Page 36 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

“But I thought it was only protecting her daughter and daughter’s descendants.”

“Her daughter had children.”

Yeah, I got that. “How many?” I asked.

“That, we don’t know.”

“Do you know, Connor?”

He shook his head. “Lilith has been out of commission since well before I made my appearance into the world.”

“Would Luc know?” I asked.

“I’ll talk to him tonight.”

“So back to the matter at hand,” Agatha said, “you’ve somehow ended up with part of the dagger of Lilith. We don’t know why and we don’t know how you can touch it.”

Understatement of the century.

“We know you’re an orphan. You’ve told me as such,” she continued. “I think you need to tap into your past, to access memories that you don’t realize you have.”

“Can you do that?” I asked.

“I can, but not here. You’ll have to come to my home, where I have the things I’ll need.” She pulled a piece of paper and a pen from her pocket, writing down her address. “This isn’t my home where I sleep, but where I practice away from prying eyes.”

“Thank you.”

“Meet me there at midnight. The magic is strongest then.”

I leaned in to hug her. “Blessed be, Agatha. We’ll be there at midnight.”

As Agatha turned to leave, I told her not to forget the herbs on the counter. They were on me.

“Can you believe that?” Connor asked.

“No. But I knew if anyone could help us, it would be her. She’s strong.”

“I’m not leaving you alone today. Something about the day is giving me an off feeling—don’t argue.”

Snickering, I smiled through it. “I’m not arguing, believe it or not. I feel something on the horizon, too, and I don’t like it.”

We tried our best to get back to business as usual, opening the store back up. He actually behaved himself and stayed out of the way, pulling back his protective instincts with me, especially when men approached me for help. I put him to work as a salesman. When Connor Baghest wanted to be charming, he nailed it. Women and even a couple of men swooned when he turned it on.

Now, when a few of those women got a little too friendly withhim, I may or may not have walked up to him, planted a huge kiss, and let him know explicitly what I planned to do to him when we got home tonight. He totally forgot about anyone else standing near us.

So maybe I had protective instincts, too.

At the end of the day, he helped me close up shop, we stopped off for BBQ takeout tonight, and headed home. Despite keeping up the low-key, nothing to see here vibe throughout the day, I thought both of us were a fair mixture of excited and apprehensive about tonight’s festivities.

“Had your sister met her mate?” I asked totally out of the blue—well, out of the blue to Connor. I’d been thinking about it since we’d talked to Agatha this morning.

He snapped his head back looking at me. “What?”

“Your sister. Your sister is a death hound, like you. You’re a protector and we mated, which—correct me if I’m wrong, but it felt like Agatha insinuated that you are supposed to bemyprotector. That’s why we mated.”

“I haven’t thought about it since this morning with everything else going on, but no, you’re not wrong. That’s how she made it seem.” He ran his hands over his hair. “And to answer your question, not that she’d told me.”

Well, shoot. “I was hoping that if we knew who she’d mated with, who she’d been tasked with protecting, that might help out in this situation.”

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