Chapter Thirty-Seven
T HIRTY - S EVE N
Soon, Julius peeks in to say that Bishop is almost done transforming and would like to speak to me. He still needs to treat Bishop’s wounds, so we don’t have long.
I pause outside the door, hand on the knob. From inside, I can hear Bishop panting, and I’m not sure whether I should go in yet or wait until he’s definitely completed his transformation and calls for me. I glance over to where Julius was, but he’s disappeared back into the main hall.
“Cordelia,” a strained voice says behind me.
I wheel to see Marjorie. She’s out of breath, and her eyes are wide. There’s blood on the collar of her men’s shirt.
“You’re hurt,” I say. “What—?”
She motions frantically. I step toward her, but she takes off, loping along the hall, pausing only for another frantic gesture. When I open my mouth, she puts a finger to her lips, her wide eyes bright with panic.
I remember Marjorie leaving while Tabitha was kicking Silas. Marjorie must have seen or heard something. That’s when I also remember the four wolves who left. Are they still here? Did they do something? Did they—?
The other maids.
I run after Marjorie. In my long dress, I can’t keep up. My heart thuds, and I want to call to her, tell her to slow down. Then she darts into a room.
I finally reach it and swing in—
The door clicks shut behind me.
I spin to see a middle-aged woman with her hand on the knob. She nods at me, and something in her face makes me think we’ve met, but I can’t place her.
“Cordelia,” a voice says.
I turn sharply, fingers rising in a spell.
The room is lit only by the late-day sun streaming through barely parted drapes. I can make out a figure swathed in shadow. A tall, dark-haired, achingly familiar figure.
Lenora.
My heart leaps into my throat, and I lurch forward, my mind spinning to make sense of this even as my heart soars.
Then the woman moves from the shadows, and I stop.
It’s…
I don’t know how to finish that sentence. Half of me screams that this is not my aunt. The other half screams that it is. Not Lenora as I remember her, but older, as if something happened the other day, some magic that kept her alive but sapped decades from her life.
Silver streaks her dark hair. Lines creep from her eyes and mouth. Otherwise, she’s Lenora, tall and slender, ramrod straight, dark eyes snapping.
“Cordelia,” she says.
That isn’t Lenora’s voice.
As I stare at the woman, I see other differences. This woman doesn’t have Lenora’s dimple that matches mine. Her skin is lighter. And the look in her eyes isn’t just Lenora’s strong will. It’s absolute will. Imperious in a way Lenora never quite managed.
“Who are you?” I whisper, even as the answer slides in.
What had Reginald said to me in the cell?
Your grandmother. I’m taking you to your grandmother.
But my grandmother was dead. I watched her die. Helped dress her body for burial. This woman isn’t my grandmother. I see a resemblance, but this is no more her than it is Lenora.
“I don’t understand.”
I mean to say the words in my head, but I hear them aloud as I look around. The woman who shut the door still stands beside it, and I realized why she seemed familiar. Because she has my mother’s chin and cheekbones.
Two other women wait across the room, one who looks like a young version of my aunt and mother combined, and one who resembles neither.
Marjorie stands near one of the other women. She isn’t bound. She isn’t cowering in fear. She’s watching me warily, and when my gaze turns her way, she mouths, I’m sorry.
Rage and hurt bubble up in me.
One person in this house has been nothing but kind to me. Nothing but open and generous and honest. Others have lied and misled, but Marjorie never has, and I fell for that. Desperate for kindness and honesty, I fell so hard.
Starved for an ally, even—gods help me—hoping for a friend.
I was on a ship that wouldn’t stop rocking, betrayal after betrayal slamming the floor out from underfoot, and Marjorie was steady ground.
Because she’d been setting me up. And yet betraying me is the least of her sins.
She betrayed Bishop.
She betrayed his allies.
She betrayed Ann and Tabitha and everyone who believed in her.
So when she mouths her apology, I mouth something back. A promise.
You will pay for this.
And she has the audacity to look stricken. Even hurt.
The woman who looks like Lenora casts a privacy spell, and the others turn away, as if in respect.
“I think you know who I am,” the woman says.
I don’t answer, only turn cold and hard eyes on her.
“I’m your grandmother,” she says.
“My grandmother is dead.”
Her eyes narrow. “Who told you that?”
“I watched her die. I washed her body. I helped bury her body.”
Confusion, followed by a flash of pure rage. “Flora,” she spits. “Was that her name?”
I hadn’t heard my grandmother’s given name in years. She’d been Gran to me, and Mama to Lenora and my mother. But, yes, others had called her Flora.
When I nod, the woman says, “That was my sister. Your great-aunt. I am your grandmother.” She straightens. “Beryl Levine.”
I don’t react, and her eyes narrow. “Tell me you have heard that name, Cordelia. Whatever lies my sister concocted, whatever stories your mother and aunt told, tell me you know who I am. Maybe not as your grandmother, but at least as a witch.”
“I’ve never heard of you.”
The rage in her eyes has my fingers twitching, preparing to counter a spell. But she only stalks to the window, pulls back the heavy drapes, and stares out.
No one else moves. Marjorie looks anxious. The other women stand stone-faced, and I’m reminded of Bishop, waiting out one of Silas’s outbursts.
The woman—Beryl—my grandmother—walks back to the middle of the room and takes deep breaths before speaking.
