36. Cori
Cori
W hen Adrian left, well before dawn, she had pretended she was still asleep. The pounding in her heart took hours to slow after her father’s visit. The skylight over the bed was glowing with early sun as beds of rainwater traced lines over the glass. She watched them fall for a long time, her body cranking with tidal waves of nausea.
She considered writing a letter to her mother, but she pushed the thought away.
No .
Astrid had kept this secret from her. For her whole life. Her father’s discussion with her last night was now her secret . A secret she wanted to lock in her heart and never let go.
She rolled over in her bed and the smell of pine trees and salt water wafted from the bedsheets. Adrian Huxley was like a drug, and she attempted to get high on the smell of him as she buried her face in the pillow.
Adrian . Goddess, how was she going to tell him?
It was nearly seven when she finally rolled out of bed, her head pounding. Two over-easy eggs were waiting for her on the kitchen table along with some buttered toast and cold coffee. Her heart swelled in her chest at the kind gesture, and she savored every bite. Nobody had cooked breakfast for her in years .
Not since Enzo.
She cradled her head in her hands and raked her fingers over her scalp. The notebook was next to her purse. Paper crinkled under her fingers as she opened to the page where she kept track of the days, staring at it for what seemed like forever as she tapped her pen on the table beside her. Finally, she scrawled the latest countdown. Ninety-seven days .
What did this countdown even mean to her anymore? Ninety-seven days until what? Until the day her brother would try to kill her. The day she could confront her mother about the truth. Ninety-seven days until she could stop living a lie.
Buzzing from her phone snapped her away from the notebook. A text message from Pru.
Where should we get lunch and talk about the solstice?
Carl’s was already buzzing with the beginning of the lunch crowd. Cori nodded at the barman as they entered, and he winked at her in greeting as she ushered Pru and Alfie into a secluded booth behind the bar.
Pru shimmied into the seat, excitement on her face as she peered around her and opened her menu. “Wow, this is so charming! Alfie, does it remind you of the pubs back across the pond ?”
“Stop saying that.” He rolled his eyes, scanning the room suspiciously. “I doubt there are this many people wearing flip-flops in all the pubs in the UK combined right now.” He examined his menu. “Please tell me this place has decent food, Cori. At least the beer selection looks acceptable.”
“Adrian and Seth claim Carl has the best on-tap list in Maine,” Cori said with a shrug.
Carl approached them with a warm, welcoming smile as he wiped off the tabletop. Pru beamed up at him while Alfie gave him a scrutinizing look. After pleasantries and introductions, they put their orders in. “We got a new California chardonnay yesterday, Cori,” Carl suggested, winking at her as he finished setting out their cutlery.
She let out a breath and some of her tension melted away. “That sounds perfect, thank you.”
Even Alfie had to admit the food was good. Heavenly even. Cori closed her eyes, savoring the perfectly crisp french fries that came with her sandwich.
“Delicious, although I will never understand the American tendency to garnish everything with pickles,” Alfie mused as he sipped his German ale.
“Just as I will never understand how you Brits eat blood pudding,” Pru shot back.
Cori hid her laugh behind her wineglass.
Alfie shrugged. “Before we talk about the important matters, I need to protect the table.”
Pru nodded back at him. He opened his backpack and placed a stone on the tabletop. He positioned it in the center of the table and arranged three small gems in a large triangle around each of them on the back of the booth.
The stones gave off a dull energy at first, but when Alfie set down the final gem, the magic buzzed in a circular pattern around them. Cori could not place her finger on how it made her feel, but the magic had an unfettered heaviness to it. “What is that?” she asked. The tone of her voice sounded muted, almost as though she were underwater.
“It’s a veiling stone,” Pru explained. “Our voices won’t carry beyond the perimeter of the gems.” She whispered an incantation as she held her hand over the stone. “A minimizing spell,” she explained. “Makes everyone around us ignore our presence.”
Cori watched as a group of men walked to a nearby table. None of them glanced in their direction.
“Always best to use that one after your food has been delivered to the table,” Alfie nodded.
Pru folded her hands and sat up straight. “Well then, let’s get down to business. Have you asked the Elemental family if we can camp on their property?”
“Seth spoke to them yesterday. The whole family should be aware by now—what I am, what I predicted, how it puts me in danger...” She sighed with the heaviness of it. It was going to take a lot of adjustment. Being so exposed.
Alfie arched an eyebrow. “Do you think they were shocked?”
Cori swirled the wine in her glass, contemplating the question. “I’m sure they were.” The sting of guilt marred the sweet gulp of her wine.
“Don’t feel too bad.” Pru patted her hand. “Sometimes we have to lie to protect ourselves.”
