Covenant (The Midnight Society #6)

1. The Summons

The Summons

The fire had burned low by the time Charlotte heard footsteps in the hall. She set down her teacup and turned toward the door, already knowing who it was before he appeared.

Reid stood in the doorway, snow melting on the shoulders of his coat, a folded newspaper clutched in one hand. Bone-deep weariness showed in every line of his face, the cost of too many sleepless nights chasing a man who refused to be found.

“Edmund.” She crossed the room to him, reaching up to brush snowflakes from his hair. His hand caught hers, and she felt the tension in his grip before he spoke.

“I need you to sit down.”

Charlotte’s truth-sense stirred, reading what lay beneath his words. Controlled fury, wrapped tight around a core of protective anger.

“That bad?”

“Worse.” He guided her to the settee by the fire and sat beside her, close enough that their shoulders touched. The newspaper landed on the table, front page facing up.

REGULATION OF SPIRITUALIST PRACTICES ACT INTRODUCED IN PARLIAMENT

Charlotte read the headline twice, letting the implications sink in. Her truth magic pulsed against the black print, testing the words’ accuracy, their weight, and their capacity for harm.

“Lord Willis Ashworth introduced the bill yesterday,” Reid said. His voice was carefully neutral, like an inspector delivering evidence. “Cornelius’s distant cousin. He inherited the title after—” He stopped.

After Eleanor killed him. Neither of them needed to say it.

“What does the bill require?”

“Registration. Mandatory examinations. What they’re calling ‘protective custody’ for anyone deemed a threat to public safety.” Reid’s jaw tightened. “Three members of Parliament who received testimony from Pemberton are backing it. The bill goes to committee next week.”

Charlotte picked up the newspaper, scanning the article.

The language was careful, reasonable-sounding.

Spiritualist practitioners. Not witches, not mages.

Nothing that would sound too fantastical for the morning papers.

Just practitioners of arts that the bill’s sponsors deemed potentially dangerous.

“The journalist got most of it right,” she said, her magic reading the truth woven through the article. “The quotes are accurate. But the intentions behind them?” She set the paper down. “Those are weapons.”

Reid nodded. “I know.”

Silence settled between them. The fire crackled. Outside, snow continued to fall on a city that had no idea what was being assembled against part of its population.

“Sebastian,” Charlotte said quietly. The name tasted like ash.

“I thought the same thing.” Reid’s hand found hers again, his thumb tracing slow circles against her palm. “Three weeks of hunting him, and nothing. Every lead goes cold. Every informant goes quiet.”

“Because he’s not hiding.” Charlotte understood now, with a certainty that made her stomach turn. “He set this in motion months ago. Before the wedding. The legislation is his contingency plan. If he couldn’t destroy the council directly, he’d let Parliament do it for him.”

Reid pulled her closer, his arm settling around her waist, and she let herself lean into his warmth. His heartbeat was steady against her cheek, a rhythm she’d learned to find comfort in since he’d chosen her. Truly chosen her, knowing full well what it would cost him.

“James said the same thing yesterday,” she added. “Sebastian doesn’t make one move when he can make three.”

“Then we need to find him before those moves land.”

“How?” Charlotte looked up at him. “Fight Parliament? Expose magic to the world?”

“I don’t know yet.” Reid kissed her, brief, fierce, his hand cupping the back of her neck. When he pulled back, his eyes held the determination she’d fallen in love with. “But we’ll figure it out. Together.”

She heard the truth in that, at least. Whatever came next, he meant to face it at her side.

“Go sleep,” she told him, touching his face. The shadows under his eyes were deeper than she’d seen them since the night they’d discovered Sebastian’s betrayal. “You’ve been awake for days.”

“Charlotte...”

“War council is at noon. You need to be sharp for it.” She stood, pulling him up with her. “Guest room. I’ll wake you in three hours.”

He hesitated, but exhaustion won. He kissed her properly this time.

Slow and thorough, his mouth warm and demanding against hers, his hands sliding down to her waist and pulling her flush against him.

She could feel the tension draining from his shoulders as he lost himself in the contact, in the simple proof that she was here, she was his, she wasn’t going anywhere.

When they finally parted, both were breathing harder than the kiss strictly warranted.

He kept her close after, his forehead dropping to rest against her hair.

She could feel the full weight of him in that hold.

Not demanding, just needing a solid anchor.

Three weeks of hunting had taken more than sleep from him.

She felt it as his arms tightened fractionally when she shifted, the involuntary resistance to letting go.

Charlotte drew back far enough to see his face.

She read what three weeks had done to him in the small ways his body told the truth.

The tension in his shoulders didn’t release even in the kiss.

The steadiness of his hands could only come from keeping them steady deliberately, again, until it became reflex.

He hadn’t let himself break. That cost a price.

“You didn’t sleep,” she said.

“Not much.”

She touched his face, tracing the line of his jaw. He turned into it, starved for gentle touch.

“Three hours,” he said, his voice rough.

“Three hours.” Charlotte smoothed his lapels, trying not to think about how easily she could follow him upstairs instead. “And then we fight.”

“I love you.”

“I know.” She watched him climb the stairs, waiting until she heard the guest room door close before she let her composure slip.

Three weeks. Three weeks since Sebastian had escaped, since Reid had chosen her world over his career, since everything had changed. And now this.

She picked up the newspaper again, reading the article with cold precision.

