MADDOX
I’ve been sick to my stomach all day. The clash of magic and anxiety kept me home from classes and locked in the study.
Piles of books, archives, and family trees are splayed over the floor, couch, and desk.
They don’t believe me, but they have to.
There’s something about Elsbeth that feels too familiar.
Something about the magic she used tastes—smells—akin to ours.
The other covens around the world emit their own individual signatures.
The ancestors we all connect to tap into different aspects of the universe and what it provides.
Which is why the legacies each manifest such strong abilities.
All descendants hold powers just as strong if not stronger than our own.
Instead of bringing us together, it divides us.
If she were from a rival coven, come to us as a spy, we would know immediately.
Even drained of all magic, the stain of it would remain.
My fingers flip through page after page.
With each fruitless turn, the tighter the vice around my gut becomes.
Thorne took Fox to the gym this morning but neither have been back.
Asher had classes this afternoon but should be home any minute.
I need to have something to show them. Something to prove that my worry isn’t futile.
She’s here somewhere, in these old tomes scribbled by the men who came before us.
It doesn’t help that I have nothing to go on.
I’ve traced all active families within our community to their living dependents.
Social media has helped narrow down the youngest of them.
Especially those who left the coven several generations back.
It’s a small handful, but jealousy and temptation of a normal human existence have taken a few lines out of our reach.
The outer fringes of our small society only have room for so much growth, and if bloodlines become tainted with outsiders for too long, they fade out.
Tracking those lines is more difficult and has taken me hours.
Fox’s mother was not of this coven and was rejected by the one she’d been born into.
She never manifested any magical ability, but her ancestral connection was strong enough for Fox to become as powerful as he is.
And no one has dared to make that deep dive since her tragic death.
Fox’s conception was only celebrated because she’d been made a sacrifice and yielded a harvest.
His parents were blessed and married, but when it came time for Fox to be born, they were doomed to bring their son onto this plane in pain.
Could Elsbeth be from Anita Proctor’s former coven?
I shove the idea aside. The ghosts of that long-dead history aren’t coming to haunt us now. It’s not my place to dig up Fox’s mother’s family tree, and even I can feel that I’d be grasping at straws to connect Elsbeth and the late Mrs. Proctor.
Slamming the book of family census from 1899-1999, I massage my temples, digging my index and middle fingers into the pounding pressure points until my vision blurs with stars.
I have a headache from hours of deciphering lines of chicken scratch writing on rebound copies.
The prospect of madness over any more of this sounds increasingly appealing by the moment.
Maybe this is my punishment from the old gods for assuming Elsbeth is some sort of Trojan horse.
The door opens and I look up to see Fox walking into the study.
“You look awful.” Fox grimaces. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Once I sobered up, I couldn’t stay in bed any longer.” I stumbled down here after they’d put Fox in Asher’s bed. That episode was sobering enough.
“Where have you been?”
I already know he’s been up to no good. He left with Thorne hours ago and Thorne had class this afternoon.
“I needed to clear my head,” he says. “We ran into Elsbeth at the gym.” He sits on the arm of the old leather couch, and when I only stare at him blankly, he continues. “She didn’t want anything to do with us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe she only has eyes for you. Because she only had venom and pepper spray for us.”
Pepper spray? What does that have to do with anything?
The questions on my face spur him on. “I don’t know what happened on her and Thorne’s date, but she acted like he kicked her puppy and spit on her granny.”
That made no sense. Thorne flirted with her for months at the gym. Why would she agree to a date if she has no interest?
“Maybe you’re right and we aren’t her target?” I get to my feet and stretch. The newfound possibility releases the ball of bunched muscles in my shoulders.
“Then who?” Fox looks between me and the stacks of books I’m standing next to.
“Some future presidential candidate? What’s she majoring in?” My question can only be answered by Thorne, but he hasn’t come home yet.
“I’m not sure. I think political science. Isn’t that what Thorne gushed about? That she’s smart and worldly.”
If she were out to find a way to become a future first lady, she wouldn’t be entertaining dates with a Business major like Thorne or an English major like me.
“It all feels too practiced. Like she’s five steps ahead of us.” Fox’s brows knit together, like finally someone is following me down this rabbit hole.
Asher walks into the room with the answer. “I think I’m her target.” He holds up his phone with a photo of her sitting at a desk in one of the old wood-clad lecture halls. “She’s in every single one of my classes. I checked after I met her in the library.”
“She transferred into your classes?” Fox squints at Asher’s screen. “Stalker.”
“For the last two semesters. Transferred in last spring.”
“You didn’t feel her magic? Could she be using a cloaking spell?” I take his phone and zoom in to see that she’s focused on the textbooks in front of her.
“That’s one hell of a cloaking spell if she’s been avoiding you for months. But why not approach you like she did Thorne or Maddox?”
“This doesn’t make sense. Why hasn’t she made a move for your attention if you’re her target?” Fox looks like he’s fighting the urge to debate Elsbeth’s intentions just for the sake of his ego. He’s not used to rejection.
“Maybe she thought Thorne would introduce us eventually.” Asher shrugs.
“Then why act like she wants nothing to do with Thorne today?”
“You spoke to her today?” Asher whips his head around to Fox.
