“Rose is upstairs.”
“Thanks.”
“And Helaine.”
“Yes?”
“Don’t worry about Rose. Do everything you can to win.”
“I won’t let you down, Aunt Row.” No, I’ll just let you daughter down, alright?
Just as I began to frown, her massive, infectious smile caught me. Though she was intuitive by nature, she wasn’t a Changeling like Rose. Neither Rose or Grayson had inherited her powers, so in great relief, she let it be known that her biggest fear in life had been passing those genes onto tiny humans. I always forgot that she had to drink blood to survive as a descendant of Countess Bathory.
I smiled back, collecting my thoughts as I traveled up the stairs, soft footsteps on the runner that covered the white wood stairs.
I waved at Gray, who was sitting at his desk with his door open and headphones on. He waved back. Gray didn’t have any powers, even though his parents were massively influential in the community. He was the only human among the children of The Nine (That story is for another time). Gray went to public school with Emmy and Esper, unlike me and Rose.
My thoughts went back to Jaime and I wondered if he had powers. He had a scar, which probably meant he couldn’t self- heal like his dad and Esper. I thought I had left, but my curiosity was still running wild in that upstairs hallway of The Hallowed Locus.
I went to Rose’s room and shut the door behind me.
Her room was decorated in plum and lilac purples, with white trim like the rest of the house. Kalista had crocheted her a lavender to violet afghan that she had ever since I had known her, and she sat on her bed, fingers idly pulling on the yarn.
“What did you find out?” I asked Rose.
“Short of breaking into my mom’s office and reading all of the psych files on everyone—which would only get her in trouble—I have researched everyone’s family histories and have also coerced this list,” she held it up with a pause, “of initiates out of Travis Juliet himself.”
“Why did everyone’s favorite writer have the master list?” I asked, pleased that she would think to question him.
“He’s working on getting the publishing rights for the Coven—contingent that anyone he writes about is not currently serving in the Coven—and he plans to go back to events about twenty years ago when the Coven stopped being so secretive.” She shot me grin full of teeth. “I used my powers in order to be extra persuasive, but you know him, he loves to talk about himself, and he figured giving us this list of names would somehow give him good karma.”
“He needs it right now,” I said. “And oh my… you wouldn’t believe the scene I had to tear myself away from to get here tonight.”
“Do tell.”
I sat down next to her on her bed, careful not to wrinkle the papers she had spread out over the purple afghan.
“I think I just met his son. The other one.”
“His other son?”
“Apparently: Jaime. I think there’s some resemblance, and he’s Jared tall, with this reddish brown hair and totally cute.”
“Did you get a picture?”
“No. There was no time in between the nonchalant dropping of a bomb and him stepping into the office.”
“There’s no way they’re not related then,” Rose commented. “You think it’s for real?”
“They have the same eyes? I can’t read him, but you will be able to, and I’m dying for you to tell me what you think.”
“I would love to tell you…”
“But...”
“But we need to go over the candidates.”
“I know.” I frowned. “Turns out there is exactly one drawback to not having my internship anymore. Travis wouldn’t keep this a secret and it will probably be in the papers tomorrow morning.”
“Do you think that’s why…” her eyes fell, and I knew she could always tell how shitty Jen (“Aunt Jen” to her) was feeling about her divorce. We thought they’d last, but it didn’t, and Emmy was especially furious at her dad.
“Maybe,” I said.
“In the meantime, here’s our competition for tomorrow.”
The names of the one-hundred peers spread out before us came from long and distinguished lines of witches. Those families weren’t strangers to turning initiate hopefuls out on the street if they failed at auditions. Fortunately for Rose and I, our parents loved us and always stood up for the right thing—infamously even. My mother had left the Coven to expose one of their biggest secrets, and she was my hero for doing that. So often, I felt pigeonholed in being the President’s daughter, but I needed to remember the rebellious, take-no-shit side my mother gave me, and that the Coven’s second look at me on September twenty-third would be because they saw something of her in me, not just because my family happened to be influential.
Our peers were from ages eighteen to twenty, and since there were two spots open this year, twice as many people were brave enough to audition. We looked at the list of candidates who had the water element running through their blood.
“Oh, it’s him…” I said.
“Who?—No, Teddy! Ah ha! I forgot!”
“I’m glad you find my ex-boyfriend on the acceptance list bloody exciting!” I said with a forced angry grin. “That makes one of us.”
“Two of us,” Rose egged me, “you know he’ll be excited to have an excuse to talk to you.”
“I’ve been avoiding him…”
“After dumping him before our last formal of the year? That was kind of mean, Helaine.”
“You know how shallow adolescent relationships are,” I argued, echoing something she had told me before. I suspected Rose’s mum only told her that information since she’d never really dated anyone before, short or long term. It applied perfectly to this. “Teddy and I were going nowhere and got into different schools and it just wasn’t right. You probably had the right idea deciding to go to formal with friends in the first place. You would have dumped him too, trust me.”
