Chapter 27 #2
“Where are they?” I asked, my tone sounding more demanding than I’d intended.
I searched my body for them, sensing our tender thread pulling me down the hallway.
Wes was about a hundred yards to the right, Atlas farther on beyond him.
The first was still asleep, dreaming about blood rituals and my eyes when I stared up at him from between his legs.
I decided not to question how I knew his dreams and focused on Atlas, who was facing his own inquisition from Valkyrie.
His annoyance and frustration pooled in my chest, amplifying my own.
“They’re fine,” Circe said. “As I’m sure you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I hadn’t told them anything about the liminal or what we’d done there. I hadn’t given them very much at all, so unless Atlas was spilling his guts, which I doubted, I didn’t understand how she could have access to that information.
“You know what it means,” Circe said, taking another long draw on her cigarette before pointing it at me. “You’ve been a very naughty witch, haven’t you?”
I took a deep breath and tried to steady it on its way out, every nerve in my body aching for me to find my warriors.
We couldn’t be apart. It physically hurt to not be near them, and that, of course, raised a whole host of other concerns.
What had we done to get out of there? What had we sacrificed?
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t lie to me,” Circe said. “You’re blood sworn to the coven and to the MC. Your colors come first. Remember that.”
“We were stuck in the liminal,” I explained. “Our bond was gone.”
Circe raised an eyebrow in a simple gesture for me to go on.
“I didn’t know how to get out,” I said, wondering how much I should say.
Between the three of us, we hadn’t come up with a cover story, but I also didn’t see the point in lying.
Lilith had looked me in the eye, and whatever she’d seen prompted her to demand we be kept in quarantine…
and separated from each other. I put a hand over my heart as it clenched.
I needed to be with them. I needed to be surrounded by their energy.
In the end, I told her as much as I could. I explained how we’d found Constance’s book and the rituals inside. We’d researched for weeks before we tried the first one, but when all of our roads turned to dead ends, we didn’t think we had another choice.
“We had to get the bond back,” I explained. “We had to figure out how to get out of there.”
I divulged all of it, down to the flesh-binding ritual and the demolition of the estate.
The demon had been watching us the whole time, nudging us in ways we didn’t anticipate.
When I got to St. Michaels and what had happened to Wes, I paused.
If she knew he’d been possessed, if she knew what I’d done to get us home, I wasn’t sure how she’d react.
I trusted my sisters, but like she said, the coven always came first. Would she expel me? Would she banish all three of us?
Atlas and Wes would be fine. They’d lived their whole lives on the fringes of the Harlots. But me…this was my world. My family. My sisters.
“Go on,” Circe said. “How did you finally get rid of the demon?”
“We banished it,” I stated. “But that destroyed the liminal.”
“You banished it?” Circe raised her eyebrows. “You used a forbidden ritual to toss a demon back into hell.”
“Yes,” I said, squaring my jaw, tilting my head up higher to meet her stare.
“I’m not ashamed of it. Not even guilty.
I knew the price, and I paid it willingly.
I did what I had to do to get us home.” I paused to swallow down the heat rising in my cheeks.
“I’d do it again if it got us the same result. ”
“Why?” Circe pursed her lips and shook her head. “Why banish it? Why not go through with the soul-binding and use all that residual magic to open the veil?”
“That was the plan,” I explained. “Until…”
I was terrified of what it meant. The memories of what happened after were hazy.
I remembered the pain. I remembered bleeding from my ears and nose.
I remembered clawing my way to Wes and clinging to Atlas and then…
something shifted inside me. If I had to guess, I’d say it was my soul being cleaved into pieces.
It was the sacrifice demanded of a witch that dabbled in banishment.
Nothing comes without a price.
Sacrifice is always painful.
To send a soul to hell, the practitioner must give a piece of herself to go with it.
Except…
I’d expected hollowness. I’d expected emptiness and apathy. Instead, something else squirmed around inside me like a parasite, like a cancer. I could sense its presence but didn’t know exactly what it meant or what it would do.
“Until?” Circe said, bringing me back from my thoughts.
“What will Lilith do with us?” I asked instead of answering.
“I botched the liminal ritual. I used old magic to create something unknowable between me and my warriors. I banished a demon to hell, knowing it was forbidden. Will she kick me out? Strip my patch from my cut and forbid me from the estate?”
Circe took a deep breath and grabbed her pack of cigarettes, pinching one between her teeth before using magic to light it with her hand.
“Don’t know,” she replied. “It depends on how honest you are.”
“Do you think I’m lying?” I hadn’t been, not about the things I actually told her.
Circe’s assessing gaze narrowed, and I sensed Wes start to wake up. He was looking for me, looking for Atlas, panic squeezing his chest when he realized he was alone.
“No,” she finally said. “But I think there’s something you’re not saying, something you want to keep hidden.”
