Page 79 of His Whispered Witch

Kathleen closed her eyes. “Ellis.”

Penn looked around. She didn’t know who Ellis was or why he would be so desperate to get rid of the snake. It couldn’t have been a happy story, but she was grateful to him.

“And the Ryersons, who lost their baby at one year old,” Malcolm said. “And I bet a lot of others who don’t want the pain. It hurts every time, Ma.”

Kathleen swallowed, her eyes still closed. “I know.”

Quinn took a deep breath. “You know what the second thing any wolf has ever said to me after congratulations when they found out I’m pregnant?”

Finally, Kathleen opened her eyes.

“Be careful,” Quinn continued. “Congratulations, be careful.”

“I can’t lose you,” Kathleen said to her son.

“You’re not gonna lose me,” Malcolm said. “‘Cause you’re gonna build the best damn spell in the world. Look, the world is never risk-free. Every time you get in a car, you risk going over the side of a mountain, but it doesn’t happen.”

Quinn shuddered. “That wasn’t the best example…”

Penn arched an eyebrow at yet another story she didn’t know. She’d felt the same when she moved to Colorado, missing half the stories because everyone spoke in a shorthand of incidents and accidents.

“My point is,” Malcolm said, “this isbetterthan random chance. Y’all can control this risk. You can make it better.” He waited, but nobody objected, and he tapped a fist into the opposite palm. “Build the spell. I’ll call the pack.”

“They are going to agree,” Kathleen said hopelessly.

Malcolm wrapped his mother in a hug. “Yeah, they are. And not only for Asher.”

He let her go and strode down the lawn.

Penn cycled through a couple of things to say like: thank you, let’s go, or sorry you lost. She held her tongue, half convinced all of them would sound like gloating.

Kathleen took a deep breath and said, “Let’s go.”

“Let’s go,” Penn echoed, hope soaring.

Kathleen grabbed Penn’s arm in a clawed grip as they started toward the house. “This has to be the best damn spell we’ve ever written, do you understand? We think through every step. Weperfectevery step.”

She nodded quickly.

“Every step,” Kathleen repeated.

“I want this to work more than anybody,” Penn said, and Kathleen loosened her grip.

“I’m sorry, of course.”

“We can do this.”

“We can’t do this,”Penn said and glanced at the enormous clock in the corner. They were on hour nine.

They’d started by transcribing the spell into a computer so there could be absolutely no confusion, and everyone got a copy. Even that took an hour as they debated punctuation marks versus smudges of dirt on the ancient manuscript.

Then they had to adapt it for snakes, because as awful as this spell was, it made normal wolves, not dire wolves. That took half the day.

None of that compared to the work it was taking toundoit. At this point, Penn wasn’t sure if it even could be done.

Members of Goldie’s family arrived by lunch. They genuinely did not seem at all worried about hanging out on a rival pack’s territory. That was the only weird thing about them, though.

Penn couldn’t help thinking that this was a proper coven. They all had long, dark hair and towered above everybody. They looked like a family. They had every talent in four different generations perched on various flat surfaces they could find in the house, bickering amongst themselves with gentle familiarity. Penn swung between gratitude, shock at seeing so many people helping, and annoyance. If she never heard another in-joke she didn’t understand again, it would be too soon.

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