Page 19 of Enspelled

“What makes you think it was Briar who killed Diana?”

“Because Diana went after Briar, a witch with an explosive power that has already exploded two businesses in town. You might have killed our kind before, but Diana was an elemental coven leader, and one wolf would find that a losing proposition. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.”

A losing proposition, huh?

I ignore my wolf snarling at the insult that we’re not strong enough to take down a witch. “How do you know about the wolf souls inside Briar?” I snap.

“The same way anyone knows anything in Madden Grove. Gossip.”

“You seem to have an answer for just about anything.”

“Was there a point you were trying to make?” she asks calmly.

I lean toward her, so close that she can’t fail to see the wolf shining out of my eyes. “I don’t trust you, witch. Not for a fucking second.”

She shrugs. “Then don’t trust me. Since you’re the only one in this town making people pay for their cruelty, I thought you might want some help. But if you don’t, then fine. I won’t give it.”

She puts her hand on the door. I put my claws against her throat. “You made it clear you didn’t like the Callas, and they’re dead. Why am I getting a feeling there’s some reason you want Layla Markham to go the same way?”

“Because there is. Did you forget when I told you that people in this town are cruel?”

“So, what did Layla do to you?” I ask, recalling Briar’s words on the slope overlooking the smoking ruins of her family-owned café. A business that Layla Markham had ruined with her refusal to help Briar’s aunt with a loan.

“Too many things to list, and I wasn’t the only one whose life she was eager to destroy.”

My thoughts return to Abigail, the witch who successfully hid south of the Madden Grove Wood, chased there by Layla’s rumors. Right up until Mara set me on her track. “You send me to the witch in the south wood, and minutes after we find her, someone flattens her house with us inside.”

Mara gazes up at me. “Was there a question in there somewhere?”

This witch has serious fucking balls. I age her down again, because no older witch can be this flippant when trapped in a truck with a wolf who has his claws pressed against her throat. “Was it you?”

“I’m a green witch,” she says distinctly. “My skills do not lie in bringing houses down on people. Only one kind of witch can do that.”

“Elementals.”

She nods. “Elementals, and didn’t you have Diana Calla after you?”

Every question has a perfect answer.

My mistrust grows, because there is never always a perfect answer to a question. Dad taught me that. “What do you want, witch?”

“Layla dead.”

There’s no hesitation, no pause. Just utter, bone-shaking truth.

This is the first real thing that this witch has told me that I believe. “Why?”

“She deserves to die.”

“Just like Diana and her vicious daughters?” I ask, my eyes once again settling on the burn on her cheek. She said she was hiding the worst of them with a spell. I’m almost tempted to ask her to show me the rest.

“More so than Diana. Witches like Layla are like rose vines.”

Angling my head, eyes narrowed, I wait for an explanation.

“They slice you to pieces, and when anyone questions their motivations, they point at the beautiful rose, and not the thorns that just cost you a liter of blood.”

The witch has a way with words.

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