Ava met us at my house after work that evening. Mac and Cassie had taken turns at the shop that evening so I wouldn’t be left on my own, then Mac hitched a ride to my place. Kitten stuck her head between the front seats and gave us her biggest doggy smile all the way home. I rubbed her neck at stoplights and she licked my ear a couple of times, making Mac laugh when I shrieked.

  We tended to use my house for ritual work since I didn’t have any roommates, other than the cats, and my curtains were extra thick so the neighbors couldn’t see in. Margie and Evangeline had made supper and set the table, so we all sat down together. Ava had brought special food for Kitten, so she thought she was a princess, too. We all sat and talked about the store and how things were going otherwise. When we were finished eating, everybody washed the dishes and put things away, which was one thing I insisted upon. My chosen people were welcome to anything in my house, but they had to put it back where they found it in the condition they found it in. I had been to Margie’s house, and as much as I enjoyed her as a person, I could never live amongst clutter as much as she did.

  We moved the furniture in the living room and rolled up the rug. When I first moved into this house, I’d taken the time to mark the floor with a working circle. A light scratch marked the outer perimeter as well as the cardinal points. I opened the ottoman and pulled out two goblets, candles, a dish of salt, a bowl of soil, some incense, a glass for water, which I handed off to Ava to fill in the kitchen, and an athame, or double-edged knife. Margie pulled a stack of headbands out of her satchel and handed them out. Some covens practiced naked, or skyclad, and others used robes to help keep members attuned to each other and the ritual at hand, but none of us wanted to waste the time or money on things like that. We weren’t particularly traditional when it came to accessories. Instead, we’d take off our shoes and socks, making sure our feet were clean, and headbands to designate which element we were affiliated with. I slid my light blue headband over my face and around my neck before pushing it back up my forehead to hold my hair back. The other ladies did the same. Cassie picked up the athame and started the ritual.

  One by one, cardinal corners were called, the candles were lit, the offerings placed, and the circle was cast. One by one, we passed through the border and sat in our designated places, breathing evenly and slowly. Cassie sealed the circle and joined us on the floor. We joined hands and started breathing together, tuning into each other and opening ourselves to the moment. After a few minutes of group meditation, we all opened our eyes and began to sing.

  “Beloved Mother and Holy Father,

  Bless our Sister from those that would do her harm,

  Keep her safe from danger in this time of transition,

  Protect her Home and Hearth from Anyone with ill intentions.”

  When the ritual was over and we closed the circle, Margie took the Holy Water we’d consecrated and started marking the windows with glyphs of protection. Evangeline followed her with the sage, and eventually the house was blessed and warded to their satisfaction. We picked up all of our tools and cleaned them, putting them carefully back in their storage space. Ava tossed me a towel to mop up a little water I’d dripped on the floor. I caught it and froze.

  “Where did you find this towel?” I asked, staring at it.

  “It was on the counter when I came in,” she said, sweeping up the last of the salt from the floor. When I didn’t move, everyone looked at me as I stared at the towel in my hand. It was clean and fresh and should not have been in my house.

  “This is the towel that guy took with him to the hospital last night,” I said. Mac dropped the glass she was holding and everyone else froze with her.

  “Are you sure this is the same towel?” Malcolm asked us twenty minutes later.

  “None of my towels match,” I told him. “I found this one at a garage sale two years ago. I’ve been meaning to throw it out for a couple of months, which is part of the reason I didn’t care about giving it to him.”

  “And you say it was on the counter?” he asked Ava. She nodded and pointed.

  “It was right there when I came in. I thought it was weird that Al left it there since she’s so picky about her stuff.”

  “I’m not picky, I’m organized,” I interjected, but they all ignored me.

  “Were the doors locked or did they seem to have been tampered with?”

  “Everything seemed normal,” Ava shrugged. She poured more hot chocolate for Malcolm and slid the bag of mini marshmallows across the counter. We were all sitting around the island in question and I was trying not to think about how someone had been in my house.

  As soon as I realized the towel shouldn’t have been there, a lot of things happened at once. Mac had called Malcolm and I had run around the house trying to find the cats. Simon and Shade had been out during the ritual, running through the circle and sitting in our laps. I found Charlie shut in the upstairs bathroom, but that wasn’t particularly unusual since she’d figured out how to close it and spent more time than she cared to closed away up there. Nemo, who was generally the least social of the cats, had been hiding in the bay window inside his wool cave. Because he was dark and hiding in a shadow, it took me three tries checking the window before I finally saw his eyes gleaming in the dark. Margie and Evangeline had gone outside and looked around the house, checking to see if the windows had been damaged or if anything had been disturbed. Everything looked normal to them, but I planned on going out and doing a trip around the next morning to double check.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Did you have a spare key hidden anywhere outside in case you got locked out?” Malcolm asked.

  “I had one in the garage, but it would have been impossible to find if you didn’t know where to look.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, getting up and going to the backdoor. Malcolm was right behind me and everyone else trooped behind him. I flipped on the porch light and walked across the back patio. Before I could open the panel to the garage door keypad, Malcolm caught my hand.

  “I should probably get someone here to check for fingerprints,” he said, pulling out his radio. He herded us all back into the house and made a call on his radio. A sputtering answer came through the speaker and he acknowledged the response.

  "Who's staying here tonight?" Cassie asked. Margie started to speak up, and I noticed a cute little suitcase sitting by the front door.

