Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
The coven house was a bright blue Victorian, about four blocks from the university campus up two steep hills that made Elise’s legs ache.
If she looked out from the window in the attic, she’d see the misty mountains in the distance.
Elise could have headed straight there, but she wandered around the well-defined paths of the university for a solid half an hour before turning down Cedar Street towards home.
She didn't know if Nico would be lurking around, trying to figure out where the coven lived. But as she walked down the sidewalk to the house, it didn't even occur to her. She had chosen the university as a drop-off location because it was both neutral and near home.
She didn't think that Nico would use it against her, even if he found out where the coven lived. Not after last night, and not after that kiss.
She also needed to get her story straight, which felt more than a little crazy.
She should have been able to tell her coven sisters exactly what happened and let the chips fall as they may. But then they'd go after Nico, and that was the last thing that Elise wanted.
Yes, he had kidnapped her, but she was over that at this point, and she couldn't pretend that she didn't feel the way she felt about him. It was completely illogical and irrational.
She refused to put any other words on it because it had been six days, and she might have gone slightly insane.
She didn't have a story when she opened the door. The ward protecting their home recognized her as she passed over the threshold with a wave of warmth. A knot in her back unclenched for the first time in days.
Home, safety.
No werewolves breathing down her neck and threatening to break it.
She heard voices in the kitchen and walked through the narrow hallway to the back of the house to find her coven sisters Briana, Delainey, Serena, and her best friend, Aya, sitting around the table with warrior expressions on their faces.
Serena was the first one to see her. "Holy fucking shitballs, you're alive!" Her hands slammed on the table as she jumped up from her chair, her dyed dark pink hair falling wildly around her face.
And she had such a lovely turn of phrase.
Delainey’s corkscrew curls bounced as she whipped her head around, eyes going wide against her warm brown skin, while Briana pushed a hand through her brunette hair, her green eyes scrunched in confusion.
Aya jumped up from her seat and rushed Elise, pulling her close and hugging her so tight, Elise had some slight trouble breathing, especially with her short, dark hair getting caught up against her mouth.
It only intensified when the three others joined in.
Elise had to push them off after a minute because the breathing situation was getting dire, but she could feel the smile on her face. A small part of her was more than a little proud of herself for walking in under her own power and surprising her sisters like this.
"Where the hell have you been?" Serena demanded, gripping Elise's shoulder.
"How did you escape?" That was from Delainey, who stepped so close she was breathing down Elise's neck.
Aya was clutching her arm, and Briana was just looking at her expectantly. Right, the story she was supposed to have come up with.
"Six days," Aya said before Elise could figure out what to say. She gripped Elise's arm hard enough to bruise.
"You disappeared off the face of the Earth," Delainey added.
"We scryed for you," said Serena, gesturing toward the basement door where the root cellar and most of their scrying equipment usually lived, "but it showed you in the middle of werewolf territory. What the hell was that about? We were about to call in the cavalry."
Elise held up her hands and gently pushed Aya a step back, making some space for herself.
"Okay, can we just calm down for a second and let me talk?
" she asked, gripping the back of the empty seat at the table—her seat.
This was exactly what life with her sisters was like.
They asked a question and then about forty follow-ups before she could open her mouth to answer the first one.
"Is there coffee?" she asked, "because I could use some. "
"You could probably use something stronger than that," Serena muttered.
"It's not even noon. Let's start with coffee. I promise, I'll be fine."
"I'll make a fresh pot," Serena offered and got up to go to the counter and the waiting coffee maker before she put some bread and butter on a plate on the center of the kitchen table for them all to snack on.
Serena liked to bake, and that instinct got very intense when she was stressed.
Elise was pretty sure there was a bakery's worth of goods hiding in the kitchen if they hadn't yet been devoured.
Once everybody had steaming mugs of coffee and slices of sourdough in front of them, she was out of time to come up with any new story.
