“You know what I mean.” Thistle leaned back on her haunches to study her work. “Why do you think he’s acting weird?”
I hesitated, briefly wondering if I should’ve left the topic for another time. It was too late now. The serious nature of our earlier conversation had stuck with me. “He’s afraid ... and he’s hiding something.”
Thistle’s eyebrows drew together. “What is he afraid of?”
“Dani. He believes she’ll turn on us.”
“I hate to break it to you, but I believe that too. I’m pretty sure Aunt Tillie does as well. If you’re gauging weirdness on that particular belief, you might be the odd witch out.”
“It’s not that I trust her,” I said hurriedly, moving to another spot so I could add a ward to the mix. We were trying to fill the woods with traps, something of a last resort should Dani lose her mind and decide to go on a rampage. The wards weren’t guaranteed to work because we couldn’t cover every spot, but I figured they were better than nothing.
“So why are you surprised he’s worried?” Thistle asked, her gaze drifting across the lake to the other campground. “Do you think we should do the same thing over there?”
I shrugged. “Maybe. We can’t do it tonight. If we decide it’s necessary, we’ll stop by in the morning before heading to town. The only way across is by canoe, and I’m far too stuffed from the s’mores to paddle.”
“You and me both.” Thistle turned back to me. “Bay, Landon is a weird guy. He once told Marcus his idea of the perfect day is you, him, a hammock, and a plate of bacon. He wasn’t joking. He was deadly earnest.”
“That’s my idea of a perfect day,” I admitted. “Well ... I don’t need the bacon. We might have to add some doughnuts to the mix.”
She smirked. “If Aunt Tillie makes him smell like baked goods, I will never stop laughing. That has the potential to be one of the funniest things ever.”
I didn’t disagree. “He really is acting odd,” I pressed. “I think ... I think there’s something on his mind he doesn’t want to tell me about.”
Thistle studied my face and then shrugged. “Like what?”
“You were going to call me crazy and then changed your mind, weren’t you?” I challenged, instantly suspicious.
She shrugged. “Your instincts have been right more than wrong the past few weeks. I figure you’ve earned the right to be paranoid if you want.”
“I’m not paranoid.”
“Then how is he acting odd?”
I debated and then plowed forward. “Last night I caught him in the kitchen whispering with Mom.”
Thistle waited a moment and then held out her hands. “And?”
“And they were whispering.”
“So what?”
Frustration bubbled up. “They acted like they weren’t having some secret conversation when I showed up. They tried to change the subject and distract me. They were obviously talking behind my back.”
“Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but everyone in this family gossips about one another,” Thistle argued. “That’s just the way we are.”
“I don’t gossip.”
She rolled her eyes. “Please. We spent the two weeks Clove was on her honeymoon debating how much weight she would put on during her pregnancy. Then we started a betting pool as to how whiny she’ll be during labor. If that’s not gossip, I don’t know what is.”
I balked. “We were worried about her. That conversation came from a place of love.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s true.”
“Oh, it is not.” Thistle lost all semblance of patience and planted her hands on her hips. “Nobody can live a life without secrets, Bay. Did it ever occur to you that Landon and Winnie were talking about Dani? I hate to break it to you, but everyone is worried about this situation. We’re all afraid that you’re putting yourself in danger by refusing to see the truth.”
“And what’s the truth?”
“That she’s beyond being saved. You see it but don’t believe it.”
“You’re right. I don’t believe it. I don’t see it either.” I gestured toward the fire. “Look at her now. She’s having a good time. She’s not being manipulative ... or threatening anyone ... or even acting surly. There’s a still a chance for her.”
The look Thistle shot me was full of pity. “Right now, she’s playing it up for their benefit because she thinks they’ll be easier to manipulate. They’re not magical. Therefore they’re nothing but pawns to her.
“She pushes boundaries with us because she wants to see how we’ll react,” she continued. “She’ll soon grow sick of pushing boundaries and decide to punch across them entirely. You need to prepare yourself for that.”
