Chapter 5
Seren
The Veil spits me out flat on my ass back in the human realm.
In the middle of a familiar forest clearing, with the night sky a tapestry of stars above and the Veil’s ether still roiling, I sprawl out in an undignified heap.
“In a mood tonight, aren’t you?” I mutter, standing and brushing dried leaves and dirt off the seat of my pants.
The ether flashes blazing crimson for a few heartbeats before fading into its usual pearly white.
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble. “Message received loud and clear.”
It’s probably not a great idea to be cheeky with the Goddess. But hey, she started it.
I’ve never had a Veil crossing like that—so turbulent, like I was being tossed around in a rip current—and I try not to let it rattle me as I get steady on my feet and survey my surroundings.
I pull my phone from my satchel and turn it on. It’s basically useless in any realm but this one, and when it powers back up, it tells me the time is a little past three in the morning, which is perfect for my purposes.
Nobody’s around this late. There are no watching eyes to see me and report back to the High Priestess, and no indignant Crescent witches who might take it upon themselves to stop me.
Not that they would succeed.
The wards guarding the Veil are cast to keep non-coven witches away, but that’s never been a problem for me.
In addition to seeking, I destroy.
Wards, locks, concealment enchantments. I haven’t met one yet that’s stood up against my magick if I’m determined to dismantle it.
That’s me, a human wrecking ball. A heat-seeking missile with no self-discipline and the impulse control of a gnat.
With one last look at the Veil—still white, no ominous crimson warnings from the Goddess—I head into the woods.
The first of the wards crackles against my skin, followed by another, and another, but I brush them all easily aside.
A combination of the spellbreaking theory and practice I studied during my decade-and-a-half education with the Crescent Coven, mixed with my own personal flair.
Instinctual and easy, the webbing of all those protective spells is clear as day in my mind’s eye as I unravel them.
Whoever fixes them in the morning will no doubt know I was here, but that’s not my problem. Hopefully they’ll put them back together in a way that’ll be more of a challenge next time.
When I reach the end of the wards, the coven hall comes into sight. Distant, but shining like a beacon at the top of a nearby hill.
My chest aches.
Not willingly, and certainly not in a way that tempts me in the slightest or would ever make me go back, but it still aches.
I turn away and head off in the other direction.
A winding gravel road leads out of coven lands and back to the mundane world, and at this time of night, I’m free to walk it alone.
It’s the same path I took in the middle of another night, never once bothering to look back when I left the Crescent Coven behind.
Goddess, it felt good.
At least at the time.
I’d never known relief like that, the deep breath of freedom I took when those massive wooden doors swung shut behind me for the last time.
I was flush with it, drunk with it, ready to make a life and a future for myself beyond the one the coven had laid out for me since my magick first presented itself.
Only, it turns out there aren’t a lot of viable career paths for wayward witches who learned how to find the unfindable and break the most powerful wards and enchantments the High Priestess could throw at me, but never developed any skills that might make money in the real world.
Leaving the coven was a high like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
It was exhilarating—sticking it to Esme, throwing her offer to stay and keep training, to be protected and cosseted and cared for as a coven darling, right back in her hypocritical face.
Ending up all alone in the mundane world? Less exhilarating.
Sure, there are plenty of witches and wielders out in the world.
There are plenty who’ve struck out on their own and landed on their feet, and plenty more who’ve had no choice but to land on their feet when the coven decided they didn’t pass muster, that their magick wasn’t valuable enough to keep them around.
My friend Joan is a prime example of that. Queen Allie, too, before the demon king scooped her up and took her back to his realm.
But me?
Not so much.
Life since I left the coven has been a series of fuck-ups and following my whims, crashing on friends’ couches and imposing on my parents, flailing for direction and not knowing where I actually belong.
Not that I’d ever go back. Not in a million years.
When I reach my car where I left it parked and warded on some back road turnoff just beyond the boundary of coven lands, I do one last sweep of my surroundings.
Every single fine hair on my body stands on-end, every sense attuned to the forest around me. My breath is tight in my lungs, and adrenaline floods through my veins at every small sound.
I’m not usually this easily rattled.
Not even alone in the woods in the dead of night.
Not even when I’m sneaking through coven lands, leaving trails of broken wards and security enchantments in my wake.
But there’s no one here—no witches, no demons, no one pursuing me—so I try to shake off all those nerves and climb into my old, rusted-out hatchback.
I don’t turn the ignition though, not right away.
Instead, I lean forward and rest my head against the steering wheel. I breathe deep, close my eyes, and try to ignore the slight tremor in my hands.
Try not to remember Callum’s face when I stepped into the Veil.
Try—and fail—not to think about any of it.
The demon.
The bounty.
The coven.
I shake my head, settle back into my seat, and start the car.
With every mile that passes between me and the Veil, my discomfort grows. The same uncanny, prickling whisper that I should go back, that I never should have left.
The same annoying tug just beneath my breastbone.
It’s just the lure of the bounty, I’m sure of it.
The promise of a payday that big has all my seeking instincts out of whack. Of course the possibility for freedom, real freedom, would call to me, tempt me, make me consider going to Faerie to—
“No.”
The sound of my voice in the car's stillness startles me a little.
I let out a long breath.
Losing it.
I’m losing it.
There’s no way in hell I’m going to Faerie.
Of all the thirteen realms, it’s the one so perilous to humans it’s made its way into the mundane consciousness.
Although most people would write off stories of mushroom ring portals and faerie bargains and terrible, enchanted courts no one ever returns from as only fables, there’s more than a little truth to it.
Everything I’ve heard about that realm is a big, flashing warning sign to stay the hell away.
Which shouldn’t make me even more curious about it.
Scratch that.
It doesn’t make me even more curious about it.
It doesn’t make me ache to go back to the Veil, lay my hand on the stone, and see if the Goddess would grant me the swirling lavender ether of Faerie.
It doesn’t make my mind race with possibilities about what the fae queen’s bounty might be, how much it would be worth, if my seeking abilities might make me uniquely qualified to—
“Fuck,” I mutter, stopping those racing thoughts short. “No.”
Fumbling in the darkness to reach the dashboard, I turn on the radio and crank it up high. Anything to drown out my idiocy and impulses.
A half-hour later, I pull up a narrow gravel drive to a familiar cottage in the woods.
All the lights are dark in the whimsical, crooked, three-story building. No one to see me sneak in. No one to question where the hell I’ve been or to finally, finally tell me I need to pull my shit together and get my own place.
Mom and dad are much too understanding for that.
They’ve watched me struggle to find my way these past few years. They’ve voiced their concerns and even tried a bit of tough love here and there, but they’d never leave me on my own completely.
And that, somehow, makes me feel even worse as I find the spare key beneath the loose brick in the low wall encircling the garden and let myself in the back door.
It makes me feel like even more of a failure as I climb the narrow, spiral staircase all the way to the third floor and into the magickal tower bedroom that didn’t used to be just mine.
All that guilt and shame and the lingering tug of my seeking instinct—and something else I’m absolutely not going to name—hound me into bed and keep me awake long, long after sleep should have claimed me.