Chapter 7
Alice
The vision hit me as I stood in Aunt Judy's kitchen helping her prepare for what we all knew was coming. The mortar and pestle slipped from my fingers, and the ceramic shattered against the hardwood floor, sage and lavender scattering across the boards.
One moment, I was grinding herbs for a protection spell. The next, the world fractured into tiny pieces and then came together again.
I saw my brother.
Not the way I'd seen him in dreams or witch visions.
This was different. More real. I could feel the cold seeping into his bones, taste the metallic tang of fear on his tongue.
The twin connection we'd always had pulled taut between us like a rope stretched to breaking, and suddenly I was there with him.
Trapped in a space that shouldn't even exist.
The walls around Alex shimmered with an iridescence that made my eyes water. They weren't solid, not quite. They phased in and out of reality like breathing, and I understood with sudden, terrifying clarity that he wasn't in any physical location we could reach.
Then the vision fractured, and I was gasping against the kitchen counter, my hands trembling so badly I had to lock my elbows to stay upright.
"Alice?" Aunt Judy's voice came from the doorway. "What happened?"
I straightened, smoothing my skirt with shaking fingers. The movement is automatic. Proper. What's expected of me. "I dropped something. I'm sorry about the mess."
She moved into the room, her gaze sharp as it swept over the scattered herbs, the broken mortar, my too-pale face."That's not what I asked."
"I'm fine," I said, but my hands shook as I bent down to start picking up the pieces. "I'm just tired."
Judy studied me for a long moment, and I kept my face smooth. Calm. The perfect niece who followed rules and respected hierarchy and never, ever defied the High Priestess.
But she didn't believe me. I could see it in her eyes.
However, she didn't push, and I was grateful for that.
Because how did I explain to someone who had no idea what it was like to have a twin that I could feel my brother's terror like it was my own?
That every time I closed my eyes, I saw fragments of his prison?
That something inside me was changing, awakening, responding to his captivity with a power I didn't understand and that, quite frankly, terrified the hell out of me?
I couldn't.
So I didn't.
"Why don't you take a break?" she suggested gently. "You've been working yourself to exhaustion."
"I need to stay busy."
What I didn't say was that if I stopped moving, I'd fall apart. If I let myself feel the full weight of Alex's absence, I wouldn't be able to function.
She sighed but didn't argue. Instead, she pulled me into a hug that smelled like rosemary and… home.
I held her tight and tried to believe it.
But the vision lingered at the edges of my consciousness, and I knew—with a certainty that chilled me to my core—that finding Alex wouldn't be as simple as tracking him to a location.
We'd need magic that went far beyond what our coven knew.
Magic I was only beginning to comprehend.
That night, I dreamed of dimensions folding in on themselves like origami.
The world tilted sideways, and suddenly I was seeing things I shouldn't have been able to see.
Layers of reality stacked on top of each other like sheets of glass.
The physical world where my body lay. The spirit realm where ghosts and old Druidism lingered.
And between them was something else. Pockets that folded into themselves, spaces that existed in the cracks between worlds.
Then I was standing in a space that existed between those spaces.
I couldn't have explained it if I tried.
The air here tasted ancient, threaded with power so old it made my teeth ache.
I saw layers of reality stacked on top of each other, translucent and shimmering.
And there—in one of those impossible pockets—was my brother.
Except he wasn't. Not in any physical sense.
He was pacing a cell that shouldn't have existed, running his hands along walls that phased between solid and ethereal. His magic sparked against the barriers, but it slid off uselessly.
Because witch magic couldn't touch djinn constructs.
The realization crystallized in my mind with perfect, horrible clarity.
I reached for him, and something inside me reached back.
Not my magic, or even Alex's. This was older.
Deeper. It pulsed from a place in my chest I didn't know existed, unfurling like wings I'd never used.
The power tasted like storm winds and star fire, and it responded to my desperation with terrifying eagerness.
The dimensional barrier noticed me.
I felt like it wasn't sentient, not exactly. But it recognized what I was…who I was.
"Alice." Alex's voice was loud in the dream, sharp with warning. "Don't. It's a trap. He's—"
The vision had shattered.
