Chapter 2 - Zephyr
I hated her.
I hated the damned witch who had haunted my dreams and days for weeks now. Adalyn, with her long dark hair braided back from her face, round blacked-out sunglasses perched atop her head. Black lipstick emphasized lips that, in my dreams, had trailed right down my skin, leaving smudges like smeared ink.
I could barely look at her for all the vile hatred climbing up my throat.
“What even happened, man?” Sweeney asked a while ago as we grabbed burgers from the only place in town that did half-decent fast food. “You two were, like, into each other, right?”
“Right,” I had agreed. And we were . She had been someone new to flirt with, to chat up, to make the island even more interesting. “Until I learned she’s a damn witch.”
“So? Doesn’t that make her hotter?”
It should have, but…
My own family had a long distrust of witches. I had never been told a lot about Azure Cove, but I knew it had something to do with my family’s bloodline from centuries ago. I had found our surname in an old history book that I had seen in Harper’s house when I had been babysitting the triplets one day. Ever since, I knew I couldn’t trust Adalyn. I didn’t yet know where I fully fit into the situation, but I knew that she had a place here, and I didn’t, and I couldn’t trust that uncertainty.
Last night’s dream had taken place beneath a waterfall, the dreamscape so strong I swore I woke up to the cascading water’s mist on my skin. Hector had woken me up that morning with a start. An intense energy had been wafted beneath my nose, rousing me from my sleep.
“Thanks, Hec,” I had muttered, dragging myself from my bed.
“What for?”
“Can’t explain right now,” I answered noncommittally. I wasn’t about to confess the contents of my dreams to any of them. Frazer would just tell me to bang it out with Adalyn, Harper, and Alex would warn me off her unless we could be civil, and Hector would tell me to talk it through logically. Sweeney and Johnson would just laugh. No, I did what I did best with unwanted feelings: I turned them into weapons. Weapons were something I could work with. Weapons were second nature to me—I utilized them far better than some goddamn dreams about a witch.
A beautiful witch , I thought.
No. No, I’d rather claw her heart out myself than hold it tenderly.
Witches had been a burden on my family for years. Ever since… Ever since I had lost my brother, finding him dead at the feet of a witch who had just come into her powers. Whether it had been an accident or purposeful, I never knew. She disappeared from sight before I could catch her.
I glared daggers into Adalyn now, my challenge hanging in the air. I want to see what she’s capable of.
And I meant my words. This past summer, when the demon attacks were in full force, wolves had done the killing while the witches, like Greta and Adalyn, provided shields. Offense and defense—it should have been a perfect match, but instead, I was annoyed. Witches could cast from a distance. They never were brave enough to risk their cowardly lives.
Adalyn looked at me. Her eyes were so brown they were almost dark. In truth, she looked terrifying. She looked hot as hell. I clenched my fist and stalked over to her. My palm smacked down on the counter, my fingers digging into the wood.
“Come on, witch ,” I snarled. “You’re too coward to risk your damn life out there. You let us wolves risk ourselves. Why don’t you do something, for once?”
My words got to her. I watched her expression flicker, her own hate for me twisting her painted lips. “Back up,” she hissed. “I’ll burn your fucking ass out of my store, Zephyr, if you don’t stand down.”
“Zeph.” Hector’s voice was a quiet command, but I ranked higher than him. The only man who would get me away from this challenge would be Alex, who wasn’t there.
“Admit it,” I said. “You can’t do anything. Do you even have magic ?” Adalyn glared at me as I braced my hands on her counter, looming over her. “You’re pathetic. You and your whole coven.”
“Zeph,” Hector tried again, just as Adalyn’s eyes rolled back and went fully black when she looked at me once again. Beneath my hand, the counter began to grow hot. When I tried to pull away and step back, it felt like I couldn’t move . Like my hands were melded to the counter. My palms melted into the wood, and my prints were left there. The wood hardened as if forming a cast around my fingers.
“Fuck off,” I snapped. “Adalyn, stop it.”
“Me?” she smiled sweetly. “I thought I was pathetic? Such a pathetic witch who does absolutely nothing couldn’t possibly do this!” She blinked innocently at me. “Or would you like to admit you were wrong, Zephyr?”
The wood burned me, and I gritted my teeth. I had endured worse, but as I struggled to break free, the magicked wood only held me down tighter. Sparks of heat ran down my wrists. I hissed, still struggling.
“ Stop it ,” I growled.
“Admit you’re wrong,” she snapped. “There’s plenty more where that came from if you want to hold onto your little pride, wolf .”
“Adalyn,” Hector spoke up. “He’s an idiot. Please release him.”
But Adalyn did not look away from me, her face furious. “No.”
Through gritted teeth, I asked, “Why didn’t you do any of this to fight off demons, then?”
