Page 100 of The Lone Wolf Café
I shrugged. I was as ready as I would ever be. Cookbook or no cookbook.
As we left, preparing to make the trek back to the village square, I whispered a few more prayers. I desperately wanted to stay here. To keep the baking job that I loved, to continue friendships with those that still supported me, and to eventually win over those who didn’t.
To stay with Rowena.
And to someday, potentially make her my mate.
But now, as I shifted my satchel on my right shoulder, I had yet another reason to make this crazy plan work.
I needed that damn cookbook back. It was all I had left of my mother’s side of the family.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The ten other witches were waiting for us when we arrived.
They were deep in preparations, sitting in a circle of chairs in the meeting room around a large wooden table. The cold, calculating solemnity of it all reminded me of the war rooms I’d seen illustrated in my fantasy novels.
An old map of Wisteria Grove, yellowed and peeling at the edges, was splayed in the center of the table. There were long stretches of strategy, explanation, and sometimes debate, with the witches occasionally pointing to different areas of the map.
But their fingers always returned to tracing the same line around the village, over and over again. The ward. A magical barrier; one that Willow, as the resident warden witch, created to keep non-witches out.
Except for Big Red. The unruly werewolf that was, for some inexplicable reason, able to break through.
And they were the target of our mission that night.
Mariah spotted us as soon as we walked in, and as she greeted us with a wave as nine other heads swiveled in our direction. Adrian also waved. Willow and Mabel smiled. But everyone else wore stony, scrutinizing glances.
While everyone continued strategizing, Adrian stood up and led us to an empty office at the opposite end of the hall. He unlocked it with a small silver key, and once we were inside, I could tell the space hadn’t been used for quite some time. The desk was bare, not a single paper or trinket in sight, and the sparse office furniture was shoved in the far corner.
And in the closer corner, leering like a wrought-iron demon, was Rowena’s cage. Adrian and several other witches had shown up earlier that afternoon to retrieve it. A young male witch hadused his levitation powers to bring it all the way to town hall, where it was placed in this empty office. As far away from the meeting room as possible.
“I’ll leave you both to it,” Adrian nodded. “Good luck.”
I gulped. I’d heard that phrase far too often over the past few hours.
Adrian closed the door behind us. There was a faint jingle of keys, and the click of the lock snapping into place was followed by soft footsteps as Adrian returned to the meeting room.
I couldn’t hide it. I was shaking. Rowena noticed this, and she wrapped me in a warm, deep embrace.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “You can do this.”
I felt like a coward. Here I was, terrified to do something that Rowena had done once a month for her entire life.
Pull yourself together, Nettie.
Because despite my fear, this was still the easy part. My true task, the one that could potentially kill me, was yet to come.
The minutes passed.
Silently. Slowly. Painfully.
Yet Rowena and I remained, still in our human forms, locked together in the iron cage.
Rowena had tied the key in a knot around one of the bars at the back of the cage. She said it had been her secret trick for years. Werewolves were intelligent, cunning creatures, capable of great feats in their wolf forms. But Rowena claimed no matter how fast or strong a wolf may be during the full moon, they were still incapable of undoing a well-tied knot.
“Lack of opposable thumbs and all,” she gave a faint chuckle, but I couldn’t bring myself to even smile at her joke. I was too nervous.
Our hands were clasped, fingers interlaced like woven threads. Our palms were wet and clammy, yet we still squeezed them together as if they were our only lifeline.