“We can’t know for sure. As an empath you either care way too much—enough to end up at The Hive, Changeling Dionysian Cult, as soon as you’re eighteen—or you’re an Avereis, a descendant of the first Changeling who ever crossed over into the human world, with a shady past, an affinity for Led Zeppelin, and the willingness to risk everything for true love.”
“I thought the expectations I had placed on me were crazy,” I told her. “I forgot about the shadow Rose has to live in, and all the classic rock tees I’ve been forced to buy her for her birthdays.”
“Mmhmmm,” she joked back, “A shadow that swallows civilizations whole. And notice how Gray doesn’t have the same standards. I think it’s because of the pro—”
She paused and I felt my eyes become narrow slits.
“B… I think it’s because I’m the oldest.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “You know us youngest children,” I joked, knowing that Brittany wasn’t as stable as I was, and that parenting didn’t get laxer when I came along. Birth order meant nothing in my family, but Rose and Gray seemed to get things right.
“So, anyway…” Rose continued. “Our biggest competition is Moon Halloran.”
“Ah, bollocks, she’s nineteen, isn’t she?” I asked. “The Hallorans always get into the Coven.
She might have even gotten more scholarships to Uni than you.”
“The Halloran water line may be powerful, but you’re still my toughest competition, Helaine… May the best girl win?”
“May the best girl win,” I agreed.
In truth, we had more than Moon Halloran to be worried about. People trained their whole lives for this, and they’d be under the pressure of their families to win. Our competition would be fierce, and tomorrow night, we would meet them all.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Poison Apple
Rose
We were only footsteps away from the pre-initiation social happening tonight, and Helaine and I both expected it to be full of tension. Riva
lry. Opposition. Pressure. It was the perfect situation for an empath, and I was looking forward to the first of countless challenges. Nothing excited me more.
The social was held at a funeral home because there would have been too much commotion if we held it at Block Thirteen in the ballroom. Only hopeful initiates received an invitation with the location, though the press would find out soon enough.
Helaine and I arrived together, as there was seldom ever an occasion that we attended apart. We had always been invited to the same events within the same social circles, and tonight was no exception. We could have either gone in as competing rivals, or as friends in support of each other. We chose the honorable way. As for the other initiates? We knew we couldn’t hold others to our standards.
The funeral home’s reception room was a combination of cream wallpaper and wood panels. Light refreshments had been brought in from a catering company, and the room was rearranged so that guests would forget where the casket usually rested.
Of course, I could still pick out the warm red lights set into the top of the ceiling. The lights were a parlor trick designed to make someone appear as if they were living for one more evening, but I always thought it failed miserably. Corpses did nothing to comfort me, and they always sewed the mouths up weird. I shuddered at a visage of my own design. I hated funerals and all of the sadness and had a serious breakdown at one when I was fourteen. Luckily, I could push the feeling down now, but it always made a small appearance whenever I stepped back into this building. Paranormals possessed dark senses of humor and prowess in the occult, so our setting was oddly fitting.
“One of us needs to be the best girl here,” Helaine reminded me. “Pay attention if anyone mentions how they will go about their practical audition. We need to show our powers uniquely.”
“We probably shouldn’t tell each other what we’re doing then,” I said.
“I agree.”
We would split up now, and I didn’t much like that part.
The first person to accost me as I turned from Helaine happened to be a Mage. They comprised the council that voted on issues in the event that the Coven didn’t agree. Not all of the Mages had graying hair and senile attitudes. They could be any witch who served their full term of ten years, with few exceptions. Grandpa Dave wouldn’t be here tonight since he had been kicked out, and neither would Imogen, Helaine’s mother. Things were different back then, but rules were still rigid to both the Coven and the Mages.
Agatha was one of the five witch Mages walking around the pre-initiation social trying to get us to impress them, though the acting Coven members would have the final say in who got inducted. I didn’t see any of the three remaining Coven members here, which made my nerves hum, knowing that they were in a room somewhere going over the information from our petitions to prepare themselves for auditions in two weeks.
“Rose, what a beautiful name for an earth witch,” Agatha said, shaking my hand when I introduced myself.
“Thank you,” I told Agatha, settling on politely correcting her. “I am auditioning as water. Thank you for throwing this party for us tonight. I can’t wait to meet the competition.”
“My apologies for not knowing your familial roots. We usually go by last names here.”
I stood corrected, but then again, I also stood to correct her twice.
“It’s Avereis,” I smirked, and then changed it into a sweet smile.
Yes, I’m her, I thought.
“Rose Avereis,” she repeated. “Your parents have certainly done a lot for the underground,” she remarked. “The only daughter of two of The Nine, revolutionaries that put an end to all experimental laboratories in London.”
I feared for her to elaborate. While my mother was a clinically supernatural psychologist, suspicions about my father’s past would sometimes resurface. He taught me that the past should stay the past, but I knew that for trouble’s sake, many subcultures were happy that he opened his own martial arts studio—my mom included. It wasn’t as much malice as it was his incredible sense of justice and drive to do the right thing. That was something I inherited, but I hoped I could stop from taking it to his extreme level. I grinned to myself this time, not caring if Agatha saw. By auditioning for the Coven, I was taking it to the most extreme level I could.
