Chapter 4
By the timeNero and I return to the coven, the sun has disappeared behind a thick layer of clouds, and I feel like I’ve been hit by a cauldron.
Memnon’s pain-numbing spells must’ve worn off, and my body is feeling all the aches of last night, as well as the deeper exhaustion that comes from overusing my magic.
Once I enter my house, I head toward the dining hall, lured in by the smell of soup and fresh bread. Halfway there, I feel a prickle at the back of my neck. I glance around and notice a couple of witches staring. And when I enter the dining room, a witch who had been playing a fiddle now stops, and the chatter in the room quiets as my coven sisters glance my way.
I’ve been distracted by my wicked fiancé, but for these women, my arrest must’ve been the drama of the night—especially since Memnon spelled them to forget their own brushes with death.
Ignoring the looks, I grab a bowl painted with vines from a stack at the front of the buffet line and fill it with steaming soup. Snagging a bread roll from a nearby basket, I beat a hasty retreat from the room, Nero at my heels.
All I really want to do is snuggle into my bed and binge-watch something on my laptop, but I haven’t spoken with my best friend Sybil since last night, and so much has happened since we parted that it feels wrong to hole up without at least stopping by her room first.
I don’t bother knocking when I get there, I just step inside, Nero trailing in after me, and I set my bread and soup down on her desk.
Sybil’s back is to me while she tends to her wall of plants, her lilac magic threading through the room. She’s lost in her own world, humming something under her breath that the leaves are swaying to. Merlin, her barn owl familiar, rests on a perch over her bed, his eyes hyper focused on Nero.
“Sybil,” I call out.
My friend startles, nearly dropping her watering pail.
“Goddess’s wrath,” she curses, turning. As soon as she sees me, she gasps. “Selene!” Now she chucks the pail aside, causing Merlin to flap his wings as water sprays him and his perch. She crosses the room and throws herself at me. “I’ve been so worried.” she says, holding me tightly. “I heard you were arrested, but when I called the station, they told me you’d already been released. But then you weren’t answering your calls, and you never showed up here.” She pauses to inhale a breath. “Where have you been?”
“I’ve been with Memnon,” I say tiredly. I shrug off the duffel bag I’ve been carrying, nearly clobbering my familiar in the process.
Nero gives me what can only be described as a dirty look.
“Sorry, bud,” I say to him.
His ears flick at the term. You just cannot please everyone.
“Memnon?” Sybil says, making a face. “Last I checked, we hated his guts.”
“We still hate his guts,” I confirm.
“Oh good. I mean bad.” Her brow furrows. “But last night when he was carrying you out of the dance, you guys seemed like you’d ironed things out. What happened?”
I let out a jaded laugh that ends as a sob.
Hell’s spells, where to begin?
I sit down heavily on the edge of her bed, Nero curling up at my feet. “If you have an hour, I’ll tell you everything.”
She nods, pulling her computer chair over to sit. “I’m listening.”
So I tell her the whole, sordid truth, from Memnon asphyxiating a room full of supernaturals then altering their minds, to framing me for the murders to forcing me to agree to his shitty demands.
Sybil keeps saying “What the fuck?” over and over again, her eyes glued to me.
Once I finish, she lets out a hysterical little laugh. “So let me get this straight: you’re no longer a suspect”—I nod—“but you’re engaged to a psycho”—another nod—“and you can now remember your past?”
I give her a sad smile. “Yeah, that’s about where the situation is.”
“I don’t believe it,” she says, staring at me intently.
I probably wouldn’t either, if roles were reversed.
“Ask me about a memory, one you know I’ve forgotten,” I say.
Sybil sits back in her seat. “Um…okay.” She drums her fingers on the armrest. “What did we do on the night of our high school graduation?”
Easy. “We got drunk off cheap booze and skinny-dipped in the Irish Sea. It was tit-chappingly cold too.”
