A Little Green Magic (The Little Coven #1) - Isabel Wroth Page 0,35
into the dining room. Almost immediately, Ivy noticed Juliet on the far side of the room, staring out the window through a slit in the lacy curtains.
McManus was on the other side, engrossed in watching Astrid spread out her Tarot cards on the dining room table, but every few seconds, his gaze flicked to Juliet and his jaw flexed.
Before anything else could go wrong, Ivy spoke up to tell Rowena about being watched in the woods by something or someone that didn't belong. Naturally, Rowena was pissed.
“I shifted, but didn't smell or hear anyone,” Uriah told the group.
McManus was quick to give a judgmental snort. “That doesn't mean shit.”
“I know that, dickhead,” Uriah shot back. “I was more concerned with getting Ivy to my place than traipsing around the woods, chasing something I couldn't smell.”
“Traipsing?” McManus drawled with a rude grin. “You get that off your Word-A-Day calendar today?”
“Fuck you, McManus!”
“Fuck you!”
“ENOUGH!” Rowena's voice sounded as though she'd shouted through a bullhorn, and to the sensitive hearing of the two testosterone laden shifters, she might as well have been shouting directly into their ear.
Like a pair of toddlers, the two men mulishly glared daggers at one another but zipped their lips.
“If Ivy felt uncomfortable in our woods, then there's something out there. We'll find it, but right now, we have bigger problems. Abel, talk to me about the murdered witches in Vermont. What was the coven name?”
The lion shifter gave a one shouldered shrug. “The Silver Wives.”
Ivy's stomach dropped to her toes; the dread that had taken hold of her was mirrored in the faces of her sisters.
Rowena shakily reached out to steady herself with the back of the closest chair, Astrid fumbled her precious tarot deck, Callie thumped down into a chair in shock, Kerrigan turned a whiter shade of pale and picked up the closest wine bottle, and at the window, Juliet blew out a shaky breath.
“You're sure?” Rowena whispered.
Ivy leaned into Uriah, who hugged her closer.
A different sort of tension took hold of McManus. His golden-brown eyes roamed the room, touching on each of their faces, clearly realizing the news he'd come to give was far graver than he'd thought.
“Yes. I don't know the details of how they died, only that the investigators are having a hard time explaining the how and why. You know them?”
Rowena nodded, sinking down into her seat, her hand trembling as she lifted it to her throat. Surprisingly, it was Kerrigan who spoke up to fill the silence, her voice hollow and dull.
“Every witch in the world knows who they are. The Silver Wives are a powerful coven of dark witches formed during the Revolutionary War. They had the power of speaking in tongues, able to convince any man to do their bidding with nothing more than a few sweet whispers in their ears.
“Back then, women were property, so they married men they could control and turned them into powerful politicians, judges, magistrates, generals.
“As their husbands rose in power, they recruited other witches with the power to sway others, and planted Silver Wives in every country and state to marry gullible men who thought they'd landed themselves a run of the mill trophy wife. The Silver Wives are the primary shareholders in every Fortune 500 company in America.”
McManus narrowed his eyes, watching Kerrigan drink straight from the last bottle of wine. “You knew someone in the coven personally, I take it?”
This was news to Ivy, and apparently the rest of the coven. Kerrigan nodded, letting her head fall back onto her chair as she slumped down. “I was recruited to join them the summer I turned eighteen.”
“You never told us that.” Juliet guffawed, looking mildly hurt.
Kerrigan licked her lips, a trickle of tears slipping down her pale cheeks. “My parents picked me up from school, and I thought we were going to dinner. I thought I was going to have to sit through another lecture on how disappointed they were in me for not having participated in a Pairing Ritual, again.
“Instead, we went to the Silver Wives summer home in Vermont. Every single woman there was perfect, poised, beautiful, practically oozing shadows and blood. Their pitch was awesome, to stay young and beautiful, to wield power like none other, and marry the proverbial heir to a vast kingdom to someday become a queen.
“My parents encouraged me—pressured me—told me what a wonderful life I would have, and how I could do amazing things for our family with the kind of power being offered