This was the second time in the same night I felt as if I was trapped in the world’s most uncomfortable conversation. “I have everything under control.”
She shook her head and looked away. “Until you’re willing to see the truth, this conversation is a waste. Landon is worried about you because of Dani. If you want him to stop having quiet conversations with your mother, don’t give him anything to worry about.”
I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead and fought to keep from starting an argument. I needed to vent, but if I started now things would spiral out of control. We needed to work together, not splinter. Dani would pick us off one by one if we didn’t stand united.
“I’ll think about what you said,” I promised after a beat. “I know you’re worried. I don’t want that. I don’t want any of you to worry.” I focused on the far back, narrowing my eyes when I caught a hint of movement. “I can’t give up on her yet. I’m doing the best that I can.”
“I know.” Thistle sounded sad. “It’s just ... when you can’t save her you’re going to blame yourself. This was never your responsibility.”
“You sound like Landon.”
“Yeah, well for once I don’t have a problem with that. He loves you to distraction. He wants what’s best for you. He sees you going down a dangerous road. He has to fight to protect you the only way he knows.
“Sure, we would all prefer that our boyfriends not talk to our mothers because it freaks us out, but he is trying to be the best man he can be — for you,” she continued. “You can’t hold the fact that he loves you against him. He wants you safe. That’s not an unreasonable demand.”
“I know.” I felt inexplicably sad. She was standing up for Landon, something she would never do unless she was absolutely terrified. I’d created an untenable position for my family and I didn’t know how to fix the problem. “I’ll think about what you said.”
“That’s all I ask.” She patted my shoulder and then moved on to set more wards. “Let’s finish this up. My stomach is upset from too many s’mores.”
That made two of us, but there was more where I was concerned. I could feel eyes watching me from a distance and the feeling drew my gaze to the other side of the lake. “Yeah.”
“You shouldn’t have let me eat so many.”
“I’ll try to wrestle you down and take the s’more away next time,” I said dryly, my gaze still on the ghost watching us from beyond the water. The figure was too far away, but I had no doubt it was Valerie. She was still hanging around the woods. That couldn’t be good.
“I’ll hit this side of the trees with another three wards,” she offered. “You do the other side. Then we’ll head back together.”
Valerie’s appearance made me uneasy, but I nodded. “Sounds like a plan.”
Twelve
It was almost ten o’clock when we decided to call it a night.
“You should hit the hay,” I instructed Dani. “You need your rest.”
Her expression was dark when she turned her gaze from Marcus to me. “I’m not a little kid. I don’t need a bedtime.”
“Maybe not,” Landon replied, “but we’re old. We’re going to bed ... which means you have to go to bed.”
“Since when is that the rule?” Dani
argued. “When Hazel is here, I’m allowed to stay up as long as I want. In fact, there are times she heads out for walks and I get tired of waiting for her so I turn in before she even gets back.”
I frowned. That was the second time Dani had brought up Hazel’s penchant for taking walks. I couldn’t decide if she was trying to get us to turn on Hazel, or if she was simply speaking because she liked the sound of her own voice. One possibility was more troubling than the other.
“Well, Hazel isn’t here tonight,” I pointed out, calm. “She’s taking a break because she’s earned it.”
“Maybe I want a break.” Obstinate to the point of being obnoxious, Dani folded her arms across her chest and pinned me with an unreadable look. “I’m an adult. I don’t have a bedtime. Only babies have to go to bed at a certain time.”
She was testing me. She wanted to see exactly how far I could be pushed. It was time to lay down the law.
“Last time I checked, babies didn’t work with outside forces to kill their fathers,” I replied evenly. “Babies don’t plot against their mothers. That means babies deserve more freedom than you.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Thistle hedged. “I’ll bet there are evil babies out there who would totally kill their parents if they could. Like when Ted Bundy was a baby, I bet he still had murderous urges. You can’t say all babies are innocent.”
