CASSANDRA WILLOWSTONE
The bonfire burned bright and hot.
In a clearing deep in the forest, I stood alone on the dais, swaying to drumbeats. I wore a silky white robe, the material draped on my body.
Such a thin barrier between hiding and being seen.
Soon I would be naked.
The male drummers were on the right side, facing the bonfire, their shirtless bodies sweating as they used strong, calloused hands to create a driving rhythm.
I felt light-headed, and my body electrified. Above us purple and gray clouds gathered. Thunder boomed.
They arrived.
The brothers.
The triplets.
I knew them. Not now. Not here. Earlier.
Puppies?
Running in a field pouncing on each other. Barking and nipping.
Playing.
My heart ached.
I lost something. No, everything.
But they were here.
They were mine.
Werewolves.
The drummers stilled, the last drumbeat echoing into the full-moon night. Not a single clan member standing on the other side of the flames made a sound. Only the crackling of burning wood interrupted the eerie silence.
Then a werewolf howled.
And another.
And one more.
Together the howls blended together.
Homecoming.
***|***|***|***|***
CASSANDRA WILLOWSTONE
I leaned against the butcher-block countertop and looked longingly at the coffee maker. "So close," I said. "And yet… never the twain shall meet."
I really needed coffee after The Dream. Foreboding made nausea roil in my stomach. Premonition was not one of my gifts, but The Dream sure felt like precognition.
Don't think about it. You have other worries.
"You left the belladonna on the counter!" I yelled.
My younger twin sisters, April and May, didn't respond. They were eighteen, so technically they were considered adults. Um, yeah. That was only true about eighty percent of the time.
The other twenty percent?
They did things like… oh, leaving belladonna spilled on a cutting board along with a silver knife, which indicated spellcasting intentions.
Since I happened to know they were not studying hexes that included belladonna as an ingredient, I could only surmise they were otherwise experimenting. They were casting spells, all right.
The trouble-making kind.
Grrr. I couldn't spend precious minutes making delicious, wake-me-up-please java because I had to figure out what mischief my sisters were creating.
"April!" I yelled. "May!"
The silence was deafening.
Ugh.
I scooped the dried leaves and berries back into the jar labeled "Belladonna – Do Not Leave Open Because Grumbler Will Eat It." I clamped on the lid and slid the container back into the glass-paned cabinet with its neat white trim.
Our kitchen had been created with witches in mind—so we had plenty of cabinetry for food, dishes, and spellcasting equipment. The house was 170-years-old, so there were a few modern upgrades, such as the stainless steel fridge and dishwasher. But aside from fresh paint every few years, the kitchen looked nearly the same as it had when it was first built.
The entire two-story Queen Anne style house was like that. Old mixed with new. Antique furniture and family heirlooms sharing space with modern conveniences like computers and televisions.
All I really wanted was coffee and to start this morning with a little peace and quiet. Ahahahaha. That was not happening. I needed to find the twins before something disappeared or exploded.
I wiped down the cutting board, put it into the sink for later scrubbing, and marched into the living room. Other than the usual spellbooks and fashion magazines scattered on the coffee table—and cereal bowls left on the end tables, sigh—nothing much had been disturbed in the room since last night. Unless my sisters were hiding in the stone hearth that was big enough to fit both of them, then they weren't downstairs.
They weren't upstairs, either. I'd gotten out of bed fifteen minutes ago and found the second floor empty. I hadn't even changed out of my pajamas before coming down for coffee. Instead of brewing myself some caffeine bliss and indulging in the homemade jasmine and honey creamer I'd whipped up last night, I found evidence my sisters were up to no good.
Argh. They specialized in up-to-no-good activities.
For example, when they were eleven years old, in an effort to produce a batch of cotton candy, they used their magic in the living room.
They turned everything pink. The walls. The ceiling. The fireplace. All of the furniture—ah, except for my great-great-great-great-grandmother's Hepplewhite mahogany hutch, which held our family's antique collection of tea sets. That disappeared.
And hasn't been seen since.
I was able to return the living room to its original status. But no matter what spells I used to locate the hutch, I never found it. And it has not, thus far, re-appeared.
Unfortunately, I'd been unable to rid the room of the sweet sugary scent my sisters managed to conjure when they'd cast the cotton-candy spell. It took about two years to fade completely.
Good times.
I poked my head in the study, looking around at the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and oversized desk with its massive leather chair.
This had been my father's study—and before that, my grandfather's, and so on and so forth. In other words, this room had been created for the Willowstone males. It smelled like pipe tobacco and orange peels. Always had. It was a scent I associated with safety and comfort.
Sometimes, when I felt especially flattened by life, I would curl up in the office chair, close my eyes, and inhale that fragrance. I knew it was silly for a twenty-three-year-old woman to pretend her father might just stroll through the door and fix everything wrong in her life.
The red velvet wingback chairs in front of the unlit fireplace did not hold two studious witches. I should've known. It was too quiet. If April and May weren't in the house, then they were outside.
Let them be doing something productive, I prayed. Like picking herbs or cutting fresh flowers or tending to the vegetable garden.
"Meow." How are you, mistress?
"Coffee-less," I said as I looked down at the large calico cat winding around my legs. My familiar was a beautiful kitty with white, black, and orange patches and big green eyes.
Only the witch bonded to the familiar could converse with it. Everyone else heard meowing, but I heard her words, too. Grumbler used telepathy to convey her thoughts to me.
"Grumbler, do you know where the twins are?"