Chapter 24 #2
She studies me. Her eyes drop, briefly, to the high collar of my blouse, and I wonder what she’s reading there.
“What do you want with witches?”
“Help,” I repeat. “With something very important. Was your aunt a witch? Could you show us where she lived?”
“Why do you want to see her cottage?”
“To look for clues as to her whereabouts. And she may have known other witches.” I look her deep in the eyes, willing her to believe me. “We are in sort of a time crunch.”
Darius speaks from the doorway. “If you don’t want to take us there,” he says evenly, “we’ll find it ourselves. We are asking out of respect. We do not need permission.”
Fiona’s head whips toward him. “Fine,” she snaps.
She walks out from behind the counter, past Lucas, past Darius. The bolt slides back with a quick, angry motion. She pulls the door open.
“I’ll take you,” she says, looking back at us over her shoulder. “But I’m telling my neighbor where I’m going with you first. I do not trust any of you.”
“That’s fair,” Lillian says quietly.
We follow her out into the high street. The place next door is a small grocer’s; a light is still on inside. Fiona enters without knocking. The shopkeeper looks up from a ledger, then at the cluster of strangers waiting on his stoop, and his eyebrows climb.
I cannot hear what Fiona says to him. She speaks low, fast, her hand on his counter.
He listens. His eyes flick past her to us once.
He nods. Whatever he says back to her, it’s too quiet, but I see his hand drop below the counter.
It comes back up with an object folded in cloth that she tucks into the pocket of her apron without looking.
Then, she comes back out. She does not look at any of us as she pulls the door shut behind her.
“This way,” she says.
The walk to the cottage takes us through the woods at the edge of the village as the light is going pink.
Fiona walks a few paces ahead, not among us—deliberately not a part of our group.
Lillian walks behind her at a respectful distance.
Lucas falls in behind me, with Darius and Violet at his shoulders.
The cottage sits at the end of the track. The roof has held. The windows have weathered open. A wild rose bush has climbed the front porch and spread across the door.
Fiona stops at the threshold.
She takes a key from the leather cord from around her neck. Her hand is steady when she fits it into the lock. The door swings open on hinges that protest.
We step inside.
The front room has a smell of dust and old herbs, faint but persistent. Lillian moves through it slowly, her palm extended, and stops near the hearth.
“Strong residue here,” she murmurs. “Old. But real. I haven’t felt a working this strong in years.”
Fiona is already in the next room. I can see her with her hand on the kitchen table, fingers spread on the wood. She drifts to a doorframe and rests her forehead against it.
I leave her to it.
I open drawers. I lift books off shelves.
The kitchen yields jars of dried things still labeled in the same slanted script I saw at the apothecary, a pestle worn smooth at the handle, a row of glass bottles tucked behind the flour tin.
Behind the bottles, wedged against the back wall, my fingers brush leather.
A notebook. Spine cracked. Heavy.
“Sienna.” It’s Violet, from the back room. Her tone is a mixture of awe and fear.
I find her holding a strip of dark fabric, her thumb running over the embroidered edge. An armband. Faded, but the symbol on it is still visible.
“I’ve seen this emblem before,” Violet whispers. “The men who came after me and Anne last year. They were wearing these.”
My breath catches.
Darius takes it from her hand, his expression tightening. “The Covenant. This cloth is old. Fiona, you said our kind took your aunt?”
She nods. He looks at Violet and me, and he doesn’t have to say out loud what we’re all thinking. What did the Covenant want with a witch twenty years ago?
We all move back to the front room. I still have the notebook I found in the kitchen, and I set it on the coffee table. Fiona identifies it the moment I lay it down.
“That was hers.”
She lifts it gingerly, cradling the leather in both hands. Her fingers shake. She opens it carefully as I look over her shoulder.
It’s a lineage.
Names. Mother to daughter, generation by generation, going back at least a hundred years. Fiona’s lips move silently as she reads down the column. Then, she begins speaking the names aloud—softly, slowly, prayerfully.
“Aoife. Brigid. Maeve. Niamh. Una.” Her voice catches. “She used to tell me stories. Said we came from one of the most powerful witch lines in the region. I thought it was just family pride.”
