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Read Book 1, Crystal and Claws, today
Tori’s ankles sang from the impact of jumping off a cliff. She’d casually insisted that witches could fly, or rather, carry themselves, but it wasn’t a comfortable sensation.
She spun around at the crunch of gravel to see her family heading straight for her.
The twins were in the lead—two women in their sixties—one tall and pale with a shock of white in her dark hair and the other short and round with freckles and light hair. They had a network of people in the foster system on the lookout for children with strange histories.
Behind her was the only other true Griffin witch, Beatrice. She was Niamh’s only biological daughter. Annie and Cat, two of her fellow foster sisters, stood behind them; they looked like they wanted to take her down, but she hadn’t told them anything.
Wait… She hadn’t told them anything. “How did you know I was here?”
The question stopped the determined march of witches, and they looked at each other, uncertain.
“It was Walpurgisnacht last night,” Niamh said. “Everyone was supposed to be at the house.”
“And you weren’t,” Annie added.
Tori had completely forgotten the summer holiday. Well, she’d celebrated in her own way.
She was about to spin some tale of a bonfire in the woods, but then clicked her teeth together. “That still doesn’t answer my question.” A horrible thought occurred. She pivoted toward Cat. “Did you foresee me here?”
Cat, the divination witch, was pulled out of a Romanian orphanage when the priest thought she was possessed for seeing visions. She shook her head. “Still doesn’t work like that. I’m not one of those geotags for lost items. Even sisters.”
Niamh sighed. “Marta was talking to Aaron at the coffee shop about a big new order for you, which was funny because we usually know if you’ve got a big new job and you didn’t say anything.”
Tori frowned. “But you don’t go to the coffee shop. You said the course grind disturbs the solution.” Niamh was a potion witch who had opinions about coffee.
“No, but David—grocery store David, not high school David—was in there buying a scone, and he talked to Gary.”
“Okay?”
“And I went to the hardware store to buy a new pane of glass,” Siobhan said, “when I mistimed pinning a streamer up in the living room, which you were supposed to help with.”
Tori winced. As a fellow force witch, she also spent a lot of time at the hardware store.
“And Gary congratulated me on your success!” Siobhan finished.
In other words, just as Tori predicted, the Silver Spring gossip train had left the station and reached the twins within an hour of Matt’s arrival. She knew that would happen, so why hadn’t she said anything?
She looked over the women ranged before her. “I’m sorry. But you can’t hurt them.”
The women looked at each other in confusion. “Hurt who?”
Did they not know where they were standing? Tori wanted to hit herself on the head. This was the double thirteen house, the one they’d warned about for so many years. But it was only Tori who got out to the rich houses around Silver Spring that sat empty most of the year. They hadn’t come with their crossbows and their spells to kill a werewolf. They’d come looking for her and found her van parked by the side of the road. They’d wanted to make sure she was okay.
Siobhan took one step forward so that Tori had to look up into her face. “Who are they?”
But she was already figuring it out as she looked around.
“This is what you’ve hidden from us?” Niamh said. “Your clients are the wolves?”
Siobhan spun around in a full circle. “Are they here? Have they arrived?”
“Come look!” Cat cried, and Tori realized she’d walked far enough along the road to see the pummeled SUV. The other witches hurried after her.
“Great going!” Siobhan said when she saw it. “Are they dead?”
They thought she’d pulled down the mountain. They thought she was capable of that.
“No! It’s empty, and it wasn’t—” She bit her tongue rather than mention the other pack, because that was all this day needed.
Cat froze and jerked, staring into the middle distance, which was never a good sign. 99% of the time, Cat needed to seek out a vision through some medium like water or crystal. Tori could count on one hand how many visions Cat got if she wasn’t looking for them. She said that she only received visions when they were gravely important.
Cat blinked rapidly and pulled out her phone to start a voice memo. “Two, three, six, twelve. A stone, a flower, a body, and a wolf.”
Tori went cold.
“A wolf?” Siobhan demanded.
Cat finally focused and met their eyes. “There was more, but I didn’t catch it.”
“What was that?” Niamh asked.
“It sounded like a spell,” Annie, the spellcaster, muttered.
“What for?” Siobhan demanded impatiently. “Of course it’s a spell.”
Cat shook her head. “It’s not like I get words. There was a set of scales, old-fashioned ones for weights, and they were decaying, but they came into balance with all of those things on them: a flower, a stone, and more. I would maybe say right an ancient wrong?”
Niamh clapped her hands together. “Like excising shifters from the world?”
Tori winced, and Cat shook her head. “I don’t know. But I would hope that mass murder is not on the menu?”
Siobhan waved a hand. “They’re not even human. It’d be like…”
Cat held up one finger. “There is no metaphor that is going to right that ship.”
