42. Cori
Cori
A lfie walked Cori back to the Huxleys. The electric ash in the air burned her nose, fueling the acidity in her throat. Her body was so numb, she floated into the house without realizing where her limbs were taking her.
She slumped into the kitchen chair as the kettle whistled on the stove. Prudence poured hot water over tea bags, but the herbal aromas that wafted from their mugs indicated there was more than just tea in those cups. Pru bounded up the stairs to Ariel’s room with the tea and a tray of vials filled with mysterious substances.
David paced the kitchen as Seth cleaned Adrian’s wounds. The sound of Hannah’s sobs echoed down the stairs as Cori fought the rise of vomit in her throat.
This . This was exactly what she feared, playing out and coming to life all at once. The cottage that Anne had graciously let her live in was destroyed. She had nearly strangled Adrian. His arms—the vomit was rising into her throat.
Ariel . She had almost died extinguishing that fire. There was no guarantee that she would make it. The murmur of Alfie’s voice broke through the buzzing in her ear, reassuring her that Prudence would heal her, but it didn’t matter. She could have died. She still might die .
Because of me. Because of my prophecy.
She had allowed herself to get close to this man. This family . All because of some horrible twist of fate from the Giver. She cursed at every ounce of magic within her, her Eye shriveling in her inner contempt.
I don’t want it anymore , she prayed to the Giver. Take it back . Take back my magic. Take back the bond of fate.
The smoothness of Alfie’s voice broke through her thoughts. “We got the story straight with Anne and Geoff,” he explained as he rubbed his temples. “I told her that the two of you discovered the house on fire when you returned from the bar. Geoff went on and on about some electrical issue they had there right before you moved in and seems to be convinced that was the source. Poor guy feels dreadful about the whole thing.”
“How did you explain that the fire extinguished itself?” David asked with a raised brow. He and Seth exchanged a worried look before diverting their eyes up the staircase.
Alfie shook his head heavily. “Wasn’t too hard. When the fire department got there and started asking us questions, I modified their memories. The crew at the fire department now believes they put out the fire. The chief also told Geoff he found some faulty wires behind the old rotary phone.”
“How do you modify their memories and not use dark magic?” Adrian asked curiously.
Alfie shrugged. “It’s not too hard. Before you say the spell, you need to cast away the dark element. Only a Gray witch would be able to do it without projecting dark magic through the spell. When you cast out the dark element, you can use the spell only for pure purposes. If you try to use it for personal gain, it won’t work.”
Cori’s head spun. The more she learned about Gray magic, the more awestruck she was with it.
Prudence appeared in the stairwell, her face pale and her shoulder slumped. Cori’s heart dropped as every face in the room angled expectantly toward the stairs .
“Ariel is going to be OK,” she said with a shaky voice. “She’s awake, but she’s exhausted.”
The Huxley men let out a collective sigh of relief. Cori allowed herself to breathe deeply, sucking in air, pushing away the nausea. Adrian looked toward Cori, but she diverted her eyes.
“Now on to my next patient,” Pru said, setting down her bag and pulling out a large jar of salve. She settled in the chair next to Adrian, scrunching her face up as he exposed his lacerations to her.
Cori put her head in her hands. His arms looked like meat that had gone through a grinder. The same voice whispered to her. Because of me.
Adrian flinched as Prudence dabbed a thick, tarry liquid from an amber bottle onto a cotton ball. As it contacted his skin, he winced in pain at the burn but watched in wonder as the thick goo bubbled over his wounds and they faded into his skin. By the time she was finished, the lacerations looked like they were old, healed, and mildly scarred. She rubbed a thick salve over his skin with a cotton ball.
He leaned back in the kitchen chair, regarding his wounds. “What is that stuff?”
“It’s Sanitatem,” she replied as she wrapped gauze around his skin. “An ancient healing potion.”
“Prudence is quite gifted in potion-making, especially for healing arts,” Alfie said warmly. It was rare for him to give a compliment like that, and it made her blush a little.
“My grandmother was a Saludadore ,” she explained. “A Gray witch with healing powers. She taught me some of her best potions when I was little.”
Cori’s Eye flashed into Prudence’s past.
A tiny girl, no older than six or seven years old, stood on a kitchen chair next to a farmhouse sink. The woman next to her was petite, her skin wrinkled yet smooth. Smile lines encircled her eyes. Herbs were ground with a mortar and pestle as the little girl pulled petals off a flower.
The woman reached over and tucked a blossom into the little girl's hair as she tickled her side. The girl giggled as she dropped the petals into a heavy, ancient-looking cauldron.
As Cori returned to herself, she found the entire table was staring at her intently.
“You had a vision?” Adrian asked, worry etched into his face.
Cori nodded, disgusted with her Eye for not listening to her prayers. “Your grandmother reminds me a lot of you, Pru.”
“You saw Gram?” Pru asked dreamily. “Was she here in the room? Like a spirit?”
Cori shook her head. “No, I saw you standing at a big sink with her.” As she explained what she saw in the vision, she noticed tears well in Prudence’s eyes. Even Alfie seemed a little choked up.
“She was a sweet little lady,” Alfie smiled.
From across the table, David rubbed his face in thought. “Cori, you get these visions randomly?”
She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Yes. They usually come to me when someone near me is experiencing a strong feeling. When Pru mentioned about her grandmother—it was a powerful emotion of nostalgia. The emotion leads to the vision.”
“You can't choose what you see and don’t see?” he asked.
“Well, I can choose to see into someone's life if they allow me to read them. Like the day Prudence let me read her on the island. I need to be physically touching someone, and they choose what I see.”
