Sisters Of The Craft: Heat Of The Moment Part 47

"You're good as new."

"Okay." He sat up, leaned over, kissed me quick. "Thanks."

"You can go back now."

"Back?" he echoed as if I were speaking in tongues.

"To the Marines."

He snorted. "Right."

"You said if you don't do your job, people die."

"If I leave, you might die. I can't risk that. The only people I care about, Becca, is you."

"But-"

"You think I don't know what you're doing? You're trying to get me out of harm's way."

"In Afghanistan?"

"Probably safer."

Definitely safer. "You should-" I began.

"Marry you. I know."

"Wait. What?"

"I'm not leaving you again. Ever. So we should probably get married. Okay?" he asked.

"What about Reggie?"

"He can get his own girl. I think he kind of likes your mom."

I thought he kind of liked her too, but- "She's only got eyes for Henry."

"Poor guy." Owen sighed. "Reggie's going to have to go back."

"Why?"

"He belongs to the Marines. He was trained to sniff bombs. He's really, really good at it, and it's what he loves to do."

"He'll miss you."

And Pru. But right now it was probably best if Reggie was gone so that he stopped growling at corners after magazines smacked him on the nose of their own accord. People would start to talk. Which would cause any Venatores Mali that might be lurking about to become suspicious. We needed to keep a low profile.

"I'll miss him too," Owen said. "I'll put in a request; when he's retired, he can live with us."

"Maybe by then this will all be over."

Owen lay back and pulled me against his chest. "Once it is over, we can come back to Three Harbors."

"We don't have to."

"I don't mind, and I think there's a couple people here who would be great to work with."

"Doing what?"

"Breeding, raising, and training MWDs."

"That would be great!"

"Billy knows a lot about dog breeding."

"Billy the prophet? He does."

"And that kid who works for you ... Joaquin-"

"He doesn't any more." Mainly because my clinic was rubble, not to mention we were going on the road. Joaquin had agreed to take Grenade-at least until we got back.

"Then he'll be glad for a job."

"How long do you think it's going to take us to end this?"

"No idea, but we'll do it. Together. You, me, the others." His arm tightened around me. "Roland isn't going to know what hit him."

I was glad Owen was confident. I was nervous. Two untutored witches, a ghost, and a wolf against an ancient evil witch hunter and countless serial-killing cronies. Even with the FBI, a voodoo priestess, and whatever Edward was- "The odds suck."

"Not once we find your third sister."

"How are we going to do that?"

A knock came at the door.

"Better put on some clothes," Owen said. "I called a meeting. First order of business, a plan to find that sister. Second order of business-figuring out what those mean."

He pointed at the athame with the wolf head carved into the handle, which lay on the kitchen table next to the necklace we'd found around Mistress June's neck. A pentacle similar to the one Raye wore, which according to Raye had been taken from one of the witches June had killed in New Bergin. We had no idea why.

However, when we'd put the athame, the pentacle, and Raye's wand on the same table, the legs had begun to vibrate so hard we'd been afraid the thing might self-combust. Raye had s.n.a.t.c.hed up her wand; the table had stilled, and she had taken the wand with her when she went back to her own room.

The knock came again. I leaped out of bed and grabbed the nearest pair of pants. Owen did the same.

"And here I was afraid you'd miss the Marines, that you'd need more than ... this."

I tugged a T-s.h.i.+rt over my head, and when my face popped out, Owen stood right in front of me. He drew me close and set his forehead against mine.

"All I need is you," he whispered, and when he kissed me I knew that he was right.

Read on for an excerpt from the next book in Lori Handeland's Sisters of the Craft series Smoke on the Water Available August 2015 from St. Martin's Paperbacks

Chapter 1.

"Do I know you?"

I glanced up from the book I wasn't reading to find one of the inmates-I mean patients-of the Northern Wisconsin Mental Health Facility hovering at the edge of my personal s.p.a.ce. In a place like this, people learn quickly not to get too close to anyone without warning them first. Bad things happen, and they happen quickly.

"I'm Willow," I said. "Willow Black. But I don't think we've met."

I'd seen the woman around. The others called her "Crazy Mary," which was very pot/kettle in my opinion, but no one had asked me. She was heroin addict skinny. I gathered she'd done a lot of "self-medicating" on the outside. A lot of nutty people did. When you saw things, heard things that no one else did, you'd think you'd be more inclined not to take drugs that might make you see and hear more. The opposite was true. Trust me.

"Mary McAllister." She shuffled her feet, glanced at the empty chair next to me, and I nodded. She scurried over, sat, smiled.

