Page 110 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

“Simone. Connor. What are you doing here?”

Connor handed me the bag with the vent grate. I handed it off to her. As she slowly took it, I explained. “Lilith came to me. She said we needed to get this blood analyzed. It’s important.”

“Uh, yes… Give me a moment.” She walked over to her desk, sliding on a pair of slippers and dropping a robe around her shoulders before joining us at the door.

We followed her to the elevator. She pressed the button to the basement laboratory. Victoria led us into one of the rooms, now empty, where she handed me the Ziploc to suit up. I handed her back the bag. She set it on a metal table before pulling the grate from the bag and placing it on the shiny surface. Victoria walked over to a shelf, grabbing a swab from a cylindrical glass jar with a fitted aluminum lid. She wet the tip of the swab from a squeeze bottle marked ‘Distilled Water.’

Victoria rubbed the dampened cotton over the dried blood. She did this three more times with three more swabs. Then, snipping off the reddened tips, she added those tips to a smaller tube containing a clear liquid. She added drops of two others before stoppering it, giving the liquid time to turn red, then used a dropper to suck up the red liquid that she squeezed into yet another smaller tube, and another, and another.

Each of the smaller tubes got the testing treatment. I’d never considered that Victoria would know how to test the DNA. When we met her before, she’d seemed socompany president.Go, Victoria.Sisters doing it for themselves and all that.

“Now we wait,” she said. “Have you eaten? Are you tired?”

As my stomach grumbled from hearing the word ‘eaten,’ I shook my head.

“We’ve been busy,” Connor replied for the both of us.

“Since we’ve been hosting witches from covens all over the world, I’ve kept the kitchen open. Staff has been taking all shifts. If you go up to the cafeteria, you can get food. I’ll set you up with an office for a few hours of rest.”

“Thank you.” I reached my hand over to Connor. As he took it, I added, “Food is great. Rest depends on what you find with the testing.”

The woman turned a look of ‘girl, please,’ on me. “You might be Lilium, but you still need rest. Tired minds make mistakes.”

I should’ve thought of that.

“Fine. We’ll eat and rest for just a bit.”

The idea of resting or sleeping irritated me. I agreed because Victoria made a great point, but it wasted time we didn’t have to waste.

Connor and I took the elevator up to the cafeteria level. Several people sat at tables eating and talking. Most of them stopped to take in my mate. He still had that effect on me. Why should they be any different? So what if covens were being attacked and people were dying—a foin man was afoinman.

After scanning the room, my sights landed on just the thing to lighten the mood. “Pasta!” I semi-shouted, starting for the pasta bar set up on the far side of the room.

“I thought you wanted a cheeseburger.”

“Well, now I want pasta. Don’t judge me on my lifestyle choices.”

This pasta bar held every kind imaginable, I swear. They even offered a high-protein chick pea option that put Connor into the throes of foodie passion.

I opted for loaded mac and cheese and creamy chicken alfredo, then I finally got my baked ziti, this one with mini meatballs.

He laughed at the delicious disaster on my plate. “That’s gonna put you in a food coma.”

“Only for the untrained. I’m a professional.” And I plucked a meatball from my plate, popping it into my mouth.

We ate in comfortable silence until I started dozing off and Connor decided that we needed to rest for a bit. He cleared our plates while I waited at the table. A pretty woman maybe in her mid-thirties walked through the door. She stopped to scan the room and when her eyes landed on me, she smiled, making her way over.

“Hi. I’m Layne,” she said by way of introducing herself, uncomfortably tucking strands of her light-brown hair behindher ear when Connor joined us. I was totally aware of that feeling, internally listing all of your visible flaws and hoping that someone as gorgeous as him wouldn’t call you on them, or even bother to notice them in the first place. He never would. He saved his attitude for me alone.

“Hi,” I replied. “I’m Simone and this is Connor.”

She dipped her head to each of us. “I’m Victoria’s secretary. I have a room set up for you upstairs, if you want to follow me.”

Talk about timing.

Connor linked our fingers together and we held hands as we followed her to the elevator. She hit the button for the top floor. Then Layne, the secretary, led us to a conference room where the tables and chairs had been removed, and a queen-sized air mattress with pillows and sleeping bags sat on the Berber carpeting in the middle of the floor.

“This okay?” she asked.

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