  “No one is staying here tonight,” I said in what I thought was a firm tone. I felt my head nod emphatically, but I realized I was having trouble concentrating on the things happening around me. My pulse was starting to pound in my ears and my vision was narrowing, so it was getting hard to pay attention. Was I still breathing? Was I breathing too much? How did someone get in my house? Was I even breathing my air anymore? Was it safe?

  “She’s going down,” I heard distantly. I tried to look around to see who was fainting but the lights went out before I could.

  “She hyperventilated,” I heard a strange voice say from above me. My eyes snapped open and I saw a woman leaning over me. Another stranger in my house, though this one was gorgeous so for half a second I was in awe. Then I snapped upright, feeling for a weapon… and realized I was on my front porch. It was cold but I was wrapped in a blanket and my winter coat. Mac caught me when I started to fall backward as my head spun from sitting up too fast. My stomach felt empty and sore and my ears were ringing. Mac rocked me gently and squeezed me tight, anchoring me into my body by sheer force of will.

  “She’s going to be fine,” Cassie said from beside me. I felt the warmth of my friends around me and tried to breathe a little easier, but panic was still rushing through me.

  “I’ll make sure there’s a car out here all night,” Malcolm said. I was leaning against the closed front door and for the first time I noticed a ruckus coming from inside the house.

  "No point," I tried to say. "No one will be here." Then I realized that they probably couldn't hear me because the it wasn't just the blood rushing in my ears that was making it hard for me to hear them, there was also a ruckus going on inside my house.

  “Is that Kitten?” I asked. They all nodded at once but they were out of sync with each other so it looked strange to me. Everything looked a little strange, though, so I just decided to go with it.

  “I thought it would be better to bring you out here to get checked out,” he said, “but Kitten doesn’t quite agree.”

  “She is very protective of you,” Margie said. “She didn’t want Mal anywhere near you, but we needed help getting you out here so we had to put her in the bathroom.” I heard the barking and snarling through the door and knew she wasn’t confined to the bathroom right this minute. I glanced at the door and lifted a brow.

  “I let her out once you were out here,” Genna said, “and Evangeline is with her now so she’ll calm down soon.” Even as she said it, the barks faded into whining. We could hear Evangeline’s soft voice comforting the big dog, and the sound helped me relax a bit. I was still a little woozy and getting colder by the second.

  “I want to go back inside,” I announced to no one in particular. The beautiful EMT was finishing packing her stuff back into her bag. She glanced up at Malcolm and nodded and then back down to me.

  “I think it was just a panic attack,” she said, “but you should really go to your primary care doctor tomorrow and get a full work-up. Just to be sure nothing is wrong.”

  “I used to pass out all the time,” I told her. “I have massive anxiety issues so sometimes my brain short circuits. I haven’t done it in years, but today has been especially stressful.”

  “So you’re going to see your physician tomorrow to follow up, then?” she asked pointedly. I kind of liked this woman. She wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  “She will if we all have to drive her there ourselves,” Genna assured her. The woman nodded and rose, hefting her bag to her shoulder. Her partner back at the ambulance started waving at her, indicating they had another call.

  “Come in tomorrow for some coffee,” I said. They all looked at me blankly for a moment before Mac laughed.

  “We own a coffee shop,” she clarified. “We’ll buy you a cup of coffee tomorrow, if you want.” She pulled a business card out of her pocket and handed it to the medic, who smiled and chuckled a little to herself. She thanked us and went back to her ride, which was still sitting at the end of my sidewalk with its lights on.

  “My neighbors aren’t going to like this,” I said as Mac and Cassie pulled me to my feet. I always forgot how tall I was until someone started helping me up from the ground. Being six and a half feet tall and sturdy as hell was great in a fight, but not so much when I'm not at my best. I was still a little woozy, so being that far off the ground seemed a little precarious, but Cassie and Mac were strong enough to help me stagger back into the house. It wasn't the first time they'd had to herd me from one place to another.

  “Aren’t going to like what?” Malcolm asked, holding the door open for us. Evangeline held Kitten back by her collar until I was back on the sofa, at which point I found myself under the close-sniffing scrutiny of a very large puppy. She sniffed me all over, making sure I wasn’t hurt, before collapsing on my lap like a lapdog made of bricks.

  “All the lights,” I said, gesturing vaguely to the windows. “They’re going to bring down the property values around here.”

  After all of the excitement, the next hour or so was fairly dull. Kitten and my cats took it in shifts to sit on me, offering me comfort and taking care of me as well as any animals could. The humans around us fluttered and fussed, talking around me and coming up with plans of action for the next few days; plans that included me but about which I couldn’t have cared less. My head pounded and all I really wanted to do was go to bed, but there were too many people in my house for me to relax.

  “Cas,” I finally managed to make my voice heard, “do you mind if we all come stay at your place for a couple of days?” Cassie looked at me, brushed my short dark curls back from my face and fix the clip that kept my bangs out of my eyes. It must have been knocked askew when they put my hat on me out on the porch.

  “Of course,” she said. As soon as she started giving orders, the others started following them. Mac might be the leader, but Cassie is the organizer. She made sure everything was in place so things went smoothly. If she decided the plan needed to change, it changed and Mac would do everything she could to make Cassie’s visions come true.

  Pet carriers were pulled from the closet and all the cats were rounded up. It wasn’t their first trip to visit their aunties, but that didn’t mean they weren’t going to fight for all they were worth to avoid being put in the Crates of Transport and Doom. Margie and Genna threw a week’s worth of clothes into a bag, along with toiletries and any perishable food from the kitchen. About twenty minutes later, we were all bundled into our respective vehicles, or, in my case, Mac and Cassie’s SUV, and we all cleared out.