Niamh turned back to Tori. “Are they here already? We could be back with our full arsenal in a matter of hours. We weren’t ready before, but we will be ready now.”
Apparently, her perfidy was forgotten in the face of a prophecy that promised the twins everything they ever wanted. Or at least, they chose to interpret it that way.
Tori wasn’t so sure. What was the ancient wrong? What was the rest of it? Who were “we?”
And what was she going to do?
The twins had given her everything, and she’d always given everything she could in return. Cat constantly challenged them, and some of the others weren’t even here anymore. The twins loved their adopted children, but they asked a high price. They expected loyalty and assistance with their main project, which was to share magic with witches who weren’t related to them. They wanted to become a coven of thirteen witches without having to worry about DNA. They also wanted to kill werewolves. The two goals were not unrelated. Both needed power.
She had stayed and she had helped, no matter how hopeless she thought both goals were, because she owed them everything.
“They’re not here,” she said. “But they are coming. I came early to set up the house.”
“So who’s in there?” Annie asked with a smirk on her face, pointing to the SUV.
“I hired someone from Denver to bring up some supplies. That was a total accident. Nobody’s in there. It was just a regular rockfall.”
“So why didn’t you come home?” Niamh asked, but she sounded more relaxed. Of course she did. Tori had never lied to her before in her life.
“It took a hot second to deal with this and call insurance. It was just a lot. I’m sorry I didn’t call. I forgot I was expected.”
Siobhan cracked her knuckles. “Okay, we have some time. When are they coming?”
“I don’t know.”
They squinted at her.
“I genuinely don’t.” At least this was not a lie. “And even if they did give me a date, which they didn’t, the percentage of my clients who show up when they say they will is in the single digits. You know that.”
“But you didn’t tell us it was the house,” Niamh said.
“I didn’t know until you said it right now. I don’t know which house is the magic house we’re supposed to avoid! How was I supposed to know?”
“Okay, okay,” Cat said. “We’re okay. The wolves aren’t here yet.”
“So we have time to get it together. You’ll just tell us when they tell you,” Niamh said.
This could be over. She could agree now and then delay. She did not have to make this into a thing.
“No,” Tori said.
“What do you mean no?” Niamh said with genuine puzzlement, as if she’d never heard the word before.
“No, I’m not going to tell you when they come. I’m not going to help you kill werewolves.”
It felt like she just announced that she’d released the black death into a nursery.
“They’re not coming here for us,” Tori said. “This is their land, and they’re coming here for a vacation. They’re not here to attack us, so we would be the aggressor. We would break the treaty first. I’m not going to help you do that.”
“They’re coming here for vacation,” Niamh mimicked. “So now you’re the one with divination and can just forecast their intentions?”
“No, but I can,” a voice said from the trees, and everyone turned.
Matt stepped out, looking like he had rolled down the hill. He was covered in pine needles and dirt. His khakis were nowhere near that color any longer.
Niamh dove into one of her pockets for a potion, and Siobhan raised her hands. Tori knew the older woman could push him halfway across the field before Tori could stop her.
“Don’t!” Tori shouted.
“If they’re not here yet, this is presumably not a wolf,” Cat said, sounding amused.
“I’m not in the pack,” Matt said. Tori took a deep breath, thankful he hadn’t outed himself in the name of some crusade for werewolf rights.
“But I’ve worked for the pack for decades,” Matt added.
What was he doing?
“So they have already broken the treaty if you know about the world of magic!” Siobhan shouted.
Tori closed her eyes.
“You must have humans in your life without magic who know what’s going on,” Matt said evenly.
“Like Henry?” Tori couldn’t help adding. Henry was Beatrice’s twin brother. As a man, he would never have magic.
“The pack is coming to the land they’ve owned for decades for a vacation,” Matt said.
“Why now?”
“Why not now?” Matt shot back. “They don’t know there’s a coven, but in New York, there are a dozen covens and packs, and we all live together just fine, and they will doubtless respect your wards.”
The twins flinched, and Matt frowned.
“And we all get out of this alive,” he added.
“There are some things humans will just never understand,” Siobhan said, like she was patting a dog.
Matt’s eyes flared, but he said, “That’s true.”
“Semper Vigilans. The family motto,” Siobhan said, “Constant vigilance.”
Tori wanted to roll her eyes. She was pretty sure their Irish ancestors were rolling in their graves somewhere, hearing the Latin “family motto.” Plus, given the fact that most of the Griffins were not in Ireland anymore, the family motto was probably something closer to, “Let’s get the hell off this rock.”
“You have to tell us when they get here,” Niamh said gently.
Tori closed her eyes against the familiarity of the one-two punch. Siobhan’s bluntness followed by Niamh’s gentleness, both implacable and both impossible.
