Page 50 of His Whispered Witch

He floored it.

12

Asher broke off the crossbow bolt wedged in his shoulder with a grunt, and Penn swallowed against sudden nausea. He examined the fletched arrow with a shake of his head before tossing it out the window. She tried to think of what to say.

“And you call us the bad guys,” he said.

She glanced over at him, stung, but he was smiling. “Says the guy with the snake!”

“And whose fault is that?”

She dug for humor, trying to match his tone. “Also witches, according to you.”

She closed her eyes, thinking about that grimoire tucked into the twins’ fortress werewolf room with a recipe for making shifters. It wasn’t just according to him.

She thought about the snake inside of him and that recipe and what she wanted to do if she ever had a chance.

“Shit,” she murmured.

“What?”

She hadn’t thought she had spoken loud enough to be overheard. “We need to make a stop.”

“Okay, where? What did you forget?” he asked immediately, and she smiled when his eyes flicked to the lizard.

“We have to go back to Silver Spring.”

“You mean the town with even more witches who are trying to kill us?”

He rolled his shoulders, and she braced against the sight of more blood, but his wound already looked half healed.

“It’s probably the one day that there aren’t going to be any witches in town,” she said.

“Oh yeah, they’re all getting carried around by mooses. Or is that meese?”

“I think it’s just moose.”

“The plural of moose is moose?”

“Would you just drive?” How could he be joking at a time like this with a hole in his shoulder, fleeing with everything they owned?

Would it have been better if he was freaking out? She had seen what happened when he freaked out.

“Silver Spring in ten minutes,” he said with another roll of his shoulder.

She was unspeakably grateful to him for trusting her. He didn’t ask what they were picking up or chastise her for forgetting something; he just put his foot on the gas.

When he missed the turn to Silver Spring, all her good feelings evaporated. “Where are you going?”

“Shit, was that the turn? I’ve only ever driven there in the dark.”

They were on a back road hauling a horse trailer. It was another ten miles to another road into town. Had they just lost everything because she wasn’t paying attention?

He didn’t even hesitate, just drove into the bushes and began what turned out to be an eight-point turn. Halfway through, thehorse trailer was mostly off the road dangling over a steep drop, but he didn’t even blink.

She paid attention after that and told him where to turn and turn again to get into the town she thought she’d call home for the rest of her life and would never see again.

She directed him up Main Street even as she questioned her sanity, but it was the straightest and therefore fastest route into the city. They passed the one gas station, the shuttered tax preparation front, the coffee shop, and the bank. TheCauldron and Broomwas coming up on the right. She got a glimpse of the sign and a face in the window. Not all the witches were out of Silver Spring.

---