Chapter Thirteen #2
“As I was saying,” she continued. There was more shuffling and clinking as she busied herself with whatever she was doing.
“I was the heir to the Avos coven, but I hated it.
After the foremothers banished the supernatural creatures to hell, we thought we had no more battles to fight, but we were wrong.
How could our fight be over when the evils of men rivaled anything a demon could do?
“And so with our new purpose, the sisters of the Avos coven began to embed themselves in politics, government, law, and various positions of power,” she said. “I’m sure at the start, the intention was to do good, but by the time I was born, corruption was our middle name.
“Did you ever wonder why I became a malpractice lawyer even though I hated it so much?” she asked. “It’s because my mother forced me into it. She was—is—the CEO and CFO of Hart Hospitals.”
My brows furrowed. My real mother never talked about her mother. She just said they had a falling out when Mom got pregnant and quit her job, and she didn’t want to think about the terrible things her mother said to her that day.
I saw the pain in my mother’s eyes, so I never brought up my maternal grandmother again.
Somehow she knows that, so she’s filling in the blanks with lies that I can’t counter.
Clever demon.
“I was forced into malpractice so that I could use my job and my magic to squash any suit that was brought against Hart,” she said, anger bleeding into her voice.
“In our coven, daughters are taken away from their mothers and raised in seclusion.
Necessary, they say, so that we devote full-time to our magical study without fear of being found by the outside world.
“But the real reason is that a child’s innocent lips can pour too many truths into the wrong ears, so better to raise said child away from friends, away from family, away from everything needed to h-have a normal life.
” Her voice cracked. “I wasn’t allowed to leave the secret estate until I was eighteen and enrolled in college.
“When I stepped out of the gates, a woman who hadn’t bothered to send me one letter or spare me one phone call in eighteen years told me she was my mother, and my mission from then on was to graduate at the top of my class, join a prestigious law firm, and fight to keep our family business strong and scandal-free.
That is how I would serve her and my foremothers for the good of the coven.
“Can you believe that?” she growled. “A perfect stranger walking up to me and telling me how I was to serve her.”
I couldn’t believe that. This was all a load of bullshit, but that didn’t change the fact that my fictional grandmother was a real cold bitch.
“Even so, I did everything I was supposed to do. I did everything I was raised to do. That is until... I met your father.”
“Dad?” I repeated, then cursed myself. Why was I letting myself get sucked in?
“Yes, baby. Your dad.” Again that fake tenderness laced her voice. “Meeting him was like feeling the sun on my skin for the very first time. Everything before had been cold and dark, and then, there was light.
“I loved him completely, totally, and absolutely. He was something that was mine—all mine,” she said softly. “Everything was perfect... until my mother called and told me I was pregnant.”
“Wait, what?” Again I tried to twist around and look at her, but the binds held me fast. “She told you?”
“Blood magic, sweetie. It’s a powerful thing. She sensed instantly that another of her bloodline was about to be born, and who else could be carrying that child but her only child? Me.”
Clink. Clink. Scratch.
What was she doing back there? Why won’t she turn me around so I can see?
“That morning, she called me up more excited than I ever heard her. She was gushing, and I mean gushing, about her plans for you,” she said.
“About how you’d be taken away and trained even more rigorously so that you could take over Hart Hospitals, and then from there, government, politics, and one day, the first female president. ”
My brows rocketed up my head. Yikes. Fictional Grandma doesn’t mess around, does she?
“She had your whole life mapped out, and me and your father had no place in it. Just hearing her speak of taking my daughter away like it was a foregone conclusion, I snapped,” she confessed.
“I shouted that no one was taking you anywhere. That, unlike her, I loved my baby and there was no way I was raising her to be a pawn in the coven’s game of power.
“Your grandmother listened to my rant... and laughed,” she hissed. “That’s right, she laughed. The woman told me that I may be more powerful than her, but I wasn’t more powerful than the entire coven, and that is who would come after me if I dared to run away with their heir.
“The whole of the Avos coven would hunt me down, and rip my baby away from my cold, dead arms if that’s what it took.”
