Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
Ilook at Marie and become overwhelmingly filled with shame. She’s the one who told me about my family’s legacy, the one who knew my family’s mission was to rid the world of as many demons as possible.
I suck in a shaky breath. “I didn’t want this to happen,” I say, and my voice breaks.
“I know, honey,” Marie says, stepping inside and wrapping me in her embrace.
Instead of anger, there’s an air of understanding around her.
It’s one of the most genuine things I’ve felt in a while.
Her energy instantly calms me, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s the first witch I’ve been around or because I’m just so desperate to feel better right now, but I lean into her and silently sob against her shoulder.
“Let it out,” she says.
“Sorry,” Leo starts, not sounding apologetic at all. “Who is this?”
I straighten up and inhale quickly, wiping at my face. It’s not like me to be so emotional.
“I’m Marie,” she introduces herself before I get a chance.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Leo states.
Other than myself, Mabel is the only one in this room who can sense that Marie is a witch. My mind is so scrambled right now, I can’t remember if I even told anybody about her or not.
“She’s a witch,” I say, my voice still weak. “She’s the one who helped me learn about my family.”
“And what is she doing here?” Leo asks, skepticism obvious on his face.
“I was hoping I would get here before the demon was unleashed,” Marie starts, “but it seems my tarot is punishing me for not sending them out during the last full moon.” She chuckles at her own little joke, though I have no idea if she’s being serious or not.
My gift of prophecy was strictly discouraged by Vivian and Marco, and I agree with Xavier’s original theory that my gut feelings and intuition are incredibly strong because I probably have some sort of foresight into the future.
But the Order didn’t want to risk finding out what was actually going on, so they suppressed it along with the rest of my powers.
They wouldn’t have been able to control visions and I could have seen the truth.
“Any chance you know how to put it back?” Mabel asks, tipping her head to the side in a way that reminds me of a golden retriever who just heard the word walk.
“I’m familiar with the ritual,” Marie says, then shakes her head. “Though I’m unable to perform it on my own.”
“Well, what do you need?” Antonio asks.
“Time,” Marie says with another chuckle. “And perhaps a drink.”
“Is there even any alcohol in this house?” Leo asks. To be fair, it’s a legitimate question.
“I’ll get you something,” Mabel says, motioning for us to follow her into the parlor. She gets a bottle of whiskey from the built-in bar and sets it on the coffee table. Then she zooms over to a china cabinet and pulls out one of her porcelain tea sets for her dolls.
She pours what I’m guessing is a very expensive bottle of whiskey into the teapot and then serves us as if it were tea, even offering around the empty sugar bowl. My brothers are more or less used to Mabel’s oddities, and Marie just rolls with it.
“You must’ve had a plan,” Antonio says, finishing the little bit of whiskey in the flower-printed porcelain cup. “You wouldn’t have come all this way for Wren if you didn’t have a plan.”
“That is true,” Marie agrees, taking a small sip of her whiskey with her pinky raised like she’s drinking steaming tea. “My plan was to keep the demon contained.”
“You know that would’ve killed her, right?” Leo asks, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes. Two seconds ago, he was ready to rip my throat out, and now he’s defending me.
“We don’t know it would’ve killed me,” I counter.
“No,” Antonio says sarcastically. “Not kill you. Just take your soul.”
“Technically, she could still be alive without one,” Mabel says, making a face like she’s not sure if agreeing with me right now is a good thing or not.
“I don’t know the exact terms of the arrangement,” Marie says carefully, and I know I’m to blame for that. I didn’t tell her the truth because I was ashamed of what I agreed to do once I found out my family was the one who put Vaelric away.
“I had an interesting dream,” she continues, “which made me do some digging. By the time I realized what was going on, I feared I was too late.”
She looks across the coffee table at me. I’m seated in a tufted armchair, holding my tiny cup of whiskey on its matching saucer.
“You should have come to me from the start,” she says.
“I know,” I say, my voice small. “Trust me, I know.”
“There’s so much you don’t know,” she says, but it’s far from an insult. She takes another tiny sip of whiskey. “I suppose that was my plan. I want to bring you home, Wren.”
“Home?” everybody questions at once, including me.
Marie smiles. “My home,” she says. “Come to my Covenstead and learn about who you are.”
“What’s a Covenstead?” I ask, ignoring the inquisitive looks from my brothers and Mabel.