“What about spirits?”
“What do you mean?” She knew exactly what he meant, but she was hoping she was wrong.
“Can you summon a spirit?”
There it was . The connection between Celestials and the spirit realm was a mystery. Despite her connection, she did not know what the afterlife was like. Nonna had warned her about talking too much about the spirit realm with other witches. The Giver did not give them information they were not supposed to have. And what happened in the spirit realm was the biggest mystery of the universe .
She sighed deep, her shoulders tensing as she diverted her eyes to the table. “No.”
The last time she had seen a spirit, her father had appeared to her in the middle of the night. The garden bench where he had sat with her was now burned to a crisp. Now was not the right time to mention her visit from her father. Would it ever be the right time?
She felt Adrian squeeze her shoulder, and she swallowed the lump of guilt down into her chest. Her Eye blinked a warning. He deserves to know.
She pushed her Eye down into her gut where it belonged, silencing it.
“It’s a shame you can’t just turn on what’s happening like a news show,” David continued shaking his head. “You must be terrified about what’s going on with your mother right now.”
Alfie and Prudence exchanged a serious look. “Speaking of that, we need to talk about what happened tonight,” Pru said in a serious tone. “We looked at the note your mother sent you, and there were two serious dark magic charms connected to it.”
A chill ran down her spine. “How?” she asked.
Alfie pulled the note out of his pocket. “Don’t worry, all the magic has been banished from it,” he explained with a furrowed brow. “Whoever cast this has a deep understanding of dark magic.”
Pru nodded in agreement. “Not a casual dark magic user,” she interjected.
“Quite,” Alfie agreed. “The first spell was a compulsion . Cori, did you feel drawn to call the phone number on the paper? Pulled to do it no matter the cost?”
Her head throbbed as she recalled the feeling of panic and drive that had washed over her as she had held the paper. She nodded.
“When you were walking to the phone,” Adrian chimed in, “It was like you were possessed. I tried to stop you, but you…”
Her blood turned to ice as she remembered the ropes that she had summoned. “I cast a rope bind on you,” she replied. Her eyes flitted to the ligature marks on his arm as she felt tears well. Prudence’s hand gripped hers with a comforting squeeze.
Prudence frowned deeply. “Compulsion forces you to complete a task at all costs. It drives you to strike out against anyone who tried to stop you. It’s a truly evil way for a witch to force their hand.”
“As soon as I finished dialing the number, I felt the spell lift,” Cori explained.
Alfie rubbed his temples, processing the information. “The second charm was a conduction ,” he explained. “By itself, conduction is not dark. In fact, your mother’s clever note-passing charm is conduction.” He raised an eyebrow. “When you use conduction to transfer harm to another witch however, dark elements become embedded into the spell.”
“Whoever tied the charms to the note sent fire to us with a conduction spell?” Adrian asked, his jaw tightening.
Alfie nodded, crossing his arms. “Through the phone. It was not just any fire they sent you. It was Byzantine fire .”
“What the hell is that?” David asked anxiously, bracing himself to process exactly what his daughter had taken on.
“Zion is looking into it,” Prudence explained.
Zion was a brilliant magical historian, a witch who specialized in the history of magic and how it pertained to the modern practices. He spent most of his time back at their camp doing research.
“I knew it was something really rare and powerful when you described it, David,” Pru said.
“It grew when we tried to put it out with water,” David explained, anger edging his words.
“That’s because Byzantine fire is an ancient form of warfare. It’s a magically enhanced fire that the Greek witches used against the Romans. Water cannot put it out,” Pru said darkly. “It also seals anything near it that’s been touched with magic.”
Cori shivered. They had been trapped in the house by her own protective spells. Whoever sent the fire knew that the house would have been warded. Grief washed over her. There were only two people in the world that knew the routine that Cori would use to seal her house.
Enzo.
Adrian tensed in his chair, and Cori knew he had gleaned the same thought. “What kind of sick fuck would try to use something like that on another person?” he asked through a tightened jaw.
“A sick fuck who wanted to kill you,” Alfie explained, his eyes narrowing.
Adrian’s shoulders tensed, red tendrils painted in black rolling off his aura as the humidity in the room grew.
“Whoever summoned the Byzantine fire had one flaw in their plan,” Prudence explained, a mischievous smirk tugging at her lip. “They didn't count on the fact that a Fire Elemental would be nearby. Only a Fire witch can extinguish it.”
David went pale. “Does that mean only a Fire witch could have summoned it?” he asked.
Prudence nodded. A chill ran down Cori’s spine. Ariel had almost died extinguishing that fire. Just how many witches out there were involved in the plot of her murder?
Alfie and Prudence exchanged a serious look. “We’ve been thinking. I think we should leave. Soon. We need to come up with a plan to go into hiding. Pru and I think the safest place to go right now will be to the campsite. It’s highly fortified with protective spells.”
Cori’s eyes widened in panic. This was not part of the plan. If they whisked her away to some remote location, it would make it infinitely harder for her to sneak off to Salem in December. Adrian grabbed her hand. When she looked up at him, his eyes were fixed on her, as though sending her an unspoken message.
The group discussed a preliminary plan for a few moments, but Cori could only hear the muffle of their voices over the churning of her mind.
Waves of bitter remorse whipped through her like the ocean in the eye of a hurricane. She nodded back at Adrian as they rose from the table together, the feel of his magic a comfort to her, despite her internal unrest. As the screen door squeaked behind them, her hand still clasped around his, she felt as though they were walking directly into the path of the storm.