“That’s Flora’s doing. I know it is. She wooed your mother and aunt away from me when they were girls.
She robbed my daughters of their birthright, and she robbed my granddaughter of her entire heritage. ”
I say nothing.
“You are a Levine witch,” Beryl says. “Do you have any idea what that means?”
“It means I don’t follow Coven rules,” I say. “It means I come from a family of powerful and dangerous witches, and I should be proud of that.”
Beryl nods, relaxing a little. “At least they taught you something. What they didn’t tell you is that we are coven witches. Just not that sort of coven.” Her lips twist. “Not frightened mice, terrified of casting real spells. The Levines have a cabal.”
She pauses again, searching my gaze as if for any sign that I recognize that word. I’ve heard of sorcerer cabals—in Europe and the Americas. From what I understand, they’re vast business enterprises run by sorcerers, who employ other supernaturals.
“You are a Levine witch,” Beryl says. “You are—by birthright—part of our cabal.”
I’m not sure how to respond to that, so I say, “Reginald said he was taking me to my grandmother. That’s what he meant. Taking me to you.”
She blinks at the change of direction. Then her dark eyes flash. “Reginald failed. For years, I paid him to be ready to act if your father ever tried to claim you.”
“So you had two spies in the Pack.”
Beryl’s lips twitch. “I’m not about to rely on one. Especially not when it comes to that idiot of an Alpha. Even he was going to eventually realize how valuable his daughter is.”
“But you still couldn’t stop him from taking me.”
Yes, I’m poking her, but she doesn’t seem like Silas, lashing out in all directions. Her anger is useful to me. It’ll get me the information I want.
“We had a deal, and he betrayed me,” she snaps. “That stray pup he took in has enough brains and balls for the two of them. My mistake was underestimating Bishop Daniels.”
I twitch at the mention of Bishop. A dozen questions soar up like screeching birds, demanding my attention, but I shove them all back down.
“You say you had a deal with Silas, and he betrayed you.” Even as I speak the words, their meaning hits. “ You were behind the fake attack on Lenora’s town house. That’s why there was a witch…” I trail off as I remember that day, what the half-demon said to me.
You murdered your cousin.
I flinch and my gaze flies to Beryl. “Henrietta. She was my cousin.”
“She was, and that pup murdered her.”
I open my mouth, even as I’m not sure what I’m going to say. Defend Bishop? Admit that I killed Henrietta? That I murdered my own cousin?
Beryl continues, “My cabal launched a fake attack on your house. Bishop Daniels was supposed to ‘rescue’ you and then turn you over to me. I needed Lenora to believe you’d been taken.
Kidnapped by rogue supernaturals. Stolen by the Pack.
Whatever confusion I could sow to slow her down, because my daughter is—” She stops, and genuine grief fills her face.
“My daughter was so very clever. I raised her to be my heir, and then Flora stole her away. Stole you all away.”
That won’t be the whole story. There is no chance that Flora “stole” my mother and aunt away from a beloved mother and a powerful birthright. They left of their own volition and for a reason.
Before I can speak, a shout sounds from deep in the house. A very familiar shout.
“Cordelia!”
Bishop’s footfalls pound on the wooden floors. Coming this way. Not hesitating for a moment, because Bishop can track my scent. He knows where I’ve gone.
I wheel to Beryl and snap her privacy spell, so the others can hear us. “We need to leave. Now.”
I don’t want to go anywhere with this woman. I barely dare think of what she’s implying—that Bishop knew about her, knew that my father was stealing me from my grandmother—but running away with Beryl isn’t about fleeing Bishop.
I do want answers from him. I want to give him the chance to defend himself.
But right now, he’s running blindly into danger, after winning an Alpha challenge. He’s wounded and exhausted. The whole Pack is, from the stress of the fight and from the skirmishes afterward.
I’m not sure I can protect Bishop if he runs in here. And I sure as hell won’t stand by and watch him die.
This is what it means to be a witch. That’s what my mother taught me. Sometimes we stand and fight, and sometimes we run and hide until we can fight.
I will go with Beryl if it means protecting Bishop and the Pack, and then dealing with Beryl later.
“Cordelia is right,” Marjorie says quickly. “We need to leave.”
Beryl only turns her gaze to the door, as his footsteps pound closer.
“Grandmother?” I say, hoping the name will help. “Please. You came for me, right? I’m here. I’ll leave with you.”
“I came for you,” she says. “But I also came for revenge.”
“Silas is dead,” Marjorie says quickly. “I told you that. Bishop killed him in an Alpha challenge. You have your revenge.”
“Not all of it,” Beryl says, and a chill races through me as her gaze never leaves that door.
“Bishop didn’t know about you,” Marjorie says. “You told me that.” Her gaze flicks my way. “Bishop knew nothing about this. The deal to hand Cordelia over was between Beryl and Silas. Bishop—”
Beryl flicks her fingers Marjorie’s way, like she’s swatting an annoying gnat.
Marjorie stumbles, but catches herself on the wall, still talking to me. “Bishop arranged the attack with supernaturals that Silas told him he’d hired. Mercenaries. Bishop had no idea your grandmother was behind it. He has no idea you have a grandmother.”
Footsteps squeak to a halt right outside the door. Then the knob turns.