The room was an open living area and kitchen, with plenty of space for friends, staff, and reporters (but mostly for staff and reporters). Our house didn’t have a view of the Thames or spectacular garden. Instead, it was dropped into the middle of the city, a mix of exposed brick, stainless steel, and earthy oranges and yellows.
“I knew you would come straight home, love. I made some tea. We should talk.”
I protested with a sigh. Today I wouldn’t give in to sitting down on the couch like how the rest of our “talks” went. I had no taste for calming, meditative tea tonight. I already knew all the obnoxious things she wanted to say.
“Don’t mix liquors. Never drink to get drunk. Keep an eye on your friends at parties and never leave them alone. Recreational drugs can always be laced with something fatal. You don’t have to have ‘regular’ sex to get an STI. If anything bad happens we will always face it together as a family. Am I missing any?”
“Helaine, I wanted to talk to you about the Coven.”
“Oh, mum,” I said. I could have only felt stupider if Jared was here now, and though I had said plenty of stupid things to my parents while he was standing behind us, I still wasn’t used to censoring my rants. “I thought you were still cross at me for breaking into the paper. If anyone knew my thoughts it would be you.”
“Just because I can read your thoughts doesn’t mean I’m always reading them,” she told me with a pointed glance. If I didn’t think anything clearly she wouldn’t hear it, but naturally, I was full of inner dialogue. “I’ve given you space since you started dating, and I certainly can’t see your memories.”
“But he can,” I said of my father. I wasn’t only raised by the most politically influential person in the underground, I was raised by—count them—two telepaths. “And it’s never been fair.”
“I know you didn’t ask for this, but I think we’ve given you a great life.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t…” My sentence trailed off, and I knew that sometimes I could come off sounding rottenly spoiled, but try over-scrutinizing every thought in your head before you thought it.
My mother, the former spirit element on the London Coven was the last person I wanted to be cross with me. She was indubitably my idol. Mum had practically been a prisoner of the Coven according to the old rules, but it didn’t stick. She valued honesty, and that made something gnaw at me to tell her about the plan I hatched a week ago. Neither of my parents knew about it and I was flabbergasted that I had kept it a secret for a week. Three, two, ah, fuck it.
“I was going to move out the day I turned eighteen, and not even tell you.” My quick sigh sounded more like I was cheering for myself than resolving my dishonesty. “The paperwork is in my room and my school loans would have covered it. But now…”
“Now you’re testing for the Coven the day you turn eighteen.”
I nodded.
“Which building?” Mum asked, motioning for me to sit in The Bitching Chair. I did.
“Pinewood in Shoreditch. That’s how desperate I was.”
“It’s not a horrible building, just not where I’d want to see you. What about the dorms?”
“I don’t want to live literally on top of someone else,” I groaned. “The Coven’s mews house is where I’m going to be.”
“I lived in the attic bedroom when I was in the Coven. That was kind of like living on top of everyone else, especially since I couldn’t leave the house with the old rules.”
“You know what I meant, but I get your point too.” It wasn’t fair that Spirit was kept a secret to protect the rest of the elements, and though mum wanted me to follow in her footsteps, the Coven’s rules (and the Mages especially) hadn’t drug her through the best of memories. Talking about it usually helped, and I could tell her mind was going to a more positive place.
“Regardless of how things were for me, there’s something truly magical about that place. If you live there, your path will be certain. You’ll have an advantage that not many people do. That’s what I want for my daughter more than anything else. A chance to good and know she is needed and wanted in this world.”
“Mum, don’t cry,” I said.
Her green eyes became a watery mess, and I knew that when the first tear started to fall, she’d just let it roll down her face as if it wasn’t there, instead of wiping it off of her eyelashes the second it bubbled her vision.
“So many people spend their whole lives trying to find purpose, trying to get in touch with their spirituality and their reason for being here on earth. When you’re in the Coven, it comes naturally. I never thought that it would be the kind of place I’d want you to go to. I never thought it would be as safe as it is now.”
“You made that happen. You and—”
My father walked in the door just then, and it crossed my mind that he had been listening, waiting for the proper time.
“Bon Soir,” he told us.
“Bon Soir,” I replied. Though I could remain fuming at my mum for days, there was something comforting and kind in my father’s brown eyes, and he always made Brittany, mum, and I calm. His stark black hair was graying from years of being re-elected president, but the lines framing his smile never dulled the infectious grin on his face. The reason he was so powerful wasn’t that he was President. He was entirely human but had wicked powers that weren’t passed down to me or Brittany. We never talked about the reason he got them.
“While I know that you want to be in the Coven more than anything, I don’t think that it is the safest place for you,” my father said. He had a stack of mail in his hands.
My mom gave him a silent, scathing look, as if he hadn’t heard a word of our conversation from outside the door. I could only imagine what she was thinking. She stood to meet him as he walked over, and I stayed in the interrogation chair. I learned to stay put like this during summer a year ago. That was when I aptly christened the chair I sat in now as The Bitching Chair. The place I had snuck into then was far worse in their minds than Block Thirteen Press could ever be. I deserved to be grounded then, and now, a year older and wiser, it was still worth it.