I know they’re wondering why I’m not instantly turning her down, but I can’t help my curiosity.
I still haven’t quite decided if Marie is someone I should trust, but I know that so far, everything she’s told me has been true.
And I can’t help but feel like I desperately need to reach out and grasp the one thing bridging me to my biological family.
“Simply put,” she says, “it’s a sacred and safe gathering space for a coven. Only witches belonging to that particular coven can enter. Unless you come with me as a guest, of course.”
“Is it close by?” I ask, wondering how the hell Xavier could be clueless about a Covenstead in his area.
“There’s an entrance not far from here,” she tells me, which only intrigues me further. An entrance? Is this some sort of underground tunnel situation?
“Slow down a second,” Antonio says, holding up a hand. “You can’t just show up here, tell us you had no plan, and then reveal your plan was to take Wren away to some coven.”
Marie shrugs but doesn’t get worked up in the least. “I let my intuition guide me, and so far, it hasn’t led me wrong. Its timing may be off, but things tend to work out exactly as the universe wants them to.”
“That doesn’t sound reassuring,” Leo says.
“I suppose it’s not.” Marie smiles. “Sometimes what the universe wants is the exact opposite of what we want, or even what we think should happen. The universe isn’t fair or just. It simply is.”
“And the universe wants you to take Wren to some secret society?” Antonio questions. “And then what?”
Marie looks at me. “Well, I suppose that’s up to Wren. My plan would be to show her around and get her acclimated. Let her meet other witches. Then she can decide if she’d like to stay for however long she wishes for training.”
“Training?” I ask, not sure if I should hate the excitement bubbling up inside of me or not. “Like magic training?”
“Yes. We could tap into your gifts and figure out exactly what comes naturally to you.” She finishes her whiskey and sets the tiny teacup down. Then she holds out her hands and closes her eyes.
A few seconds tick by before she opens them again and smiles.
“You have a natural way with summoning energy,” she says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out telekinesis was strong on your mother’s side. But I’m also sensing clairvoyance, and it’s very much buried inside of you.”
I swallow hard and lean back, thinking over everything I’ve ever said to Marie. My brain is so muddled right now I can’t remember if this is information I’ve given her or if she’s really picking up on it.
I’m so paranoid. But can you blame me? I only recently found out my entire life was a complete lie.
“What if I get there and want to come home?” I ask.
I see Mabel’s lips twitch into a smile at my reference to this place as home.
“Then you can leave,” Marie says. “It’s not a prison.
You can come and go as you please. Well, I suppose you’d need a witch to open the door for you to get back in, but once you’re there, you’re free to leave whenever you want.
” She pauses. “It’s against coven rules to give the exact location of our door to anyone outside the coven, but once we’re nearby, you can send a pin with your approximate location if that makes you feel better. ”
I sit back, fiddling with the drawstring on my sweatpants. My lips part, but I can’t form a coherent sentence. My whole life, I’ve dreamed of this day. Dreamed of someone coming to rescue me, more or less, and bringing me home to what, in my head, was simply a house full of witches.
Not some magical place I didn’t even know existed.
“Wren,” Antonio says, looking at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “You can’t seriously be considering this.”
“Why not?” I ask, looking from him to Leo to Mabel. “Things have gotten so messy because I don’t know who I am.”
“Things got messy because bad people did bad things,” Mabel counters softly.
She leans back and inhales, holding the breath for a second before slowly letting it out.
It’s such a human thing to do, and there’s such a gentleness about her that it’s easy to forget Mabel has been dead for a century.
“But I know how painful it is not to know who you are,” she continues.
“You could have everything in life, but without a sense of identity, you can still feel quite lost.”
“Yeah,” I say, not really sure how to agree or disagree with that. Because on one hand, I feel like I know who I am. I like the person I’ve become.
I’ve seen some shit. I’ve lived through terrible things, and I’ve had people do terrible things to me, and I haven’t let it make me bitter.
I haven’t let it cause me to give up or convince me that the world is full of horrible people.
So maybe that part of me could only get stronger if I understood exactly where I came from.
But there’s another side of me I don’t even know how to use or tap into. And wondering what if wondering who I am and who I could be…I think it would haunt me forever unless I tried.
They say you regret the things you don’t do more than the things you did.