Every fact laid out like a chess piece on a board.

Registration requirements that would expose every magical family.

Examination protocols that would put practitioners at the mercy of men who’d never held magic in their lives.

Protective custody that was just a polite word for imprisonment.

Her truth magic hummed against the newsprint, and she understood with terrible clarity. This wasn’t legislation.

It was a declaration of war.

Eleanor arrived an hour later, Baby Eddie bundled against the February cold. She swept into the sitting room, telegram in one hand and murder in her eyes.

“Tell me you’ve seen it.”

“Reid brought the newspaper.” Charlotte rose to take Eddie, settling him against her shoulder while Eleanor shed her coat. “He’s sleeping now.”

“Good. He’ll need to be rested for what’s coming.” Eleanor’s voice was controlled, but Charlotte’s magic caught the fury beneath it. Not aimed at Reid. Aimed at the world that kept finding new ways to threaten her family.

Eddie made a soft sound, and Charlotte adjusted her hold on him automatically. At two months old, he was already recognizing faces, tracking movement with bright, curious eyes. His small hand curled around her finger with surprising strength.

“Cecilia and Daniel are on their way,” Eleanor said, brandishing the telegram. “Vivian and Dominic are bringing the twins. Solomon will meet everyone at the Midnight Society chambers.”

“Full council?”

“Everyone who can make it.” Eleanor sank into a chair, her journalist’s mind working behind her eyes. “Ashworth, the new one, inherited the title and the agenda. I’ve been trying to trace his connections for weeks. Now I know why they matter.”

Charlotte watched her sister, noting the exhaustion that mirrored Reid’s. Eleanor hadn’t been sleeping either. None of them had. Not when Sebastian was out there, planning, waiting, watching.

“Mother sent a letter,” Eleanor added quietly. “Asking if she and I should flee. Take Eddie somewhere safe.”

“Flee where?”

“She didn’t say. France. Or America.” Eleanor’s laugh was hollow. “As if there’s anywhere the Society’s reach doesn’t extend. As if running ever kept anyone safe.”

“There isn’t.” Charlotte set Eddie in his basket by the fire, tucking the blanket around him with hands that wanted to tremble. “Running just makes us easier targets. Isolated. Vulnerable. Exactly what Sebastian wants.”

Eleanor had already reached that conclusion before Charlotte finished the sentence.

She’d been reaching it since the letter arrived, her mother’s handwriting looping across the page with a longing for somewhere safer, somewhere far.

The pull of it was real. She wasn’t ashamed of the pull.

Eddie was two months old and she had counted too many exits from too many rooms since the day he was born, not from fear for herself but from relentless calculation of a mother measuring distances between her child and every harm.

France. America. Somewhere with no Society, no Parliament, no Ashworth heir inheriting a cousin’s agenda. She could picture it. A cottage, a different name. Eddie crawling in unfamiliar grass.

She could picture Sebastian finding them within a year.

Running felt like love and delivered her child directly to a man who had already demonstrated, precisely and without remorse, what he was willing to do to people who tried to disappear from him. Isolated was not safe. Isolated was exactly what Sebastian preferred.

Eleanor knew this. She had always known this. The letter had made her feel it as grief rather than logic, and that grief had lasted an hour, and now it sat in her chest alongside the right answer, heavy and unavoidable.

Charlotte’s voice had been steady. Eleanor didn’t need the steadiness. She needed someone to hold the weight of it with her.

“I know.” Eleanor rubbed her temples. “But try explaining that to a mother who watched her husband die for knowing too much.”

Charlotte didn’t answer. Their father’s death sat between them, a wound that refused to heal.

The truth of it, the murder disguised as illness.

Eleanor had discovered the conspiracy three years ago.

Charlotte had learned it piece by piece as Sebastian’s betrayal unfolded, each revelation another knife in her heart.

The magical world had already taken their father. It wanted more. It always wanted more.

“James thinks this is Sebastian’s backup plan,” Charlotte said. “Contingency legislation, set in motion months ago. Maybe while he was still pretending to be the man I was supposed to marry.”

Eleanor’s expression hardened. “Of course it is. He’s been planning this since before you ended the engagement. Possibly since before Cornelius died.”

“We need to find him.”

“We need to survive this first.” Eleanor looked at the fire, her eyes reflecting the flames. “If Parliament passes this bill, finding Sebastian won’t matter. We’ll all be registered, examined, and locked away while he walks free. He’ll have won without a single shot fired.”

Baby Eddie stirred in his basket, making the soft sounds of a child dreaming. Both sisters turned to watch him. A child born into a reformed society that might not survive long enough to raise him. Hope and everything worth fighting for, contained in one small bundle.

“War council at noon,” Charlotte said. “Nathaniel called it. He wants all the legacy couples present, plus the Crawley sisters. Everyone with a stake in what happens next.”

Eleanor reached across to squeeze her hand. “Whatever happens next, we face it together.”

“Together.”

Outside, snow fell on London, covering the city in white silence while underneath, Sebastian Whitmore made his next move. The man who’d once held her hand and spoken of love. The man who’d betrayed everything she believed about him. The man who was still out there, watching, waiting for his moment.

Charlotte read the newspaper through once more.

REGULATION OF SPIRITUALIST PRACTICES ACT

Sebastian was playing a game with Parliament as his pieces. But he’d forgotten one thing. Charlotte Vance could see the truth in any lie.

And she would find him.