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Damon had his arms crossed over his chest, his expression wary. “Yeah. They brought the fight to us. We didn’t ask for it.”
“You simply being here implicates us, you know,” Aunt Irene said to me, ignoring the guys.
“She’s our niece,” Aunt Ginny protested. “We owe her at least this much.”
“We don’t even know the girl.” Irene looked at me. “I’m just stating the facts. You dropped into our lives out of nowhere.”
My stomach balled into a knot, but I managed to nod. “I understand. I wish I hadn’t needed to impose like this.”
“It’s fine,” Ginny said. She raised her chin. “You don’t have to get involved, Irene. You didn’t have to come over at all. I kept you out of it because I didn’t think you’d like the risks, and obviously I had the right idea.”
“The whole family assumes the risk even if you don’t tell me,” Irene said. She sighed, looking weary for a fleeting moment before she raised her chin again. “Here we are now. Let’s see what we can make of this muddle. Rose, perhaps you can—”
A new ring of the doorbell cut her off. We all glanced at each other. “Are you expecting anyone?” Irene asked Ginny.
My younger aunt shook her head. “And you’re already here, so that eliminates the usual random visitor.”
Irene glowered at her. Naomi got to her feet. “Well, we’d better answer it.”
Ginny sucked in a breath. She motioned to her daughter. “We can’t take any chances. Take Rose and her consorts upstairs—show them the trap door to the attic. If you have to hide anywhere, that’s the best place. There’s a dormer that’ll let you out onto the roof if it comes to that. And Naomi, you can run interference to give them time if anyone comes upstairs.”
“You’re assuming it’s the Assembly,” Naomi said.
“I just know it could be. Go on.”
She hustled toward the front hall as the six of us hurried after my cousin up the stairs. Naomi opened the door to what I took to be Aunt Ginny and Uncle Owen’s master bedroom. At the back of the walk-in closet, a small square was etched in the ceiling.
“You have to pull over the chest and climb up on it to get up there,” Naomi said. She grasped the edge of the chest and tugged. “Here, I’ll get it in place now. Stella and I used to goof around up there as kids. Not much to see except a few pieces of old furniture and some boxes of stuff we never use.” She looked at me, her eyes worried. “You’ll be okay?”
“We don’t even know if it’s someone looking for us at the door,” I said, but my gut was still tight.
“I guess we’d better find out. We might be able to hear them from the landing. But as soon as it sounds like they might come up, you’d better head for the attic. Come on.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Seth
We sat in a cluster near the top of the stairs, ears perked as voices carried from the first floor.
“Well, it’s certainly a surprise to be having a couple members of the Assembly dropping by out of the blue,” Rose’s Aunt Ginny was saying with a quick laugh I was relieved to hear didn’t sound forced.
She was purposefully calling attention to her visitors’ status for our benefit, I realized. Knowing we were probably listening in to determine the danger. A flicker of gratitude slipped through me. I hadn’t been all that impressed by Rose’s witching society so far, but this part of her family seemed like good people.
“I apologize for the intrusion,” a male voice said in return. Rose stiffened beside me. I recognized it too. It was the man who’d confronted us in Manhattan, the one with the beakish nose and the red-brown hair, for the “parlay” that had quickly devolved into a gun fight thanks to Damon.
Well, and thanks to the Assembly guy too. Maybe I wasn’t keen on Damon’s over-the-top methods, but I could see why he’d felt he needed to act.
We all did whatever we could to protect Rose in our own ways.
All six of us and Rose’s cousin Naomi kept our lips tightly shut as the voices traveled from the hall into one of the side rooms below. “I’m afraid it’s a bit of a delicate matter,” the Assembly guy was saying. “I’ll try not to take too much of your time.”
“We’d just finished up breakfast anyway,” Ginny said. “Did you need to speak to Owen too? He’s about to head into the office.”
“No, no, that’s all right. I see your sister has come over. Perhaps she’s already informed you of some of our concerns. I also wanted to ask you about a major magicking we noticed emanating from your property last night.”
Naomi’s mouth tightened. “Don’t worry,” she murmured to Rose. “Mom already thought of a thorough explanation for the spell we cast to stop them from noticingyourmagicking.” But a thread of worry wove through her words.
“Should we go up into the attic?” Rose asked.
