Chapter 8
HANDS PRESS INTO ME, SHAKING me awake. “We need to get you out of here,” Mother says, turning on the lights in my dark room and throwing open my closet door.
“What?” I say, shielding my aching eyes from the light.
“You can’t stay in New Orleans. If any witch finds out about this, we are dead. Dead.”
“Mom,” I say, wanting to fold inside myself, wanting to disappear forever. Everything that’s happened pushes into my chest, a weight I can’t unload. I’m having a son. A child I can’t pretend isn’t half Bastian.
Mother pulls my suitcase from under my bed, unzipping it with a mad spark in her eye.
“Who will find out?” I ask, watching her as Mercury walks up and sits right inside the suitcase.
“Are you joking me? Never underestimate the power of witches. How do you think a Bayou witch was able to put a protection spell on Franklin? By knowing our weaknesses. There is an enemy out there, my love. Never forget that.”
My heart races as she shoos Mercury out of the suitcase and starts piling my clothes inside.
“Wait!” I yell. “Wait. Where am I going to go? What am I going to do? I’m eight months pregnant!” I watch her with tears collecting in my eyes, my heart racing at the unknown.
“We are going to Cassius. That house in California, he said it was yours. You go there, you hide out for now.”
“Then what?” I cry. She pulls out a handful of underwear and bras, tossing them on the floor.
“I don’t have all the answers yet!” she yells, but her eyes are wild, her motherly protection driving her to take care of the mess I’ve made.
“But we can’t have you giving birth to a boy here and it getting out.
You know how gossip spreads like wildfire here.
We need you out of here so we can devise a plan. ”
“I can’t go have a baby by myself.”
That’s when Chantal appears in the doorway, parking a suitcase in front of her. “You won’t be by yourself.”
My mouth falls open, my head shaking with uncertainty. “You can’t keep cleaning up my messes, you guys. Chantal, you can’t just leave your whole life.”
“This coven, and when I say coven, I mean you, this baby, Delta, and Jade—that’s my life. It’s probably not the healthiest thing. But it’s the truth. My mom is living on a worm farm. My sister and I can’t even be in the same room. This is my life.”
“Chantal,” I whisper, shaking my head. I’m being sent away.
“Please behave yourself,” I whisper as Mother and I ascend the stairs to Nightwalkers. A phrase I say all too often to my own mother, who loves to misbehave, but this time—this time, the stakes are incredibly high.
She blinks at me, making no promises, and my body runs hot.
“We don’t need any more drama or problems. Please.”
“Who’s been delivering the potions and creams to them? Hmm? Me. Clearly, I have been behaving myself.”
But that’s transactional. Not coming to someone for help, not begging on your knees.
I don’t want to leave my city. But I understand what Mother’s fears are now that I’ve woken up, now that I can see a little more clearly.
Franklin’s face transports to my mind. The power he had to kill me instantly, and all because of some unknown traitorous witch.
I can’t be naive. So I vow to stay quiet, allowing her to take the lead on this one. I feel like part of my brain is broken.
We stride through Nightwalkers straight to Nicola’s office, Oksana standing guard in front.
“Hi, honey,” Mother says in her mocking tone. She looks at Mother and then straight at my belly, shaking her head with what looks like disgust.
“Got something to say, Oksana?” I can’t help myself. Her face drives me nuts because she can never hide her hate for our kind, and she’s not even a vampire—just their human minion.
“Not unless she wants that lovely mouth to be sewn shut,” Mother huffs, and Oksana cackles.
“Try it,” Oksana sings, her English accent making everything she says sound proper, even when she’s taunting me.
“Oksana, I swear to God, today is not the day.”
She swings open the door to Nicola’s office, and I consider stomping on her foot as I pass her.
My eyes instantly meet Nicola’s as she sits behind her desk, Cassius standing behind her.
Why Cassius demanded Nicola be here is beyond me.
We don’t need our mothers’ tempers butting heads right now.
But there’s no turning back, so I take the lead by sitting in the chair closest to the door as Oksana closes it.
When your heart is broken, it easily takes you back to important places in your life.
Moments tattooed on it forever. I was so angry when Cassius condemned Bastian and me the night he discovered there was something between us, the first night Bastian coughed up blood right in front of me in this very room.
The night Franklin sat outside this door, preying on me as I left.
But now, I don’t have that feeling of anger. I look back and think, we risked it all, didn’t we, Bastian? We risked it all for each other. I swallow, vowing not to cry. Now is not the time.