“I spent two months in the liminal,” I said. “There are a lot of things I want to keep hidden. Lots of things I wish I could forget.”
“Hmm,” Circe hummed a gentle agreement.
“I had to do what I needed to save him,” I said. “You have to understand. I wouldn’t come back without him.”
Understanding dawned in her widening eyes. “Which one?”
“Does it matter?” I asked. “The demon possessed him, and I love him, and I would do it again to save him.”
“One of them was possessed?” She ran her hand over her face. “Jesus, Marta. Are you sure it’s gone?”
I didn’t answer because I wasn’t.
“Fucking hell.” Circe blew out a breath. “If it were up to me, I’d be giving you a fucking medal. Two months alone with your warriors and a demon?” She laughed. “I don’t know many witches who could go through that and live to tell the tale.”
I tried for a smile, but it felt fake even as I pushed the corners of my lips up.
“But it’s not up to me,” she said. “It’s the coven. We all have to agree, and honestly, the way you three looked coming out of there did not spark optimism.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your eyes were black,” she said. “You were covered in soot and brimstone. You reeked of magic, like it was clinging to you, refusing to let you go.” Circe blew out a thick cloud of smoke and shook her head. “It was the stuff you only hear about in old wives’ tales.”
“I had to invoke certain…energies,” I said, glancing down to my lap, refusing to meet her scrutinizing gaze. “I couldn’t do it alone.”
“I don’t doubt that,” she said. “But if you’re a threat to the coven, a threat to the Harlots, we can’t let you stay. You know that, right?”
I nodded. “My tita?”
“She’s here,” Circe said, nodding toward the door. “She’s been waiting for you to wake up.”
“Can I see her?” My heart tugged at the notion that she might say no. “Even though I’m in quarantine?”
Circe thought for a moment before nodding. “I’ll go get her. Don’t tell Lilith.”
She rose and walked out of the door while I tried again to push myself upright, now having enough strength to do it. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and checked in on my warriors. Atlas had finally been left alone, now ruminating over what they would do with me.
“Not going to leave her,” he thought. “They can go fuck themselves, and if they try to keep her from me, from us, I’ll—”
“It’s okay,” I told him. “Don’t let them see you sweat.”
“Little witch.” He sighed. “Did you tell them the truth?”
“Most of it,” I said. “I left out some bits at the end.”
“Good,” he replied. “I miss you. I’m coming to see you.”
“No, stay there for now. Let’s see how this plays out.”
Silence and then a reluctant grunt. “Fine. But don’t think you’re—”
The sound of Tita opening the door cut him off, and my weariness warred with utter joy at the familiar sight.
“Mi hija,” she cooed as she came closer to sit on the bed.
I wrapped myself in her arms, holding her tight as she whispered prayers of thanks to the Virgin and God and all the fucking saints that I’d made it home.
We held each other for a long time, probably longer than was necessary, and I berated myself for not feeling… more.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to break myself into pieces and flay myself open.
But there was just…nothing. That wrongness infected me.
It swallowed up all the emotions I should have had and sucked them down into a bottomless void.
My abuelita had been the one stable person in my life.
More mother and father than grandmother, she’d raised me as her own.
She loved and cared for me when no one else would, and yet…
I couldn’t bring myself to show any emotions about being back in her arms.
That concerned me, too.
“Let me look at you,” she said, pulling away to cup my jaw with her firm hands. Her careful gaze ran down the length of my face as she pushed a piece of my hair behind my ear. “Oh, you’ve been through it, huh?”
I nodded. “It was…”
“You’re different,” she said. “You’re stronger.”
“Perhaps,” I admitted. “I don’t know if that’s a good thing.”
She smiled and leaned in to kiss my forehead, the touch comforting in its familiarity. How many times had she done this in my life? Thousands? Millions? And this time, it seemed to startle me. Like whatever was in me would sink its teeth into her, corrupting her as thoroughly as it had me.
“Tita, I—” I cleared my throat and shook my head. “I think something’s wrong with me.” The words came out in a hushed whisper. I didn’t want anyone else to overhear, which was stupid because there were ears everywhere in the estate.
“Shhh,” she said with the same kind smile that she always used when I came home with a skinned knee or a bruised ego. “It’s over. Whatever happened is gone. Whatever it is, we’ll figure it out.”
“They might take my patch,” I said. “They might…”
“If that’s the case, then we will figure that out, too.” She pulled me back into her arms. “My sweet Elizabeta. My Marta. You have survived so much for someone so young. And you know what? You will survive this, too.”
My heart squeezed as I wrapped my hands around her back and clung to her, suddenly feeling like that little girl again, the one who had found out she’d been made an orphan.
I didn’t know what would happen now, where I would go or what I would do.
But I remembered what St. Michael had said to me.
Sacrifice is always painful.
I made my choice, and now I had to be prepared to live with it, no matter the cost.