I jerked awake gasping, sheets twisted around my legs, my heart hammering against my ribs. But the power that had woken in the dream hadn't faded. It had hummed beneath my skin, waiting.
Hungry.
I pressed my hands to my chest and tried to steady my breathing.
This hadn't been witch magic. Witch magic felt like the natural world responding to will and intention.
I worked with herbs and moonlight, with the slow patient growth of living things.
My spells were soft and sure, woven into the fabric of nature rather than forced against it.
This had felt like I could tear a hole in reality if I tried hard enough.
Like I could step between worlds and drag my brother home.
The air in my bedroom had suddenly grown thick, almost syrupy. The hum beneath my skin had intensified, and I felt something shift in the fabric of reality itself.
When you need it most, it will find you.
The voice wasn't mine, but it was familiar to me. My grandmother's voice…
I frowned. She died when I was twelve. I couldn't possibly be hearing her voice.
Before I could process what was happening, weight materialized across my lap. Not gradually, but all at once. One moment there was nothing, the next there was something heavy and solid pressing into my thighs through the blanket.
I looked down and my breath caught.
It was a book with ancient leather binding, worn smooth in places from countless hands.
The cover bore a symbol that seemed to move when I wasn't looking directly at it, three points and a swirl in the middle, shifting and reforming in my peripheral vision.
The leather was nearly black, with lines of gold running through it like veins.
My hands shook as I reached for it, and the moment my fingers touched the binding, electricity shot up my arm. Not painful, but overwhelming all the same. The djinn power inside me surged to meet it, recognizing something kindred.
No.
I jerked my hands back, the book sliding sideways on my lap as it suddenly occurred to me...
But no. It couldn't be. This couldn't be the book Marcus had been searching for. The book he'd murdered Esme's family for trying to find. The book that supposedly contained the spells to bind him, control him, send him back to whatever hell dimension he'd crawled out of.
But I knew it was. Every cell in my body knew it.
My grandmother's voice echoed again from somewhere deep in my childhood memories:
Our family has been its guardian for generations, Alice. Hidden from those who would abuse its power. But it will only reveal itself to the one who truly needs it.
I picked up the book with trembling hands, feeling its weight.
It was heavier than it should have been for its size, and the cover was warm, almost alive.
When I opened it, the pages were filled with text that made my eyes water.
The words shifting between languages I recognized and symbols that existed in no human alphabet.
Most of it was incomprehensible, swimming before my eyes like living things refusing to be pinned down. But here and there, a word crystallized. A phrase became clear before dissolving again.
Binding.
Between worlds.
The price of passage.
I slammed the book shut, my heart racing. This was what Marcus wanted. What he'd been killing for. What he'd tortured Esme's family to find.
And it—quite literally—just fell into my lap.
I should have told Aunt Judy immediately. Marched to her house right then, placed it in her hands, and let the coven decide what to do with it.
But I didn't move.
The book pulsed warm against my palms, and I swore I felt it approving of my defiance.
If I gave this to the coven, they'd lock it away. They'd say it was too dangerous, that the djinn magic in it could corrupt our magic. They'd let Alex rot in that prison rather than risk using the very power that could save him.
But I wasn't pure witch. Neither was Alex. We were something else, something in between. And maybe that was exactly what we needed to be.
I slid out of bed, moving on silent feet to my closet. In the back, behind winter coats I rarely needed in New Orleans, there was a loose floorboard I'd discovered years ago. I pried it up and created a space beneath, wrapping the book carefully in an old silk scarf that had belonged to my mother.
"I'm sorry, Aunt Judy," I whispered to the darkness as I replaced the board. "But I won't let Alex die for your principles."
The book's presence thrummed through the wood, through the floor, through my bones. A secret. A weapon. A possibility.
I crawled back into bed, pulling the covers up to my chin, and stared at the ceiling. Everything had changed. I had what Marcus wanted most in the world. I had the power to save my brother, if I could figure out how to read it. If I was brave enough to use it.
If I could keep it hidden long enough.
I avoided the coven for three days.