me far too long to sit, though I kept a hand on my loom bag just in case. The very last thing I needed was to accidentally cause a fire in her living room and burn down the whole house. But there was the promise of relief, of being able to share things with her that the coven had despised and ignored before they kicked me out, along with the threat that Deirdre would be like them. She’d invited me into her house thinking I was just a witch in trouble, not a defective witch who couldn’t control her magic.
I struggled to find the words as I weighed how much to say. Maybe a few half-truths would suffice… But Henry saying they could smell lies gave me pause. Was it true? Had he just been fucking with me? I cleared my throat and didn’t even try to meet her even, dark gaze. “I have…a problem. I can’t always control my natural magic. Most of the time I can channel it, to store it here,” and I patted the loom bag. “In weaving or knitting or something. I thought…as long as I can siphon it off into something else, it would be safe. I haven’t had…an accident like that in a while. Weeks, definitely. Maybe months.”
Months was optimistic, but still within the realm of possibility. The last time trying to escape from Rocko didn’t count as an accident. I’d mostly meant to do it on purpose.
Deirdre didn’t speak right away, instead nodding thoughtfully as she kept watching me. The scrutiny grew unnerving, even more so because I could hear the click of nails on wood as the wolf paced on the porch. As Henry paced on the porch, after what I’d done to him. My fists clenched, balanced on my knees, as I tried to look at anything in the room but her.
“What have you tried to control it?”
She surprised me into looking at her. “What?”
Deirdre shrugged. “You’ve found a short-term solution with whatever is in the bag, but I’m assuming you’ve also looked for long-term solutions to control what goes wrong. Didn’t your coven work with you?”
Bitterness swamped my mouth and I looked away again, debating throwing myself to the porch just to avoid having to admit to how many times I’d been rejected in my life. “We moved around a lot when I was a kid, so no one would realize that I had a problem, and then… well, I managed to hide it for a while. When they found out, they weren’t…pleased.”
Which was the understatement of the century.
She made a thoughtful noise, her head tilted. “But you’re powerful. Got some oomph to those little accidents. A lot of covens would overlook the control issue just for the strength.”
Maybe she already knew about Rocko, since that had been his proposal. I shivered and rubbed my hands together, ignoring the sharp look she gave them as they moved. Like she thought I might have charged them up for another shock. “They were…traditional. Didn’t like the potential for drawing too much attention, especially since we were in a conservative area. The kind where witch-burnings are still a distinct possibility, with the right proof.”
Deirdre grimaced with understanding, then waved her hand to dismiss whatever she’d been thinking. “That’s just one coven, though. You must have been looking for a while, though?”
I didn’t want to talk about Rocko. I really, really didn’t. “A while. Nothing ever seems to help.”
Those dark eyes weighed and measured me until I started to get nervous. “Do you want to fix it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you want things to change? It’s not my business to help you fix a problem if you’re okay with the problem itself.” She frowned as she sat up and craned her neck, and the sound of muffled cursing reached us through the windows. Deirdre’s expression cleared. “There he is.”
I turned in the chair but knew I was too much of a coward to face Henry right away. My legs were weak, that was for damn sure, and wouldn’t carry me to the door to let him in. Luckily though, it wasn’t necessary. Deirdre hadn’t locked the door, and Henry fumbled with the knob until the heavy wood door swung in, knocking aside the chair she’d propped there.
My jaw dropped when I saw him. Completely stark naked and unashamed, though there was certainly nothing to be ashamed of in the muscled physique marked by more than a few scars. I blinked and my whole