The scratches and dents in the vinyl siding of Zelda’s house stretched all the way around. Hedges underneath windows were trampled, and the front door was so badly damaged it would need replacing. Beryl stood with her on the lawn in the light of day surveying the damage.

  “Pack up some things and stay at the house with us for a while,” Beryl told her. “You aren’t safe here alone. While you pack, I am going to call in sick to the hospital. We have to call an emergency coven meeting.”

  Yasmine was typing contracts when the call came through. After she hung up, she went into Howard’s office. He was reading over documents a client had messengered over. She waited a few moments, waiting for that specific expression which would come over his face the moment he had finished the important, uninterruptible parts. Once he made that face, she spoke.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you, Howard, but I’m afraid I have to cut out early.”

  “Anything the matter?”

  “I don’t know yet. Beryl just called me on her way home. She’s calling an emergency family meeting.”

  “It isn’t Olympia, is it?” he said, putting down the documents.

  “No, nothing like that. She just said I had to come home immediately.”

  Howard nodded. “Nothing here that can’t wait till tomorrow. But call me if something serious has happened. I’m a junior member of the Blanchards myself, you know!”

  By the time Beryl and Zelda reached Blanchard House everyone was assembled in the living room awaiting her explanation. Upon entering, Beryl was bombarded with questions. Zelda took a seat on the sofa beside Olympia.

  “Settle down,” Beryl began. “We have a lot to handle, and it’s very serious. This is so serious in fact that I am asking that no one interrupt me, and I am calling for vows.”

  “Vows?” Artemis cried.

  She, along with everyone else knew it had to be very serious indeed. For a witch to call for vows meant that only the truth could be spoken. To lie, withhold, or misdirect would mean certain consequences from the Natural Order. A vow was like a temporary verbal spell which, if broken, would rip a witch’s powers from her. It was like binding yourself if you lied or willingly withheld pertinent information. Witches took vows very seriously.

  Beryl went first. “I vow to speak the truth in every word I speak. I will not mislead, nor will I omit. I pledge my powers stricken if I betray this trust.”

  Olympia, right on cue, understanding the severity involved if Beryl made vows, took her own vow next. Glances of confusion and apprehension darted around the room as each member of the coven took their turn making vows. It was unnecessary for Yasmine to make the pledge since she held no physical ability, but she was part of the meeting all the same.

  When the last vow was spoken, Seth demanded to know what was going on. Beryl waved his protest away as she said, “Let me speak uninterrupted, please.”

  “You have the floor,” Olympia agreed.

  “Mother,” Beryl addressed Demitra, sitting with Fable on the second sofa. “Mother, you are currently assisting with the police investigation into the recent murders occurring in Daihmler, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Fable,” Beryl addressed next. “Tell us about Patric, everything you know.”

  Fable was bewildered, and a little infuriated at the inclusion of her personal life into whatever Beryl was upset about. But she had taken vows and knew she had to answer anything asked of her. “I don’t know very much,” she said. “He came here to be with his sister. I don’t know where they live. I don’t really know where he came from.”

  “How do you know so little about this man you’ve been seeing?” Beryl asked.

  “He doesn’t say much.”

  “Why are you dating him?” Beryl asked.

  “I like him,” Fable huffed. “Why else would I be seeing him?”

  “What is it that you like about him?” Beryl pressed.

  Fable was incensed. “I don’t know Beryl! There is just something about him I’m drawn to. I’ll admit he’s not always very nice, and sometimes I even think I don’t want to see him anymore. But then he comes around, and I’m just all heady again.”

  Beryl hated asking the next question, “Have you had sex with him?”

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “That is crossing a line, Sister dear!” Fable yelled angrily. It was embarrassing to be asked something so personal, especially in front of her mother, grandmother, and everyone else.

  “I need an answer.”

  “Yes!” Fable snapped. “Yes, we have had sex! You bitch!”

  Beryl stopped for a second and looked sympathetically at her younger sister. “There really is a very good reason I’m asking you these things. I’m sorry it’s so awkward. But it’s necessary.”

  “I ask for truth now,” Fable demanded. “Why are you asking all this?”

  Beryl walked over to her sister and knelt at her knees. She took her sister’s hands in her own, looked her dead in the eyes, and replied, “Patric is the killer.”

  “You’re wrong!” Fable shrieked as the thrust Beryl’s hands away from her.

  “No, I don’t think she is,” Demitra interjected. “I’ve felt something off with him from the start.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything!” Fable scoffed. “Beryl is lying for some reason.”

  Olympia shook her head, “Fable you know that she isn’t. Not after vows.”

  “Then she is mistaken,” Fable cried. “Patric would never hurt anyone.”

