Page 56 of Enslaved

If Diana believed I was at the cafe, it and every building around it would be ash, just like that. The only thing she cared about was the coven, her pretty daughters she’d so perfectly molded in her image, and being the Queen bee in town.

She believes I’ve just taken all of that away from her.

My life is over.

That’s when I know what I have to do. “I have to go Sera,” I say, already lowering the phone from my ear. “I can’t involve you in this. And your mom is right, you should stay away from me before anything happens to you, or the coven is—”

“I don’t care about the coven,” she hisses down the phone, “you know I don’t. I care about helping my friend. What do you need from me?”

How have I been lucky enough to land a best friend as loyal as Sera?

“It’s dangerous, Sera.”

“I don’t care. I’m guessing it was the wolf, right? Keane Destin. He blew it up, and now he’s pinning it on you.”

“He didn’t do it either. He…” I frown as I remember something about the explosion in town. Something that I can’t believe I forgot.

The explosion blew us both off our feet. I didn’t even know something was flying toward us until he rolled over me. He grunted when it hit him, and he’s a wolf. They have hard heads.

What would it have done if it hit me? Never mind that. What wolf would protect a witch like that?

“He didn’t do it,” I say, because telling Sera that a wolf put his body between harm and me would have her thinking I was going crazy, or that he kidnapped me and Stockholm syndrome is already setting in.

No, it can’t be.

Or maybe this is something else. It was easy to think of Keane Destin as just another uncontrolled wolf who only wanted me dead because I was a witch.

But he’s not. Or not only.

He came back to Madden Grove to get justice for his dead pack. For ten years he’s been alone, with no one, haunted by the memory of what happened to them. I remember the anguished sounds coming from his bedroom.

How many nights has he woken from nightmares as bad or even worse than mine? He lost everything, just like me, and now I’m the only one who can help him figure out who killed his pack, and he’s the only one who can help me with this crazy power.

And he believed I didn’t blow up Calla’s Cauldron when no one else would have.

But then I shake my head.

No, he’s wrong. I’m just seeing something that isn’t there.

“Maybe it was me,” I admit in a low voice. “I mean, I set fire to Aunt Mel’s room, so blowing up Calla’s Cauldron is totally in the realm of possibility.”

In the silence, I visualize Sera brushing her bangs out of her eyes. “What if it was someone else?”

I snort. “Someone like who? Who would go up against the elementals and set Diana on a warpath? No one sane, Sera, that’s who.” After tucking the phone between my shoulder and neck, I get up and go grab a chocolate chip muffin from the cupboard before returning to the dining table. “So it has to be me. You know it as well as I do.”

Sera doesn’t speak for several seconds, and as I pick out the chocolate chips from the muffin, I can’t help but think that Diana Calla coming after me might not be a bad thing after all.

I have wolf souls clinging to me and an out-of-control power that’s becoming more and more unstable as time goes by.

If the souls drive me crazy, I could blow up the town, and even if they don’t drive me crazy, I could still blow up the town, anyway.

In my sleep.

Dahlia wasn’t wrong about the danger I represent to the town and everyone in it.

“What if Diana Calla is the only way to get rid of the power?” I whisper.

“But getting rid of the power is going to mean getting rid of you.”

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