Chapter 22
Chapter
Twenty-Two
“Is it that bad?” I rush out, my heart pounding in my chest.
“Not that good,” Marie replies. “And if I’m not on speakerphone now, you might want to put me on.”
“Oh, you are,” I say. “We’re all over here dying.”
“After you told me the demon’s name,” she begins, “I started digging. And honestly, it surprised me how little I could find on him.” I lean forward. “It bothered me. You know that feeling when something isn’t quite right and you can’t let it go?”
“Yeah. I’ve had that feeling many times.”
“Sometimes I don’t know what’s intuition and what’s just an OCD obsession,” she says.
I understand that better than probably anyone else in this room.
Trying to figure out the difference between anxiety and intuition has always been a challenge for me.
“But I couldn’t let it go,” Marie continues.
“I knew I was missing something.” She pauses. “Well, I found something.”
I suck in a breath and scoot toward the edge of the couch, lacing my fingers together as I wait for her to keep going.
“I was digging through the archives, looking through records of notable witches and warlocks throughout history. We used to teach a defensive magic course years ago, so I had to go through thousands of professors’ journals.”
She chuckles.
“Thank God for finder spells.”
“Seriously.”
“I found an old textbook printed almost seventy-five years ago. There’s an entire chapter about the Blackwood and Bellamy families.” My pulse jumps. “And yes, I’m bringing it to you,” she adds before I can ask. “I already know you’re going to want to read it.”
“Obviously.”
“It highlights some of the more noteworthy demons your families have imprisoned.” Her tone changes. “Your man Vaelric is in there.” I swallow. “Along with his conduit.”
“Conduit?” I echo.
“A demon can possess enormous power but still be limited in how that power can be used in the physical world,” Marie explains. “That’s why so many of them rely on human puppets or followers to carry out their work. That’s exactly what Vaelric did. Except his conduit wasn’t human.”
My stomach twists.
“She was a witch in the beginning.” The room goes completely still. “Her name was Helen Gustav. She became obsessed with death magic and was wanted by the Grand Coven for nearly a century.”
“A century?” I repeat.
“Yes. I said that right.” Marie lets out a humorless laugh. “She performed some kind of dark magic on herself that essentially made her immortal. From what I can piece together, Vaelric was instrumental in helping her achieve it.”
“How?” Mabel asks.
“Human sacrifice.”
No one says anything.
“She found a way to take the life force of other people and use it to sustain her own body,” Marie continues. “And once she started working directly with Vaelric’s necromantic power, she became exponentially more dangerous.”
My skin prickles. “So she could actually use his necromancy powers.”
“Exactly. Vaelric possesses the power. She wielded it.” Holy shit. “Once the Grand Coven discovered what she was doing, they tried to capture her and sentence her,” Marie goes on. “But by then, she was too powerful. She and Vaelric evaded them for years.”
“Until the Bellamys,” I say.
“Until Eudora Bellamy the Second.” The room falls silent. “She trapped Helen in a Bellamy prison.” Everything clicks together at once. The Order isn’t after Claire.
Vaelric is.
And that explains something else. Mabel was right. Vaelric hasn’t really made a move. Not a meaningful one. If he could control the dead on his own, he would’ve gone after the vampires already. But he can’t. He needs someone to wield that power for him.
“I don’t even know what to say.”
I hate how perfectly everything is fitting together. Vaelric was communicating with Vivian before he was ever freed. This could’ve been his plan all along. Use me to escape. Then use Vivian to find Claire. The Order would have no idea Claire’s powers were lying dormant inside her.
But Vaelric would.
“We need to find her,” I say. “Before he does.”
“I would be very careful casting any kind of spell,” Marie warns. I frown. “You’ve cast locator spells frequently enough that Vaelric likely knows you’re capable of it. And Vivian knows too.”
My stomach tightens.
“They could be counting on you to lead them straight to Claire.” That thought hadn’t even crossed my mind. “If you perform any kind of locating magic,” Marie continues, “I cannot stress enough how much I want you to do it here at the Covenstead. It’s safer, and we can cloak the magic much better.”
“Yeah. Okay.” I purposely avoid looking at my brothers.
My hands are shaking, so I press them flat against my thighs.
“For now, maybe we treat this like any other missing-person case,” I say.
“We find her the way hunters would. Surveillance footage. Transportation records. Follow her known patterns.” Then I think about something from the therapy notes.
“Do you know anyone in the Bellamy family you could call?”
“Not personally.”
“The therapist’s notes said Claire believed her mother was communicating with her through dreams and telling her to go home.”
Marie is quiet for a moment. “I’ll make some calls.” She sighs. “The Bellamys are stuck-up bitches, but they’ll do what they have to do if it means preventing another demon from being released.”
“I thought you said Helen was a witch,” Mabel says.
“She was.” Marie hesitates. “At one point.” A chill crawls across my skin. “Over the years, she became something else. Something dark. Something unnatural. I don’t even believe her soul was fully inside her body by the time she was captured.”
“What was she called?” I ask.
“The Crone.” Of course she was.
“And along with working with Vaelric, she has quite the body count of her own.” Marie’s voice hardens. “Whatever you do, don’t rush into this. Remember, it took an entire Coven to take those two down.”
“I know.” I get to my feet again and shake out my hands, trying to release some of the nervous energy building beneath my skin. Tiny sparks flicker around my fingertips. If Claire was experiencing things like this without knowing she was a witch, she probably thought she was losing her mind.
“Does Vivian know you have the notebook and the vial of Claire’s blood?” Marie asks.
“I don’t know.” I start pacing.
“They were left at the warehouse, and we went back for them hours later. Vivian could’ve assumed Marco grabbed the bag. Or maybe she thought it got lost in everything that happened.”
“Just be careful,” Marie says. “If they need Claire’s blood for a locator spell, Vivian may come looking for it.”
“Yeah.”
“Holy shit,” Antonio mutters. Then, apparently determined to tempt fate, he adds, “I hate to say it, but I don’t know how this day could possibly get any worse.”
I shoot him a look. “Seriously?” Unlike Mabel, he knows better than to jinx us.
“Well,” Marie says with a nervous laugh, “let me be the one to make it worse.” I stop pacing. “I found out what happened between your families.”
My stomach drops. “What?”
“The reason the Blackwoods and Bellamys had a falling-out.”
I suck in a breath. “What happened?”
“It seems they disagreed over how the prisons should be sealed.” Marie pauses. “You already know the Blackwoods use blood magic. Their prisons were designed so only someone from the bloodline that created them could open or close the door.”
“Right.”
“The Bellamys thought that wasn’t secure enough.”
I slowly sit back down.
“What did they do instead?”
“To open a Bellamy prison,” Marie says, “you need more than Bellamy blood.”
The room goes completely silent.
“You need to sacrifice a life.”