A Lost Witch (A Modern Witch Series: Book 7) Read Online Free

outlet.
    -o0o-
    Lauren considered the pint of Cherries Garcia in her hand.  It probably wasn’t the right offering to try to calm a tiger, but it was the best she had.
    She walked into the living room where her tiger sat in an armchair, looking out the window at the early dawn seas.  His pose might even fool a lesser woman.  “Ice cream?”
    “We still have some left?”  Devin turned around in the chair, grinning.  “I figured my nieces totaled your stash last night.”
    She was smarter than three ten-year-olds.  “I have more than one stash.”  Which was a good thing, because Shay in particular had excellent ice-cream-stalking skills.  Lauren made her way across the remnants of a hotly contested game of Settlers of Catan and took a seat in her husband’s lap.
    Strong arms wrapped around her, the kind that were built for rescuing damsels in distress.  In any other era, Devin Sullivan would have been a knight in shining armor.
    She planted a kiss on his forehead.  He hadn’t married a damsel, distressed or otherwise.  “I’ll call Tabitha in an hour.  The wheels are turning as quickly as they can, love.”  And if it turned out that Hannah needed rescuing, the bat signal was only a finger swipe away.
    “I know.”  And he did.  Trust wasn’t the issue here.  His tiger state was one part reckless soul and two parts enormous empathy.  “It’s just hard to be patient.  That could be one of us in there.”
    And that was why she desperately needed the Cherries Garcia, even if he didn’t.  “Maybe we should have just gone in.”
    The tiger leaped—she could see it in his eyes.  And then Devin caught it by the chin hairs.  He took the pint out of her hands, set it on the side table, and cupped her cheeks in his hands, a giant finding his gentle.  “There’s no one better and more capable who could be working to get her out.  We all know that.”  His eyes searched hers, making sure she knew it too.
    She would do her best.  And they would still be stumbling around in the dark.  Lauren sighed and cuddled into his chest.  She was savvy, skilled, loaded up on coffee and ice cream, and had the might of Witch Central at her back.  That would have to be enough.
    Right after she curled up in her husband’s strength for a while.

Chapter 3

    “You’re quiet this morning.”
    Hannah didn’t look away from the window.  The raindrops slowly making their way down the pane of glass were soothing.  They flowed, content—their futures weren’t in doubt.
    Dr. Max took a seat on the chair beside her.  “That was a pretty bad one.”
    Her attacks—they didn’t know what else to call them.  Hannah sighed and wished she could join the raindrops on their eternal cycle of falling and then rising again into the mists of the sky.  She’d had strange dreams—the sedatives always did that.  “I made it a whole month without one this time.”  Thirty-two days, sixteen hours, eleven minutes.
    “I know.”   The empathy in his voice had always been able to touch her—and today it carried the same frustration that hammered her soul.  They’d run out of ideas.
    She ran her finger down the inside of the windowpane, tracking a greedy, fat droplet as it made its way down her field of vision.  “It’s not Jessica’s fault.”  The attendant was new.  She hadn’t understood the protocols. 
    No visitors.  No new people without photographs first.  No words on first contact, and absolutely no visual contact from anyone she hadn’t known for months and months.
    The rules, worked out through painful trial and error, that kept Hannah Kendrick somewhere near sane.
    Most days.  New faces were the biggest trigger, but not the only one.  Sometimes the attacks came for no reason at all.
    “She can’t work here if she can’t stick to protocol.”  Dr. Max’s voice held steel now.  He was very protective of his patients.  “You’re not the only one who needs that kind of attention to