No Rest for the Witches by Karina Cooper Page B

trade his arm to have Naomi back, safe and sound. To have his mother beside her.
    Even to get Silas back, to ease the shadows from Jessie’s eyes.
    She sat on the porch, a blanket around her shoulders, staring over the dark water stretched out in front of the house. She hadn’t said much over the past hour, and Phin got the impression she was only half present, anyway.
    He turned as his bare feet found the start of the glassy stepping stone path. Began his trek in front of the porch to the other side once more. How many times had he followed this same route?
    Too many.
    He’d do it until they came back. Or he dropped from exhaustion.
    He wouldn’t be able to sleep with all the jitters, anyway.
    God, please let them come home.
    â€œI’m sorry, sir.” Joel raised his head from his folded arms, his face tortured in the light of the lantern they’d set up on the porch. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it, and Phin flinched. “If I hadn’t have let you come—”
    â€œCome on, Joel,” Phin cut in, pausing in his pacing to sink to his haunches in front of his friend. Joel Evans had been his right-hand man for years, now. Not only had he been Timeless’s best masseuse, famous for hands Gemma liked to say should be dipped in gold, he’d personally handled aspects of the evacuation ring Phin couldn’t trust to anyone else.
    The man knew things about the Clarkes that could destroy them. He was, as far as Phin had ever cared to explore the subject, a member of the family. Close as blood, close as anyone could get.
    He clapped a hand on Joel’s shoulder, squeezed affectionately. “If I wasn’t with you, maybe I’d be dead. Or captured. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
    Joel stared down at the porch steps beneath him. “I keep thinking.”
    â€œDon’t.” Phin rose, his gaze drifting upward. To the dark sky, clouded over with winter storms. It still seemed wrong, to be so warm in the middle of winter, but everything about the world seemed wrong right now. “Just keep hoping.”
    â€œGod, I am.”
    Phin was, too. He smiled down at Joel in a way he hoped was reassuring. A cold pit had opened up in his stomach.
    Naomi hadn’t said goodbye. She hadn’t let him kiss her, or touch her.
    She was pulling away.
    If she didn’t come back— no. He couldn’t think like that.
    She loved him, and he knew it. Knew it in the same way he knew her steely exterior was a front for something soft and fragile underneath.
    God, he loved her.
    And she’d gone to save his mom. It meant something.
    Phin jammed his fingers through his hair, turning to begin his pace again.
    The rocking chair creaked as Jessie leapt to her feet, her eyes wild. “They’re here!” she cried, and practically flew down the steps. She staggered as she hit the bottom, collided with Phin, who steadied her only long enough for her to get her balance and sprint around the back of the house.
    Phin met Joel’s searching gaze.
    As one, they lurched into motion and followed her into the dark.
    Golden hair flying, Jessie put him in mind of a pixie as she darted between giant, leafy plants. “Silas!”
    A rumbling voice, deep and too intense to miss, caused something to catch in Phin’s heart.
    Three figures stepped through a fissure in the canyon wall, as eerily as if they stepped through the wall itself. A large silhouette disengaged itself, moved into the ambient light.
    Jessie threw herself into Silas’s arms; not just physically, Phin saw, feeling suddenly like an intruder. Body and soul. When they met, when Silas pulled her to him with a rough sound, buried his face into her hair, it was as if he could see the connection fuse between them. See the love, the hope. The future. She clung to his shoulders and sobbed something wordless and angry.
    He looked away as the other two figures came forward, and Phin nearly