Chapter 17. Ambrose
Since Priscilla’s arrival, the couch had become my assigned living quarters.
I told myself it was temporary. That Isadora simply needed space to focus, and that sharing her room—even the floor at her feet—was a step we weren’t quite ready to take yet.
But the couch made it hard to obey the voice in my head—the one that sounded like Isadora. The one that hissed:
Stay where you are. Stay out of my business until I call for you. Don’t speak. Don’t be seen. Don’t be a nuisance.
It was difficult to follow, given the couch sat in a central stretch of the house, barely a few yards from the spell room Isadora had dragged her daughter into.
Every time her heels struck the floorboards, I found myself curling inward without thinking, folding into myself in a half-conscious attempt to disappear.
I spent most of the evening with my knees drawn to my chest, hoping the backrest of the couch was enough to hide as much of me from Isadora as possible.
The effort was mostly futile. The couch was a two-seater, and I stood just over six and a half feet tall.
No matter how tightly I curled in on myself, some part of me always poked out.
It wasn’t all bad, though. The fetal position helped, at least a little, with the hunger cramps that had reached an almost excruciating level.
My stomach gurgled constantly now—an ever-present reminder of how long it had been since I’d fed—and I wondered, distantly, just how many days I had left, or if I even had days left at all.
The grumbling sounds of starvation had been enough to crack Priscilla’s hardened gaze, but only for a millisecond.
She’d paused beside me earlier, when her mother had sent her out of the spell room to fetch something to drink. For a foolish moment, I’d thought she might say something helpful like “I’ll talk to my mother. Tell her you’re starving. See if she’ll do something about it.”
Instead, all she’d said was “Listen.”
Listen.
Her voice swam through my mind, calm and insistent, forcing my attention outward. I didn’t want to eavesdrop on Isadora. I trusted her implicitly. And I certainly wanted to stay out of her business like she’d asked me to.
But between the hunger pangs, the fatigue, and my inability to move from the couch, there wasn’t much choice left to me.
I lay there, eyes closed, breathing slow and even, and let their voices wash over me.
Just listening.
“Honestly, Mother, I don’t see what possible use you have for him. All he does is sit there with those puppy-dog eyes, watching you. Surely you could find a more useful one?” Priscilla’s voice was monotone, as if she were speaking purely to fill the silence.
Isadora’s reply was ice-cold. “I have a habit of keeping useless things around me, Daughter.”
“It’s not my fault you sired me with such a weak warlock,” Priscilla snapped back, her tone just as sharp.
“He was not weak.” Isadora’s voice rose, brittle with fury.
“I spent years hunting down and compelling the most powerful warlock I could find—just as my mother did before me. By all rights, had you turned out as you were meant to, you should have been powerful enough to overthrow that bitch head of a coven by now.”
“As I recall, Grandmother was mated to her warlock,” Priscilla said coolly. “She didn’t need to compel him into her bed.” A beat passed before Priscilla said, “And perhaps I took after your magic, Mother. Not my father’s.”
The sound of flesh striking flesh cracked through the room, followed by the crash of a picture frame hitting the floor as Priscilla was presumably hurled into the wall by the force of the blow.
My shadows billowed out of me—the urge to intervene almost uncontrollable—only stopping at the threshold of the spell room when I snapped back to my senses.
Stay out of my business.
Isadora’s words rattled through my head, and my shadows recoiled.
This isn’t right, I thought.
I managed to creep the slightest wisp of shadow into the corner of the spell room—just enough to press beneath Priscilla’s elbow and help her push herself upright.
Her emotions were a whirlpool of brine and static, an ocean storm waiting to break, but threaded through it was the faintest scent of sun-kissed sea spray at my quiet, defiant offer of help.
“Look at the mess you’ve made! You insolent, pathetic excuse for a child!”
Silence followed.
I could almost picture Priscilla sitting there, calmly fixing her hair, preening as though nothing at all had happened.
“If you had taken after my magic, at least you’d be of some use,” Isadora said, her voice now eerily calm.
“Your grandmother was one of the most powerful sirens that ever existed. She ruled oceans. And yet she chose to mate with a land dweller, lost her fins, and cursed our line to walk this barren earth, unable to answer the call of the ocean, and forever alien to the witch blood she polluted our lineage with.”
“Yes, Mother,” Priscilla said, her tone flat, as if she’d heard the story a hundred times before.
“And for what?” Isadora spat, ignoring her.
