Chapter 3
JOSIE
The ancient tree trunk the group of us sit around practically exudes magical energy. Maybe even as much as Lilian’s moonstone amulet, though it is a different kind of energy. I slide flat palms across the smooth surface and bask in the potent headiness of it.
It’s the closest I’ve ever felt to Mother Gaia, as if the thick roots snaking into the ground beneath my feet give me a direct connection to her.
It’s invigorating.
One of the younger Moon Witches at the table pours a dark, steaming tea into a cup for Rune. The delicate china is comical in his huge hands while he sips from the edge with a loud slurp.
Fintan shakes his head at his sire. “You can take the Viking out of the Middle Ages, but he’s still a Viking.” Finn accepts a matching blue and white teacup from the witch with a nod of thanks.
She reaches out to top mine off, filling my nose with the scent of clove and the slight woodiness of althea root as steam billows from my cup.
No one offers Sebastian a drink.
Not that he would accept one, anyway.
Whether it’s paranoia or hating the implication of accepting a kindness, he’s terrible at being civil. Maybe when you have an entire horde of vampires behind you, you don’t need friends.
Sounds like a lonely existence to me.
“So, are you going to tell us about the moonstone amulet now?” Sebastian asks, his tone making it clear it’s more of a demand than a request.
Point proven.
I shoot Sebastian a glare and hope he takes the hint to keep his mouth shut, though I’m not about to hold my breath. “We know the moonstone has been in your possession these last twenty-five years, but we still don’t know why Egan is so keen to get his paws on it.”
Blessedly, Sebastian keeps quiet.
Still, I keep an eye on him in my periphery where he stands against the wall with his face screwed up, somehow still managing to look exquisite even in his dirtied and torn button-up, usually so pristinely white.
He looks good a little roughed up, almost like a layer of his outer shell has been peeled back and I’m closer to seeing the real Sebastian.
Lilian draws my attention away from the vampire. “This amulet is one of two powerful talismans that were created on the night of the Unity Ritual.”
I blink. “Two? There is another artifact floating around out there? Does Egan know that?”
Lilian nods. “He does.”
“And, of course, the bastard wants to harness their power,” Rune says next to me, his blunt nails tapping the side of the emptied teacup. “But for what reason? What’s his endgame?”
“The power of the amulet is reason enough,” I say.
“But he must have a plan to go to such lengths. Is he planning to take a stand against Sebastian and the French Quarter?”
Lilian shakes her head, the lines around her mouth tightening. “Egan’s intentions aren’t entirely clear as of yet.”
“Of course they are,” her niece says. “The werewolf alpha wants to use the stones to destroy the unity bonds.”
“Violet!” Lilian scolds.
What? Destroy the unity bonds? Does Egan not realize what that would mean? I’m not even sure I know what that would mean.
Nothing good.
“What?” The teen is unfazed by the harsh tone, meeting her aunt’s cold stare with one of annoyance. “The dude attacked the leader of one of the ten parishes. He’s getting bolder while we sit on our asses and hide. We don’t have time to wait for you to get to the point. We need their help.”
A nasty red blotch climbs up Lilian’s neck. “I think it’s time for the children to go to bed so the adults can speak.”
Violet rolls her eyes. “It’s gonna be hard to get any sleep with all the commotion you’ve invited into our home.”
I know what she means. Having so much turbulent energy in close quarters is making my stomach churn. And the family spat happening at the table isn’t making that any better.
I take a sip of my tea, hoping to settle the seasick feeling sloshing around my insides.
“Go,” Lilian urges, her face going red. “To your room, outside, I don’t care—just go.”
Violet opens her mouth to argue, but then rethinks. Her indignant huff is almost entirely drowned out by the scraping of wood against wood as she pushes her chair away from the table.
Shooting her aunt a wild stink eye, she turns to stomp through the ring of Moon Witches that stand around the table and against the walls.
Lilian rubs at her temple and exhales. “Raising a teenager was hard enough the first time around,” she says, sounding tired.
“When was that?” Sebastian jeers from the sidelines. “During the Bronze Age?”
The comment earns him a glare not just from me, but Finn, Lilian, and a few of the other Moon Witches as well.
If he was sitting closer, I would smack him. It would likely break my hand and he wouldn’t feel it, but I would still enjoy hitting him. “Seriously, Sebastian, this would go so much better if you could learn to keep your thoughts to yourself.”
“Besides, if anyone here should be the butt of old age jokes, it should be him.” The young witch lets off a laugh as she strides to the closet by the front door.
Lilian looks like she might snap. “Violet Reine.”
The addition of the middle name makes me cringe, sparking memories of Grand-Mère standing in the back door with her hands on her hips as I ran and hid from her wrath.
“Yeah, yeah,” Violet grumbles as she finishes pulling on a pair of cheery yellow wellies. “The annoying burden is leaving. Don’t worry.”
I have no doubt that if the front door was still attached to its hinges, she would have slammed it shut on her way out.
I don’t envy Lilian the responsibility of raising a teen, that’s for sure. It’s hard enough going through the awkward adolescent years as a young woman with fluctuating hormones and emotions.
