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“I know you’re not, but maybe we should be a bit more cautious. Maybe we should be…content.” He peered at her in the gloom.
“Content?” They’d had this discussion before. As far as she was concerned, Crawford had a lack of ambition. He was always the first to volunteer when it was about rituals and sex, but in other areas he could be lazy. “You’d be happy to potter along like the Abernathy coven, I suppose, with their craft shops and their nursing jobs, using their other powers for local do-gooding?”
“Who are we to criticize the way the neighboring covens function?” His eyebrows were drawn down.
She gave a derisive laugh.
“This is important, yes,” he added, “it’s a test of what we can achieve as a coven. But do you ever stop to think about the fact it’s tantamount to murder?”
She folded her arms across her chest. “Zoë won’t be dead, she’ll just be…different.”
“A hell of a lot different,” he muttered.
“Most activities associated with witchcraft would be seen as illegal by normal folk.”
“Yes, so would breaking an employee’s arm.”
“Isla deserved it. Besides, he healed her the next day.”
“She was in agony all night. None of us had the power to do anything about it except him, and he ignored her.”
“He was teaching her a lesson.”
Crawford shook his head.
“Don’t get all righteous on me now, Crawford, I need to be focused on my task.”
He folded his arms across his chest, but didn’t respond.
Clouds flitted across the night sky. When the moon was obscured, she took her opportunity to end the discussion, and kissed his cheek, waving him off as she darted along the street.
Outside the door, she paused and made sure he was gone, and then inserted the key into the door. She crept inside, shutting the door quietly behind her. The cottage was in darkness, and she had the annoying feeling that Ms. Zoë Daniels was not where she was supposed to be. That wasn’t much good to her, when she was about to try to cast a binding spell on her while she slept. Crawford seemed convinced that she was going to stay around, but that would be his ego talking. By all accounts she’d been responsive to him, but Elspeth had caught sight of her stomping off across the cliff path that afternoon and wasn’t so easily convinced. The only way to be sure was to bind her to the house, much as Annabel was.
Pausing in the hallway, she took note of the amount of psychic energy in the cottage. Putting her hand to the wall, she felt it racing across the surfaces. Her hands glowed, the energy throbbing in her veins. She shivered with delight but pressed on, eager to get her job done. She’d never seen the cottage quite so active, and it was a good sign.
She crept up the stairs, and drew to a sharp halt when she walked through an area of intense sexual energy on the staircase. It plumed inside her pussy, instantly making her want to bump and grind. Glancing around the spot she could see the phosphorus magic lingering in the atmosphere. Lust mounted inside her. She pressed on. If she didn’t have something else on her mind, she’d have stopped to take advantage, but she could see to that later.
As suspected, there was no one in the bedroom. The bed was unmade and clothes were strewn across the floor from a suitcase. Where was Zoë? Had she seen the ghost and been spooked off? Elspeth already knew she hadn’t moved to the B&B, nor she was staying at the Silver Birch. Her car was still outside. There was only one possibility—she was next door with that bastard, Murdoch.
She had to be sure, which was annoying. She didn’t even want to see Grayson Murdoch again so soon, let alone find out what he was up to with their guest. She was still smarting over the way he had humiliated her this morning. His attitude set her teeth on edge. How dare he come onto their patch and act that way? Luckily his boundary spell only covered the four walls, not the patch of garden at the back of his house. Or at least it hadn’t done so the last time she’d climbed over the wall into his garden to get a peek through the window. Cain had sent her to find out what he was up to. Working on his laptop, mostly. There was also the fact that he looked so bloody hot strolling around stripped to the waist and barefoot. That alone kept her checking on him whenever he stayed here. If it weren’t for the fact that he was the enemy, she’d have been interested for an entirely different reason.
Before she left, she picked up a bra that was lying near the suitcase and stuffed it into her pocket to use in a stronger binding spell. Then she tried to sense Annabel’s spirit. The sexual energy on the stairs might be from one of her manifestations, or maybe their holidaymaker had a wild side. If that were the case, Zoë was even more appropriate a host for Annabel than they had originally thought.
Elspeth pursed her lips, wondering—as she often did—why it was that Annabel had never appeared to her. With them being bloodline and all, it seemed like it would be a given. That hadn’t proved to be the case, which was disappointing—not to mention an embarrassment in front of the rest of the coven, several of whom sniggered at her behind her back about it. There had to be a good reason for it, and she certainly didn’t want to probe into the subject too much in case Cain suggested that she herself become the vessel for Annabel’s resurgence. There were a couple of times when she knew he’d been considering it—something about the way he looked at her gave it away—and she’d become wary. Dabbling in necromancy held its own thrill, and having Annabel around would liven things up no end, but she wasn’t prepared to give up her own life for Annabel’s. So, she’d proved herself indispensable in her own right and Cain had shifted his effort to acquiring someone with no connections. A blank slate, as he called it.
Retracing her path, she left the house and jogged back up Shore Lane until she came to a gap between the rows of houses. The alleyway that let down to the back gardens was dark and cobbled, but she knew it well. She passed by the walled gardens at the back of the houses, until she got to the creaking iron gate that led into the back of Her Haven. She skirted the garden furniture on the patio, peering over the wall at the house beyond. The lights at the back of Cornerstone were on. Using the ledges on the old bee bole as footrests she climbed up onto the wall between the two gardens, and then paused, squatting low, hands on the top of the wall for balance.
No boundary spell around the wall. Nettles grew tall against the other side of the wall, and they were even bigger than on her previous visits. Murdoch let them grow on purpose, she was sure of it. The rest of the garden was reasonably well tended, but the nettles were here to deter intruders. There was no other way into the garden, though. It was completely walled. She looked up at the bedroom. There was a dim light there, but there was also light on the ground floor, and that one was much more interesting to her because even from the garden she could see that it shifted and pulsated with energy.
Tensing, she levered off her perch and sprang out from the wall, aiming at the ground beyond the weeds. She made contact with the grass, but rolled backward on landing. Nettles brushed the back of her neck. Cursing Murdoch, she clambered to her feet. As she did, she heard a low growl and a hiss emerged from the border shrubs.
Light glinted off a pair of feral eyes.
“Shit.” Ground level was covered by a new boundary spell. She wasn’t willing to leave, but she had to get back up to wall level, and fast. Darting across the small lawn, she clambered onto the coalbunker that stood against the whitewashed wall of the cottage.
“Please, please,” she chanted, willing the spot to be out of the boundary. Fuck knows what that bastard had lined up for intruders. What she could see of it looked like a very large version of that cat of his, and it was prowling around beneath the coalbunker, ears back, hissing. Her heart thu
ndered in her chest and she watched as the thing prowled and then sat down, lazily washing itself right under the spot where she perched.
