Chapter Forty-Six
On the night Katherine would have been tried for Lily’s death, Los Angeles was finally cooling down.
Katherine stood outside the door to El Sereno Coffee, enjoying the brisk night air.
She didn’t know what to expect. If anyone had even bothered to show up.
If those who had would accept her leadership or laugh her out of the room.
If she could even do this, or if she would collapse under the pressure.
She was a ball of anxiety. She’d been restless with it for the past few days, rushing from place to place, trying her best to make the right choices in an increasingly hard-to-navigate world. She had never been more stressed, more exhausted, more afraid.
But it was a beautiful night. A clear sky, with a few dots of light in it, either stars or airplanes. Katherine decided to believe stars.
It felt like the type of night that could have magic like that.
She pulled the door open.
And people were inside.
Not everyone, Katherine noticed, but there were still a few dozen witches crammed into the small space.
Henry, Casey, and a few of the other witches from Aestas.
Fiona and Tess, whispering to each other as they prepared the speech on old magic they’d be giving in an attempt to offer a balm to the lack of spellbooks. And a handful of witches from Libertad.
Not a permanent joining of covens, but a moment of togetherness. A shared fight to rebuild what they had all lost.
Katherine waved at Fiona and Tess, getting a quick wave in return before they turned their attention back to each other. Henry didn’t look up as she walked by, and when she saw his face, she realized why—Aestas’ Bookkeeper was already fast asleep, lightly snoring in the second row.
She reached the front and sidled up to Niles, who had his back to the group as he fiddled with the cups next to the percolating coffee maker.
She bumped him with her hip, and he turned to her.
His face, like all of theirs, was showing the stress of the past few days, his normally bright eyes sunken and surrounded by dark circles, his forehead etched with worry lines.
But he still smiled when he saw her, pulling her into a hug.
She was endlessly grateful that he had forgiven her when she told him everything that happened with Sylvia.
Forever indebted to him for not rubbing it in her face that he had never trusted Sylvia; that had she listened to him, she could have stopped it.
Katherine knew that wasn’t true. Sylvia’s actions were her own.
Of course, Katherine was going to have to spend quite a lot of time in therapy to fully internalize that, but hearing it from Niles helped.
“People came,” he said.
“They did.” She glanced behind her, surveying the crowd. “How are we going to do this?”
“Carefully.” Niles reached into his pocket, pulling out the small spellbook and setting it down on the table between them. “But at least we have this to offer them.”
Katherine’s heart twinged at that small reminder of Silas.
She’d still been reeling from the heartlessness he’d shown her when Niles had first pulled out the spellbook Silas left on his doorstep.
It was such a contrast—the good man that had been hiding inside, even when she thought the worst of him, and then the worst that was living in him now, rooted in his soul by Sylvia’s mistakes.
This spellbook was nothing compared to the library Aestas, or even Libertad, used to have. But the spells were powerful and rare, and they were an incentive to stick around.
An incentive that Katherine suspected they would greatly need, considering there were rumblings of another Noctis-sanctioned coven being built in Los Angeles.
The spellbook was a small thing, but it was something.
And they needed anything they could get right now.
Based on the news, they estimated that at least two hundred unsettled witches had snapped across the United States, with a couple dozen more stretching across the globe.
The government had been calling it a coordinated series of attacks, likely organized on clandestine internet boards.
A few kids had died in the chaos of their snaps, and a few more had died trying to avoid the authorities.
Katherine found herself crying for them at random points throughout the day, crushed that they never stood a chance.
Finding the rest was proving to be a near-insurmountable task.
Without spellbooks, their tracking spells were severely limited, as were the protection spells they needed to transport so many scared kids to Oak Grove.
There was no safe way to get an unsettled witch onto a plane, no easy trick to get a terrified, volatile child from Connecticut or Canada or Cairo all the way to California.
No instructions for how Katherine was supposed to rebuild hundreds of shattered lives.
They’d managed to rescue just a half dozen unsettled witches so far, the youngest just eight years old.
Katherine shuddered remembering the fear on that child’s face as they’d found him huddled under a picnic table at a burning park.
He’d cried in her arms as she carried him to her car.
Sobbed in her backseat as she drove him to Oak Grove.
George was there now, dealing with the witches Katherine had brought, along with a few more that other covens had called Aestas for help with—including the one Silas’ friend Anika had brought to Niles during the chaos of that fateful day.
Katherine was spending every free moment she had at the camp, trying to keep herself together as she took in all that Sylvia had ruined.
Noctis, she was sure, was in the process of flexing their government contacts to keep the true nature of the attacks as buried as possible.
But that, it seemed, was as far as they were willing to go to deal with this.
They had offered no official guidance to covens on how to deal with the newly unsettled witches in their territories, leaving Katherine and the remaining members of Aestas to reach out on their own.
The responses had been mixed—some were grateful for their help, but so many others were angry, their already existing prejudices against unsettled witches stoked by Sylvia’s betrayal.
But Katherine couldn’t take no for an answer. She had to take care of these kids. It was her sole purpose in life. She wouldn’t stop until they were all safe and accounted for.
And so she called, and she called, and she called, until she found someone friendly enough to hear her out. And then she convinced them to bring their unsettled witches to Oak Grove for the help they so desperately needed.
She’d never had to talk to so many people. When this was all done, she was going to stay silent for a full week.
Unfortunately, though, right now she needed her voice.
She stepped up to the podium, Niles at her side. The room quieted as people looked up at them.
So many faces. So many emotions.
Curious. Scared.
Hopeful.
Katherine cleared her throat, and then she spoke.
“Thank you all for coming tonight.” Her voice cracked, the nerves showing through.
From the audience, Fiona gave her a reassuring smile.
Katherine swallowed, then continued. “We’ve all been through a trying few days.
We have been faced with challenges we never should have had to face.
And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like anything is going to get easier anytime soon. ”
Quiet grumbles at that, but Katherine pressed on. She wouldn’t lie to these people. This was going to be a tough journey, and she wouldn’t drag anyone along unless they were fully on board.
“But in the face of all this adversity, I want to reiterate our mission.
Aestas and Libertad are here to provide a home for witches.
For all witches—no matter their background.
No matter who tries to stop us, no matter how many enemies we make, we will reach out to those who are turned away from other covens, and we will welcome them into our ranks.
“Together, we are going to rebuild LA’s magic system into something that’s equitable, democratic, and fair. Together, we are going to create covens that serve all of their members. Together, we are going to find a way to leave this world better than we found it.”
Katherine paused, waiting for a reaction. For a moment, there was only silence, and her heart clenched. But then—
Claps. Scattered at first, then spreading throughout the group.
Katherine smiled.
“So,” she said. “Who’s ready to get started?”