I pinned her with a look. “Is that really the point right now?”
She shrugged. “I was just saying that babies can be evil.”
“She’s right,” Aunt Tillie offered from her spot next to the fire. She looked as if she was one s’more away from lapsing into a sugar coma. “When Thistle was a baby, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was evil. I tried telling Twila, but she refused to listen. Now we’re stuck with her.”
Thistle narrowed her eyes. “I’m not a baby any longer. I can sneak up on you and smother you with your sleeping bag the second you fall asleep and nobody will be the wiser. They’ll assume that you just died in your sleep because you’re so old.”
Aunt Tillie’s eyes were glittery slits. “You’re on my list.”
The argument might’ve been entertaining under different circumstances, but there was nothing amusing about the interplay now, especially when I was trying to exert control over Dani.
“You made poor choices, Dani,” I offered. “That’s the point. Until you can prove that you’re over making those choices, you have to bend to our will. That means it’s time for bed.”
“And what if I don’t?” Dani puffed out her chest, defiant.
“Then I guess we’ll have to make some hard choices.” I kept my voice even despite the fact that I was suddenly feeling weak in the knees. “Is that what you want?”
For a moment, I thought she was going to push the matter. At the last second, though, she shrugged and wrinkled her nose. “Oh, don’t be a big whiner. I was just saying that I don’t want to go to bed. If you’re going to make a thing out of it, I guess I’ll go in there and read or something. There’s no reason to fight.”
“It’s not about a fight,” I replied. “We’re tired. It’s been a long day. We all have jobs to report to tomorrow.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dani grumbled, slowly getting to her feet. “I get it. I don’t have a job. I’m not important.”
“If you weren’t important, we wouldn’t be here,” Landon argued. “But you need to start putting in some effort. If you’re unwilling to meet us halfway we will start questioning whether we should even make the effort.”
“Is that supposed to frighten me?” Dani demanded. “Are you going to threaten me with freedom because I’m no longer worth the effort?”
Landon didn’t shift his gaze. “Not freedom. That’s not on the table.”
She initially looked taken aback but recovered quickly. “I’m going to bed. I’ll be a good little girl.”
Landon’s expression never wavered. “We’re not congratulating you for doing the right thing. You need to want to do it. That’s why we’re here.”
“Great.” Dani scuffed the soles of her shoes against the ground on her way to the cabin. “I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”
“That’s the plan,” I agreed, watching her slink off with some level of trepidation. “We should set wards around where we’re sleeping,” I said once I was certain she was out of earshot. “You know, just to be on the safe side.”
“I’ve already handled that,” Aunt Tillie said. “As long as we stay in the square around the fire, we’re safe. I marked the lines with little stakes.”
I looked at the wooden pegs. “That’s smart, but what if someone has to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?”
“I guess that means you’ll have to go before then and hunker down for the night,” Aunt Tillie said. “That means no funny business tonight.”
“Oh, and I was looking forward to dressing up like a clown and honking Bay’s horn all night,” Landon drawled, earning a glare from Aunt Tillie.
“We’ve got it,” I reassured her before an argument erupted. “We’ll make our bathroom runs before bed.”
“Should we keep watch?” Marcus asked. He might not have understood all the hoopla surrounding Dani, but he was a master at reading moods. He knew Dani made everyone edgy, and that made him wary. “That way, at least we’ll know what she’s doing.”
“She’s warded in the cabin,” Aunt Tillie argued. “She can’t leave until we say it’s okay. She’s in there for the night. There’s no reason for anybody to miss sleep.”
“Fair enough.” Marcus bobbed his head before collecting the sleeping bags we’d stacked near the picnic table. “I guess that means it’s time for bathroom breaks and then bed.”
“I look forward to sleeping under the stars with you,” Landon teased, lowering his forehead to mine. “There’s little I like more than cuddling in the same sleeping bag with you.”
