“We thought we had the animal magic covered. We had her.”
Grace was a person. Another animal witch?
“Bird,” she whispered; there was a Cooper’s hawk in the trees. It was the size of a football with beige and gray feathers. It wasn’t as big as an eagle, but the squeaky, nasal cry of a raptor would be enough.
“Bird,” she whispered again, ignoring the snake rampaging through her consciousness.
“Oh god, we’ve lost her.”
Asher gripped her hand. “We haven’t.”
Penn tried to protest as the hawk screamed.
The snake dove, seeking shelter, but ruthlessly, Penn left it nowhere to hide until the essence of a snake dove for somebody else, and Penn rolled away from Asher, the only one possible, until she felt a tearing in her magic and whimpered in pain as everyone screamed.
“Be gone,” Asher said implacably. He didn’t seem frightened at all.
She felt a slithering wisp of scales against her mind. If it went back to him…
“Got him!” someone said triumphantly.
Penn curled in the fetal position on her side in the dirt with a hole in her magic.
The spell was over. The intensity was over. The snake was gone.
She turned to see Moira holding a literal snake, black as night, twined around her arm with its head in her hand.
Frantically, she spun back and launched herself into Asher’s arms.
“You’re okay,” he whispered against her scalp.
“I’m okay, are you okay?”
The Circle broke up, and suddenly it was just a field full of random men and women.
“Are you—” she whispered through dry, cracked lips.
Asher met her eyes, and she felt the connection pulse between them, exhausted, shredded, but clean.
Her eyes landed back on the snake. “Is that?—”
Moira nodded happily. “Called it. European pit viper, also known as an asp.”
Quinn shook her head as she came up to them. “That thing is probably a couple thousand years old. You know that, right?”
“That is so cool,” Moira said.
Penn scanned the rest of the wolves. “Is it gone for you, too?”
They were clapping each other on the back and hugging each other. She blinked when she saw that Malcolm had tears flowing down his face.
“It’s gone,” Malcolm said.
One of the wolves from the Abbott side clapped his hands. “Great, now it’ll finally be a fair fight.”
“It’s gone completely,” Malcolm said.
“The wolf?” Penn whispered.