“For love? A love that has been nothing but a curse on this family. It cursed me to fail at everything. It cursed me with a siren’s song so diluted I can barely keep that idiot out there in line.
” Her voice sharpened. “It cursed me to have only half the magic those other witches wield so effortlessly. I finally found a coven that had everything handed to them on a silver platter, and it cursed even the coven’s magic to reject me.
It’s cursed me with a daughter who is not siren enough to sing even a single note of compulsion, and not witch enough to wield even a drop of useful magic.
” She laughed, bitter and hollow. “Love is a curse.”
“I know, Mother,” Priscilla said wearily. “It’s why you raised me without it.”
“And you’re better for it,” Isadora replied coolly. “Now, unless you’d like a jaw to match that black eye, change the water in that cauldron. You do have enough magic for that, don’t you?”
“Just about,” Priscilla said, the barest hint of sarcasm threading her tone.
Hours passed. The only sounds from the room were the dull clank of the stirring rod against the cauldron and the low hum of Isadora’s voice as she sang a wordless, lilting melody.
When her voice began to rasp, she finally fell silent.
“How long is this going to take, Mother?” Priscilla asked.
“It takes as long as it takes,” Isadora snapped. “And it would go much faster if I had a daughter capable of singing alongside me.”
Priscilla’s voice was a low melody as she said, “How long, mother?”
Isadora’s voice was unusually flat as she said, “At least a week. But it would be quicker if you could sing too.”
“Well, it’s a pity I can’t,” Priscilla said. “What’s the conch for, anyway?”
Isadora scoffed. “Sometimes I truly wonder if you have any siren blood in you at all.”
Priscilla’s voice was a soft lilt. “Indulge me, Mother.”
“If you did, these things would come naturally.” She paused, then added, reluctantly, “Compulsions only last a short while. As a half-siren, and one not from a lineage that specializes in compulsion, mine endure only a few hours at best, which means I must remain close to maintain control. That is why we imbue our most precious ocean finds with our magic—to concentrate our voices into an object capable of exerting control where a whisper alone cannot. The conch in that cauldron is the finest I found while scouring the beaches after my exile—seeing as I cannot swim the oceans,” she spat.
“I have been saving it for something special.”
“And what do you plan to do with it, Mother?” Priscilla asked, that same lilt to her tone.
“We have a choice of houses to seize control of,” Isadora said. “But the one in Headless Hollow, as you said, is the least suitable for my needs. It will be far easier to take the house the other incubus has gone to.”
A weight dropped into my stomach—a sudden, unmistakable sense of wrongness.
Don’t let her anywhere near Blaise.
My blood surged, a primal urge rising fast and violent. Shadows stirred beneath my skin, aching to lash out, to coil around Isadora’s throat and—
The feeling vanished.
The bloodlust evaporated into nothing, leaving behind a hollow stillness. My pulse slowed, thrumming unevenly, and I found myself blinking, vaguely confused as to why my heart had been racing at all.
“Speaking of incubi,” Priscilla said. Her tone was flat, almost bored, though the crash of glacial panic rolled off her in waves. “Yours is about to expire.”
“Hm?” Isadora murmured. “Oh—Ambrose?” She sounded faintly amused.
“Yes, I noticed he looked a bit peaky earlier.” Then she laughed cruelly.
“I suppose it’s fortunate there’s another one waiting, unawares, at the house I’m about to claim.
Perhaps that one can actually cook.” She paused.
“But if you’re concerned about this one, by all means, feed him.
I only need him to last a few more days. ”
“Ew. No, thank you,” Priscilla said, disgust lacing her tone. “I’d rather let him die than take someone who was compelled to be in love with my mother.”
“I suppose the body would be a nuisance,” Isadora mused. “But I can always bury it at the edge of the woods alongside the witch who used to own this place.”
There was a long pause.
“I thought that witch abandoned the house,” Priscilla said carefully.
Isadora cackled. “Honestly, Priscilla, sometimes I forget just how innocent you really are. Do you truly think I—after dedicating the last ten years of my life to acquiring a house that could serve me—simply stumbled upon an abandoned one with a hob attached to it?” She scoffed.
“I told the hob she’d abandoned it to make the compulsion easier. ”
“It didn’t stay compelled for long, though, did it?” Priscilla said, her voice tight with barely contained fury.
“No,” Isadora snapped. “The blasted thing escaped before I could deepen the compulsion, and I haven’t managed to capture it since.”