Sybil’s mouth parts with her surprise. “Holy midnight,” she says softly. “You remember.” The lights in her room flicker, punctuating the statement. “And your magic won’t take any more memories the next time you cast a spell?”
I shake my head. “No.”
Sybil’s eyes well as they move over my features. “How do you feel about that?”
I sigh and get up, grabbing my bread roll before returning to her bed. Bread will help, right?
“Awful. Angry. A little hopeful and then guilty that I feel hope.” I rip the roll in half, then take a bite of it. “I don’t know. I’m so conflicted.”
Sybil moves next to me on the bed and rubs my back. “I’m sorry,” she says softly. “Now is probably not a good time to tell you what’s been happening here.”
I glance over at her, my brow creasing. “What are you talking about?”
“Another witch was murdered.”
It’s my turn to stare at her in disbelief.
“What? When?”
“I think someone discovered the body sometime in the middle of the night out in the Everwoods,” Sybil says.
A shudder runs through me when I realize this must’ve been Memnon’s doing. He’d moved the previous bodies into the Everwoods when he was framing me for murder. He must’ve spent the hours I was incarcerated unframing me for it. After all, he didn’t scheme to marry me just to leave me behind bars. No, he has far more carnal plans for the two of us.
All at once, fear floods my chest, making it hard to breath. I place a hand over my heart, choking a little on the sensation. I can’t understand my own extreme reaction?—
SELENE!Memnon bellows down our bond.
Speak of the fucking devil.
Panic continues to grip me, and I realize it’s his emotions I’m feeling, not my own.
Answer me if you can!His tone is frantic. Tell me you’re okay.
“Are you okay?” Sybil says, echoing the sorcerer’s words. Her brow crinkles as she eyes me.
I nod. I’m fine, I push down our bond, just to beat back this terror pouring from Memnon. It clicks then. You found the fire.
I sense the instant realization strikes him.
You set this?
I feel relief spreading down our bond, and it’s like a balm to his previous fear.
He begins to laugh. The hairs along my arms rise at the sound. Only he would find arson funny.
Clever, vicious woman, he continues. I should know by now that you would have vengeance to match my own.
“Selene?” Sybil snaps her fingers in front of my face. “What is going on? You’re zoning out.”
“Memnon’s found the fire,” I say distractedly.
“What fire?”
“The one I started in his house.”
“You started a fire?” Sybil squawks.
I nod.
Where are you now? Memnon asks.
Home.
I don’t see you,he says.
My home, I clarify.
“You’re not serious, are you?” my friend says. “You can’t just light people’s houses on fire.”
“You can if they suck.”
“Selene.” Sybil gives me a patronizing look.
Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t come over right now and haul you back here, Memnon says.
I will light your house on fire again,I respond, doubling down on my actions. Assuming any of it still stands.
When will this man learn not to fuck with witches?
How are you doing?Memnon says, pivoting the conversation. Getting uncomfortable yet since we made that oath?
Why would I be uncomfortable?
There’s a spark of amusement. You’ll find out soon enough. Once ignoring it becomes intolerable, soul mate, you can come find me.
Tits will talk before that happens, I say. In the meantime, have fun figuring out where you’ll sleep tonight.
I withdraw from the connection then and glance at Sybil. “I should get back to my room.” I have the rest of my dinner to eat and notebooks to put away. Plus, Nero likely wants to get out and stretch his muscles in the Everwoods.
“Wait a damn second,” my friend says, “you can’t just leave after you casually mention that you lit some dude’s place on fire.”
“Not ‘some dude,’” I say, grabbing my soup. It’s long since gone cold. “My evil soul mate. And I’ll tell you more about it later.”
I heft the unzipped duffel bag of notebooks onto my shoulder and head out her door, Nero prowling after me.
To our backs Sybil calls out, “I’m holding you to that!”
Nero and I make it up to the third floor, passing by several framed portraits of wild eyed witches and a random bat flying down the hallway.
The door to my room hangs slightly ajar—no one bothered to fully close it last night after I was taken away. My heart twists at that.
