Witch's Awakening by Neely Powell Page B

a week ago, her time was her own. She had her art kit with charcoals and colored pencils beside her. She was going to sketch plants that attract caterpillars and butterflies.
    Aunt Frances had a butterfly garden that was the envy of the local lawn enthusiasts. What better place for Brenna to study a caterpillar’s domain for the children’s book she was illustrating?
    Brenna felt she also needed a break. The past days had blurred one into another.
    First there had been the odd disturbances in town. Jake and the rest of the sheriff’s department were hard pressed to keep order. Three nights this week, the coven had cast calming spells for the entire countryside. Still not used to exercising her magic so often, Brenna found these group encounters taxing.
    The good news was the troubles had subsided, although not disappeared. Brenna could feel an evil presence hovering, but no one else had been killed or seriously injured. There’d been no more incidents like the one with the werewolf in the diner. How was the Woman in White able to influence local residents? That Brenna didn’t understand.
    Garth’s memorial service was held Wednesday, with an evening wake at Sarah’s. Eva Grace and Garth’s aunt had spread his ashes in the woods where he had loved to shift and roam.
    As Brenna traveled the familiar route to her elder aunt’s home, she marveled again at Eva Grace’s strength. The day after Garth’s wake, Eva Grace insisted on going back to her cottage. Brenna and Fiona stayed with her the two following nights, but she asked them to leave this morning. Brenna didn’t blame her cousin for wanting some time alone before returning to her shop on Monday.
    They were all getting on each other’s nerves. Despite the need to find answers about the Woman in White and the curse, they had made little headway. Sarah and the elder aunts turned peevish about
The Connelly Book of Magic
, insisting they needed to study it first. So the younger witches had no new information about past visits of the Woman in White. Which made it difficult to understand how they related to current events. Jake was too busy to do more than stop by Eva Grace’s a few times to check on her.
    On top of all of this, Brenna was supposed to be setting up her third floor studio-bedroom at Sarah’s. She hadn’t unpacked before Garth was murdered, and the large room was a jumble of boxes. She knew she should make herself at home in the attic where she, her sister and cousin had played so often as children. Having her own space was essential to being able to live with Sarah and Marcus.
    But who could unpack or concentrate on a curse when the mountain roads of her home called on this bright June Saturday?
    Better to think about work on the book she was illustrating, Brenna told herself. A friend in Atlanta who was a kindergarten teacher had written a beautiful story about tolerance and acceptance that featured a small bird and a caterpillar. She submitted a few of Brenna’s sketches to the publisher, and now they wanted Brenna to revise and add to the drawings. She was thrilled with this new challenge, not to mention the paycheck. She hoped this opportunity and her savings would launch a new phase of her career.
    She pulled to a stop in the driveway of Aunt Frances’s sprawling ranch-style home. Red brick was accented with crisp white trim, green shutters and deep awnings. Both the elder aunts had been given four-acre plots of Connelly land when they married. Frances’s husband, now deceased, was a successful insurance salesman, and the home they built reflected their affluence. Her granddaughter Lauren now lived with her.
    Brenna asked Lauren about being in town on Friday night when the fighting in the streets erupted. Her cousin said she was so surprised by the outbreak of hostility that she rushed home to make sure her grandmother was safe.
    Brenna got out of her car as Aunt Frances came bustling