I stared up at the edge of the kitchen counter. Where I was seated on the floor, I was blocked from being seen by anyone looking in the doors or windows. Which also meant I couldn’t see anyone at the doors or windows.
I scrambled to my knees, plugged my phone back in the charging stand, and plopped down. The crumb-covered floor seemed the safest place to be.
Bear fur. Big fish. Herb plants, berry canes, and invasive vines—these were my allies, and though I couldn’t remember ever having ridden on the shoulders of an actual bear, I knew I was in the ocean the same time my mother had swum past me and into the deep, hand in hand with a man sporting flippers.
Real flippers, not the detachable kind.
I shook my head. No one would believe me. Well, actually, I’d recently met a number of people who would—might?—believe me. I felt for the Telfa pad on my lower belly and picked at the Band-Aid doing a half-assed job of protecting the cut on my thumb.
I had to do something.
I came out of my crouch slowly, circling, scanning the rooms and the areas outside of the windows and doors. Everything looked normal. The wards were off high alert. Cars and trucks passed by just as they did every week day, and I knew if I listened hard, I’d hear prop planes buzzing overhead on their way to the harbor.
Sliding my feet along the floor, I turned the lock above the handle on the front door and continued on, closing and locking every window and door on the ground floor. I kept repeating, This is my house; this is my house, and after I extracted my new crown from the jumble of things I hadn’t unpacked from the weekend, I owned the words the next time they issued from my mouth.
This. Is. My. House.
I giggled and wedged the crown more securely atop my head. Forty-one years old and still playing dress-up.
Bear fur. Big fish. The trunk with my mother’s things was in my office. I kneeled in front of the dusty thing, lifted the top section of the latch and the lid, and surveyed the contents before I pawed through them.
There! I parted two stacks of pinned-together quilting squares and felt for my mother’s Witchling Way sash, the one I’d seen her wearing proudly in photographs displayed on my aunt’s mantle. I smoothed the faded fabric, straightened the rows of round, enameled pins, and brought the entire thing into the kitchen.
I snapped a photograph so I wouldn’t forget the order in which the pins were arranged; I had no idea if it made a difference or not. I didn’t know if the Witchling Way still even existed; my aunt had signed me up for the human counterpart, the Canadian Girl Guides. But the once-colorful pins were grimy, and I wanted to wash and polish them and imagine my mother’s pride as she worked toward collecting as many as possible.
Because the sash was so filled with round reminders of magical milestones, I decided my mother would have been the accomplishing kind—maybe even a little competitive—and she would have placed each pin onto her sash very, very carefully.
There were creatures on the buttons, along with trees, leaves, and flowers; esoteric symbols; and tools of the magic trade.
Three pins kept rolling away from my cleaning operation: a bear, a seal, and an apple.
I dried the pins, stashed them in an empty sweetgrass basket, and placed the basket and the sash in the trunk. The three errant buttons stayed in my palm until I placed them on the altar in my bedroom, next to the branchlet from the old crabapple tree. I slipped the crown off my head and placed it on the altar with my new wand and the three pins inside its circumference.
What was I doing? I glanced at what little I could see of my reflection in the mercury glass mirror. Its usefulness had ended decades ago, but my aunt and my mother and maybe other female relatives, other witches in my lineage, had searched its oxidized surface for signs of their own hidden beauties or latent skills.
Pressing my palm to the cool glass, I whispered the words again: This is my house and then added, And I am yours.
Chapter 19
A car pulled into the driveway, fast, splattering gravel. I made it to the end of the hallway as Tanner peered in the front door and jiggled the handle.
“I’m here,” I called, waving. “I’m here.” I flicked the lock and pulled the door open. The screen door that had taken the brunt of Doug’s flight was leaning against the side of the house.
“I can fix that,” he said, giving the splintered frame a glance before stepping over the threshold. “Are you okay?”
“Yes. Very.” I took a couple steps back, my at-home dress swirling around my lower legs.
Tanner was suddenly next to me, wrapping one of his hands around the back of my neck and clutching me against him.
“I was worried about you,” he said, his words muffled by my hair.
He kissed the side of my head, his thumb rubbing the back of my skull.
“I locked the house tight, even the windows.” Barefooted, I closed my eyes and rooted down, and down further, searching for her presence.
“I was still worried.”
Nothing. I opened my eyes, caught the green light of the reinforced wards draped like emerald-dusted netting over the trees.
“I don’t feel her below, Tanner, but the wards. They’re shimmering again.”
“Those are the new wards settling in with the old ones,” he said. “I threw them a little test on the way in.”
Tanner wore a faded cowboy-style shirt, the kind with snaps for closures. The fabric was so soft it barely provided coverage between his chest and my cheek. I hadn’t moved closer on purpose; Tanner’s hand was the likely culprit. He was still cupping my head, massaging me with his thumb, and whether I was aware of
