Page 136 of Which Witch Is Wicked?
Moira was alive.
Moira was alive, and armed with a weapon as powerful as his own.
If he had thought her a worthy opponent before, he was certain the next contest of their wills would prove…orgasmic.
Nick allowed a grin to take over the side of his face Lucy couldn’t see.
He couldn’t fucking wait.
13
“Hey, y’all. What’s for dinner?”
Moira and Justine stood in the kitchen doorway of the de Moray house, waiting for their presence to register.
Tierra looked up from a saucepan and shrieked, the spoon she had been holding clattering to the floor as her hand flew to her mouth.
“Moira! Justine!”
Moira braced herself for the patented Tierra tackle-pounce-hug she was about to receive. Her sister didn’t disappoint. Moira’s and Justine’s heads knocked together like a pair of bobble-head dolls as Tierra dragged them both into her embrace at once.
“Thank the Goddess!” she wailed, burying her face in Moira’s neck while simultaneously squeezing Aunt Justine’s spleen up to her throat. “You’re alive! You’re home! You’re…soaking wet. What on earth happened to you? How did you get away? How did you—?”
Moira held up her hand. “It’s a long story. Maybe we ought to wait until Claire and Aerin are here so I only have to tell it once.”
“Claire! Aerin!” Tierra hollered at an eardrum-piercing decibel. “Get down here, now!”
Moira heard the shuffling of footsteps overhead, followed by the creaking of stairs announcing her sisters’ descent.
“Holy balls,” she heard Aerin mutter. “Whatever the fuck this summons is for, it better not involve kale.”
“Or tofu,” Claire replied. “If I ever come across the asshat who first cultivated the soybean in the afterlife, I’m going to burn his testicles to cinders.”
They rounded the corner simultaneously and froze in the doorway.
“Look!” Tierra enthused, whipping off her apron. “They’re home.”
Moira hadn’t been expecting either of them to rush her the way Tierra had. Neither had she expected the narrow-eyed scrutiny she met instead.
Aerin folded her arms across the blouse of the button-down shirt she was only allowed to wear at home since the Horsemen had unanimously decided she was the pick of the litter as far as the killing was concerned. “How do we know it’sreallyher?” she demanded.
“Good question,” Claire agreed. “A certain bitch who shall remain nameless has gotten awfully good at borrowing bodies lately. And besides, I don’t think the real Moira would have brought Aunt Justine back with her.”
Irritation needled Moira as she stood there in their warm and cozy kitchen. After having surviving a day as Conquest’s captive, patching things up with an aunt who’d tried to kill her, being shot through the chest with an Apocalyptic arrow, inheriting her crown and wand from some watery tart, destroying the Horsemen’s compound, and saving Justine, being asked to prove her identity was just about the last damn straw.
“We buried the hatchet while we were both captives, once and for all,” Justine reported. “That’s why Moira came back to save me.”
“The MoiraIknow would have buried the hatchet in the back of your head,” Claire pointed out.
Moira pulled up a stool from the counter and plopped onto it. “How exactly would you like me to prove my identity?”
“What if she told us something only Moira would know?” Claire suggested.
“Well there’s a short list,” Aerin snorted.
“Would this help?” Moira lifted her tank-top and retrieved her wand from the waistband of her cut-offs, setting it on the kitchen island.
Tierra, Claire, and Aerin gasped in unison.
