Page 43 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

“I can still see you and myself,” he said, sounding defeated.

“That’s because I didn’t manifest foryounot to see us. Is that what you want?”

“No. Not if you’re sure this’ll work.”

“I think it will. It has in the past, but there’s a reason I don’t offer a money-back guarantee.”

He pressed his forehead to mine. “You got this,” he whispered. I smiled. For Connor, for Connor and I to have a chance at a future together, I believed I had this.

Nodding, I took the first step up the stairs with my mate at my side. To be on the safe side, I continued to chant my chant in my head until we reached the top of the stairs, entering into a beige, governmental office straight out of the 1970s, sucking all fun and happiness out of the air. If working in a place like this didn’t make one vengeful, I didn’t know what would.

“This is horrible,” I whispered. “Maybe if we painted his office lilac, he’d give up the wrath.”

“Sweetheart, he chose the color scheme to make his employees hate their lives. Wrath is in his blood.”

Oh, right.With that little ditty of information floating around in my head, it was now or never. We walked holding hands down the ugly hallway, unforgiving incandescent lighting and all, passing cubicle after cubicle without anyone turning a head. We weren’t out of the woods yet. Those employees could’ve been conditioned to keep their heads down, nose-to-the-grindstone, and all that.

A man in an ill-fitting business shirt and beige slacks with pleats walked out of one of the offices along with a woman in a very unflattering gray dress and her hair pulled back in a tight bun. They moved right past us without a second glance, and I melted against Connor. As he led us to the stairwell that opened to Ireland, another office door opened. In the doorway stood a man. He scared the crap out of me. Black hair slicked back. Dark suit with a white button-down, the top two buttons undone at the collar. He wore thick, gold chains and all his fingers sported thick, gold rings. A scar ran down the left side of his face.

That had to be him.

Satan.

Connor tugged me to keep moving. For just a moment, I swore he glanced in our direction, but it passed quickly and we ran up those steps. My calves and thighs burned by the time we reached the top, but the door opened and we stepped outside, finding ourselves next to a mausoleum that might have been even older than the one in Raven. The cemetery definitely was way older.

“Don’t take the juju off us yet,” Connor whispered.

I didn’t plan on it.

We walked to the edge of the cemetery, out the old gate, onto Irish soil.

Now we had to find Agatha’s relation.

That should be easy.

Not.

Chapter

Eleven

“We need to head to County Cork. That’s where Agatha’s relation is located,” I said, in awe of the fact that I actually stood in Ireland. Both feet on the ground. Here. “Do we know where we are now?”

Connor pulled my phone out of my pocket to check our location. “It looks like we're in County Kerry. Cork is the next county over to the southeast.”

“But Cork is a big county.”

“We’ll make it work. We don’t have a choice.”

No truer words. We had to make it work. Period.

As I still felt sluggish, I had Connor remove his clothing and drop down into his hound form in order to carry me. I ended up compromising with myself, manifesting the directions we needed to go to get us to Agatha’s relation rather than just trying to manifest us there because I just didn’t have it in me. It took extra juju to cloak myself from the non-supers we passed because explaining how I zipped across a field faster than most humans could run, and doing it not touching the ground becauseonly supers could see Connor in his hound form, might’ve gotten a little tricky.

Turn by turn, directions sped through my mind, but they gave me enough time to relay them to my mate before leaving. I was my own personal GPS. How cool was that?

Connor, for his part, didn’t act at all winded. But if anyone got a look at his physique, they wouldn’t question why. The man had it going on in all the ways.

The directions headed us toward an old town called Youghal, which upon our arrival, we found to be a quaint seaside town. But we weren’t done. We needed to find a section of town called Moll Goggin’s Corner.

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