"Yeah," she said. Elise wrapped both hands around her mug. She just had to dive right in. "I got kidnapped by a werewolf. I'm okay," she held up her hands and gestured around as if to demonstrate it.
"We figured that part out," said Serena, her elbows dug into the table as she leaned in. She was practically vibrating with curiosity … and violence. "Could you give us any more details? How are you alive? How are you okay? Did you heal yourself? Did you kill any of those motherfuckers?"
"I didn't need to heal myself," she said as she set her mug down. "No one hurt me." A brief flash of Reece's angriest expression flashed through her mind.
If it hadn't been for Nico—no, she wasn't allowed to think about Nico right now.
"So, you know I was at work, right?" she prompted with a glance around, and the others nodded.
"It turns out the alpha of a local pack got injured, and their healer was out of town.
One of the betas broke into the zoo to steal medical supplies, and unfortunately, he ran into me and thought I was a veterinarian. "
"Why did he think that?" Briana asked. She and Aya exchanged a look. "Where was everyone else?"
"I thought you said everyone was working late?" Aya tilted her head and looked at Elise like she belonged under a microscope.
Elise hadn't told the others about her extracurricular activities at the zoo. If they knew she was there without permission, they would make a whole big deal about it and probably want her taking protection with her. Or not doing it at all and letting her powers fester.
Really, it was just easier to go in secret and not let anybody worry. Aya suspected, though—that was the thing about best friends; they had an annoying habit of figuring out all your secrets.
"I was near the wildlife refuge," she said. She picked at the bread in front of her so she had something to do with her hands. "And I had spilled something on my shirt, so I put some scrubs on, and he made his own conclusions from that."
"So he thought you were a vet?" Delainey asked.
Elise nodded. "And he didn't realize that I was a witch, so I just kind of played along."
"Which pack was this?" Briana asked.
"The Southern Basin."
She was nodding, so whatever their scrying had told them must have indicated Elise was in that territory.
"We're going to fucking destroy them." Serena slammed her palm down onto the table and made the mugs rattle. "No one will even remember that pack ever existed by the time we are done with them."
Delainey had a particularly evil look on her face. "You think we can give them scabies?" she pondered, tapping her fingers. "And lice and crabs? I want every single inch of their skin itching forever."
Serena's fierce expression resolved into an even eviler smile. "Hell yeah, I think we do that first, so they suffer, and then we kill them."
Aya looked contemplative, and Briana had her head tilted to the side, like she was considering going along with the warmongering psychos.
Elise probably had to put a stop to the evil scheming, but she knew her sisters well enough to know that they had to get it out of their system before they could speak rationally.
She noticed the whiteboard hanging on the wall, where normally a colorful print hung and soaked up sunlight in the mornings.
The handwriting was almost impossible to decipher, which meant it must have been Delainey's.
But Elise had known her long enough that she could make out what it said, and the arrows and X's and O's helped.
Elise wasn't an expert, but it almost looked like a football play—a football play involving witches attacking a werewolf pack … a lot of witches. Far more than the ones in their coven.
She met Briana's gaze. Their coven didn't have a leader, per se—smaller covens rarely did.
It wasn't necessary when witches liked to act on their own most of the time.
But if this coven did have a leader, it was Briana.
She was the one who had brought them all together in the first place.
She was the one who had found the house.
She was the oldest among them. And she was the one they all ran to when everything went wrong.
"Were you going to call in my parents' coven?" Elise asked with a pointed glance at the whiteboard. "Was this the rescue plan? Because this looks … big."
Briana didn't look repentant in the slightest. If anything, she sat up straighter.
"Of course. They're your parents, first of all, and they want you safe.
And they are respected members of one of the oldest and biggest covens in the state.
If anyone could take on a relatively large pack, it would be them. "
Something like fear curdled in Elise's gut. That explained why no one had come to rescue her in the days she had been held prisoner. Her friends were planning a full-on assault rather than a careful extraction mission.
And someone, or many someones, could have died.
Nico could have died.