Chapter 22
Lily
I read the email again, like it might change if I stared hard enough. It didn’t.
Witches International had rejected us.
The official governing body for witches worldwide—if you can call a bunch of paper-pushing witches with clipboards and charm-stamped approval seals a “governing body”—had decided we didn’t qualify. The problem was that the email didn’t tell us why we didn’t qualify, which was extremely frustrating.
Gigi and I had been individual members of Witches International since college, back when The Wall was still up and magic was something you whispered about behind closed doors after one too many glasses of wine. But this was the first time we’d applied to formalize our coven.
Penny just became a member recently, since she’d been hiding the extent of her magic from her family.
Witches International itself was relatively new for a magical organization.
Born in the 1970s hippy era, it was created as a direct response to the WEC, the Wizard Elder Council, which had been operating in secret for literal millennia.
The WEC was all robes, magical bloodlines, and secret politics, a strict all-boys club.
Witches International was supposed to be the opposite, run by women who believed in community magic and spell-sharing potlucks.
But like all good plans, things changed and evolved over the decades, and with the power suits and shoulder pads came the business-minded witch. It also started accepting male members since witchcraft wasn’t just a women’s thing, especially now that gender rules were a little more lax.
There were naysayers to both of these changes, especially when it started to be run like a business.
But that, believe it or not, had ended up being a good thing.
Because by the time The Wall had fallen, Witches International had lawyers, consultants, and a global network of magical PR reps.
They were positioned perfectly to become the voice of witches worldwide. And for a while, they were crucial.
The first two years after The Wall came down had been brutal.
In Darlington, we were sheltered from the worst of it since most people here already knew about monsters and magic being part of the community.
But elsewhere? It was utter chaos. People lost their minds when they found out that their neighbors had magic.
They blamed witches for everything from storms and droughts to bad luck and cheating husbands.
Some of us genuinely thought it would be the Holy Inquisition all over again.
When the world found out a bunch of old geezers who called themselves the Wizard Elder Council had been messing around with world politics, magically controlling world leaders and heads of corporations to start profitable wars, Witches International started a very effective social media campaign to show the world that most magic users were just regular folks trying to survive, and nothing like those billionaire asshats at all.
Since then, the coven application and approval process had gotten a lot more strict and fancy, but I hadn’t expected a rejection email. We met all the criteria.
When the words on the screen didn’t change after reading them for the fifth time, I decided it was time to send it out to everyone else. I took a screenshot and uploaded it to our chat and added a quick note: Calling them now to see what’s going on.
A woman named Simone picked up. Her voice was calm, older, and sounded a little bored. I explained the situation: our coven application had been rejected with no explanation and no flagged issues.
“Give me one moment and I’ll bring up your file.” There was a series of hmms as she looked it through. When she finally replied, she sounded just as confused as I was. “You meet all the criteria,” she said, tapping away on her end. “Let me try submitting it myself.”
She did, then asked me to stay on the phone as the system processed the request.
“Lilibeth Thorne. Your name looks so familiar,” she said. “Do you happen to know an Elizabeth Thorne or a Rowan Thorne?”
I pressed my lips into a thin line, knowing where this was going. But I was stuck for it. “Elizabeth and Rowan Thorne are my parents.”
My parents had worked for Witches International back when I was still a kid. Of course I had to get someone on the phone who’d known them. I wondered how close Simone had been to my parents and if I’d be getting a call from them soon after this.
“That’s wonderful. I’m so glad their daughter has found her coven sisters. And it says here you have both an innate talent and spell-casting magic. Wonderful! They were so worried you’d only have the talent.”
I was glad she couldn’t see through the phone line to the frown on my face.
There was a beep on the other line, and Simone tutted, sounding frustrated.
“It rejected it again. I’ll need to escalate this,” she said with a sigh.
“Sometimes the system glitches. You know how computers are. But don’t you worry Lilibeth Thorne, we’ll get this figured out.
It’s just ridiculous that Elizabeth and Rowan’s daughter would get rejected for a coven application. ”
Oh yeah, the parents were going to hear about this. I sighed internally.
“Is the email and phone number listed here the best way to reach you?” she asked.
I confirmed my number, and she said “Alright, hon, I’ll be in touch,” and hung up.
I dropped the update in the group chat and stood to stretch. I was just about to close my laptop when another email pinged my inbox. It was from Haley, one of my former co-workers.
As I read her email, my anger began to rise. In it were several screenshots of a professional forum where a certain someone, Steven I presumed, was bad-mouthing me. No wonder every job I’d applied for had ghosted me.
Great. I closed the screen to my laptop a little harder than I should.
Shadow was pawing at the balcony door so I decided to take a break with her up on the roof.
I didn’t feel comfortable keeping the door open for her even though we were on the third floor, but we had a good system going.
Shadow communicated very well, and I wondered if it was because she was meant to be a witch’s cat.
Shadow darted ahead the moment I slid the balcony door open.
I followed her up the narrow metal stairs to the rooftop terrace where the afternoon sky hung heavy and gray.
The air was cool, damp with the promise of rain, and the city below seemed quieter than usual.
It was still busy though, with traffic and people going about their day.
