Chapter 19
Julia
The moment the door to the guest room closes, Elizabeth’s magic slams into me, buffeting the air from my lungs.
My wrists snap together as if bound by invisible shackles, and I’m forced to my knees on the wood floor.
My magic flares hot beneath my skin, searching for a weakness in her attack, but as powerful as that feeding made me, I’m no match for an ancient witch in her own domain.
“You dare attack a guest under my roof?” Elizabeth says, her voice low and dangerous.
I struggle against the restraints, but they only tighten. How humiliating, being on my knees like a chastised child. “She’s the one who—”
“I don’t care what Rebecca did to you.” Elizabeth circles me like a predator, her fingers trailing green sparks. “There are laws older than your vendetta, Julia. Laws of hospitality that even you should respect.”
“I need her to tell me how to break this spell.” The words come out strangled. “I’m running out of time.” And kneeling on this damned floor isn’t helping.
“You think torture is the answer?” Elizabeth stops in front of me, her green eyes blazing. “You think making her bleed will somehow undo what she’s done?”
“It’s worth trying.”
“No, it’s desperation masquerading as strategy.
” She backs up to a padded armchair by the door and sinks into it.
“You want to break this spell? Show some remorse. Apologize to Rebecca for what you did to Charlotte, and try to find some way in that black heart of yours to make it up to her. Maybe then she’ll have mercy on you. ”
Remorse? As if feelings could solve this.
I glare up at her. “What happened between Charlotte and me is none of her business.”
“It became her business when her little sister’s life fell into your merciless hands,” Elizabeth snarls. “Have some compassion, Julia.”
I laugh bitterly. “If only that were possible for someone like me.”
She furrows her brow, searching my face. “You really believe that about yourself?”
I lift an eyebrow. Is she honestly asking that? I’ve spent my life feeding on others, taking what I need to survive. I’ve watched bodies collapse at my feet and felt nothing but satisfaction as their life force filled the endless void inside me. “What else could I be?”
Elizabeth sighs, leaning back. She crosses her legs beneath her elegant black nightgown and bounces her slippered foot. “Julia, this binding spell is designed to force you to confront that question. You have to decide what you are.”
“Sanguine witches don’t get to decide that.”
She stares at me, and I stare back, struggling against the invisible bonds. My magic pulses erratically, trying to help me escape, but her hex is too strong.
“You left Hannah the moment you thought you were free.” Elizabeth tilts her head. “Why?”
Nausea rises, but I swallow it down. I will not feel guilty for choosing my freedom. “Because that’s my nature. I take what I need and I leave.”
“Is it? Or were you running from something else?” She stops bouncing her foot. “Perhaps from what you felt when she surrendered to you so completely?”
Heat rushes into my face at the memory of Hannah spread beneath me, begging for me, offering everything.
The way she looked at me felt dangerously like trust. I open my mouth to defend myself, but what can I say?
That I panicked? That seeing her so vulnerable, knowing I could have killed her, terrified me?
Instead, I say flatly, “I felt nothing.”
“Really? Nothing at all when she offered you her life, her soul?” Elizabeth’s voice is too knowing. “Surely, from what I gather about the nature of these feedings, you felt something when she came apart beneath you—”
My chest tightens. “Stop.”
“You care for her.”
I scoff. “It’s not in a sanguine witch’s nature to care. Anyway, Hannah won’t surrender to a monster, which means breaking this binding spell is impossible unless we find a loophole.”
Elizabeth’s laugh is soft and pitying. “You truly don’t understand your own power, do you?”
I flex my fingers, a spark of magic prickling between them. I don’t have time for this. “I understand it perfectly. I drain life to survive.”
“You think sanguine magic is only about taking?” Elizabeth leans forward. “Tell me, Julia. In all your years of feeding, when did you feel the most powerful?”
Tonight comes to mind, after I fed on Hannah. And there was Charlotte, of course. Those months when nothing could stop me.
Elizabeth seems to know what I’m thinking because she nods. “Why do you chase freely given power when you have the option to steal it?”
Because Hannah won’t let me kill, I think, though I know there’s more to it. Feeding on Hannah is more pleasurable in so many ways.
“Sanguine magic thrives on connection,” Elizabeth continues. “On genuine intimacy. The willing surrender born of real feeling is more powerful than anything you could take by force.”
“That’s not—”
“Charlotte didn’t just offer you her essence. She offered you her heart. And you felt something for her too, didn’t you? That’s why she was so intoxicating.”
The memory threatens to choke me. Charlotte’s beautiful face as she undressed for me one last time.
She was supposed to be different from everyone I’d fed on before her. She offered herself willingly, and so I wouldn’t need to drain her dry. For a few precious months, I thought I could be something other than a parasite. Maybe I could give as much as I took.
“You’re so certain that you’re beyond redemption.”
“Aren’t I?” I try to laugh, but it comes out strangled. “I killed her, just like everyone said I would.”
“Not everyone.”
“Enough of them. Don’t think I forgot their words. A hungry ghost, forever feeding, never satisfied. A monster who destroys everything she touches.”
“You were young with Charlotte. Inexperienced in matters of the heart and in your craft.”
“That doesn’t excuse what I did.”
Elizabeth’s eyebrows shoot up. “So you do feel remorse.”
I say nothing, unwilling to put a name to this feeling.
Elizabeth waves her hand, releasing me from her magical bonds. I rub my throbbing wrists, though they bear no marks.
“Letting yourself feel these emotions will save you from this curse, Julia.”
I sigh. “If you mean to convince me that I can overcome my nature, you’re mistaken.”
