As I drove away, Raven’s kiss burned on my lips and ached in my body. He could feel the link through our bond. He was trying to get to me. His feelings for me still burned. They tormented him as they tormented me.

I’d learned to shove those feelings down, hard, never looking at them or feeling them, but they were always there, behind my steel walls. But being around Raven, it was becoming increasingly hard to keep my emotions in check. I’d been a weakling the entire time I was in Portland, and I was beginning to disgust myself.

I’d let my mother mess with my hair and clothes. I’d let Raven kiss me. It took me days to find a sword that was right under my bed. And I hadn’t found this stupid cannibal creature yet.

At least I finally had Benedictus. I glanced over at it in its scabbard on the passenger seat. On the way back to Portland, I considered getting a hotel room or renting a yurt in the national forest. But the truth was, I barely had the money to pay for gas, let alone pay for anywhere to stay.

The Council had frozen all my accounts as punishment. All I had in the world was in the trunk of my Camaro. And that wasn’t a lot.

I pulled into my mother’s driveway and slammed my car door closed before hurrying up the steps of the front porch.

I found everyone but Iona still inside gossiping and knitting at the kitchen table. A mess of tea pots, plates, scones, and jam were littered across the wooden expanse.

All eyes turned up to me and blinked, but no one said a word. I sighed, gripping the sword belted at my waist.

“What? Spit it out,” I said.

“We’ve decided it’s okay for you to have the sword,” my mother said.

“Well, that’s great for you, because I’m keeping it.”

“Olivia, sit down. Have some tea,” Twyla said. She pointed at the chair beside her with her knitting needles. I pursed my lips and sank into the chair. Tea did sound good.

I poured myself a cup and took the blackberry scone my mother had probably made, plopping it on the pink porcelain plate with dollop of blackberry jam.

I sank back in my chair and sipped my tea before taking a bite of scone, waiting. They continued chattering about some witch from the coven and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, needles clicking.

I finished the scone, eying them each in turn. “You want to start a scarf or something?” my mother asked. “You used to be pretty good at knitting.”

“No.”

“It’ll be fun,” Aster said, a pair of baby pajamas draping over her belly.

“Fine.” I grabbed a random ball of yarn and a spare pair of needles and started knitting. The motions came back in an instant, the memories in my body as automatic as those I’d had when Raven had kissed me.

“We heard something about you,” Margery said. I snapped my eyes away from my knitting and stared at her.

“What?” I snapped.

“Dear. We heard you were let go from the Executioners. You didn’t need to keep that from us,” Mother said.

I dropped the two rows of knitting on the table and sighed, crossing my arms. An image of chopping their heads off crossed my mind. I blinked. That was a bit harsh. I had to be more mature about this no matter how much they goaded me.

“Fine. I’ll tell you the truth. I failed to kill a powerful vampire who has a ward against all my best tactics. The only way to break through the ward is with Benedictus. Instead of killing him, or letting myself be killed so someone else could take him, I banished him to who-knows-where with an unauthorized totem. So. They ‘let me go.’ More like I was thrown out. All my assets are being held. They’re punishing me.”

“But that vampire, Vincent. He’s the one who’s after you,” Twyla whispered.

“Yes. He’s the one who’s after me. If I kill him, I know I’ll get my job back. But I had to come here to get the sword. It was the only way. Even though I knew he’d follow me.”

“Why didn’t you just tell us, Olivia?” my mother asked.

I didn’t want to tell them it was because they were all silly bitches that made my brain want to explode. “I have my reasons,” I ground out, rising.

“Are you going to kill the wendigo?” Aster asked, leaning forward, her eyes big and full of panic.

“I don’t know. I need to think.”

I turned to the door. “Olivia,” I heard my mother say as it closed to behind me. Walking around the porch, I heard a terrible screeching from the backyard.

Drawing my sword, I sprinted toward the sound. Dust and feathers spun in a cloud inside the chicken coop. Benedictus singing at my side, I flashed to the coop, yanking the door open.

For a split second I saw it. My sword flashed through the air, a chicken’s body hanging from its mouth. My blade swung, slicing toward the wendigo’s neck with inhuman speed. I had a good angle to make the kill. Nanoseconds ticked by.

He blinked out.

Nothing. I stood in a dark chicken coop holding my sword, surrounded by dead bodies and blood. Fuck.

I heard Mom’s voice yelling from the porch. Emerging from the coop, I slid my sword back in the scabbard.

“What… what happened here?” she stuttered. Mom looked scared. I’d never seen her look scared like that before except on the day Dad died.

“It was him,” I said, coming to stand in front of her. “He killed all the chickens.”

“But why? It did this on purpose?” She gritted her teeth and her brow furrowed in anger.

“Maybe. It does seem personal. Doesn’t it?”

“You didn’t kill it?”

“It disappeared. I had it. Less than a second longer and I would have had it.”

Mother sighed, frown lines etching the pale skin around her drawn mouth. “You have to find it and kill it, Olivia. I won’t have this thing around the children. You take care of it, or I’ll do it myself.”

“Are you going to knit it into submission?” I asked her, raising an eyebrow.

“I’ll raise the coven. We can locate it together.”

“I just might need to you to do that anyway. I don’t have my tracking spell anymore. I can’t find it myself. If I can corner it in its cave, I might be able to kill it.”