“Yes, of course. Sometimes we even have to kidnap people to protect ourselves,” Alfie said with a shrug, stabbing his tomato with a fork.
“Can you let it go already?” Pru shot back at him, rolling her eyes. “How many times do I need to tell you? You were right, Alfie. I was wrong about the kidnapping idea. When we get back to California, I’ll get it engraved on a trophy for you.”
He smiled wryly, leaning back. “What about a nice gold medallion? I can wear it around my neck every day.”
“I’m about to put my hands around your neck every day,” Pru muttered under her breath.
Cori coughed. “Well, it’s settled. Adrian and Seth trust my judgment with you helping me.”
Pru nodded with a smile.
“Of course, they trust your judgment,” Alfie drawled. “It’s foolish to doubt a Celestial witch, especially one that’s fated to their brother,” he said matter-of-factly.
Cori nearly choked on her french fry. She gulped down some water as Pru patted her on the back. “Excuse me?” She sputtered as she caught her breath.
Pru’s eyes widened. “Oh, my Goddess, you didn’t know?”
“Of course, I knew!” She was eternally grateful for the veiling stone now. “I just didn’t think it would be so obvious to everyone else. Hell, I don’t even know if he knows… ”
“Oh, darling,” Alfie said pityingly. “He knows.”
Cori put her head in her hands. The connection between her and Adrian was playing out in front of everyone. She had hoped it would be less obvious. If a human like Jordan could sense the tension between them, it should not have shocked her that other witches could sense it, too.
“How else would he know where to find you on the island?” Pru asked, her mouth full of salad greens.
“Actually, he knew because I sent him a message.” Cori explained how she had found the piece of paper and the pen on the back seat, allowing her to send Adrian the S.O.S. with her mother’s spell. Her heart jumped as a forgotten event clicked in her mind. “That was the same spell my brother used to send me a message this weekend.”
Pru and Alfie exchanged a dark look. “Yes, we know about that message,” Pru said slowly.
Cori narrowed her eyes on her. Until that moment, the pentagram had been pushed to the back of her mind. “I know you know about it. I saw you. You were in my cottage and found it. What did you want with my brother's note, anyway?”
Pru’s aura darkened and contracted. “Cori…” she started.
“I’m listening.” Cori’s fist clenched her fork. There was no mirror nearby, but she could see her reflection in Alfie’s glasses. Her eyes pulsed a deep gold as she let her Eye reach out to them, reading them for any sign of deception. Alfie shivered as Prudence shrank back. “This arrangement will never work if you hold information back from me.”
Alfie shook his head. “We were in your cottage that night to banish something,” he explained. “We had been following you that day, and we could sense something dark was in your cottage. It’s common, you know. Sometimes humans own things that are dark…a trinket from a pawn shop, a piece of art. We break into houses all the time, actually. When you were out, we followed it. The note was in your drawer, and we used the pentagram to banish the magic that was on the paper. ”
Her heart pounded, and her stomach twisted into a knot with the truth that she already knew. “My brother sent me that note.”
Pru twisted her face sympathetically trying to formulate words, but she gave Alfie a pleading look instead.
“We have some intelligence on your brother, if that is what you're asking,” Alfie carefully replied.
Cori raised her eyebrows expectantly. “What intelligence?” She was still unsure if she was strong enough to share what her father had revealed to her when he visited from the spirit realm.
Pru sucked in a deep breath, biting her lip. “Dark magic was all over that note because Enzo was the one who sent it.”
“What are you trying to say?” Cori knew what they were trying to say, but to hear it aloud meant that she could keep what her father had told her to herself. No, she wasn’t ready to tell them about her father’s prophecy, but if they already knew about Enzo, that made the matter a lot less complicated.
Alfie and Pru exchanged a look.
Alfie cleared his throat. “We have intelligence on Enzo that suggests he has been working with a dark magic coven.”
Cori blinked back at them. “Why? How?” She had so many questions. What exactly did they know?
“For the past two years, he has been traveling to LA once or twice a month,” Prudence explained. “Each time he goes, he stays with a friend who’s well-known for being—a reformationist. They believe the Covenant has robbed witches of their true power. According to them, magic should be strengthened by a combination of light and dark forces.”
Her mouth felt dry. She wished she could summon Carl over to refill her empty glass. Alfie pulled out a thick leather binder and opened to the first page divider. He turned it toward Cori.
The binder was full of pictures of her brother. As she slowly turned the pages, each photo captured Enzo doing seemingly mundane things. Enzo walking into the airport. Enzo exchanging a bag with another man in the park. Enzo with his arm around a woman’s shoulders as they walked down the street .
