Chapter 43
I didn’t think that mere days after our school closed I’d be back on campus as frequently as I’ve been, but here I am, wandering through the Everwoods with Sybil and Nero like it’s just another normal evening and not some night from hell.
I still can’t figure out what’s going on, though one horrible possibility does keep forming in the back of my mind.
“So, you’re alright?” Sybil asks, her form limned in pale purple light. Above us, her witch orb floats along, casting the soft lavender glow. I still have no idea exactly what I’m doing right now, but I’m too shaken from my recent encounter with demons to question this clandestine coven meeting.
If this ends up being some sort of perverse trap, then I’m F-U-C-K-E-D because I don’t have it in me to mistrust my best friend after all we’ve been through.
“Define ‘alright,’” I say shakily.
“Oh, Selene,” Sybil says, grabbing my hand and squeezing it. “Are you physically hurt?”
I shake my head. “Not physically.” It’s everything else that has me choking up.
Sybil wraps an arm around me. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. We’ve got you.”
I swallow and nod, even as I feel more than a little lost.
She maneuvers us between looming evergreens and the occasional oak.
“Cordelia is the one who started the group chat,” Sybil says, referring to another one of our coven sisters, one I only vaguely know. “Her specialty is foresight, and she said she had a premonition about you specifically, but it included all the rest of us.”
That…sounds concerning.
“What was the premonition?” I ask. I’m not entirely sure I want to know.
Sybil shakes her head. “She said she’d explain at the spell circle.”
So there’s going to be a spell circle? My nerves ratchet up.
“And you believe that she’s being honest about all of this?
” I ask. Maybe it’s an insensitive comment, but there is still a part of me that worries about witches double-crossing me.
It happened so often in weeks gone by, and there are still sisters out there who remain bonded against their will.
Prolific though he is, Memnon hasn’t been able to hunt down every abuser.
Sybil nods. “I know trusting our sisters is hard, but in this case I do believe Cordelia is being honest. She even gave us some details to verify her claims this was a legitimate premonition.”
My brows draw together. “Details?”
Sybil smirks. “Did you, by chance, burn another house down?”
I glance sharply over at her.
She gasps. “You did! That’s your second one. I believe this makes you a serial arsonist.”
“Demons were after me.” I defend myself.
I see the shudder work its way through Sybil. “I’m so sorry, friend,” she says. “Cordelia told us about it on the group text. Said that you’d be heading my way after it occurred. So you see? There’s your verifiable detail.”
Verifiable details can go suck goblin dicks at the moment when there’s a bigger issue at hand.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” I ask. I might’ve been better prepared for the attack.
She flashes me an apologetic look. “Cordelia said we couldn’t interfere with the events before they happened or else it would alter the future.”
Maiden, Mother, Crone. Just what other sort of events did she foresee happening tonight?
“Did she say whether her version of events turn out well for us?” I ask as we reach a particularly knotted old oak tree.
“You can ask her yourself,” Sybil says. She faces the tree in front of us and lifts a hand.
“Occultatum illuminare,” she whispers.
Illuminate the hidden.
A small door appears on the thickened tree trunk, along with a delicate brass doorknob embellished with ornate leaves.
“This was how the Fortunas would get supernaturals in and out of coven property unnoticed,” Sybil explains, opening the door and revealing a small chamber beyond.
Yet another persecution tunnel.
My heart pounds, half in anticipation, half in dread as Nero and I follow her inside. I still don’t know what in the Seven Hells is going on, or why the evening has taken this turn, but I let myself be swept along anyway.
This entrance to the persecution tunnels is set up much like the others, with a small antechamber fitted with an iron staircase that spirals down to a larger subterranean chamber.
Sybil closes the door behind us just as the first torches hiss to life.
“Alright, this way, Selene,” Sybil says, crossing over to the stairs and leading us to the passage below.
It’s a strange sensation, returning to these tunnels to seek refuge when they have represented such pain and hostility for me in the past.
“Where, exactly, are we going?” I ask.
“Back to Ravensmeade,” Sybil says, as though it’s obvious. I guess technically it is, all things considered.
We must walk for a while, considering where we entered from, but it feels as though only mere minutes have passed when we finally reach the chamber beneath our residence hall. The wall sconces in this room are already lit, and wax weeps from the flickering candles.