“It will be nice,” I agreed, faltering when I realized Aunt Tillie was watching us with a dour expression. “Not that we’re going to do anything,” I hurriedly added. “It’s going to be a quiet night, involving just sleeping.”
“It had better be,” Aunt Tillie warned, shaking a finger. “If I hear any hanky-panky, you’ll be dealing with Mulder and Scully.”
“Why Mulder and Scully?” I asked after realizing she was naming the fists she was holding up.
“She’s been watching old reruns of The X-Files,” Thistle said. “I caught her a few days ago. She was explaining to Mulder through the television what he was doing wrong. When I asked why she watching it, she said she was exploring ways to take down ‘The Man’ from the inside.” Her gaze was pointed when it landed on Landon. “If I were you, I’d be afraid.”
Landon was blasé. “And somehow I think I’ll survive. Come on, Bay. It’s bedtime. I’m ready to pass out and put this day behind us.”
He wasn’t the only one.
I THOUGHT FOR A FEW SECONDS that the screaming I woke to was part of a dream. Landon and I had zipped our sleeping bags together so we could sleep wrapped around one another. His jerk swiftly brought me back to reality.
“What is that?” Thistle asked, jerking up her head.
“It’s coming from across the lake,” Landon replied, glancing around the campground. His gaze immediately went to the cabin, where he sought out Dani. She stood in the window, seemingly intrigued, but didn’t move to exit the cabin. She couldn’t without permission from one of us. That’s the way the wards were set up.
“It’s Heather’s house,” I said, rolling out of the sleeping bag and searching for my shoes. “It sounds like she’s in trouble.”
“It’s probably faster to drive over there, right?” Marcus asked. He was much more alert than Thistle. “It will take too long to go by canoe.”
I shifted my eyes to Aunt Tillie, who was already heading toward the shore. “Not necessarily.” I glanced around the campground. “We can’t take Dani with us and we can’t leave her her
e without someone to release her should it become necessary.”
Marcus hesitated. “You want it to be me, don’t you?”
“I think we might need as many magical people as we can get,” I offered, apologetic. “Also, Landon has a badge if it becomes necessary.”
“We’re wasting time,” Aunt Tillie barked. She was already using her magic to push one of the canoes into the water.
“Maybe you should stay with Marcus,” Landon suggested to Aunt Tillie. “We can cross the lake faster without you.”
Aunt Tillie turned haughty. “Except you need me to power the canoe. Thistle and Bay don’t know the right kind of magic. Do you want to know why? They spent their lives as dabblers. They’ve only recently shown interest in becoming a true witch.”
“Great story,” Landon drawled. “We still need to get across that lake fast.”
“Do you believe this guy?” She turned to me, incredulous. “I’m going to save the day. He’s the one who will slow us down. And who, may I ask, is being threatened?”
I was already tired of the bickering. “We need to go.” I hesitated before fixing Marcus with an apologetic look. “I am sorry, but we need someone to stay here in case something goes wrong.”
He nodded without voicing a word of argument. “Just keep me posted.” He leaned over and gave Thistle a quick kiss. “Be careful. Don’t get in any trouble.”
“I’m with Bay and Aunt Tillie,” Thistle pointed out. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“You don’t really want me to answer that, do you?”
AUNT TILLIE USED HER MAGICAL PROPULSION SPELL and we were across the lake in four minutes. We went so fast, in fact, that I felt mildly sick to my stomach when we beached on the opposite shore.
“Stick close to me,” Landon hissed.
“Maybe you should stick close to me,” Aunt Tillie countered.
“I’m the FBI agent,” he fired back.
“And I’m the witch.”
I ignored both of them and started for the house. The closer we got to Heather’s mansion, the sicker I felt. Something was terribly wrong on this side of the lake, and I felt that even before the screams had abruptly stopped during our trip across the lake.
To Love a Witch Page 12