Her breath caught in her chest as she turned the page and spotted a picture of Enzo holding the hand of a small girl. The photo was snapped from a distance, but Cori could make out the girl’s golden-brown hair reflecting the sunlight. She stared at the picture, her mouth agape, lost in the image of the little girl, who could be only five or six years old. She felt her hand move to the photo, the electric energy of her magic connecting with the image. Her Eye flashed open.
A child’s laughter echoed. The smell of candy and the sound of little feet running away.
“Cori,” she heard Prudence whisper as she snapped back to attention. “That’s Enzo’s daughter. Based on what we know from the address, the girl’s mother is registered in the Sonoma County Charms Coven. She has no marriage record…” her voice trailed off. “That’s the only picture we have.”
The lump in Cori’s throat expanded as she trailed her hand over the picture. The sound of her laughter was so familiar, like something out of a forgotten dream.
The implications of her years in exile never felt more real than it did in that moment. She had missed so much time she could never get back, and here was the living proof that her heart would never be the same. There were parts of her brother’s life she had become so displaced from, it was impossible to really know him in the same way she once had.
Her heart ached for her brother, someone who had tried to fill the void of her father’s absence in her life with every fiber of his being and every shred of his soul, even though he was only this little girl's age when Cori had been born. And yet—this little girl was another lie. Another secret. She couldn’t bring herself to ask what the little girl’s name was.
She fractured as she turned the heavy pages of the binder. There were dozens of pictures of Enzo. Walking up to the door of their town house, carrying a bag of what appeared to be takeout, out to dinner with a few friends. When she turned to a picture of him at a restaurant, she immediately recognized the face of one friend at the table. “Calvin.”
Alfie and Prudence exchanged another dark look. “Calvin Hanson. High priest of the Los Angeles Reform Coven. You recognize him?” Prudence asked with surprise.
Cori nodded, a lump in her throat. “Cal was in my coven growing up. He and Enzo were best friends. His family moved to LA when they were in high school. I think they moved right before the prophecy.”
Calvin was leaning his arm over the back of the booth with a satisfied smile on his face. Enzo and the woman sitting with them appeared to be laughing, perhaps at one of his jokes.
Cori shook her head. All this time, Enzo had not been trying to stop them, he had been conspiring with them. “My mother had recently sent me a cutout from a pamphlet. Calvin is holding a meeting about the prophecy next week.”
“The LARC. They have a nefarious reputation. Calvin is the reason we think Enzo got tangled in dark magic,” Prudence said, her eyes darkening, as she leafed through the photos in the binder.
Each turn of the page revealed a chapter in his life that she had not been a part of, and each image shaved off a piece of her heart, left bleeding and withering on the floor at her feet.
“Listen, Cori,” Pru said gently. “I know this is hard news to hear. We don’t have the full story behind Enzo yet, and we don’t know how deep he’s gotten or what his motives are. Your brother has a reputation around town, and a lot of witches have become scared of him.”
That didn’t surprise her. Her brother always had a temper and a rebellious edge to him.
“It feels like a betrayal to tell anyone anything about him,” she explained. “Ever since the prophecy, Enzo and my mom have been the only ones who have really protected me. The coven always had an attitude that it wasn’t their problem . It was always family business.” And until last night, she had believed that to be true.
Prudence and Alfie were aware of Enzo’s truth the whole time she was in the dark about it. They had an entire task force dedicated to him, and she had been oblivious.
“I wonder how much of a problem you truly were to some of them, Cori,” Alfie said darkly. “Maybe it wasn’t an unwillingness to help protect you, but a willingness to put an end to the problem by other means.”
A shiver danced over her skin. Her mother had always feared this. After the prophecy, she had broken ties with many old friends for this very reason.
Her mother . Her blood ran cold. “Do you have a binder like this for my mother?”
“If we did, it wouldn’t have much material,” Prudence said, shaking her head.
Cori’s eyebrows knitted together. “What do you mean?”
“Your mother doesn’t get out much these days,” Alfie said sadly.
Her eyes widened as she bit her lip. All this time, her mother had been isolated, too. She tried to picture her mother—her lively, bubbly, extroverted mother—as a shut-in.
“People have been in to see her,” Prudence explained. “Enzo brings her a lot of food, and she accepts visitors, but the only glimpses we get of her are from the front window as she waves hello or goodbye.”
Cori closed her eyes and cradled her head in her hands as she recalled the vision of her mother on the phone in her kitchen. “They argued.” Alfie and Pru returned baffled looks at her. “A few days ago, I saw Mama in a vision. She was on the phone talking to my brother, and the conversation was tense. He was asking her to go somewhere with him.”
Prudence pulled out her phone, her expression fierce as the glow of the screen illuminated her dainty features. “I’m telling my dad to get a safety detail on Astrid. ASAP. We need to figure out where Enzo wanted to take her.”