Page 81 of His Whispered Witch

Pregnant women still did Circles. They’d never field a Circle if they waited for all witches to not be pregnant at the same time, but they tended to stick to the well-known spells Circles did all the time, like warding the land, and not experimental werewolf surgery.

“The whole thing is a charm,” Quinn said. “You’re not doing it without me.”

“We’re trying to change it,” Moira said. It was the first thing she’d said in an hour. “We’re not trying to make it last.”

“We’re trying to make thewolflast,” Quinn said. “We’re excising a piece of the spell. We better make damn sure the rest of it stays stable. And that’s my job.”

Kathleen’s eyes swung to Charlie. “Is there a charm witch in the Abbott coven?”

“She’s in Philadelphia, but I can ask…” Charlie did not sound confident.

“She’s not as good,” Quinn said. “Of everyone in this room, I’m the only one who’s actually messed with this spell or joined with a bunch of witches I’m not related to. The bean is gonna be fine.”

Penn closed her eyes and was grateful they’d sent the wolves out of the room two hours ago. Their hilariously misguided suggestions about how to do magic were amusing but distracting. And they would never go through with it if he knew they were risking an unborn child.

She couldn’t think about it.

Penn had also been mostly silent through this process, trying not to betray her ignorance. She’d had no idea group spells were so contentious. Growing up, she’d come to Circles every two weeks and stood on the sidelines. Thirteen women joined hands and chanted words, and magic filled the air. It all looked so clean from the outside.

She took a deep breath. “So now we know where everybody’s standing, how the hell do we make this happen?”

She looked over the lines again, searching for the magic words—literally—to unravel one part of a spell without destroying the whole thing.

“It’s gonna put up a fight,” Moira said, her bright red hair a halo around her head. She’d undone her braid around the time the sun had set.

“I mean, we can unhook the snake from the charm,” Quinn said. “We’ve got that far. A wolf and a snake are different. I’m reasonably sure we can get itout.”

“But the redhead’s right. It’s gonna put up a fight,” Charlie said.

“Then we have a magical snake loose inside my boy,” Kathleen said from her perch on a stool in the kitchen. “Our boys.”

“I can’t write a spell to say don’t put up a fight,” an older Abbott said. She was the spellcaster of the coven. The only detail Penn could remember about her was that she had a truly insane number of children. She could host theSound of Musicin her living room, except they were all boys.

You can’tspella predator not to fight…“But I can!” Penn shouted, then bit her tongue.

“You can do what?” Kathleen demanded.

“You can’t get a snake to trust you, but I can.” That was her talent. She’d been treating the snake as a foreign invader hurting the wolf, but it was also god’s creature, and more importantly, subject to her magic.

Witches perked up around the room.

“What can you offer that’s better than eternal life in a shifter?” one of the Abbott witches asked.

Penn shook her head automatically. “Animals don’t think like that. Only we worry about eternity.”

“So what do we got that’s better than what it has right now?”

Moira held up a hand. “That I can help with.”

Everyone swung her way. She stood out like a sore thumb in a room full of dark-haired beauties. “They want to be fed. They want to be warm. They want to be safe.” Her job was raising snakes. Penn didn’t even know that was a job.

“They have all that where they are,” somebody said from the back of the room.

Penn held up a finger, trying to think back to what it had felt like to touch Asher. She’d been so focused on the distress of the wolf that she hadn’t considered the distress of the snake.

“They’re not safe.” She looked around the room, meeting as many eyes as possible. “They’re not safe. As much as the wolf hates snakes, the snake hates wolves. They’re a threat. We offer it life without the wolf.”

“We’re betting everything on a spell that offers the snake a choice?” Kathleen asked incredulously.

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