I was the only child who descended from two The Nine, oh, and then there was Gray.
“Thank you, Agatha. Pleased to meet you.”
I diverted her concentration using my powers, a slight and temporary hold on her attention and slinked away to meet Helaine.
“How’s it going?” I asked her slyly.
“Well, but I do feel a little too restricted in this dress for dancing.”
There was no dancing, and I had noticed the same thing Helaine did.
The girls our age wore tight-fitting dresses in vibrant colors, and tall spiky heels, while we opted for the bold, powerful pattern of black and white, and wore shrugs over our shoulders, as we would in a job interview. Our parents—and my dad especially—never would have allowed us to leave the house wearing dresses more suitable for a club than a job interview.
Helaine’s color block dress with a white bodice and black skirt was sophisticated and reminded me of the journalist she wanted to be—that is before she landed her internship and got saddled with the daunting tasks. Her red hair was down in curls, with a few pieces pinned back on one side. I knew Brittany helped her nail the formal but not so stuffy look.
My dress also had a neckline just below the collar bone and was a pattern of vertical black and white stripes that separated into a fringe when they reached my knees.
There were just as many boys auditioning, and they wore casual clothes, some with ties and some without. Sensing their emotions against my will, I knew that they were enjoying the fashion sense of every girl here with long legs and cleavage, apart from me and Helaine.
Whatever.
We needed to focus anyway.
“Refreshment time?” I asked Helaine.
“Lead the way.”
I reached to grab a glass of punch, realizing that someone else’s hand was after the same crystal stem.
“Sorry,” I said, prepared to turn on the empath charm that guaranteed forgiveness.
“It’s alright,” said the girl to the right of me.
She was wearing a skin-tight royal blue dress with a fan of asymmetrical ruffles on one side of the bodice. Her hair was worn straight, long and dark. Though I hadn’t seen her in two years, I recognized her.
“Are you Moon Halloran?”
“I am.” Moon’s smile confirmed that she was as humble as she was friendly. She was also a black belt in Isshinryu.
“I’m Rose Avereis.”
“Helaine Laurence,” she said, as we took turns shaking Moon’s hand.
“Are you two as nervous as I am?” Moon asked with a giggle.
“Yes,” We said in unison.
“People know who you two are,” Moon told us, “you’ll be great competitors and you know I love competition. I wish you the best of luck.”
“Good luck, Moon,” I said.
“You’ll do great,” Helaine added, as Moon excused herself and walked away. “Someone we don’t have to be fake nice to?”
“Someone who shares the code of a martial artist,” I said. “The only other person in this room.”
The punch table became busy, and we ended up being introduced to a few more fellow initiates as we sifted through the parlor, keeping our ears out for the ways everyone would show their powers. I didn’t hear any mention of ice.
Two of our schoolmates, Bessie and Contessa, donning blinding bright blue dresses, wouldn’t even look at Helaine or I. Never before had I thought they could be this ugly.
“Rose, what a smashing name for an earth witch,” one boy said to me. He was average in looks and height with dark brown hair, and while I always said I didn’t have a type, he could have been it.
“I’m initiating as water,” I repeate
d for the tenth time tonight. “That’s my family line. I don’t have any claim to Earth.”
“I see,” my competition said, excusing himself, leaving my mouth hanging open on my abruptly cut next word.
“He’s here…” Helaine said in a raspy whisper, clawing fervently at my arm. Thank goodness she had to keep her nails trimmed in order to make a fist in martial arts. I knew she was talking about Teddy.
“It’s too late then. He’s seen us.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’ll divert,” I said. “Get out of here.”
“Thank you,” Helaine said. “It’s just—I’d rather put my energy into learning things about the others here.”
“Hey, you don’t have to explain how you feel to me. Go.”
She moved to the other side of the parlor and didn’t look back.
“Hello, Rose. Lovely evening, isn’t it?”
“I agree. Good to see you, Teddy.”
I hadn’t seen him since high school ended and something seemed different about him. Teddy was good-looking with sandy brown hair and kind eyes. Helaine stated him to be granola, like a stock peer to us while we were the Hallowed Locus for school.
“Great to see you too. Good luck at auditions, but being Irish and all, I’m sure you don’t need it.”
“Everyone could use a little luck now and again,” I said back. “Are you auditioning for fire or water?”
“With you and Helaine, and Moon Halloran testing for water, I think my chances are better with fire.” He gave me a smile.
“That’s sweet,” I said, catching his relaxed mood and accidentally mirroring my expression to his. That happened sometimes, but it’s not like he’d notice. Teddy stood a huge chance of being fire. Double elements in your blood meant stronger magic, and he was the only Fire candidate who had parents from two different lines.
“I’ve been practicing it a lot more and fire is all-consuming. It’s a passionate element. It’s charged with every innate desire we have.”
Death's Primordial Kiss (The Silvered Moon Diaries Book 1) Page 6