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“Kind of. My aunt is the official scribe.” That was part of it, but she shied away from the real reason.
Kathleen rolled her eyes. “I haven’t been in a coven in decades. I forgot what they’re like. You know magic came before all our hierarchies and strictures?”
Goldie snorted. “So if I write meaningless swirls instead of letters, my spells will work just the same?”
“Meaningless, of course not. Butmeaningfulswirls? Have you tried it?” Kathleen asked. Goldie had tried to sound flippant, but the older woman took her seriously.
It had never occurred to Goldie before. Scribes were the coven historians. They wrote words down and read what old witches wrote. They channeled magic onto paper. That’s all they did.
She shook her head. That’s all her Aunt Barry did. She had precisely one example of a scribe.
Goldie took a deep breath, feeling the curious sensation of shame melting away for the first time in decades. Her magic wasn’t faulty. It existed long before writing.
“You see patterns, not words, my dear. My potions are the same. We take magic and turn it into order. How do you think I created those wards?”
Goldie’s jaw dropped. Aiden had said his mother had created them, but that fact hadn’t sunk in until now sitting in front of this compact woman. In her family, it took a Circle of thirteen witches to weave even the weakest ward.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“I made a lot of pots of every kind of brew under the sun. I still have to work through liquids, but you just have to be flexible about the details if you’re the only witch around.”
“I helped,” Aiden said, sounding like a much younger boy.
“You helped. Your brother helped. My husband helped. Did you know the wolves are made of our magic?”
“Yeah,” Goldie said, but she still couldn’t see how a couple of wolves and a witch made that swirling wall of protection. “Don’t rip it down.”
Something flared in Aiden’s eyes, and Kathleen tensed.
Goldie patted Aiden’s knee. “Nice doggy.”
Kathleen gaped at both of them. “He lets you do that?”
“The wolf likes her,” Aiden said.
“It doesn’t like anything,” Kathleen said.
Aiden shrugged. “It likes her.”
Goldie had found a man with a wolf who didn’t like anything—sounded about right.
“Don’t kill the wards,” she repeated. Her words had nothing to do with wolves or witches and everything to do with this witch’s life work: the wards she wove to protect her family. Goldie couldn’t bear to destroy them.
Wordlessly, Goldie pivoted to Aiden, unsure what she was asking.
“You could try,” he said, oh so casually.
She frowned. “Try what?”
“To open them. Don’t you read spells?”
She hiccuped and then bent over in a spurt of laughter. “On paper. I read spells on paper.”
“But you could see the wards last night.”
She stopped. Could she read the spell? His mother’s speech had given her hope.
“You could try,” he said.