“Yeah, she wasn’t a fan of either of us. Threatened to pepper spray us.”
“You,” Thorne jumps in, finally gracing us with his presence. “She threatened you with pepper spray. I would have just watched.”
He crosses his arms over his chest as if he didn’t miss most of the conversation leading up to this moment.
“Did you tell her about your kinks? Loving to inflict pain could have sent her running for the hills,” Fox volleys.
“We didn’t get that far.”
“I say we let her lure in whatever poor sucker she’s aiming for and walk away. It’s not worth us losing our heads over.” Fox reclines back in his chair as if the mystery is solved.
“I don’t think we have that kind of time.” Thorne looks like he’s ready to brawl.
His stony expression fixes on Asher. “Do you have classes with her tomorrow?”
“Just one in the morning.” Asher perks a brow at him, his voice tilting with the silent question.
“Good. That gives us time to prepare the guest room.” With that, Thorne turns and leaves the library and the three of us dumbfounded.
“What the fuck is he talking about?” Fox springs out of his chair and jogs after Thorne, Asher close on his heels. “Thorne!”
We follow him down the short hallway into the kitchen. He takes a soda from the fridge and pops the tab before taking a long sip.
“You invited her to come over for a little fall break vacation?” Asher leans against the white and gray marble top of the kitchen island. “Because I don’t think that’s a great idea considering the timing.”
“Not to mention, she didn’t seem warm to the idea of spending more time with us,” Fox adds to the mockery.
“There’s something going on with her and we’re not going to figure it out until it’s too late.
” Thorne’s eyes pan across us before he continues, “We need to get to her when she least expects it. I think someone else is pulling her strings, and she can either tell us or we’ll figure it out when they try to come get her. ”
I glance to Asher, who looks like he’s processing Thorne’s words like they’re in another tongue. Isn’t this what I wanted? To confront Elsbeth and get to the bottom of this before it’s too late? Then why do I have a sinking feeling in my gut that this is the biggest mistake we could make?
“You’ve lost it.” Fox laughs. “Say you’re kidding.”
Thorne smiles but it doesn’t hold any humor. Fox and Thorne are always on the same page. They practically finish each other’s thoughts. But right now, I don’t think any of us have the same idea in mind for Elsbeth.
“I hate to say it.” Asher sighs on the other side of me. “But I think he’s right. This isn’t harmless flirting or high school love spell bullshit. I felt . . . something when I spoke to her today. Then I just kept feeling a pull to her during class. Like a vibration or thread pulling me closer.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” Fox slaps his palms down on the countertop and takes a step back.
“She’s got you all twisted up in some common pickup artist type bullshit.
Lure them in, treat them like shit, and they’ll come begging for more.
Isn’t that what those losers on YouTube are always saying with their crazy red-pill nonsense? ”
“Why do you think someone else is behind this?” I turn to Thorne, that piece of his rant finally blooming bright in my tangle of thoughts.
“I . . . followed her to the library this morning,” Thorne admits, his shame hanging around his neck like a fifty-pound dumbbell. “I saw the two of you talking before the fire alarm went off.”
He’s looking at Asher, whose jaw is tight. They stare at each other for a long moment before Asher finally speaks. “Did you see anything on her that looked like the spell she had when she met Mads?”
He doesn’t seem angry or embarrassed. It’s almost like someone told one of his secrets without warning, and I wonder if there was more in that exchange than he told us and think back to the brief moments I had with Elsbeth and how enthralled I was from the second I saw her.
Was that a spell, or is she that enigmatic?
“No,” Thorne answers him. “But I saw a ghost pull her into the bathroom.”
“Now I know you’ve lost your mind.” Fox howls. “A ghost pulled her into the bathroom for what?”
“I saw someone pull her into the bathroom, but when I got the door open, she was the only one there. They’d vanished. If it wasn’t a ghost, then it’s someone with very strong magic, and for right now, I’d rather believe they weren’t corporeal.”
“Vanished? And she didn’t seem freaked out?” I am trying my best to put myself in her shoes but am struggling to put my own feelings aside.
“She was . . . fine,” Thorne replies, and the large boulder that has been sitting on my chest for the last thirty hours gains more weight.
“We can’t kidnap her because she had a mysterious bathroom meeting?” Fox pipes up as the only voice of reason, but even he knows he’s outnumbered because he hops up to sit on the counter behind me.
“We’re kidnapping her because we’re not safe if we don’t know what she’s up to,” Thorne assures him then looks at me. “Can you handle yourself if we bring her here?”
I know why he’s asking me and no one else. Not because of the insta-love spell, but because I have skeletons that like to come out when I’m under stress.
“I’ll bunk with Asher.” I shouldn’t put that burden on Asher, but he’s the only one who will be able to withstand my abilities if I lose control.
Thorne gives me an approving nod. “Good. Let’s go ensure the guest room is well equipped for our little problem. With the break, we’ll have ten days to get to the bottom of this.”
“A jury of our peers will not see it that way,” Fox states, letting his head fall back against the cabinet with a heavy sigh.
Asher levels us all with a familiar look, a promise of solidarity. Of loyalty. “Then pray for favor from all the old deities that we don’t get caught.”