She found a flowerbed to do her business before trotting to the edge of the terrace, ears perked, and let out a sharp chirp.
Not her usual “look how adorable I am” sound, but something more like “hey, something’s weird here.
” I crossed the rooftop, brushing past the overgrown vines and planters cracked by years of winter freeze and spring thaw, and peered over the edge.
Behind the building, a figure was hunched over some garbage next to the dumpster. The faded maroon hoodie with the Darlington University logo on the back caught my eyes. So did the reddish-brown ponytail.
I squinted. Yup, it was Krista, the work-study girl from the Breach site.
What the hell was Krista doing here? Dumpster diving behind a nightclub known for its magical clientele wasn’t exactly standard student behavior. I crouched beside Shadow, who was now watching with laser focus, her tail twitching like she was ready to pounce or bolt.
I picked her up and cradled her in my arms, just in case.
With one arm around Shadow, I dug out my phone and took a quick pic to send over to Julian, who was at a mixed martial arts studio getting some sparring in.
For some reason, his having such a mundane hobby had surprised me.
But it turns out that physical hobbies were common with demons, and this studio was built with magical beings and monsters in mind.
A few seconds later, he replied with a link to access the feeds and a quick warning for me to get inside, just in case.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Shadow and I hurried back, and I clicked the link to watch the cameras.
The system had automatically zeroed in on the intruder’s magic thanks to a little tweaking from me during the setup process.
Krista was most definitely looking for something. What, I didn’t know. But she didn’t stay there for long; her next actions had me even more concerned as she tried to peer inside Delerium’s windows. Was she looking for me? Or something else?
And who had put her up to this?
She continued around the building, looking through the windows, but found nothing as they were all covered in reflective film.
Then she looked up at one of the third-floor windows, and despite being indoors, I ducked as if I thought she could see me right through the walls.
A hooded figure approached, and she turned to greet him. They clearly knew each other.
This had to be the guy from the video. His face was also obscured here, like the pixels there decided to glitch, or the lens was dirty, exactly where he was.
I recognized magic when I saw it. There were spells to prevent faces from being photographed.
It hadn’t been obvious before because he’d used something to cover his face, sparing the stress on the spell.
Suddenly, she looked up at one of the cameras, the one we’d hidden inside a broken light. Then, like they finally realized they were being watched, the two left quickly.
I looked up to see that Julian had already returned and was standing behind me, watching the screen. He was topless and sweaty like he’d puffed right back home after a match.
“I was so focused on Alfonzo the researcher that I hadn’t even considered Krista. No wonder she looked so panicked when she first saw me there. She probably thought her goose was cooked.”
“We’d both missed it, and I’m guessing Nathan might have too. I think it’s time we talked to him about this.”
“I agree. I don’t think Alfonzo put her up to this.
He looked like he barely tolerated her. And they didn’t know I was listening.
He just wanted her gone. My question is, who the hell is she working for?
Because clearly she’s not working alone.
” I sighed. “Now I have more questions than ever. And I don’t feel any closer to the answers. ”
And whoever was involved had substantial magic. They hadn’t been able to break through the combined magic of me, Penny, and Gigi. But it had been close. Not to mention we also had Mrs. Kim’s magic on our side too.
“You did good, Vixen. This is one more piece of the puzzle. Don’t sell yourself short.”
“It wasn’t me,” I admitted. “Shadow noticed her first, didn’t you?”
Shadow preened, and I swore she could understand us.
She was a lot nicer to Julian now that he’d welcomed her into his home and given her a nice, big garden to call her own.
I wasn’t even sure she wanted to go back to my place.
What would even happen when we got back to my place?
Would she go back to living her stray cat life?
I knew I couldn’t force her to stay indoors if she’d been an outdoor cat her entire life until now.
But I also knew how dangerous it was for cats who roamed the streets.
I wanted to keep her safe, and that felt almost impossible where I lived without confining her to my tiny apartment. It didn’t seem fair.
Here, she had access to the rooftop patio and all of Julian’s third-floor apartment.
“Still up for that dinner tonight?” Julian asked, completely unaware of the moral quandary in my head.
Oops, I’d almost forgotten. We’d planned on trying that Brazilian steakhouse tonight.
And even though Julian had insisted on paying this time, it still had me thinking about how expensive eating out was and how little money, as in none, was going into my bank account in the near future.
He frowned. “You’re upset.”
Not wanting to go into my financial worries, I kept it to the basics. “Coven application got rejected, and Steven has been bad-mouthing me on industry forums.”
“Want me to kill him? Offer’s still open.” He winked.
“Nah, too risky. You’ve already got cops looking your way,” I said, pretending to take his offer seriously. “He’s from a family of witches, so it’ll just make things worse.”
“Aww, damn it. Then maybe some good meat will cheer you up.” He waggled his brows suggestively, making me laugh.
I closed my laptop and got ready for our first official date. Though did that make us more than friends with benefits? I didn’t know. The line was so blurred now.
“It just might.” I sent him a saucy smile. “Who knows, I might get hungry for more than just steak.”
“I’ll give you anything you’re hungry for, Vixen. Anything.”