Albrights were ready to do battle against some unseen force.
I tried to get Laney to stay in Mount Diablo, but she insisted that she come through.
“This time you’re going through with me and we’re going first,” Ryder said.
I could feel the chaos just below his skin and it made me very nervous. I knew he was angry at me. I had been trying to do a romantic gesture, but instead I had created a wall of chaos between the two of us and a potential disaster on the planet.
“I didn’t know Magnus was creating havoc,” I said.
“None of us did,” Laney said. “It’s not your fault.”
In a room full of supernaturals, it felt like the only one who had my back was Laney. She was the only one empathetic enough to let me off the hook. I had freely given Ryder‘s wedding ring to his brother with no realization his brother could be causing the problems.