Page 38 of Enspelled

Briar’s eyes widen. “We can’t go to Layla’s house.”

My finger hovers over the end call button. “Then where do we go? You tell me who has as good a reason to wipe out my pack and hit you with a spell?”

She doesn’t say a word, not that I was expecting her to.

“This transformation spell changes things,” Sera says into the silence. “If Layla could work a spell like that, she wouldn’t keep quiet about it.”

I shrug. “So maybe she was trying a different spell, one to kill Briar, and Briar’s power made it… I don’t know… malfunction. You said transformation spells were impossible, right?”

Briar nods, a thoughtful twist to her lips. “It’s possible. And the wolf souls might have interfered with whatever spell she cast—not that I even remember being hit by a spell.”

I raise my eyebrow. “You said something hit you in the back when you were in the Madden Grove wood looking for the flower to talk to souls. The white something.”

She blinks at me. “White asphodel. But that didn’t feel like a spell. It just felt like… I don’t know… a snowball. Magic has a feel to it.”

“That you know of,” I tell her. “But since no one has cast a transformation spell before, who can say what it would feel like to be hit with one?”

A long pause.

“He’s kind of got a point, Briar,” Sera says, her agreement surprising the hell out of me. “She might have even been the one responsible for the wolf souls.”

“So she blew up Calla’s Cauldron because she had some secret vendetta with Diana, pinned it on you, and then destroyed the café because she knew it would devastate you,” I say, growing more and more certain that Layla was responsible the longer I think about it.

“And killing your pack?” Bodie asks.

“She wanted to get rid of Abigail, her witchy competition.” I think about it a little longer, and then nod firmly. “It’s her.”

When no one speaks, I get to my feet. “Bodie, we’ll meet you at the grocery store to get the spell that Sera is working on.”

“And then?” Briar asks.

I end the call. “Then we’ll find Layla Markham and deal with this once and for all. Unless you have a better idea of who could be responsible for all this?”

Briar blinks up at me but doesn’t say a word.

“That’s what I thought. Let's go.”

11

BRIAR

Ifix my gaze on the destroyed tree beside the grocery store parking lot. One that Sera’s spell ripped apart so completely, I still don’t believe it, even though it happened right in front of me.

Sera would have killed Keane with that blow. No doubt about it. And the thought of Sera killing anyone is wrong. Was she that desperate to protect me? Or does she hate Keane that much?

But that’s not the important question. It’s why I stopped her when I should want him dead more than she does. “How long do you think Bodie will be?” I ask in a rush, desperate to escape a question I’d rather not know the answer to.

I feel Keane glance over at me. “Doubt he’ll be long. We’ll give it twenty minutes and then go.”

To kill Layla Markham.

“Doesn’t it ever bother you?” I ask.

“What?”

“Killing. Or do you reach a point when you’ve killed so many people that it’s easy?” I recall the overheard phone call when he’d locked me in his cabin. He was coaching a guy about how easy killing was. But now the guy, or maybe the people he couldn’t bring himself to kill, are all dead.

A house full of dead people in Texas, Bodie said. Surely hearing that must have some effect on you.

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