Chapter 26
HE'S BEEN WATCHING US FOR YEARS, WAITING FOR HER POWER TO MANIFEST.
All of my mates seemed to catch on that I needed space. Though Grayson kept monitoring my thoughts so he'd appear or send someone else if needed.
I sat cross-legged on my bed, the grimoire open across my lap, shadows pooling in the corners of my room where the single lamp couldn't reach.
My eyes burned from staring at the same page for the last twenty minutes, but sleep felt impossible…
not with Ro's words still echoing in my head.
Someone who's been in your life for as long as me.
The warning had burrowed under my skin like a splinter, impossible to ignore and too deep to extract.
I turned another page, careful not to tear the fragile paper.
The pages whispered as they turned, a sound almost like breathing.
I'd been at this for hours, searching for.
.. something. Answers. History. An explanation for why Eloise had kept her true nature secret, even as she'd carefully constructed the puzzle that would lead me to this book, this power, this moment.
Why she'd died rather than tell me the truth herself.
Most of the text remained frustratingly opaque…
symbols and languages my mind recognized but couldn't translate.
But here and there, phrases leapt into clarity, meanings unfolding in my brain like flowers blooming in fast motion.
Protection wards. Binding spells. Blood oaths.
A witch's armory, written in a language only her bloodline could read.
I traced a finger along the edge of the page, feeling the slight ridge where ink had dried.
My mother's hand, her words, and her magic, binding itself to me page by page, word by word.
The connection hummed between us, across time and death and all the secrets that separated us.
Not enough. Never enough to answer all my questions. But something.
I turned another page, then froze as my fingers brushed against something that hadn't been there before.
A slight bulge in the binding, too deliberate to be a wrinkle or a fold.
I worked my fingers into the gap carefully, mindful of the grimoire's age, and felt paper…
thicker than the pages, with a different texture.
A photograph.
My heart stuttered as I eased it free. The paper was yellowed with age, edges slightly curled, but the image remained sharp, a moment perfectly preserved across decades.
A woman stood in a garden, head thrown back in laughter, one hand raised to push windblown hair from her face.
Young, happy, and alive in a way I'd never seen her.
Eloise.
My mother. But not the mother I remembered… not the careful, measured woman who'd moved through our house like she was afraid of breaking something. This was someone else. Someone free. Someone who hadn't yet learned to hide the light behind her eyes or the magic in her blood.
I stared at her face, something aching behind my ribs.
She'd been beautiful—not in the way of models or movie stars, but in the way of real people caught in real moments of joy.
Her smile transformed her face, lifting her cheekbones and crinkling the corners of her eyes.
She wore a simple dress with a pattern of tiny flowers, the kind she'd stopped wearing by the time I was old enough to remember.
Her hair fell past her shoulders in waves the exact shade of mine.
But it wasn't just Eloise who made my breath catch.
Beside her, one arm draped casually around her waist, stood a man.
His face was turned slightly away from the camera, half-hidden in shadow…
deliberate, I realized with a jolt. The angle was too perfect, too carefully arranged to be accidental.
Someone had wanted to capture this moment, but not to remember his face.
And yet...
Something about him was familiar. The set of his shoulders, maybe. The way his head tilted as he looked down at my mother. The hand resting at her waist, long-fingered and strong. I knew him. Not from the photo, but from somewhere else. Somewhere recent. Somewhere I'd felt safe.
My blood turned to ice in my veins. There was a distortion on the face. If I followed the outlines, one appeared to be Ro. But there appeared to be another face superimposed on top of his.
I snatched the grimoire closer, flipping frantically through pages, looking for more photos, more clues, anything that might confirm or deny the suspicion crystallizing in my mind.
The book responded to my urgency, pages turning faster than my fingers could move them, as if it too sensed the danger, the revelation hovering just beyond comprehension.
Another photo slipped free… Eloise again, but older now.
Standing on the steps of a building I didn't recognize.
Her expression was serious as she spoke to Ro, who was almost cut off by the edge of the frame.
Again, a shadow fell across his face. A distorted face that was not quite visible, but not quite hidden.
The grimoire's pages kept turning, faster now, as if the book itself was trying to show me something specific. They settled finally on a page covered in my mother's neat handwriting… a journal entry, dated just months before her death.
He knows, but so does what's inside of him, it read. About the convergence. About Parker. About what she'll become. I've tried to hide it, to redirect his attention, but he's too clever. Too patient. He's been watching us for years, waiting for her power to manifest. And now that it has...
The entry ended there, the final words trailing into a smudge of ink, as if she'd been interrupted mid-thought. Or as if she'd decided, suddenly, that writing it down was too dangerous.
I turned the page with trembling fingers. The next was blank except for a single line, written in a different hand… stronger, darker, the letters pressed deep into the paper.
She knows too much.
The grimoire fell from my nerveless fingers, hitting the bed with a soft thud.
The surrounding room seemed to tilt and spin, reality rearranging itself with each hammer of my heart.
Not a stranger. Not some ancient enemy I'd never met.
Someone who'd been there all along. Someone who'd watched me grow up, who'd been there the day we buried my mother, who'd. ..
Ro was right. The threat hadn't been coming for me. It had been here. It had been watching me figure out exactly how to fight back. And now it knew everything I was capable of.
The realization crashed over me like a physical wave, stealing my breath, my balance, my certainty.
How long? How many years had this person been playing this game, moving pieces across a board only they could see?
Had they been there the night my mother died…
the "accident" the police had never quite been able to explain?
Had they watched from the shadows as I'd grieved, as I'd rebuilt my life, as I'd stumbled into the paranormal without understanding what had drawn me there?
Had they been laughing the whole time?
My hand moved without conscious thought, closing around the dagger where it lay beside me on the bed.
The metal cooled at my touch, responding to the fear and fury coursing through me.
The runes along its length began to glow, faintly at first, then brighter…
not the warm fire of demon magic but a colder, steadier light that reminded me of my mother's smile.
Protection, one rune whispered. Boundary, insisted another. Blood-right, declared the largest, pulsing in time with my heartbeat.
The dagger had been made for this. Not just as a weapon or a key, but as an answer to a threat my mother had seen coming decades before it arrived.
She'd known, prepared for, and left me the tools I needed, hidden in plain sight, waiting for the moment when understanding would matter more than safety.
I slipped from the bed, dagger clutched in my fist, and paced the room.
The compound lay quiet around me. Somewhere out there, the entity from the photo moved through the night…
planning, watching, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Someone I'd trusted. Someone who'd earned that trust through years of careful manipulation.
Someone who thought they knew exactly what I was capable of.
They were wrong.
I closed the grimoire with careful hands, tucking it into the bag I kept the paranormal journal in, ready by the door.
The dagger remained in my grip, its weight both foreign and familiar against my palm.
I wouldn't set it down again. Couldn't. Not now that I understood what it was…
not just a weapon but a promise. A legacy.
A mother's final gift to the daughter who would have to finish what she started.
Dawn was still hours away; the night was at its deepest and most dangerous. But I was done waiting for threats to find me. Done reacting instead of acting. If someone had been watching me from the shadows of my own life, it was time they learned exactly what they'd been cultivating.
I slipped from my room, grabbing my bag as I made my way through the darkened corridors of the compound, silent as a ghost. The dagger hummed against my palm, runes glowing just bright enough to light my path.
Not toward the exit, as whoever watched might expect.
Not toward safety or escape or the dubious protection of my team.
But toward the one place in the entire compound where I might find answers. Where the entity in the photo… the entity who possessed Ro, might have left traces of their true nature.
The archives. It was time for action through knowledge and research.