Chapter 6
Hannah
As the bus takes us down the highway toward what I hope to God is Julia’s old coven, Julia grips her seat like the driver is about to hit an Eject button. When a semi-truck roars past, she flinches.
I must be smiling because she says through her teeth, “Does something amuse you?”
I lift a shoulder. “Just interesting to see an all-powerful witch afraid of public transportation.”
“I’m not afraid,” she snaps.
“Right. There must be some other reason you’re leaving finger dents in the seat.”
I probably shouldn’t be teasing someone who tried to kill my neighbor an hour ago, but watching her white-knuckle the bus seat makes her seem less like a threat and more like an ordinary human who is out of her depth—which is almost worse because it makes her harder to hate.
Anyway, I’d rather joke than think about how completely my life has derailed.
Sarcasm I can handle. Existential terror, not so much.
She releases her death grip, smoothing her cloak with dignity. “In my time, if something moved this fast, it was trying to kill you.”
“Welcome to the future. Everything moves fast and nothing makes sense.”
“Finally, something we agree on.”
My lip quirks. “You can relax, though. I’ve been riding the bus since I was a kid and it’s safe. I mean, we’ve never crashed.”
Safe might be a generous word, especially at night, but she doesn’t need to know that.
Julia makes a sound somewhere between disgust and resignation, watching the dark landscape blur past. “This speed just seems excessive.”
“What’s excessive is you murdering people for breakfast.”
“Breakfast, supper, the timing is irrelevant.” She waves a dismissive hand. “But I do not eat them. I feed on essence, not flesh.”
“How civilized of you.”
She studies me, her gaze burning the side of my face. The silence that follows is not quite comfortable but not hostile either.
I drum my fingers on the empty seat in front of me, glancing out at the full moon. We’re in a row of three seats at the back of the bus, away from the other passengers’ listening ears, but I still keep my voice low. “Why did this Rebecca person bind us, anyway?”
Julia is looking away from me, but her reflection in the window shows a flicker of surprise. “Why are you asking?”
“Why wouldn’t I ask?”
She shifts to face me, though her hands stay anchored to the seat. “What?”
“I need to know what I’m dealing with. How magic works.” Anything Julia can share about what the hell is happening and how we plan to get out of this mess would be super helpful.
She scowls. “I suspect she wanted to ensure nobody would want to free me. Why would someone wake me knowing they’d be subject to a binding spell, right?”
“Things that would’ve been nice to know earlier,” I mumble.
Her laugh is low and rich, sending a shiver down my spine. I have the sudden urge to say something clever just to hear it again. Which is ridiculous. I don’t care what she thinks of me.
“But why did she do this to you?”
Julia is quiet, watching the dark landscape and flowing traffic. Finally, she says, “My turn to ask a question. Where did you get that journal?”
The question hits me like a knife in the heart. “Someone gave it to me.”
“Who?”
“A girl.”
“What girl?”
I chew my lip. I can’t tell her my theory about Riley being a witch. If she thinks Riley had anything to do with her curse, she’ll want to hunt her down. And as much as I hate Riley right now…
Well, you can’t fall out of love in a blink. I refuse to put Riley in this woman’s crosshairs.
But I guess there’s no harm in mentioning that I got it from her. “My ex,” I say begrudgingly.
Julia traces her index finger through the fog building on the window. “Forgive me for being a century out of touch, but what do you mean by ex?”
Heat floods my cheeks. “Former…lover.” The word feels strange on my tongue, too intimate for a conversation with this woman I just met.
Her hands go perfectly still.
Wait, why am I staring at her hands?
I drop my gaze.
Finally, she says, “I see. And why is she your ex lover and not your current one?”
The knife in my heart twists deeper, reopening the wound I’ve been trying to cauterize. The silence stretches, and something about the darkness outside, or maybe just the turbulent day catching up with me, makes me too exhausted to keep my walls up. “She was just done with me, I guess.”
“She gave you the journal and disappeared?” Julia asks, her tone sharpening. “Tell me more about this girl.”