She turns the page. Her own name is at the bottom of the lineage, in the same careful hand. Fiona. Niece. Blood kin. Next of the line.
Fiona’s hand closes over her mouth.
I take the book back gently. She lets me. I turn past the lineage.
The next page also has names in a column, but it’s a different list. Each name has a date attached, each entry clean and deliberate.
Cassius Steele.
Edmund Steele.
Henrik Steele.
Thomas Steele.
Lucas Steele.
I read them aloud. “Every name above Lucas’s has been crossed out.”
The room goes silent.
Lucas takes the book from me. His fingers close around the edges of the leather, and he stares at the page. I am at his side, my shoulder brushing his arm. The bond carries his pulse to me: hard, slow, a drum pounding deep in his chest.
Fiona steps closer to look. She says doesn’t recognize the names, but she knows the writing. The pattern, too. Her aunt’s record-keeping has a rhythm to it that Fiona knows on sight.
“She used to travel,” Fiona adds slowly.
Lucas looks at her.
“Several times a year. Always to the same town. The closest human town to…” Fiona stops.
Shakes her head. “To wherever it was she was going. She’d dress with care.
Leave at dawn. Be back by evening.” Her hand has lifted to her chin.
“She never let me come.” Fiona’s voice becomes quieter.
“I asked her once if she had a friend there. She said she was going to keep an appointment.”
I can feel coldness climbing up my arms.
“One time, when she came home from one of those trips,” Fiona continues, “she went straight to her desk, opened this book, and wrote in it. Then, she put it away, and I never saw it again.” Her eyes drop to the page the book is open to.
“I remember her face that evening. She seemed…satisfied.” She looks around the room at each of us in turn. “I didn’t know what she was writing.”
Lucas closes the book. “She was checking,” he murmurs.
“On the dates the curse would have run its course,” Lillian says, her voice gentle, “she traveled to the human town nearest the Silvercrest alpha’s territory.
Found out whether the alpha had bonded a fated mate that year.
Confirmed the mate’s death. Came home. Crossed the alpha’s name out.
” She touches Lucas’s arm. “She must have crossed out your father’s name when she learned his fated mate had died. ”
“Four generations,” I whisper.
“Four generations of alphas,” Lillian agrees. “Verified by the witches of this bloodline.”
My hand finds Lucas’s where it is gripping the book. He doesn’t let go. His thumb twitches once against my palm.
Lillian comes to Lucas’s other shoulder and looks down at the page. “Lucas, it appears this woman is from the bloodline we’re looking for.”
“And the Covenant has her,” Darius says tightly. “Why?”
Fiona looks rather confused. “What are you all talking about?”
“We can’t tell you. But we need you to tell us everything you remember about the day your aunt went missing.”
I can see the reluctance in her eyes. After crossing slowly to the back door of the cottage, she opens it and looks out into the trees. Then, she speaks without turning around.
“She didn’t run away. The villagers all believed she did, and I never contradicted them.” Fiona sounds wistful. “I was seven. I couldn’t tell anyone the truth.” Her hand takes hold of the doorframe. “She didn’t run.”
The rest of us wait for her to continue.
“She took me out to a diner for lunch. She’d never done that before.
We got home, and she was edgy. She kept throwing clothes in a bag and then saying it wouldn’t matter.
Suddenly, she shoved me out the back door,” Fiona tells us.
“She told me to run to the village and never come back here. I ran, but not far. I hid in those trees.” She points out the back door.
“There were men who came to the cottage. She opened the door for them. I watched them put her in the back of a truck. She didn’t resist. I saw her look over her shoulder at where I was hiding.
I think she knew I was there. She never came back after that. ”
Eventually, Fiona’s shoulders ease. “My aunt was a good person. She was kind and fair. I never understood why she didn’t fight those men. But there was something about them, about their eyes. When you all walked into my shop, I felt it again. You made me feel like prey.”
Her instincts are spot on.
She swallows. “If that’s all you wanted, I’m leaving. I’ve never come back here since that night, and I never want to again. It’s too painful.” She puts the key on the table. “Return this when you are done.”
I watch her leave and sigh heavily. “Poor girl. The guilt she must carry.”
