Chapter 7 #3
The trip to Tegan’s place was short and unpleasant, mostly because I kept replaying Lucinda’s threat in my head.
Remove you from my coven.
It wasn’t just a power move. It was a warning.
Lucinda wanted me scared.
She wanted me isolated.
And she wanted me to believe she was the only reason I had a place in this world.
We didn’t stay in the council chambers long after that.
Lucinda issued orders with her usual crisp certainty, but the direction was clear. If the missing Resurrection Relic mattered, we needed the person who guarded the vault and the bloodline that could speak to the old ones without provoking them.
So we went to Tegan’s house.
The drive felt too quiet for the kind of night we were having.
No sirens close by, no screaming, just wet pavement and streetlights that looked tired.
My body hadn’t caught up to the fact that we’d been burning corpses downtown less than an hour ago.
My hands still carried the phantom cold of the disk and the contested pull of the tether.
Tegan’s home sat in a quieter part of town, tucked behind a hedgerow that had seen too many winters. It felt lived in. Real. Warm light in windows. The kind of place where people drank tea and argued about laundry, not world ending relics.
Inside, the air smelled like herbs and beeswax, with a sweetness underneath.
No marble. No showpiece furniture. Just wood floors, worn rugs, and shelves that held books with cracked spines.
It made my shoulders loosen by a fraction, which was ridiculous.
Zombies didn’t care if your house had character.
Tegan didn’t waste time. She led us through her living room and down the stairs.
She pressed her palm to the frame. The wards flared, recognizing her. The air shifted as the vault opened, like we’d stepped into a space where the rules were older and less forgiving.
The vault wasn’t huge, but it was dense. Shelves lined the walls, each holding carefully contained objects—boxes etched with sigils, jars sealed with wax, wrapped bundles that hummed. The temperature dropped a few degrees the moment we entered.
Tegan stood in front of the book and recited a passage before another presence joined us.
A woman stood near the back, as if she’d been waiting in the shadows.
She was older than Tegan, with similar features, the same focused eyes, but honed by years of having to be the responsible one.
Her posture was upright, her expression controlled, and her gaze swept the group in a single assessment.
“Tegan,” she said, voice calm.
Tegan’s shoulders lifted and fell once. “Mom. Thank you for coming.”
Her mother’s eyes slid to Faith, to Eve, to me, to Nishi. Her expression didn’t soften, but it held a kind of iron steadiness that made the room feel more anchored.
“I felt the wards,” she said. “And I felt the town screaming. Tell me what you need.”
Tegan’s jaw tightened. “We need the answers.”
“Ask what you will.”
Tegan stepped forward. “The Resurrection Relic is still missing from the vault,” she said, voice tight. “Could it be at play in these outbreaks?”
Silence stretched.
Then a whisper moved through the space like dry leaves sliding over stone.
Not words, exactly. Impressions.
A pull.
A door opening.
A call.
Tegan’s mother’s eyes narrowed as she listened, her face tightening with concentration. Tegan swallowed, gaze fixed on the empty air above the bowl.
Then the impressions deepened.
Calling. Waking. Drawing what should stay down.
But the second part didn’t come.
No sense of command. No leash. No hand steering the dead.
Tegan’s mother exhaled slowly. “They’re saying the relic calls the dead.”
Tegan’s voice was tight. “And it controls them.”
Her mother shook her head once. “No.”
The whisper shifted again, and the message settled like a cold stone in my stomach.
Calls. Doesn’t command.
Tegan’s mother spoke it clearly, as if stating it plainly would make it less horrifying. “It doesn’t control them.”
Eve’s mouth tightened. “So something else is controlling them.”
Faith’s jaw set. “Someone else.”
I couldn’t stop the thought that rose, bitter and persistent. “Or the relic is just the dinner bell and someone is holding the leash.”
Tegan’s mother’s gaze flicked to me, not hostile, just assessing. “That is possible.”
The air eased slightly, the presence withdrawing like a tide pulling back from the shore. The vault felt warmer again, though only by a fraction. Enough that I could breathe without feeling like my lungs were coated in frost.
Tegan stared at her mother for a moment, then looked at us. Her eyes were steady, but her voice wavered just a little.
“We have to find it,” she said.
Eve nodded, expression grim. “Yes.”
Nishi’s voice was clipped. “It was housed here, so you should be able to track it.”
Faith crossed her arms, gaze hard. “We find the relic before it calls up every corpse in town.”
“Because once the dead are awake, putting them down is never the hard part,” I said.
Her eyes lifted, meeting mine.
“The hard part is stopping whoever thinks they can use them.”