“She gave it to me a long time ago,” I say quickly. “She knows I love old books, so she probably thought…” I lift a shoulder. Who the hell knows what Riley thought? Apparently, I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.
“And when she broke your heart, you burned it?” Julia asks.
“Yeah.” My eyes sting as I hear those words spoken aloud. “The way she broke up with me was so juvenile that I wonder if she never realized how deeply I fell for her. Like she thought we were kids holding hands at the movies instead of women in a real relationship.”
There’s a pause. Okay, so I’m discussing my love life with someone who had her hands on me earlier.
Someone who, through magic I don’t understand, makes me feel more at-ease than I did with Riley in the last few days.
But these feelings are from the spell, right?
It’s not real. Not like what I had with Riley.
“Where did you meet?” Julia asks.
My cheeks heat up as I force my brain back to the conversation. Her tone is clinical and emotionless—she’s trying to solve a mystery while I’m vomiting my deepest feelings like this is therapy.
“A park,” I reply. “The summer after high school, I was on the grass, reading, and Riley was doing the same a few feet over. We started talking.”
“Hm.”
I can practically see the gears turning in Julia’s head, cataloging every detail about Riley. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her up.
“Why does any of this matter?” I ask.
“Because people don’t just stumble across cursed objects by accident. And it so happens that witches mature into their craft around the time they reach womanhood.”
My blood runs cold. If Riley really is a witch, this would explain a hell of a lot. But it also makes the breakup hurt in an entirely new way. If she was struggling with discovering something about herself, why didn’t she tell me? I would have supported her and loved her through it.
“My turn to ask another question,” I say before this conversation gets any closer to Julia suggesting that we hunt down Riley. “Why does the spell become permanent when the moon sets?”
She sighs. I prepare to deflect again, to insist that Riley is just a normal girl with a sappy side, but then Julia says, “Because spells are tied to natural cycles. The moon, the seasons, the body, flora and fauna. Magic takes time to plan, to cast, and to root.”
“How poetic.”
She waves a dismissive hand. “Merely facts.”
“So this binding spell is linked to the moon?”
“Rebecca is particularly skilled with time-based spells and curses.”
“You said she’s a celestial witch, right? Like how you’re a sanguine witch?”
She dips her chin. “We’re named for how we draw our power.”
So Rebecca draws from celestial bodies, Julia draws from others’ life forces… “Any other types of witches I should be worried about?”
“My coven had all kinds. Green witches, sea witches…and there are certainly more I haven’t met.” She pauses, watching me. “A sanguine witch is the most powerful, and there are—were—only a few of us in the world, in case you’re wondering.”
The thought of even one other witch like Julia is enough to make me shiver.
If Riley really is a witch, I wonder what kind she is. Not that she should matter to me anymore.
“How many were in your coven before your, um…nap?” I ask.
She shoots me a glare at my word choice. “Nine, but it fluctuated as members came and went.”
The unknown state of her coven hangs between us. Over a hundred years of comings and goings. Even for a murderous witch, that has to hurt.
“How long do witches live?”
The bus stops, and the doors hiss open. An old woman wearing a lot of layers and carrying two shopping bags hobbles aboard.
“Hundreds of years, if we’re prudent,” Julia replies. “Most aren’t. Violence finds us more often than old age.”
Another silence. In other words, almost everyone she knew is probably gone, one way or another.
As much as this is literally the worst thing to ever happen to me, it’s clear that this is even worse for Julia. At least I haven’t woken up in a different time period, unsure if everyone I know is dead or alive.
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
She scoffs. “For what?”
“I’m just sorry for what you’re going through.”
She doesn’t respond.
Another semi-truck roars past, and this time, she doesn’t flinch. Progress.
“Thanks for telling me all this,” I say, oddly touched by her honesty.
She lets out a low laugh, watching me with those unsettling eyes. “A word of warning, Hannah. In matters of witches and magic, be careful what you dig into. The more you learn about our world, the harder it becomes to pretend you’re still innocent.”
I scoff. “I was never innocent.”
I’m not sure why I said it. I guess I don’t want her to think I’m some sheltered little flower who can’t handle whatever we’re up against.