“I say this because I’m looking out for you,” Dad said. There was something hidden in the corners of his smile as if he thought to tell me I couldn’t try out. “The last death in the Coven was nearly ten years ago, and the underground has been stable for two decades, despite the occasional happenings reported in the paper.”
The mention of the paper made me smile so wide that my face felt like it would break. They let me quit my internship to focus on tryouts—or more or less, stare at the mint green walls of my bedroom for a month.
“Everything is safer now, Yves.” Mum uncrossed her arms.
“What about karma and the natural energy of balance?”
“Shhhh!” Mum silenced him at once. The “k-word” was one you didn’t mutter as a witch. “I guess that settles it. With the natural order and energy of karma unleashed in this house tonight, it might not be safe for you after all, love.”
“We all know evil has always been out there.” I recalled once when a serial-killer was stopped by the witches. The headline didn’t read that he died or was caught in the cross-hairs. The Thirteenth proclaimed that he was rotting in hell. “You think that karma and balance will stop me from wanting to protect the people who need saved?” I didn’t even blink as mum’s eyes traveled to the cabinet we kept the sage in.
“Jamias,” Dad sighed out, no doubt planning his next words accordingly. “However, if you decide you want to be in the Coven, you need to listen to your mentor the first two years as an…”
“Initiate,” mum reminded him. “That will be your most vulnerable time before your powers reach full maturity, when you’re under the guidance of the mentor assigned to you to complete your trials. And to let you concentrate on that…”
“We’re staying out of your thoughts and treating you as if you were already at university.”
This was some shit, though I wasn’t complaining.
“The university I’m not going too? Seems a little convoluted.”
“We don’t want to chase you away. We want you to feel like you can always come home and have a place here. L'amour d'une famille est plus grande bénédiction mortes.”
I rolled my eyes halfway but resolved to smile. That quote was hanging on a plaque in the kitchen.
“Does that mean I can have boys in my room now?” I smirked something awful, and they didn’t return the sentiment. “I’m joking!”
“Taking the piss out of your own parents not even a minute in?” Mum asked.
“Where do you think I learned it from?”
My father looked to my mum, placing culpability on her. He was the sweetest father—had to be to raise two girls—and though my mom was still strict, she was the jokester and the comic relief in our family. Since Brittany was more like her mother, I guess that made me become more like my own.
“I don’t say this without a sarcastic tone often, so thank you.”
I thought maybe we should hug, but they would have known that if they were in my thoughts, and I felt relief when they didn’t move in to smush me with their warm fuzzies turned embraces.
“This was in the mail room.” Dad handed me a letter.
The lotus pentacle.
“But I hadn’t even—”
I stopped mid-sentence realizing that my mum had sent in the petition for me. I knew it was expedited because I was a Laurence. I opened the letter and scanned over it. I was holding everything I had hoped for in my own two hands.
“I’m cleared to try out for water,” I told them.
I knew how hard I’d have to work to get out from under my father’s shadow, but I couldn’t even estimate the number of people who were just waiting to hate me when I was inducted. Rose included.
“Even though you’ve been preparing for the Coven, remember that you have a big day Thursday night too,” Mum said with a smile. “Don’t let tryouts come before something you worked so hard for.”
“I won’t,” I said.
How could I have forgotten about Thursday?
CHAPTER SIX
The Second Degree
Rose
It had been two days since I had submitted my petition to try out for the London Coven, and I still had not gotten my letter by the time I left for class that evening. Letters did get lost and delayed, it happened… but what if I wasn’t actually chosen, what if there some sort of mistake?
Tonight, I had to force my worried thoughts aside to be focused on receiving something I had put two years worth of blood, sweat, and bruises into.
When you walked into the dojo, The Grandmaster ordered you to leave everything else at the chiming door, and focus on your tasks as a martial artist. On the mats, there was nothing but your drive to push the limits and test your mind, body, and spirit. The physical place of a school didn’t have as much to do with the enthusiasm and complete focus of the teacher. There wasn’t time to dwell on the Coven today—at least until after the last class tonight when I received the honor I had worked so hard for.
I was helping Emmy and Helaine bring chairs over to the edge of the mats from the waiting room that was partitioned by a wall. The last class of the day, our ceremony, was to take place in the heart of the dojo. This had been my second home as long as I could remember. When someone else needed off for a night—only if it was absolutely necessary—I had been able to fill in as Head Instructor for an evening or two since my eighteenth birthday back in March.
“Bollocks,” Emmy breathed, lowering her head of dark hair. “Give it a rest, I’m not on the mats yet,” she shot back to me.
“What is it?” Helaine asked.
“He’s here,” Emmy said angrily, peering around the wall to the front door.
“And you’re disappointed that your father comes to see the color belt Tae Kwon Do champion of England earn her black belt?” I asked back.
“Travis is going to ruin this for me somehow,” she shared with a grimace.