I hissed. “I know this isn’t real, but even the thought of a mother threatening their own daughter like that is gross. I’m really disliking Fake Grandma right now.”
“She is gross, and cruel, and very, very real,” she corrected. “She also wasn’t bluffing. I knew she had every intention of taking you away from me, and resorting to brutal measures if I stood in the way.
“I was scared, Charlie. Terrified and backed into a corner, and so I said the one thing a witch is never supposed to say.”
The warmth leeched out of my body. “No...” Somehow, I knew what she said like I was right there in the room. “You didn’t...”
“I did,” she rasped. “I screamed at my mother that I’d sell my soul to the devil before I let her lay a finger on my baby, and just like that, he was there.”
I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know why. I couldn’t speak even if I found the words.
She continued her awful story. “On that day, Lucifer offered me a deal. In exchange for hiding me, you, and your father from my coven, I had to give him something that only I could. A devil’s spawn that was half fallen angel and... half Avos witch.”
“No...” My lips were numb. All the feeling had left my fingers. “Stop...”
“And so four years later, it was born,” she spat.
“Stop!”
She plowed on. “And the devil named it... Adora Rose.”
“I said stop!” I shrieked. “That’s enough. Nothing that you’re saying is true! Nothing—!”
The impostor snapped her fingers. “Silentium.”
I kept shouting, but no one could hear it. She’d stolen my voice.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but the immobilization spell won’t last forever, and your interruptions are wasting time. Just listen quietly so that we can do what we’re here to do. When I’m done, I promise you’ll understand.”
“Understand, my ass! Let me out of here!” I thrashed even harder against my unseen chains.
“I know this is a shock,” she cried. There was more scratching and the sound of something being dragged across the stone floor.
“I more than anyone know how attached you became to it. You thought it was your sister. You thought it was something to be loved. You even gave up your future to care for it!” She swore.
“You don’t know how it broke my heart when Lucifer told me you dropped out of college to care for the thing instead of letting it go into foster care. ”
“Stop calling her it! You’re not our fucking mother, what right do you have to speak of my sister that way!”
“But that was also my fault,” she gritted.
“Lucifer put in the soul contract that I wasn’t allowed to mistreat his spawn in any way.
I had to treat it the same way I treated you, or the contract was void, and his protection would be lifted.
Of course, I couldn’t put your life at risk because of that thing, so I put on my greatest performance, but in doing so, I left you with a terrible burden after I was gone. ”
“Dora is not a burden, you monster! Get me out!” I rocked and rolled in the invisible stretcher. “Let me out!”
“Eighteen years,” she whispered. “Eighteen years the three of us had together, before it all came crashing down. You see, when you make a deal with Lucifer, you have to be perfect. You have to think of every eventuality and every loophole. If you don’t, you’ll regret it for the rest of your afterlife... and I didn’t think of everything.
“When I made the contract, I thought the only serious threat against our family was the coven’s magic, and so that is what I told Lucifer to protect us from,” she said.
“I never for a second thought that technology, tracking, and the internet would advance to the degree it did in the last two decades. All of a sudden, anyone could be found, and anyone can be tracked.”
“Enough with the fairy tale! Just take me to my sister!”
“At some point, my mother figured out that magic wasn’t going to find us, but technology could do the trick just fine,” she said.
“Mother hired someone to find me, your father, and the thing and kill us. With the three of us out of the way, you’d be alone and desperate for the only family you had left—her. ”
“No!” I was desperate to cover my ears—block out all the horrible lies she was spouting.
“As far as you were told, your father lost control of the car on a wet, slippery road. He and I died, while the thing ended up in a coma. But of course, she said, that wasn’t the whole story.
What truly happened is that the hitman cut our brakes, and Lucifer let your father and me die—choosing only to save his spawn. ”
Tears soaked my face. What was wrong with this lunatic? What was she getting from stuffing my ears full of this bullshit!
“But in so doing, he left his spawn without someone to raise it.” More clinking. More scratching. “Despite what you may have been told, it’s not that demons can leave hell when mortals summon them. They can only pass through the closed gates when a witch summons them through want or need.