“No,” she said again. “I love you both, and I will be endlessly and eternally grateful for everything you did for me, but that gratitude does not extend to helping you fight a war that does not need to be fought.”
“Victoria,” Niamh began, sounding more hurt than upset when Siobhan put a hand on her shoulder.
“That’s her choice.”
“That’s my choice.”
“We will find our own warnings,” Siobhan muttered to her sister.
“I can’t stop you,” Tori said and wished she could.
They began to walk away, Cat leading the way. Annie and Beatrice, her sisters in all ways but blood, watched her for a moment before they turned away, too.
Tori sagged like her strings had been cut.
Matt was at her side in moments. She wanted him to hug her and make it go away, but he just put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Would they really attack?” he asked.
“I don’t know. They can’t be that suicidal, can they? We don’t even have wards.”
“What?”
“We’re not a real coven. You saw the last of the real Griffin coven. Niamh had one daughter. I don’t think Siobhan could or didn’t want to? I don’t know. There are only three witches related by blood.” She spun to face him. “I won’t be with them.”
“I did not want to cause a rift in your family.”
“You didn’t. They did. They wanted to kill you. Not in defense.”
“I’ll be fine, so will the pack.”
She stepped away. “How will this be fine? You’ve been openly attacked by another pack and threatened by the local coven. Your boss is stepping into a war on two fronts for his nice little vacation. Which is totally not a vacation, is it?”
“No.” Matt eyed the destroyed SUV. “You know the minute I report this, he’ll be on the next plane. We’re constitutionally incapable of running from a fight. Especially an alpha wolf, even if he’s the most unlikely alpha wolf on earth.”
Tori frowned in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“He’s this nerdy data guy. He crunches numbers, extremely big numbers. More than one rival has mistaken that for weakness. And he’s mostly just amused by dominance games until there’s a threat, and then he is the most ruthless, brilliant fighter I have ever seen in my life. All that analytical power gets put into a fight, and nobody ever has a chance.”
“You love him.”
“He’s my brother. Of course, I love him. And there’s not another human being on earth I fear more.”
He rubbed his hands along her shoulders and then down her arms to hold her hands.
“We could just absent ourselves…” she began.
“Run away?”
“He sounds like he can take care of himself. And I don’t have to betray them if I’m not here to warn them.”
“Where would we go?”
Tori laughed. “I know a dozen houses that are standing empty right now. One call to the owner and we could take our pick.”
“This is insane,” Matt said.
“For once, don’t you want to let them solve their own problems?”
He wrapped his arms around her, and something solidified in her chest.
“We can’t camp out in rich people’s summer homes for the rest of our lives,” he whispered into her hair.
“We wouldn’t. Just until they knock their heads together long enough to knock some sense into them.”
“That might take a while.”
“We could try New York. Especially if you’re pack comes here, I’m sure you can find a bunch of empty places there.”
“You would come home with me?”
Tori shuddered. “Not forever.”
Matt shook his head, a grin on his face. “Of course not. None of this is forever.”
“An interlude. A moment out of time,” she said and kissed him
Matt looked out the gigantic bay window that had a spectacular view of the Aspen ski slopes, now just grassy lines cut into the side of the mountain. As Tori had predicted, one phone call to a loyal client had netted her carte blanche to stay until the slopes opened.
He glanced up at Tori, in the kitchen now, where she was moving her hands like an orchestra conductor as knives chopped various things on two different cutting boards and a spoon stirred itself in a pot on the stove.
He looked down at his phone at the email he had typed out.
Mateo,
Everything is ready except the road. Park at the bottom of the hill and walk in.
There are steaks in the freezer.
On your way up the road, you will see an SUV covered in stones. I am fine. It was the work of the local rival pack. Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be sanctioned by the alpha.
Also, there is a coven in Silver Spring with a vendetta against werewolves. They have vowed to drive you out of Colorado if you come.
I know these facts will nearly guarantee that you are coming when maybe before you wouldn’t have, especially when I tell you the nearest takeout is a fusion sushi/Boba place an hour away in Aspen. But you won’t let a challenge to your territory go unanswered, even if it’s territory you haven’t seen in your lifetime.
I will not be there to greet you. I’ve taken a vacation. I’m no use to you in Colorado anyway. There’s another project I’m working on now.
He almost signed off: In bocca al lupo, an Italian phrase for “Into the wolf’s mouth” that meant the same thing as break a leg, but the answering phrase Crepi il lupo meant, “May the wolf die.” It was a running joke amongst the pack, but it didn’t sound that funny right now.
Instead, he wrote, Buona Fortuna, and hit send.
He put his phone down to return his to love. “He’s going to need it.”
The End
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Read Crystal and Claws today, Book 1 in the Witches and Shifters: Griffin Coven series, where Mateo and Cat find happily ever after…after they almost try to kill each other.