Emmy’s candidate belt was turned upside down so that it had a black stripe, red, then yellow. The black stripe on top meant that she had tested for and was waiting to receive her black belt. She was an inch or two taller than Helaine—who at two inches above five feet wasn’t hard to top—and she nearly always kept the sleeves on her uniform rolled up past her elbows. She wore black like me and Helaine, and most everyone else wore white. Emmy had honey blonde hair up until six months ago. Brittany used to bleach it for her—apart from the black stripe growing near her nape. We all knew that Emmy’s hair reminded her of her father, and while they were civil, that didn’t mean she liked him.
“I think you’re just nervous,” I reminded Emmy, pulling acceptance out as her dominant emotion. “You earned this. He’s just here to acknowledge it.”
“You’re right,” Emmy said. Helaine went to grab one more chair and Emmy turned to me. “You know Rose, I’ve always looked up to you, and I hope I can be as focused on martial arts as you are.” It might have been the push from my powers, but she kept going. “You just always seem to want to do the right thing, and you’ve always acted older than you are. I trust any advice you give me.”
“Thank you,” I said, as Helaine walked back over. Emmy was never unnecessarily kind, and while I could sense it was the truth, my powers might have walked off without me again.
“Oi, did you get your initiate acceptance letters yet?”
“Mine came!” Helaine told Emmy. Her joy radiated from her like warm sunshine sifting through the clouds.
I gave my all not to show any guilt. I wanted to tell Helaine about the prophecy and how I was part of something, and how Dave’s intuition said that something was highly suspect about Fire and Water getting kicked out. It was my problem. Why burden her with something she wouldn’t be in the position to fix?
“How about you, Rose?”
“I’ve been here all day,” I told Emmy. I tried to stop it, but the thought was forced out again. No letter means no trying out.
“I’m sure it’s at your house,” Helaine assured me. Her happiness for me left my competitive spirit and guilt tugging at each other again.
“Can you help me stretch?” I asked Helaine. She nodded, and we saluted all three flags before we walked on to the mats.
Helaine had succeeded in pulling my upper body parallel to the mats, and after a few moments of silence and me stuck in middle splits, she whispered, “he’s here.”
“I can tell.” I felt the sadness, longing, and thrill off of her even though my face was pressed against the mats. There was only one emotion that comprised anything like it, and it was the heartbreak of unrequited love. Helaine didn’t even have these feelings for her long-term ex, Teddy.
“Sorry,” she said for the millionth time.
“Don’t be.” Who else would I vicariously live through? As we switched to stretch, I glanced over my shoulder and had to admit that it wasn’t easy for anyone, let alone Helaine, to miss Jared in a crowd.
Jared was the President’s bodyguard, and he took private lessons with our Grandmaster. Helaine and Jared were in the same tournament last year, and it was then that Helaine fell for him. He was easily six and a half feet tall, in perfect shape, with short black hair framed perfectly by a straight razor, and dark, glowing skin. I wasn’t kidding. It glowed, and until Helaine accidentally blurted it out one day, I hadn’t been sure what adjective to use.
Not only was he her father’s bodyguard, but Jared was twenty-four, and since Helaine knew he would obey the rules and not give her a second glance because she was a teenager, she liked him all the better.
“I have a decade to prove myself,” she said impishly, “and once I’m in the Coven, I can get him to see me as a woman, and not the daughter of his first real job.”
“If he should be so lucky,” I said.
“I’m hopeless, aren’t I?”
I nodded.
It was soon time to begin. We bowed to instructor Kalis
ta as she entered the mats and obeyed as she told us to line up. Black belts stood in front and colored belts in white uniforms were in the last row. Age didn’t matter here. Only rank did.
Don’t look into the crowd. Don’t speak. Don’t fix your hair in the mirrors while facing them. Shout every time you strike.
When warm-up was completed, our Grandmaster entered the room and even the parents were quiet. His imposing posture would never go unnoticed, and I had never once in my life seen him slouch. He wore all black, like me, Helaine, and the other assistants, and there were seven stripes on his belt. He was a seventh degree, someone who had the right to call himself Grandmaster.
He gave us our commands as we showed friends and family our forms, and instructed the others how to hold boards as we broke them. The belt ceremonies were about putting on a show, and nothing upped the energy like piles of split pine boards.
Those being awarded their third-degree belt today were called up first. My group was next.
When my name was called I walked to the front of the room as I had every few months since I was seven years old. The Grandmaster tied my new belt around me, and I held the old one with one gold stripe in my hands.
Sitting back down with my second-degree belt on, I felt as proud as I could. When the first degrees stamped their hands in red ink and received their new belts, all of the positive emotions of drive and accomplishment filled the dojo. Still, I was unable to push Coven completely from my mind. Before I knew it, we were dismissed to share our accomplishments with our families.
My grandmother was standing next to my mom. I was to call her Grandmara—because Mara was her name—and she decided that before I was even born. My mom still thought it was “unnecessarily weird,” but it was all I had ever known her by.
Grandmara squeezed me tightly in a hug before anyone else could.
“Congratulations. You have a big few weeks and I won’t be missing any of it. I’m staying at a vacation flat for auditions and then I’ll go back home after that. I recorded the whole thing for your grandfather.” She held up a small camera. “I so desperately want to take you shopping, but your mom says no distractions.”
Death's Primordial Kiss (The Silvered Moon Diaries Book 1) Page 4