Page 55 of A Witch-ish Guide to Protectors and Pendulums

Magical energy filled every nook and cranny of the building.

“Oh, my…” The pretty, blonde receptionist with her plump, rosy cheeks said as we approached her desk. Her eyes grew wide. I couldn’t discern whether she was ‘oh, my’ing my mate or if it had to do with me.

When she tilted her head and asked, “What are you?” I sighed, knowing it was me. Well, until she turned to Connor and whispered, “Oh my,” with a completely different meaning.

I snapped my fingers to get her attention back to me. “He’s taken.”

Her face pinked. “Um, yes. So sorry. How can I help you today?” But before I had a chance to answer, especially since I had no idea how to answer her or how much information to give, her eyes grew wide once more as she looked between Connor and me and she put her finger up to tell us ‘one minute’ and picked up a phone receiver.

“Ms. Rivers,” she said into the phone. “You should come down here.”

After she hung up, Connor, always on the defensive when it came to me, pushed me behind him. “Is there a problem?”

“No. There’s no problem. It’s just—” She was cut off by another voice.

“I’m Victoria Rivers.” A woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties with short, curly, brown hair and a navy suit jacket and pencil skirt clicked her heels over the marble flooring toward us. “We’ve been waiting for you to show.”

She stuck her hand out. I reached around Connor to shake it.

“You’ve been waiting for us?” Connor asked suspiciously.

“The protector,” she said, still smiling. “Would you like to join me in my office? It’ll be easier to show you than try to explain.”

“We’re not going anywhere with you.”

To move this little party along, I stepped out from around Connor. “Honey,” I whispered in his ear, “we’ll be okay. I feel it. She’s not going to hurt us.”

“You’re lucky to have such a fierce protector.”

I leaned in closer to her conspiratorially. “Don’t tell him this, but I agree.” Then I turned and winked at Connor. “I’m Simone, by the way. And this guy is Connor.”

“I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to finally learn your names, but I’m also a little nervous as to what it means that you both are here.”

Well, that sounded ominous. I knew we had bad men trying to kill us and all that, but did she know something that we didn’t?

Victoria Rivers led us to the bank of elevators. She pressed theuparrow, the one that took us all the way to the top. So it appeared that Ms. Victoria Rivers was an important person in the Weik Labritories world.

Her office was huge. Huge. And full of windows. Bright sunlight shone in. Luc would have been jealous. The heat in his office didn’t come from the sun.

“Please, have a seat.” She gestured to two leather club chairs situated in front of a large, oak desk. We sat and watched her walk over to a room that wasn’t a room when she opened the door because inside that door was another, a safe door. The expensive, airtight, fireproof, waterproof, bombproof variety. That part was the human magic. It’d also been imbued with witch or some sort of super magic. Given the location, I was going with witch.

She punched in a code and waited for the lock to deactivate. Victoria opened the safe and walked in. I lost sight of her for a minute and then she returned wearing white, cotton gloves that she used to protect very fragile, yellowed paper, walking it over to her desk.

“We’ve had this in our possession for more generations than I can count. It was given to an ancestor of mine. She was told to read it and to keep it safe. Above all else, she was to pass it down to someone who would follow the instructions.”

Victoria carefully pulled the paper from the envelope, laying it open on her desk. I craned my neck to see what was written. “What are the instructions?” I asked.

Turning the letter for Connor and me to get a better look, she began to explain. “When the mated pair seek you out, you must help in any way possible. The dark protector and the one you will not be able to discern. They are the key. The world will be unraveling, unable to recognize itself. I cannot say when they will present themselves, but they will present themselves. To save all that is love and beauty, you must hear them. You must aid them. Without the mated protectors, all will be lost.”

“That’s ominous.” I swallowed hard.

Connor turned his head to look at me. “Babe.”

“What? We’ve got bad dudes after us who want us dead. But that whole ‘all will be lost’ thing is creepy.”

“Really? After everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve survived,that’s what gets you?”

“Yeah. Literally carrying the fate of every living thing on the planet, all the people and animals and even the plants on my shoulders, is a little daunting. I’m not going to lie, it fills me with a tad bit of anxiety. How doesn’t it for you?”

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