“I caught that scent when I finally got out of that basement away from those flowers,” I reply. “Since we no longer have those artifacts, what’s the point of this? Revenge?”
“Make us all sick with those flowers for what happened with that other Starling witch, for what happened with the wand? Maybe Eduardo didn’t make it.”
“But what would they do after we got sick and were all laid up?” Tyson asks.
“Good question,” Mase adds.
Riley’s jaw muscles bulge. “When they’re done over there, we’ll run it down with them.”
“What about Aphra?” Mason asks. “Why don’t we get her out here?”
“She’s staying at my house,” Tyson says. “Her daughter’s been sick, so Ivy gave them a guest room.”
“Should we be concerned?” I ask. “She’s a Starling.”
“Absolutely not,” Riley says at the same time as Bailey.
“Has Ronnie ever laid hands on her?” Mase pushes.
“Don’t think so,” Rye says with hesitation.
Me and Mason look at him.
Tyson says, “We’ll make sure.”
Then Bailey gasps, “Oh!”
We all watch as what looks like fireflies float up from all along the river, lifting, then divebombing into the cauldron. They’re coming from everywhere around us now. Thousands of tiny orange sparks from this side of the river, all heading for that cast iron pot. There are red and blue sparks in the air around Grey and around Erica.
It goes on for a few minutes before there’s no longer anything floating through the air. The orange glow from the contents of the cauldron is now a bright beacon. There were way too many.And they came from beyond the riverbank. They were definitely growing elsewhere in our village.
Erica, Ronnie, Danica, and Grey surround the cauldron at close range, hands joined, heads bowed.
A couple minutes pass and the glow burns out before Grey lifts a lid from the ground and sets it on top. The group of us go back to the town hall. It’s after ten o’clock now and the party will wrap up soon as Brody’s people have a big day ahead of them tomorrow. We decide to go in to have some food and say goodnight, ending the evening on a high note to give Brody our best wishes.
But I don’t like the feeling in my gut, and I know none of my council co alphas do either.
***
“I don’t think it’s over,” Bailey whispers to me in bed a few hours later.
We connected physically when we got back, me peeling that gold dress off her. It was slow, unhurried, gentle, and fucking awesome, but both of us are restless.
“I don’t think it is, either,” I say, sifting my fingers through her hair and pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “I don’t want you out of my sight until we know it is.”
“I don’t think it’s Aphra. I’ve been thinking on what happened after Anya phoned Alta. About the things she said upstairs to those guys. They were arguing. Just before they left, I heard Alta say,arcano. She also saidgrotta. I also remembered the wordcascatasomewhere in there. I suspected they were speaking Italian and I remembered those words so looked them up on a translator on my phone tonight and those words were for sure about our village, the word waterfall, and the word cave. I knewby their tones as they were arguing that the one creepy guy was upset that their plan was thwarted, and I don’t remember the order of the words she said, but I’m thinking what she said was around her having a solution to the problem of not getting the wand.”
The cave behind the falls is a sacred place. It’s where the Young coven called upon magic to form our bonds in the council way back whenever it was decided we’d be led by a group instead of one alpha.
We’ve always had important conversations there for privacy. It’s the council’s space. The cave walls house layers of crystals. We’ve always known there’s special magic there.
“She also said if we tried to retaliate for her taking us like that, she knows more magic than the Youngs do. Called Erica and Grey wet behind the ears.”
“We haven’t retaliated,” I say. “And we should. The Young coven said they thought it should be reported to the SCC. We’ve been occupied so I don’t know if that was done or if anything came of it.”
And now I’m a little pissed, because why didn’t I make sure something was done? I know why and I can’t let myself dwell on it. My head was elsewhere. And if I do let myself dwell for another second, she’ll feel it. I need to keep a clear head now, eyes open, senses on alert.
“Regardless, I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she says. “And I can tell you don’t either.’