Laz clears his throat. “Ursula Shipton wasn’t your great aunt. She was your ancestor from over five hundred years ago. The eldest witch on this planet until she passed.”
I gape. A few odd things here and there was one thing. This is something else entirely.
Laz goes on, seemingly oblivious to my inability to absorb any of this. “And with five hundred years of descendants, there are many people with a tenuous or direct connection to Shipton. But she chose you.”
“If she could choose anyone, why on earth would she name me?"
“We don’t know. What we know is that before she passed, she cast two spells.” Laz’s eyes flick to Conall, who’s still standing in front of me, staring at the edge of the desk, hands balled into fists.
“Spells?” I’m not sure I can take any more of this. I’m glad I’m still sitting on the edge of the desk, feet dangling, while they explain.
“The first,” Laz says, still watching Conall like he might snap, “was a transfer of contract from Shipton to her chosen successor. It was an unexpected move.”
“That one was pretty rude,” Amy chips in, sifting through books at her feet.
“It was more than fucking rude,” Conall growls. My eyes catch his, and all the softness from before is gone. “Faehounds protect a family line. But my forbearers traded that protection to Ursula Shipton alone in exchange for a magical favor. The contract was supposed to be severed upon her passing, but she found a loophole. One I’m sure she’d built in from the beginning.” He grits his teeth. His eyes flick from the desk to me, and what I find in them is a complicated mess of heat, anger, and resentment.
“A loophole she used to pass the contract onto you,” Amy finishes. I look from Amy to Laz and back to Conall, who has a muscle ticking in his jaw and is staring at the desk again as if he might flip it.
“What is the contract?” I ask.
“Protection,” Conall snaps, and I flinch. He eyes me, and some of the earlier softness comes back.
“Protection from what?”
“From her second spell,” Laz says. Not what I was expecting. “Ursula Shipton’s last act was a blood magic spell that disrupted the wards protecting this island, allowing in creatures that were never meant to be here. We're still not entirely sure what she did."
I reach automatically for my right arm, where the cut from the snake still sits. Conall’s eyes track the movement. “Why would she do that?”
“There were issues with the wards,” Conall admits, and Laz cuts him a sharp look.
“But this was not the way to handle them.” Laz says, voice strained.
“No, but it’s definitely what she was doing,” Amy says, turning to me. “She was vocal about adjusting the wards to make it easier for monsters in need to come here. She was also worried about the dwindling population. It didn’t make complete sense, though. She wasn’t very coherent at the end.”
“The point is,” Laz cuts in, steering us back to the main topic, “as her named successor, your blood is the only thing that might undo her spell. The monsters getting through don’t want that, so they’re hunting you. Which your aunt knew would happen. Ergo, the faehound protection.”
I stop myself from looking around the room just to make sure they couldn’t possibly be talking about someone else. “Monsters are hunting me?” I point to my chest, just in case it’s somehow unclear.
“Yes,” they all say, in disgusting unison.
“Weird things started happening when I got here, but I was fine before I came to this island. Maybe I should just leave.” Even as I say it, I know it isn’t true. There’d been that mysterious fire at the hotel with no explanation, and a rabid animal that almost bit me.
Laz confirms it with a shake of his head. “The monsters getting through our wards are dangerous. Some monsters never got past their feral roots and behave more like animals. They don’t even have human forms to change into. But outside the wards there’s no way to keep anyone safe from them.”
“So what’s the plan?” I look around at the three of them. The lumberjack wizard. The sarcastic shapeshifter. The grumpy hound. A ragtag group of heroes, but I guess I have to work with what I’ve got. I don't want to be monster food.
They look at each other with trepidation. My heart sinks. “There is a plan, right?”
Laz clears his throat. “The plan is that Conall keeps a closer eye on you. He thought he could do it from a distance, a perimeter, but that’s proved nearly deadly. I continue looking for the exact spell Shipton used. Once I find it, we use your blood to undo it.”
“Wait.” I hold up a hand. “Rewind. What do you mean by a closer eye? How close?”
Conall
The cottage is small and clearly made for one person. Ivy glares at me from the bottom of the stairs. She’s given me a brusque tour. Back at Laz’s, she’d been adamant that I not be allowed inside her house, but when I explained the number of creatures I’d had to dispatch because they tried to kill her, she changed her tune.
“I’m still not sure I believe all of this,” she says.