Throwing magic into the mix must be a recipe for disaster. Still, my heart goes out to the kid as well. Violet seems to handle herself better than I did back then. When I was her age, losing control of my magic as my emotions flared was nearly a daily occurrence.
Then I catch Fintan frowning after her with his brows drawn together. Is it more than teenage angst and unplaced anger?
“Will Violet be okay?” I ask, following Finn’s gaze when his attention flicks to the front window just as the young witch’s shadow passes by.
“My niece is fine. She won’t go far; she is bound to the house.”
“Talk about keeping the kid on a short leash.” Rune’s mumbled words are too quiet for Lilian to hear him from across the wide trunk of the bald cypress.
I hope.
Sebastian is doing well enough at pissing her off on his own. He doesn’t need Rune’s help.
Lilian rubs at her temples again, and I wonder if maybe it isn’t her teenage ward who is the cause of her headache. Regardless, she gets back on track.
“To truly understand Egan’s intentions and what we are dealing with, we have to go back to the beginning.”
“The war,” I answer absently.
She dips her chin. “Yes. Though perhaps it began even before then. How much do you know about the time when you still lived here as a child?”
“Grand-Mère used to tell me stories. She wanted to make sure I knew our history.”
Lilian nods. “Knowing one’s past is imperative, so we don’t repeat our mistakes, but I doubt you know the whole truth of what happened.”
A few short hours ago, I would have argued that, but after Adelaide’s betrayal and the revelation of who was truly behind my parents’ death, I’m wondering what else I thought I knew.
Sebastian scoffs. “Enlighten us then, o’ wizened hag of the swamp.”
I look at Finn. “Is there a way to make him keep his mouth shut?”
He runs a rough hand over the russet stubble gracing his perfectly sculpted jaw. “Ignore him, lass. Reacting to unacceptable behavior only reinforces it.”
Thankfully, Lilian takes the advice to heart, and we get back to the discussion of the war that plagued New Orleans. “In the beginning, the idea of the unity ritual stemmed from our intention to stop the war waging between the werewolves and the vampires. It had been months of endless fighting—one bloody battle after another, all of them senseless and leading to more chaos and suffering rather than any kind of conclusion.”
Grand-Mère told me the witches and a handful of other supernaturals were fleeing the city. With the vampires and the werewolves matching each other with equal forces of strength, it was a deadlock and neither side was willing to concede.
It was too dangerous to risk getting caught in the middle.
“The covens across the city came together,” she continues, “taking it upon ourselves to conceal the violent truths. We cleaned up the messes our fellow supernaturals made and they went about slaughtering one another.”
“But it wasn’t enough,” Fintan says. “There was already too much momentum and bad blood.”
Lilian regards Finn across the table like she wants to hate him, but can’t quite bring herself to.
He has that effect on people.
“Eventually, the humans began taking notice. Despite our best efforts—it was only a matter of time before one of them witnessed too much and exposed the secret of the entire hidden world of supernaturals. We knew the kind of persecution that would bring and couldn’t let that happen…not again.”
Grand-Mère taught me all about the witch-hunts that took place across Europe, the torturing and killing of our sisters that pushed them further and further out of society until they came overseas to the Americas.
There’s a reason supernaturals stick to the shadows of society—our survival depends on it.
Humans don’t take kindly to anything ‘other’.
That hasn’t changed in the last thousand years. I doubt it ever will.
Not in my lifetime, at least.
Lilian blinks, and whatever horrors she sees in her mind’s eye seem to clear. Her gaze flicks over me, Rune, and Fintan. “We tried to stay out of it, but eventually it became clear that something had to be done.”
“The unity ritual,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No. Not yet. At first, our goal wasn’t to end the war. All we knew was that something had to be done.”
“We? You mean you and Grand-Mère?”
“And Gisèle Caron. We were the three most powerful lineages of witches this city had seen: the Beauchamps, the Dumonts, and the Carons.”
I try to remember if Grand-Mère ever mentioned anyone by the name of Caron, but nothing comes to mind.
“Claudette, Gisèle, and I were inseparable. The three of us grew up together in Tremé. Our family homes were all on the same block and we trained together, forged our magic together, and got in trouble together. We were always raising some kind of hell around Tremé.”
I chuckle. “That sounds like my grandmother.”
“So, when things were bad, Claudette, Gisèle, and I recruited and deployed teams of witches to patrol sections of each district in the city.”
Sebastian huffs, the icy daggers he shoots at our host growing ever more intense. “Fucking witches. Always sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”
Lilian opens her mouth to respond, but I’m already accessing my magic, calling on Mother Gaia’s power and channeling the force of the ancient cypress through me to amp up my intentions.
“What you don’t understand is—” Sebastian’s rant ends as his body spasms, assaulted by the fury of a woman and enough electricity to drop him to the floor in a fit of spasms.
“Josie, don’t.” Rune’s whispered warning does nothing to lessen my enjoyment at seeing the mighty Bastard King taken to the floor.