Page 83 of His Whispered Witch

“It’s better than telling them the truth!” Becca said.

“That’s exactly my point!”

Moira cleared her throat. “Wow, I forgot about this charming feature of covens: the ability to argue while agreeing with each other. You’re right. All of you. We’re building a lollipop for a snake as we do a lot more than stick it with a needle…”

Penn nodded. They could do this.Shecould do this. Often her job didn’t sound that different from Becca’s: lying through her teeth. Penn spent a lot of time figuring out how what the owner wanted would also work for the pet, twisting bizarre demands like not sitting on the comfortable couch cushions around the home and instead choosing the tiny, considerably less soft bed in the corner of the room into something palatable. She’d wanted to tell the owners they were insane for shrinking a kept dog’s world even more, but that way lay madness.

She stared at the scribbles of black Sharpie on the wall opposite the table, two Circles of witches connected through marriage and wolves.

She thought of the twins but let it go. They had their path to walk, and she had hers.

She could have this world where multiple covens mixed, and she wasn’t even sure of how they were all related, where two different packs mixed and didn’t want to kill each other, because their mates were sisters, and that would make for really awkward Christmases.

She almost laughed at herself. Here, she realized she could have a genuine home. Becca even sounded excited about setting up an office for her in Harper’s Ferry, where the tourist trafficalone would keep her in business for years. Penn had the home she’d been searching for forever, and all she wanted was him.

They could live their lives alone at that rest stop in the middle of the country amidst endless grass and nothingness, and it would be all she ever needed.

To ask for both felt extravagant and strange, but she was asking. She wanted him and his family; she wanted this land and her lover. It seemed insane to fight for both, but if she didn’t, how the hell could she live with herself? What else would she do with her life?

There was a shout from out on the lawn, and nobody even twitched. The pack was on the lawn; they’d been arguing all day. The front door slammed, and Malcolm stepped inside.

Okay, this was different.

Penn held her breath and laced her fingers together, surprised to find they were shaking.

“Do it,” Malcolm said.

“What does that mean?” his mother asked. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Everyone agrees. Worth the risk.”

“Everyone?” Kathleen asked as she stood up. It hardly made a difference. She was only a little taller than the stool.

“Unanimous.”

“I don’t believe it,” Kathleen said.

“We trust you,” Malcolm said.

Kathleen closed her eyes again. She was doing that a lot.

Penn wanted to protest that they shouldn’t trust her, but this was what she’d wanted. They needed to be worthy of that trust.

Kathleen spun back to her son. “It’s not unanimous.”

“What?”

“Asher hasn’t agreed.”

“Asher?”Penn whispered. She wanted to dash into the clearing and take him in her arms, but Malcolm’s restraining hand stopped her.

It had taken a week. A week of ten to twelve-hour days with endless coffee and increasingly simple meals as the women came together to build a spell to free a snake.

That was how they came to think of it: not a spell to help the wolf, which would only be a threat to the snake, but a spell to help the snake with the best, most beautiful fake world it could ever want to live in.

None of them mentioned the bizarre code at the top of the spell, which no one had cracked, but they’d agreed to recite at the beginning, just in case. The meat of the spell they wrote should do it.

Penn had all been for Circling up and trying it the moment it was finished, but Kathleen made everybody go home and sleep.

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