Elizabeth stands. “Then I suppose you’re going to prove Rebecca right about you.”
“Unless we find another way to break the spell,” I challenge, standing too. “Surely you’ve found something in the grimoire?”
She studies me for a long moment, a slight drop in her shoulders, like she was hoping I would come to a different conclusion. “I remember when you first joined us, Julia. 1866. You were so young. So angry.”
“The world gave me reason to be.” I still recall the sensation of my magic guiding me to the coven after my mother died. Like my power was protecting me by taking me to the only women who could keep me safe.
“It gave all of us reason.” Elizabeth’s gaze goes distant. “I don’t know what would have come of me if I hadn’t met you all. Alone with my power, making plants sprout, being labeled a freak.”
I scoff. “I know exactly what would’ve happened to you. You would’ve had the same fate as my mother.”
“None of us ever regretted helping you exact revenge on those men, Julia. That’s what sisters are for.”
I almost smile at the memory. Their fear, their screams…the first hint that my life was about to change now that I’d found my sisters.
“The others have missed you,” Elizabeth adds, watching me closely. “I know they’ll love to see you again, if you’ll stick around.”
I know what she’s doing, trying to get me to remember the early days of our sisterhood before this rift fell between Rebecca and me. Trying to get me to feel something. But that will not help me get out of this mess.
“Have you found any unbinding spells or not?” I ask shortly.
She studies me for another moment, then sighs. “I might have. Two potential paths, actually.”
Her serious expression doesn’t reveal how good or bad these options are.
My chest squeezes with desperate hope.
“Then why are we standing here?” I cannot keep the edge out of my voice.
“They’re dangerous, and not the solutions I wanted to find. It’s safer to break the spell the way Rebecca intended instead of trying to find a loophole, Julia.”
“I tried to break the spell the way Rebecca intended, and it didn’t work,” I say through my teeth. “A loophole is all we have left.”
She studies me, then rolls her shoulders and smooths her nightgown as if to compose herself. “Meet me in the parlor. I’ll fetch the grimoire.”
She opens the door and leaves the room, and for a moment, I stand there in the heavy silence.
The guest room feels hollow. My reflection stares back at me from the darkened window—a woman who hasn’t aged in a century, permanently unchanged.
I turn away.
Elizabeth’s words echo in my head. You care for her.
Ridiculous. Even if I could care, I can’t afford to. Not when I’ve proven what I’m capable of.
She thinks I was just young and inexperienced? Ha. I’d been feeding for long enough to know better. I just couldn’t stop. In that moment, with Charlotte surrendering everything to me, I felt powerful enough to transcend my nature.
And then she was gone, and I was exactly what everyone always said I was. Exactly what I’ve always known I am.
I square my shoulders and sweep out of the room, following the hum of voices toward the foyer.
I descend the curved staircase, where the others are huddled together like conspirators. Hannah’s back is to me, tension in her posture. Riley has a protective hand on her arm.
The urge to rip them away from each other is so strong that my fingers twitch. Hannah isn’t hers anymore. Hannah has fed me, surrendered to me, opened herself for me, and what has Riley done? Broken her heart?
As I approach, glistening streaks become visible on Rebecca’s cheeks. Tears. My stomach gives a nauseating lurch.
“Having a pleasant chat?” I ask.
Hannah whirls around, and the look in her eyes—fear, disgust, betrayal—punches the air from my lungs.
I’ve seen that look on countless faces. It’s never mattered, and it shouldn’t matter now.
But it does. She knows what I did.
Of course she knows. Rebecca would never miss an opportunity to turn Hannah against me. To ensure that Hannah will never trust me enough to break this spell.
The twisted thing is, Rebecca isn’t wrong. Hannah should fear me. She should hate me.
But now that she sees the truth, I can’t bear to meet her eye.
“Hannah, follow me,” I say, my voice coming out flat and emotionless despite the storm raging inside me.
Riley steps protectively in front of her. “I am not leaving you alone with her so you can drain her dry.”
I ignore the twist in my gut and sigh. Past them, through the open parlor doors, the grandfather clock shows past three. We’re running out of time.
“Riley,” Hannah says quietly. “She won’t kill me. We’re bound.”
“That doesn’t mean she won’t hurt you,” Riley snarls.
The nerve of her, acting protective after she shattered Hannah’s heart.
“I’m not here to hurt her,” I say through my teeth. “Now step aside and stop wasting our time.”
Riley clenches her fists, refusing to budge.
“I’ll be with them, dear,” Elizabeth says from above, and we all turn to see her walking down the stairs with a large, leather-bound grimoire propped against her hip. “Rebecca, Riley, give us space.”
Riley stands taller. “But—”
Rebecca touches her shoulder, and they exchange a wordless conversation full of hard stares and raised eyebrows. Riley looks desperate, her eyes growing watery.
Elizabeth walks through our midst, forcing us all back a step, and into the parlor. I shoot Rebecca and Riley one last glare before following.
Hisses break out behind me, and a moment later, Hannah hurries along, leaving the other two.
I sweep my hand to slam the doors, closing me in the parlor with Hannah and Elizabeth.
Frustration coils inside me. I don’t know what Elizabeth thought she was doing, trying to convince me I’m not a monster.
The fact isn’t debatable. I know it, she knows it, and Hannah knows it, and as long as that’s true, Hannah is never going to surrender to me as fully as the spell requires.
We need a plan that doesn’t involve asking anyone to trust me.
Time to find out what an ancient grimoire has to say about breaking curses.