“No?” Her tone is amused. “You threw yourself between me and a stranger tonight. That’s either innocent or incredibly foolish.”
“It’s called having a conscience.”
“Hm, a luxury I can’t afford. Neither can you, if you want to survive what’s coming.”
We turn a corner, and the force bumps me against Julia. I keep my gaze ahead, ignoring the tingle under my skin.
“I’ll take my chances with my moral compass, thanks.”
“How noble. Tell me, does your moral compass account for the fact that you enjoyed it?”
My hands tighten on the back of the seat in front of me. “Enjoyed what?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
“That was—” It’s suddenly way too hot in here. I shift, keeping a few inches of space between us. “It’s the binding spell.”
“Sure,” she says flatly.
Dammit, should I be worried about how incredible it felt to have her hands on me? How I kind of liked being at her mercy?
“You held back during the last feeding,” she says, examining her nails. “I couldn’t consume enough to sustain me.”
I let out an indignant gasp. “I did not! Do you really think I’d even know how to hold back? I have no idea how any of this works!”
She scrutinizes me. After an uncomfortably long minute, she says, “Then let me deepen the feeding ritual when we get to Fort Langley. I need more power.”
My heart lurches. “Already? Now you’re being greedy.”
“You agreed to feed me, and this is what it entails.” She drops her hand, her tone shifting to something more serious. “I—need—more.”
“Not—yet,” I say, flinging that tone right back at her.
Something about thinking of Riley and then imagining having Julia’s hands on me again, even deepening the ritual, makes my insides twist. I’ve barely recovered from the last ritual and… I don’t know. This is all confusing.
I still love Riley. I can’t just shut that off. But when I look at Julia, all beautiful and confident and more interesting than anyone I’ve ever met… I don’t know if I’m ready to feel her hands on me again.
Movement in my periphery jolts me back to reality.
The older man who was staring at me has stood up, though the bus is still moving. He sways and stumbles as he makes his way toward the back. My heart misses a beat as his destination becomes clear—he’s coming to us.
His eyes are bloodshot, and the scent of alcohol wafts from him as he motions to the empty seat beside me. “This spot taken, doll?”
I look pointedly at all the other empty seats on the bus. How am I supposed to respond to this? If I say yes, will he get violent? If I say no, will he sit and bother us?
Before I can figure out how to respond, Julia stands, her cloak brushing my legs.
The man’s pupils dilate as she meets his gaze.
“You should return to the seat you came from,” she says quietly. Her voice is calm, but underneath it runs a current that raises the hair on the back of my neck.
The sudden quiet feels heavy, as if the air is too thick to breathe. My skin prickles like we’ve driven into a storm cloud. The yellow lights flicker.
The man opens his mouth, but no sound comes out. His eyes go wide and vacant, as though he’s seeing something no one else can. His face drains of color. Then, he backs away so fast he trips over his own feet. “S-sorry to bother you. I’ll…” His words dissolve into mumbles as he scrambles away.
Julia waits until he’s back at the front of the bus before sitting again.
The air returns to normal. The prickling on my skin fades.
I stare at her. “What did you do?”
“Nothing harmful.” She smooths her cloak, composed except for a sheen of sweat on her chest. “He’ll have nightmares for a few days, but he’ll live.”
“Oh.” The sound barely comes out.
She turns her gaze back out the grimy window. “I told you you were safe with me.”
My cheeks tug into a reluctant smile.
Something loosens in my chest. She’s right. She just defended me. The realization settles over me like a warm blanket.
It’s insane, considering who she is. Should I feel safe when I’m with her? Or should I be afraid that I’m magically bound to the most dangerous person on the bus—and probably in the whole city?
I shift, trying to get rid of this weird flutter. It doesn’t go away.
The scariest part is that I don’t know which feelings are real. The comfort when she’s close, the pull toward her, this warmth inside me… How much of this is me, and how much is the spell responding to her proximity?
It must be the spell. It’s the reason she protected me too—she has to keep me safe in order to stay alive. That’s all it is.