My shoes squeak against the marble floors as Sybil, Nero, and I cross the room. We pass the lamassu standing guard, and I make sure to run my hand over one of their heads as we reach the spiral staircase out.
“Hi there, strangers,” a coven sister calls out from above.
I glance up to see eight witches peering down from the small space at the top of the staircase.
Among them are Olga, Mai, and Evanora.
My heart pounds at the sight of them. Goddess, this is real. They’ve all come here for this coven meeting.
“I forgot that we’re locked out of Ravensmeade,” Mai says sheepishly as Sybil and I climb up the stairs. “Rosemary is trying to untangle the threads of the spell, but—”
“Actually, I got this one,” I say as I join the women in the small, crowded room. It feels like a lifetime ago that Memnon and I spelled this doorway to keep it closed.
I move to the wall now and place my hand on it. “Ifakavek.”
Reveal.
The wall shimmers into empty air, and Olga, who had settled herself against it, now falls through.
“Ungh!” she cries out.
From the other side of the wall several women gasp, and as the Ritual Room comes into view, I realize that even more coven sisters have gathered, including Cordelia.
I suck in a breath as I take them in.
“You’re alive!” one of them says, breaking the silence. “Blessed be.”
I hear another witch cackle, and then I’m being swarmed from all sides.
Coven sisters hug me and squeeze my hands—sisters I didn’t know well but who still decided to show up tonight, largely for me. They don’t even seem to mind that I brought an overgrown panther to the reunion.
My gaze moves over them.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I do,” Sybil says, quieting the room. “Everyone here understands how you have helped—and are continuing to help—stop our sisters from being trafficked. Many of us have seen enough of that life to know that the people who captured us are powerful and evil, and we know that maybe even because of us, your life is now in peril. So we’re here to help in any way we can. ”
My lower jaw trembles, and my throat has seemingly closed up.
For most of my life, I yearned to have the sisterhood of a coven.
From my mother’s early stories of her time at school to my own experience at Peel Academy, the supernatural high school I attended, I wanted it, and I knew the bonds between us were strong enough to live and die for.
It’s what the world is scared of—our power as witches, as women, when we are united.
Since I came to Henbane, that promised sisterhood was twisted by the malevolent schemes of wealthy supernaturals with too much power and too little conscience.
But now, I finally, truly get it.
My eyes prick. “Thank you,” I whisper.
Rosemary reaches out and pats my shoulder. “We’ve got you. For better or worse, you’re never alone.”
“Definitely for worse,” Mai chimes in as she hauls in tapered candles from a supply closet in the hallway, “but you’re still stuck with us.”
“Alright, sisters,” calls out Cordelia, a witch with dark hair, thin lips, and a dusting of freckles over her very pointed nose, “let’s prep the room for a spell circle.” She calls out a few more orders for specific coven sisters, and all around me witches jump into action.
Several coven sisters carry out the stacked chairs lining the walls, while a few others lug in pack after pack of mini bottled waters, which they set in the middle of the room like kindling for a pyre.
While Nero lounges in a corner, I help pull out candelabra from a supply closet and fit the tapered candles into them. All around me, my sisters cackle and chat. It’s lovely and familiar, and I can almost forget that nearly everything else in my world is wrong at the moment.
Olga brings in an ancient grimoire from the house’s library. Supposedly it was the first official spellbook used on Henbane campus. Magic wafts off it, and slowly the conversations die away.
“Sisters, gather around,” Cordelia calls. “It’s time.”
The group of us form a loose circle.
Someone flips the lights off, throwing the room into darkness.
For a moment, my pulse spikes. I can make out the stack of water bottles in the center of the circle as well as the shadowy forms of my coven sisters, but nothing else.
My misgivings, ones born from the first doomed spell circle I participated in, rise up. But tonight, there are no robes. No masks. Just witches who’ve come together to protect one of their own. To protect me.
I’m going to have to trust my sisters over my fears.
“This is a leaderless circle,” Cordelia announces to the room. “There is no high priestess, just a group of witches who stand before one another as equals.”
Her voice grows somber. “Several of us have been through horrifying, inhumane ordeals. And we have done awful things to each other—most of them without our own permission, but we have done them all the same,” she says. “That ends here, tonight. Do we all agree?”
It’s quiet for a moment, the weight of her words settling on us.
“Yes, sister!” Sybil finally says, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” Olga says, then Mai.