“How badly was she shot?”
“Not badly enough,” Raye muttered. “She’s here. She’s still killing people.”
Raye plucked a paper sack from the exam table. “I’m staying at the Harborside Motel.” She pulled a card from her pocket and set it on the table. “Here’s my number.” She paused in the doorway. “If you see Mistress June again, run.” Then she was gone.
“You stay.” Becca pointed at the wolf. “I gotta go talk to my parents.”
“Now?” Owen was almost as amazed at that as the idea of her telling a wolf to stay. Except the animal did, sticking her nose under her tail and closing her eyes.
“Right now.” She shooed Owen and Reggie out the door. “If you want, I can come to the cottages afterward.”
Owen led her toward his pickup. “Your name is on the witch-watch list.” Beneath his palm she tensed. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until this is over.”
“Just because someone tried to kill me doesn’t mean—”
“I heard about the ring.”
She didn’t respond.
“The crazies think you’re a witch. There’ll be no convincing them otherwise. I learned that much from my mom.”
*
Once in the pickup and on the way to the farm, I wrestled with what to say. There wasn’t much I could tell Owen without sounding as insane as his mother.
“Who is she?” he asked.
Reggie sat between us, his huge head and solid body a comforting barrier. I leaned into him, and he nuzzled my hair.
Love her.
“Who?” I asked, one question for both guys.
“Raye,” Owen said.
Pru. That was Reggie.
Hell. That was me. I didn’t have time for puppy love. Which might actually produce puppies. Cubs. Cub-puppies.
“Raye Larsen. From New Bergin.”
“I know what her name is, and that she’s involved in this mess somehow. But who is she, Becca? It can’t be a coincidence that she’s your clone.”
“Maybe it’s witchcraft.”
“Ha-ha.”
I scrubbed my fingers behind Reggie’s ears.
Good. More. Yes.
I had to tell Owen something. I chose the best option from a whole lot of bad ones.
“She says she’s my sister.”
Owen frowned into the setting sun. “She explain how that could be possible?”
She’d intimated that the spell of two witches, cast four hundred years ago, fueled with sacrifice, fire, and magic, had sent my sisters and me to this time—where no one believes in witches any more. Or at least not the kind they’d believed in then.
“Not really,” I hedged.
“Why should you believe her?”
“You saw her, right?”
“Right.” He reached over and laid his hand atop mine where it rested on Reggie’s bony head. “What are you going to do?”
“Ask my parents if I’m adopted.”
Despite all the childhood conjecture, I never had before.
“What if they deny it?”
“There’s always DNA.”
Owen turned into the lane that led to my parents’ farm. “This is gonna be swell.”
Chapter 20
Moose brayed like a banshee, and Reggie tried to climb over me while doing the same. As soon as the truck stopped, I reached for the handle.
“Reggie should stay here,” Owen said.
“He doesn’t play well with others?”
“His idea of play is work and vice versa.”
“What does that mean?”
“He lives to play with his ball after he finds deadly explosives. Got a grenade you could hide for him?”
Reggie stared out the window, panting. Play. Run. Chase.
“He wants to play,” I said.
“He tell you that?”
Instead of answering, I opened the door. Reggie vaulted out of the truck and chased Moose into the high grass. I listened for growling, yelping, or snarling. When none came I cast Owen a glance, but kept the “told you so” to myself. I had bigger fish to fry.
Both of whom stood on the porch, having been alerted to our arrival by the security system known as Moose.
“Should I stay in the truck?” Owen asked.
“No need.”
I certainly wasn’t going to bring up witchcraft, time travel, spells, and the like to my parents. All I wanted was the truth about my past, and I didn’t mind Owen hearing it too.
We crossed the yard. My mother hurried down the steps and threw her arms around him as if he were a long-lost child who had at last come home. He kind of was.
“Owen,” she said, the same way she always had.
In contrast, my father’s scowl seemed completely out of place. Though Owen’s arms had gone around my mom and held her close, his gaze had gone to my dad. He wasn’t smiling either.
“What’s up with you two?” I’d asked before, but neither one of them had answered. I was pretty sick of it.