to be because they were both shifters. She wanted to make a go of it with him.
I wished her luck, but didn’t have much hope for her.
I stood and cleared the table, Corb helping quietly. I knew without asking that he wouldn’t leave until Penny did. No matter what he might think of her abilities, he clearly didn’t trust her.
“Now the stanza,” Penny said. “Let me hear it.”
I paused at the sink and rolled the words through my mind again before I spoke them.
“Of death and power, of magic and pain,
"That which comes shall find those slain,
"Raised anew and given life,
"A warning alone, this call is strife.”
I paused as I lifted both brows. “What do you think? It sounds like it could be important.”
Penny pursed her lips, tapping the floor with her walking stick. “Could be. Was it in your gran’s spell book?”
I wiped my damp hands on a tea towel and flipped open my bag, slung over the back of a chair. “No, it wasn’t. The stanza was in this—” I dug around in the bag and then handed her Black Spells of Savannah and the Undead. I’d picked it up on a whim in the used bookstore, egged on by Oster Boon, the leprechaun who’d sold me Gran’s book. And I’d found the stanza hidden in the back.
She didn’t take the book, just stared at it. I laid it on the table in front of her, then sat in the closest chair. I flipped the book open to the back cover, which I peeled apart to retrieve the piece of paper that had the stanza written on it. “See, there is a number three here. And inside the book.” I let the book go, and it flipped around on its own until it stopped on the same line as before.
Of demon skin and angel wing.
I pointed at it. “This, this is why that stanza came back to me. Because I saw this at the same time.”
Penny sucked in a breath and her walking stick trembled against the floor. “I don’t know for sure. I’ll have to do some research. See what I can find, but if this . . . if this is real.” She stood. “I need to think on this. I need to call on my guides to direct me. This is more than just a bad spell, Breena O’Rylee. It could be devastating to our world. It could literally be the worst spell imaginable. One that is only told of in whispers and legend. A spell that is not supposed to exist.”
My jaw dropped. I’ll admit it. I mean . . .saving the world sounds good in the movies, but not so much when you were in the middle of it and didn’t really know what the hell was going on. I would’ve asked her more, but she stood and held her hand out to me as if sensing my questions and stopping them. “Let me think on it. We’ll discuss it tonight at dinner. Get some sleep, we all need it.”
And with that, she shuffled off, leaving me and Corb in the kitchen. He had his arms elbow deep in soapy water as he cleaned up the dishes and cutlery. Acting for all the world like he was content to be doing menial work.
“I didn’t thank you yet, for getting me out of there. Out of the jail that is,” I said. I chose not to say anything about Crash helping. No point in poking the bear if I didn’t have to.
He nodded, his words short and sharp. “Couldn’t leave you to die. I thought you’d know that.”
Yeah, he was still upset. I sighed, tired and painfully aware this conversation was only going to make me more exhausted. “Corb, why are you upset now?”
He turned, his shirt stretching across his broad shoulders. “You just made a decision that would affect us all. Like it was nothing to you to make it for the rest of us. Especially when you accused me of doing the same thing.”
I stared at him, not really shocked this was the direction he’d taken. “Right. But I didn’t tell you that you had to come with me. I gave you a choice at the beginning. This is my journey, Corb. You didn’t want to give me a choice—you wanted to just stuff me into a cabin.” I paused and let that sink in. “As for Penny, she is part of this. And what I’m hearing is that you don’t trust