Especially with the way Nicola is looking at me. Like I’m the devil incarnate, the one who took her child from her. She doesn’t age, but there’s something around her cobalt eyes that looks older, more broken, and I’m sure it’s the loss of Bastian.
Amerie and the vampire I’ve come to recognize as Mathius enter the room, and Cassius looks at them, eyes squinting quizzically.
Mother doesn’t sit, instead, crossing her arms while looking at Nicola. “This is a private matter.”
“Anything you say to us, you can say in front of them,” Nicola replies, her hands sprawling on the desk.
“Absolutely not.” God, it’s my mom’s favorite thing to say these days.
“Mathius, Amerie. Please leave us,” Cassius requests, and Nicola glares at him for his insubordination.
Mathius cocks an eyebrow, pressing a hand through his dark blond hair that sits just below his ears, his hazel eyes widening like he owns the place.
The egos of vampires never cease to surprise me.
Yet Mathius and Amerie finally exit, and Mother sits.
“Family matters should only be discussed amongst family, isn’t that right?” Mother says. A dig at Nicola because we are all connected now. Even though Mother doesn’t love the arrangement herself, she enjoys sticking it to Nicola more.
“I don’t know why I’m here,” Nicola says to Cassius, but it’s for all of us. “I never agreed to this ‘witch-vampire family’ shit.”
Cassius scowls and turns to us. “I told Aster that she had my protection, and now she needs it. Is that correct?”
I shuffle in my seat, my stomach fluttering. I don’t think I’ve spoken to Nicola since the night she saved my life.
I look around the room, preparing for the words that will be exiting my mouth, finding the strength from heaven knows where.
My ancestors, my grandmother, anybody. “What I’m about to tell you is something that has never happened in the history of my coven.
And it can be incredibly dangerous for us.
For me, and this child…that is half Bastian’s.
” I make that point because I think Nicola wouldn’t care if I were dead.
“Witches only birth girls. But something happened when this child was conceived. An explicable magical occurrence because Bastian was a vampire and part human at the time. The potion gave him human qualities when he took it. So, something that wasn’t supposed to be possible…is.”
“We know all this. That’s how you got knocked up,” Nicola says, yawning into her hand.
“Our child…is a boy.”
The room couldn’t be more silent, only the cacophony of the patrons outside the door stifling us. Nicola and Cassius look at each other, their eyes seeming to speak another language.
My gaze falls upon my hands, which are once again bright red from being clasped so tightly. But my head jolts up from the high-pitched shriek that has erupted from Nicola’s mouth.
She’s laughing. Laughing so hard she pounds the desk with one hand and places her head in the other.
“Stop,” Cassius whispers to her.
“You fucking witches,” she scorns, the trill of her laughter getting louder and louder. “You fucking witches are a disaster.”
“Nicola,” Cassius warns, nostrils flared, a look of exasperation on his face.
Angers swells in my chest, but before I can react, before I can calm her down, Mother reaches out her arms, whispering a spell I can’t hear through Nicola’s rancorous laughter.
Mother’s invisible power swipes across Nicola’s desk, and pens and papers go flying.
A telephone crashes into the floor, and a dagger strikes the wall beside me.
Everything but Mother’s purse piles across the room and crashes to the floor.
Nicola shoots out of her chair, her fangs sliding out with an ear-piercing groan. Her fist rises in the air then slams down, crushing Mother’s purse through the desk, the edge of the wood creaking and falling off as if Nicola’s hand were an axe.
“Stop,” Cassius commands, fangs extended, and with one jump, he lands between them both on top of the desk.
But Nicola uses her powerful strength to swipe against his calves, and then his feet are in the air, and he falls flat on his back.
In seconds, Nicola has rounded the desk and has my mother’s back pressed into her chest. Her hand snakes across Mother’s waist, caging her in a tight embrace.
With a sharp inhale into my mom’s neck, Nicola’s nostrils flare, her fangs gleaming, eyes lusting for a taste.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I scream, looking at the two women, power igniting in my fingertips.
“Take a bite, Nicola. I dare you,” Mother pants, a taunting smile on her red lips, goading Nicola to take Mother’s cursed blood. “My skin welcomes you, please, it cries. Take a bite.”
“Put your guns away,” Cassius tells me. “She’s not taking a bite.”
“Maybe I will. Maybe I will, and put an end to all of this,” Nicola seethes. “I’ve been alive for hundreds of years. I could take a bite and be done with it all.”