She still had all of her teeth, which was an accomplishment around here. I had mine, sure, but I was only twenty-seven. Mary had to be ... it was hard to say. I'd take a stab and guess between thirty and sixty. Give or take a few years.

Mary looked good today. Or as good as she got. Her long, wavy graying hair had been brushed free of tangles. She'd had a shower recently, but she still wore the tan jumpsuit issued to problem patients. The more you behaved like a human being, the more you were allowed to dress like one. I, myself, was wearing hot pink scrub pants and a white T-s.h.i.+rt that read NWMHF, which placed me somewhere between Mary's solitary confinement jumpsuit and the jeans and Green Bay Packer designer-wear of the majority of the visitors. Not that I ever had any visitors, but I'd observed others.

Mary had been incarcerated a while. The powers that be didn't like to call us "incarcerated," but a spade was a spade in my opinion, and if you couldn't waltz out the front door whenever you wanted to, I considered that "incarcerated." Mary spent a lot of time either doped into zombie-ville or locked away from everyone else. She was schizophrenic, but around here that was more the norm than not. Sadly, Mary was on the violent side of the spectrum-hence the doping and the locking away.

"Willow." She rubbed her head. "I don't think that's right."

"What isn't right?"

"Your name isn't Willow."

"It is."

"No!" The word was too loud. She hunched her shoulders, glanced around to make sure none of the orderlies were headed our way. None were.

Yet.

"It hasn't always been. It was something else. Before."

Very few people knew about my past, or lack of it. Mary McAllister certainly shouldn't. Unless she was part of it.

I'd been abandoned at birth. Found beneath a black willow tree on the banks of a babbling brook. Lucky for me it had been July, and there'd been a huge town picnic going on nearby. I'd been found almost immediately, or I'd have been dead.

I'd often wondered why the State of Wisconsin hadn't named me Brook instead of Willow, though I guess Brook Black is a bit of a tongue twister.

"Your hair was red." Mary leaned in close. "Your eyes were greenish-brown."

Mary might seem good today, but she was still talking crazy instead of truth. Even if I'd dyed my hair from red to blond, which I hadn't, I didn't think I could change greenish-brown eyes to blue, unless I wore super expensive contact lenses. As I didn't have enough money for new shoes, and putting anything near-never mind in-my eyes wigged me out, that hadn't happened either.

"You have me confused with someone else," I said. "That's okay. Happens to everyone."

Mary shook her head. But she didn't argue any more than that. The silence that descended went on so long, I nearly went back to my book.

"I know what you are."

I hadn't shared what I was with anyone, though I guess it wasn't a secret that I was here for the same reason Mary was.

"What am I?" I asked.

Might as well get the truth out in the open, although murderer was a bit harsh. The man hadn't actually died.

No thanks to me.

"A witch," Mary answered.

I laughed, but when her eyes narrowed I stopped. I'd been in here long enough, with people like her, to know better.

"Why would you say that?" Had I done something to her without realizing it? Or did she just think that I had?

"Because I'm one, too."

"When you say witch, you mean...?" I'd been thinking "b.i.t.c.h" but- Mary cackled like the Wicked Witch of the West.

Maybe not.

That interpretation made more sense. If Mary thought she was a witch, it followed that she'd think I was as well. Which meant everyone in here was a card-carrying broomstick rider-at least according to Mary.

"You see things," she continued, "then they happen."

Since becoming a resident of this facility, I'd told no one of what I saw when I looked into the water. I'd stopped insisting that those incidents would occur. I wanted to get out of here while I was still young. So how did Mary know about my visions?

"I don't understand what you mean," I lied.

There wasn't much that could be done about what was wrong with me. No amount of medication made the visions stop. Talking about them with my shrink certainly hadn't. Pretending I didn't have them was my only option, and I was getting better at it.

"You know any spells?" Mary lifted a bottle of water to her lips and sipped. The sun sparkled in it like a beacon. Images danced.

I closed my eyes, turned my head. "No."

"We'll have to find some."

"Find spells? How? Where?" I should have asked, Why? My first mistake.

The sound of water splas.h.i.+ng onto the floor made my eyes snap open. Second mistake.

The puddle on the ground at my feet reflected the ceiling tiles and the fluorescent lights for just an instant before I saw something that should not, could not, be reflected there.

A room with books, books, more books. I recognized the library here at the facility even before I saw myself at the center-green scrubs, blue s.h.i.+rt, bare feet. I was alone. On the floor lay a volume. The t.i.tle: Book of Shadows.