Lucas puts his hand on my shoulder. “If her aunt was as powerful as I think she was, then she could have taken down at least some of the shifters. She was protecting Fiona, most likely. She didn’t want them to shift and track down the little witch hiding in the woods.”
We decide we have found all there is to find here, and we leave the cottage. Hennessy is waiting at the tavern when we get back to the high street.
“I was asking around, and I found a human drunkard who seems to remember the witch going missing.”
We follow him to the back, where an old man well into his eighties sits hunched over a bowl of stew, his hand around a mug of dark beer. Lucas slides onto the bench across from him. I stand at his shoulder. Lillian and Darius hang back near the bar, while Violet returns Fiona’s key.
“Tell him what you told me,” Hennessy says.
The man looks at Lucas for a long time before he speaks. His eyes are watery and pale.
“Meera seemed off for a few days. Paranoid,” he murmurs.
“Then, she comes in one night, and we drink. We always drank together. But she said this was our last time, and she bought me a round. Her little girl was waiting outside. Just ten minutes. She sat with me for ten minutes. Told me to look after Fiona if something ever happened. I don’t know why I went to her cottage.
Wanted to see if she was okay, I guess, ’cause she was talking all funny.
A covered pickup passed me on the road. Didn’t belong to anyone I knew.
The plates weren’t from around here.” The old man’s hand shakes a little.
“Three men in the front seat. More in the back, I’d reckon. Heavy on the springs.”
Lucas nods.
“Then, I see them drag her out of her home.” The man’s voice catches.
“She didn’t make a sound. They put her in and left.
She never came back. That was the last drink we shared.
” Tears drip into his stew. “Never told a soul. Those men scared me. They were big, like mountains. Who was I going to tell? Who would believe me?”
Lucas reaches across the table and rests his hand on the old man’s wrist. “You’ve told me,” he murmurs. “That’s enough.”
The old man looks at Lucas for a few seconds. Then, he picks up his spoon.
We leave the tavern and stand outside, exhausted. In one day, we’ve covered more ground than we could have hoped for. Violet rejoins the group, and I fill her in on what we learned.
“Hennessy is going to see if that man remembers the plate numbers. We might be able to get somewhere with those,” my mate says, tucking my arm in his elbow.
“And I’ll have Monroe look into Meera’s background.
For now, let’s rest, and we can leave in the morning.
This happened twenty years ago. There’s not going to be any evidence left. ”
“You guys book us some rooms at the inn,” Violet says suddenly. “I need to buy something. Sienna?”
“Sure.” I shrug.
Lucas seems reluctant to let me wander off. “I’ll go with you.”
“We’ll be fine,” Violet says. “You go get the rooms.”
I watch them leave with Lillian, and for a few seconds, I breathe in the night air. So much has happened in the span of one day. We came to find a witch and ended up discovering the very bloodline that cursed Lucas’s ancestor.
“Okay, where do you want to go?” I ask Violet.
The high street has emptied. Lamps burn in the upstairs windows above the shops. Violet steers me past the apothecary, past the cobbler’s, past the smithy with its banked fire glowing red through the open door, and stops in front of a small shop with a rose-colored display in the window.
Silk. Lace. A ribbon trailing from a pale, satin shoulder.
I look up at the painted sign. I look at Violet.
“No.”
She laughs. “Yes.”
“Violet, no.”
“Sienna.”
“This is hardly the moment.” I gesture vaguely at the dark street, at the village, at everything. “We’re on an investigation. This is the most inappropriate possible moment for lingerie shopping.”
Violet shrugs, untroubled.
“Something is going to be happening all the time, Sienna. There is never going to be a convenient afternoon for it.” She tilts her head at the window.
“You’re going to take advantage of this perfectly good shop in front of us, a mate who has been sleeping with his back turned to you for over a week, and the spine I personally know you have. ”
I stare at her. The wind cuts through the high street, and I tug my coat closer.
The shop window has gone gold in the lamplight. Behind the rose silk, there’s a darker piece on a hanger, deep wine-red, the cut of it visible from the street.
My wolf, who has been so quiet for so long, lifts her head.
Violet’s hand is still at my elbow. The glint in her eye tells me I am not getting out of this.
“You are a menace,” I mutter.
“I’m one of your best friends.” She squeezes my arm. “Come on.”
I let her draw me toward the door.