“Maybe I wasn’t given a chance,” she spat. “Maybe I was delegated to shields. Maybe I’m simply strong in certain situations. Maybe I have weaknesses. I have no problem admitting that. You , however.”
“Fine,” I snarled when the counter started to blister my hand. I choked on the pain, no longer able to ignore it. “Fine! I was wrong.”
The wood immediately cooled and smoothed back to its original position. I exhaled sharply and wrenched my hands away. “You’ll fucking pay for that.”
My threat hung between us. Adalyn narrowed her eyes at me. Hector gave me a cool, impatient look.
“Stay out of my store next time, Zephyr,” she warned. “I can make anything hurt you; don’t forget that.”
“Bitch,” I spat and stepped further back.
But as I did, I saw something flicker across her face, something replacing the anger for a moment: pain . Pain of her own that flashed through her features, tightening her mouth and eyes for a minute. But it wasn’t the jolt of physical pain. No, it was the sharp surprise of emotional pain; I knew it. That brief glance upwards at the sky. The quick composure. What had I said to trigger her?
I hated this damn place. I wanted out of it immediately. I hated how the walls seemed as though they had eyes watching me. I hated the witch who ruled the store like a dark queen. I hated feeling unsafe, but I couldn’t see the threat.
Adalyn is just a girl , I told myself. I can handle a girl. I’ve won enough of them over. Except I didn’t want to win her over. She terrified me. She irritated me. She triggered my hatred, my anger, and I wanted to destroy her—her and every last one of her coven. I wanted out of Azure Cove, but I had followed Alex in setting up a life here for a while. I was loyal to a fucking fault.
Hector moved forward. “If you don’t have any maps of the demon world,” he began again, reminding us all why we had visited the store in the first place. “Then, could you let me know the last place demons were active?”
“That I can do,” Adalyn answered. “Do you have anything of the demons? Blood?”
“Oh, great,” I muttered. “She can do something productive.”
Hector and Adalyn both ignored me. He handed her the vial of demon blood that he’d collected. She spread out a map of Azure Cove. Even I peered closer. She poured a drop of blood on the center of the map and held a crystal pendant over it. The blood seemed to connect to the crystal, as if they were magnets. Then, a force pulled both blood and crystal to a spot on the north coast of the cove.
“That’s where I’ve been putting up more shields,” Adalyn told him.
“So you already knew?” Hector asked.
She shrugged, smiling. “I had to do some parlor tricks , didn’t I?”
“So you did a location spell,” I muttered. “Wolves can do that in less time and on the go by using our sense of smell.”
“Cool,” she answered dismissively. “Can you track full groups of them at once?”
As she asked, the blood split into six different groups. It snaked out across the map, stopping at several pinpoints as the crystal swung in a circle, pulled by all of the different points.
I scowled at the witch.
“If you want to offend my abilities, then you can do it off my property,” Adalyn told me. “There’s a lovely sidewalk outside. You can wait there.”
“I’d rather not leave Hector alone with a witch.”
“I thought I wasn’t a threat?” she challenged.
I ground my teeth. As the two of them talked more about locations and Adalyn’s process for shields, I tuned them out. I didn’t care about any of that. I would be called in to fight. I would always answer that call, but when there was nothing to answer, my life was mine , not to prepare for a demon attack. I was proactive.
Adalyn levitated a grimoire in the air, and I rolled my eyes as she listed off a spell to Hector.
“It’s all bullshit,” I reminded him.
“Witches have protected this island for centuries,” Adalyn shot back. “Keep talking, and you’ll find out what a hex feels like.”
I clenched a fist over my chest. “Oh, no!” I cried sarcastically. “A hex!”
But before she could remind me of how the counter had left my palms bubbled with blisters, I caught sight of a piece of old parchment nailed to the wall above the cluttered counter. It had symbols going down in a vertical line, some sort of ancient witch language that I had never learned, but those symbols were ones I knew.
They were engraved in my brain.
L.I.N.D.E.L.L.
Adalyn was from or part of the Lindell clan?
“Lindell,” I said aloud.
Adalyn looked at me. “You can read our ancient witch symbols?”
“Only that word,” I answered. The world faded away, and my sight narrowed on her.
Lindell.
Blood flashed through my mind. The tattooed head of my twin brother, dead on the road, his car totaled, his body broken and draped over the arm of a witch who had taken him from us.
No. No, no, no .
Hector’s eyes burned into me. “Zeph?”
“I’ll be—” I choked on my words, blindly stumbling back, through the store, shoving at the door and out onto the sidewalk. I hurried to the side of the building, gasping. I slumped against the wall.
My fist clenched, and I pulled it back, only to slam it into the wall.
I would eradicate every last fucking witch in that clan if it was the last thing I did, starting with the one right in front of me.