  Zelda, who had been silent all this time, leaving the family to tend to their own business, couldn’t be silent any longer. “He practically tore my house to shreds last night trying to get at me and Beryl! It’s a wonder we’re alive.”

  “Patric was with me last night,” Fable said, discrediting the accusation.

  “He was?” responded Beryl with a perplexed expression. Was there some possibility she was mistaken after all? “He was with you all night?”

  “Well, no,” Fable admitted. “He actually left rather suddenly when we were at the river.”

  “He saw me looking at his mind,” Zelda informed them. “I was in a trance and got into his head. But he saw me looking, and he looked back. Then he came after me and Beryl.”

  “Why Beryl?” Seth asked.

  “I was at Zelda’s,” Beryl replied. “I asked her to take a look in his head for me.”

  “And he saw you both looking?” Olympia inquired in amazement. “That is remarkable.”

  Beryl looked into her sister’s eyes. She tried to be sympathetic. “When he left you last night, he came after us. I saw his face. He isn’t human, Fable. Mother discovered it first. You were with her when she did. The killer is a werewolf. And the killer is Patric.”

  Fable was in tears now. The room fell silent. Fable didn’t want it to be true, but she understood it was. It had to be. Beryl would have never made the assertion under Vows if there was any doubt at the possibility. Yasmine felt a pang of heartbreak for her cousin. She went over to the sofa and wedged down between Fable and Demitra. She put her arm around her and pulled Fable onto her shoulder.

  “Fable,” she said. “Maybe you don’t really care for Patric at all. If all this is true, then maybe your power explains why you’re so drawn to him.”

  “What do you mean, my power?” Fable sobbed.

  “Well,” Yasmine continued, “your power grants you a kinship with animals. Maybe you connected to the animal inside him.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Seth said.

  “Actually,” Olympia noted, “it’s the only thing that does.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Fable wept.

  “Wasn’t last night a full moon?” Seth recalled.

  “A full moon isn’t actually necessary,” Olympia informed them. “A werewolf cannot help but transform under a moon that is full—that doesn’t mean he isn’t capable of willingly transforming any other phase of the moon as well, if he likes.”

  Demitra and Beryl exchanged glances. “That could mean there are even more bodies in his wake I didn’t account for,” Demitra gasped. “I only searched for killings during the full moon cycle.”

  “I have a question,” Artemis called out. “How did you become involved in all this, Beryl?”

  Beryl answered her aunt. “I have a patient who I suspect was attacked by the werewolf. I went to Zelda for help seeing if it was Patric.”

  “The real question here now is,” Seth started, “what are we supposed to do?”

  Demitra exchanged glances with Artemis and Olympia. A knowing nod between the women let her know that they were on the same page she was. “We are going to have to kill him.”

  “Kill him?” Seth gasped. “We don’t kill people! None of us have ever killed anybody!”

  “Some of us have,” Zelda snorted. “Back in the day, Lympy, Pastoria, and…” Olympia shot Zelda a look of caution. Zelda winked at her friend and continued. “In our youth, your Hecate and I had to take out a monster or two.”

  “Hecate, you’ve killed someone before?” Seth asked in utter disbelief.

  Olympia sighed softly, “There are times in this world when help is needed. A minister, a police officer, a fireman, a doctor…but there are some forces that cannot be stopped by regular avenues. Witches have always had to step in where necessary for the greater good and to protect the Natural Order. It is why we exist—we protect the realm, so to speak. It is why I trained you all for all these years.”

  “We thought you were just trying to help us control our powers so that nothing bad happened because of us,” Seth gasped.

  “That was part of it,” Olympia admitted. “But mostly I needed the next generation to be ready to do the things the generations before you had to do to keep this world safe. It didn’t used to be this peaceful. My father, his father, all those before us did their part. And I have stepped up to the task at times in my life when I was needed.”

  “It appears you are going to be needed again,” Artemis noted. “Sounds like we all are.”

  “Yep,” Zelda huffed. “We got us a werewolf to kill.”

  “Or two?” Seth quipped.

  Everyone turned to look at him. “What do you mean?” Artemis asked.

  “Well, Beryl, didn’t you say your patient was attacked? If your patient is still alive doesn’t that mean he’s a werewolf too.”

  “She,” Beryl mumbled, mostly to herself. “My patient is a she. And I never even thought about that. What if we have two werewolves now?”

  Olympia took over the meeting. As coven leader, and the most experienced member of the family, she needed to formulate a plan. “The time for conversation is over. We must prepare. Fable has a date with Patric tonight. She told us at breakfast. He will be coming here. And he is sure to know by now that Beryl has told us about last night. At all costs we must keep Fable protected. He wants her, but he’ll have to come through the rest of us to get her.”