And if there’s one thing about me I know for sure, it’s that that’s true.
“I’ll go,” I say, and in that moment, my mind is completely made up.
“Wren,” Antonio says, trying to reason with me. “That’s insane.”
“Maybe it is.” I shake my head. “Or maybe this is exactly what I need. I’m a Blackwood witch. And if I can let this demon out, I can put him away. But we already know I can’t do it alone.”
Mabel’s shoulders hunch forward as she wraps her arms around herself. Her face falls, and I know she’s only sad because I’m right.
“You won’t be gone forever, will you?” she asks.
I look at Marie. “I assumed it would be, like, a couple-hours kind of thing.”
“If that’s what you’d like,” Marie says. “Shall we?”
“Should I change?” I ask, looking down at myself and suddenly feeling underdressed.
“You look fine to me,” she says. “But do whatever makes you comfortable.”
“Okay.”
I get to my feet, ignoring the looks of shock and disappointment on my brothers’ faces. “Wait. What are you supposed to wear to one of these things?”
Marie chuckles. “Anything you like. When we have formal coven gatherings, we tend to dress traditionally, though there are plenty of members in our coven who are challenging that. But the Covenstead itself is simply a safe place to go. Many witches even live there.”
I blink, taken aback all over again. What the hell is this place?
Is this a terrible idea?
It might be.
But it probably isn’t the worst one I’ve had all week.
“Give me five minutes,” I say, then hurry upstairs. I make it as far as my closet before Leo comes into the room.
“Don’t try to talk me out of this,” I tell him as I stare at my rows of clothes.
I have absolutely no idea what to wear. To be honest, what I already have on is more my go-to outfit than anything else.
Maybe I’ll stay like this and just quickly dry my hair and pull it back into a braid.
Should I wear makeup? Definitely mascara. I shake my head. None of that matters.
“I’m not going to try talking you out of it,” Leo says.
I turn around to look at him in surprise.
“I can’t compare my struggles to yours,” he says, “but I know what it’s like to be different and unaccepted.” He laughs. “Being one of the few openly gay hunters in the Order has gotten me plenty of shit, you know.”
“I know,” I say. “And I’ve cursed a few people for how they treated you.”
“Seriously?”
I smile. “Let’s just say that potluck back in Omaha three years ago wasn’t food poisoning.”
“I always wondered why we were fine.”
He tips his head as he thinks back, and his eyes widen. “Larissa had horrible diarrhea for three days.”
Smirking, I shrug. “Call me petty.”
I pull a Lululemon sweatshirt from the closet and tie it around my waist.
Leo follows me into the bathroom while I apply the smallest amount of makeup—just enough to look put together. After towel-drying my hair again, I pull it back into a French braid.
“I’m not gonna tell you this is a good idea or that things are gonna be okay,” Leo says, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small silver knife. He hands it to me. “But be smart, Wren.”
“I’ll be as smart as I can be,” I say, trying to keep the mood light.
“I’d say make sure your phone is charged, but I honestly don’t know if you’ll even have service at this place.”
“Ha. Right?” I swallow and push my shoulders back. I’m not sure if the prickling sensation going down my spine is excitement, anxiety, or a mix of both.
I’ve been very intuitive my whole life, though it would be remiss of me not to admit that sometimes it’s hard to discern what’s intuition and what’s anxiety.
Sometimes the things I know but haven’t accepted yet cause my nervous system to go insane. Other times, my nervous system is already insane, and I successfully convince myself something terrible is going to happen.
Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. Hence my dilemma.
I go back downstairs and grab a pair of black running shoes. I get my phone, add it to my purse, and sling the bag across my body.
“I’ll be back,” I tell Mabel, who looks like she’s about to send me off to war. “Before sunrise.”
“Promise?” she asks.
“To the best of my ability, yes.” I feel like we all know better than to make promises we intend to keep but might not be able to. “I’ll talk to Xavier,” I say, looking from Mabel to my brothers. “I’ll let him know what’s going on. Don’t do it for me.”
“You mean don’t give him a chance to stop you from doing something dumb?” Antonio says.
“Yeah.” I see no point in arguing with him. That’s exactly what I’m doing.
“Are you ready, dear?” Marie asks. She’s already heading toward the door.
My heart skips a beat in my chest, but I take a deep breath and find my resolve. “Yes.”