I push it open and step inside. The space is still covered with sticky notes, and my newest journal sits wide open on my desk. It’s a time capsule of my life before my memory was restored. This version of me—the one who meticulously crafted her life to work with her memory loss—I feel like I lost her when I gained these memories.
And even though there’s a lightness to me where the curse once bore down, I feel a bit like a ship without an anchor, forced to drift about aimlessly.
Nero prowls over to my bed, then hops on it, completely uncaring that I’m having a moment.
He stretches out his forelegs, then sprawls out on his side, closing his eyes.
“Clearly, you’re super torn up about last night,” I mutter, dropping the duffel bag with my notebooks. A few of the journals spill out.
I move to my desk, looking over the open page of my newest notebook. I run my fingers over one of the last messages I left myself:
Do not trust Memnon the Cursed.
I can still remember the anger and the panic I felt in the moment. Strange to be on this side of it. My eyes slip away from the warning to a sticky note placed in the center of the page. I smooth a hand over it before I realize the penmanship isn’t my own.
I pull the sticky note off the paper.
You might’ve forgotten what happened at the spell circle, but we have not.
I drop the note on my keyboard, staring at it before looking first to my window, then to my previously open door. The wards I made to keep out intruders are still in place, the spidery threads of them softly glinting in the air.
Whoever wrote this got past those wards. A chill runs down my spine. How? Someone who meant me ill shouldn’t have been able to, not without ripping the spells down.
I glance back at the ominous message. Whoever left this is aware of my memory loss but not that the magic causing it was lifted.
And they won’t learn of this, I decide. I will keep that revelation as quiet as I can.
Something ancient and buried stirs within me. Enemies ended me once, long ago. I didn’t endure that fate to be played once more.
I pull out my chair and sit down, opening my new notebook to a fresh page. I might no longer need this journal to remember my tasks, but there are other things it can be useful for.
Grabbing a pen, I jot down the disturbing events that have happened on campus since the school year began:
Murdered witches
Monthly spell circle with illegal binding spells
I’ve been connected to both of these events. Until now, I was too busy trying to stay one step ahead of the shitstorm to actually address either of them. But now I can. I glance at the sticky note again.
I must.
Returning my attention to the notebook, I tap my pen against the paper. Many of the murdered witches attended Henbane Coven.
There are so many questions I have about these murders, starting with Memnon’s involvement, but before I can get too distracted by that, I force myself to look at the other incident listed. The spell circle happens every new moon, and if my experience was typical, then these all center around forcibly binding an unwilling supernatural—in my case, it was a shifter—to the high priestess running the circle.
According to the sticky note, she and the other witches haven’t forgotten that I fucked their spell to shit, and unfortunately for me, I don’t know who those witches are. They’d all worn masks. But I do know they can get past my wards and into my room.
A bit of that old, iron-fisted spirit of mine rises in me again.
If I want to live in peace, I’m going to have to deal with these enemy witches before they deal with me. Removing whatever threat they pose to me is more important than even my studies.
My pen moves to write the information down, and only halfway through scribbling my plans out do I realize it’s unneeded. I won’t forget.
I will, however, need help.
I tap the top of my pen against the paper.
In the past, Memnon was just as keen to discover these witches as I was. I don’t think his interest had anything to do with revenge. Even then in the depths of his anger, I believe he still sought to protect me. I’m nearly positive he would be willing to get his hands dirty on my behalf once more if I asked.
But he might simply use this request as leverage to get something else out of me. The thought leaves me cold.
No, that will not happen. I won’t let it.
My mind strays back to the last of my ancient memories, the truly painful ones, and I press my lips together.
I have leverage of my own.
Memnon,I reach out down our bond.
I feel warmth from his end of the magical cord. I’m sure he thinks this is me caving to his wishes.
Before he has a chance to speak, I say, Meet me in the Slain Maiden’s Meadow in an hour. I… I close my eyes, forcing the next part out. I need your help.