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She jumped into the driver’s seat and started the truck.
“There’s no road beyond the valley,” Kathleen said just before she closed the door.
“I’m not trying to head for the Cumberland Gap. Just far enough.”
“You remember the sign?”
Goldie nodded once.
The trailer shuddered again as the wolf inside threw himself at the door. It held.
“And if you miss the sign, you’ll ram right into the wards, so you literally can’t miss them.”
Goldie swallowed. She didn’t know as much about vehicles as she did about furniture, but this was not an inexpensive truck. “Got it.”
She floored it, already sorting through spells.
She drove fast along the tiny, curving track that led south through the valley, the wolf convulsing in the back. She didn’t know whether he was still trying to free himself, or if he was just getting knocked around by the crazy turns she was making.
“The magic, show me, so mote it be,” she muttered aloud. The spell fizzled, and she nearly screamed in frustration as she painstakingly wrote it out in her mind’s eye. She wasn’t going to miss these wards.
She caught a sparkle up ahead. She slammed on the brakes, and the truck and trailer jackknifed in the soft grass. She heard another thump. She may have preserved the truck, but she suspected the trailer was a goner.
Well, it was a worthy cause. Mostly.
She examined the wards stretching above her head. This was not where she and Aiden had entered. This was a bigger clearing where they could park vehicles like this one. She tried to tell herself to look for the pattern, and after a few frantic seconds, she could see where the spells overlapped. This was definitely an entrance, and it was definitely closed.
She jogged back along the trailer but leaped away from it when she heard a low growl beside her and saw teeth through one porthole much higher than she expected any teeth to be. The wolf was on its hind legs. She swallowed hard.
“You’re going to open those wards,” she said to the beast.
She marched to the nearest tree and snapped off a branch. She brought it back to the trailer and started drawing a circle. The circle was just for show. All her magic needed was written words in her head, but she was trying to play up the stereotypes most people had of witches.
She drew a star in the dirt within the circle and then deepened the lines, walking around and around her drawing.
“What the hell are you doing?” Buck asked. She ignored him, though everything in her relaxed when she realized he’d shifted back to human and there was no longer a giant beast looking over her shoulder. She knew he could switch back in a breath.
She hunched over and started mumbling. She tried to think of something intimidating, and all she could come up with wasMacbeth. “Double, double, toil and trouble. Fire burn and cauldron bubble, and something else menacing. I forget the rest. Eye of newt, and toad, and frogs. Strange dead bodies pulled from bogs.” As she chanted nonsensical things, in her mind’s eye she wrote,Sparkly, banging, chilling spree. Scare this wolf, so mote it be.
There was a reason she didn’t write down any of her actual spells. It was way too embarrassing.
Fortunately, this one got the job done. Strange colors, sparks, and bangs filled the air around the trailer.
Whip up the wind, so mote it be, she added spontaneously, and a burst of air hit her—and only her—right in the face.
She was really glad Kathleen had not come with her. She did not need a witness to this. No more improvisation.
Buck slammed his hand into the side of the trailer. “What the hell are you doing?”
She stepped carefully into the middle of her star and met the boy’s eyes. “I’m taking your wolf.”
The color left his face, and he convulsed against his prison.
“You can’t do that,” he said in a voice an octave higher than moments before.
“You know the old stories. Stay away from witches. They’ll take the pack. Your wolf is made of my magic. I want it back.”
“You can’t!” He sunk out of sight, but the fear that drenched his voice made him sound at least ten years younger.
