AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That the things a guy overhears in a witch-filled ashram aren’t like any place else.”
“Oh God,ashram?” Ithunkback against one of the boulders and fold my arms. “Not you too.”
“Hey.” He smirks. “When Kell’s right, she’s right.”
His repartee isn’t helping a millimeter of my focus. “Subject for a different time,” I grouse. “Unless you’ve really tromped all the way out here, seeking me out, just to share some cute anecdotes about my new friends?”
In reality, my new extended family—but that’s an assignment best delayed in conversations with him and Kell. Once they get to know everyone better, they’ll understand. I hope.
“It’d be great if you tell me theyarecute and nothing else,” he offers. “Because, to be honest, I’m not sure.”
“Why?”
He settles once more against the boulder across from me. “I couldn’t see them, of course. But I think there were three people talking. One of them was definitely Morgana. Hard not to place a voice that sounds like it can summon Excalibur out of a lake.”
“Right.” But grilling him about thewhoof the exchange feels less important than thewhat. “So Morgana and…whomever…I take it their subject wasn’t just the weather?”
“If it was, you know I would’ve tuned them out. But they weren’t exactly trilling about their bright-bright-sunshiny day. Usually that’s even more of a reason to notch down my frequency—until yours and Maximus’s names got stirred into their thunderheads.”
“Okay.” I use the tone more than the word, almost turning it into a question. “I mean, unless they were mapping out a plan to drive us into the wilderness and feed us to the coyotes…”
“No,” he interjects. “It wasn’t like that.”
“So, what was it like?”
“The exact opposite.”
I pull in a breath and make sure he sees. I’m trying to be the calming big sibling but have zero experience with this side of my brother. I have no idea how to read his Rorschach anymore.
“The opposite?” I ask. “In what way?”
“They all sounded…worried,” he finally offers. “But more than that. Protective, I guess? No. That doesn’t sound right either.”
“Why?” I step back and scrape my fingernails around opposite elbows. “I mean, was there additional context to the conversation? Could you pick out anything else?”
And what am I going to do if all he heard were the globby sound clumps?
When Jaden fills a long pause with nothing but a taut expression, I begin to suspect exactly that—to the point that even his next words bring me bizarre relief.
“Well, that’s where things got really wonked.”
“Wonked.” I examine his face, hoping the repetition will draw out more of his intention. Not happening. “In a bizarro-scary way, or just a missing-essential-parts way?”
“Both.” Jaden digs a hand into his hair again. “I know that doesn’t help, but that’s the truth.”
“Well, get to the part where it does help. What were they saying?”
“The word I heard more than any other was…war.”
My stomach isn’t roiling anymore. Difficult for it to do that after seemingly sinking all the way out of my body. At the same time, my mind connects more recognitions to each other—most prominently, everything that Maximus spilled to me yesterday. He was in such a stunned stupor but was scarily clear about what he’d just overheard in the sala’s kitchen.
Hecate reminded her…they’re preparing to go to war…
“With whom?” I now demand from my brother, who looks close to being in the same kind of funk. “About what?”
Yes, I know the adage about insanity and doing—in this case, repeating—the same things. But maybe this time I’ll get lucky with some solid answers to the demands.
But if so, will I still consider it lucky?
