by Aileen Erin
“Don’t worry. Dastien is committed to you. It’s just because you’re apart and you’re an emotional person. Don’t give it a second thought.”
For the first time since I woke up, I finally felt better. This was totally fine. My fears were taking me for a ride at night, but I just had to tell them to shut the hell up, and all would be good.
My parents got up, and I stood.
The floor came up to meet me. Or more accurately, I met it.
“Whoa.” Dad crouched beside me. “Are you okay?”
I sat up and shook my head. “God. What is wrong with me? That’s the second time I’ve tripped. And I threw up last night and dropped a plate. What is up with me?”
“You didn’t trip. You fainted,” Dad said.
“Is it your wolf?” Mom asked. “Do you need to shift?”
“No. I should be okay. It takes weeks for that to happen.” I paused to think.
Something changed two days ago. I’d been feeling weak ever since. What had changed?
I’d gone to Rosa’s. Learned some things.
And Luciana had been in my room.
There were times that coincidences were simply that. But for me lately, nothing was a coincidence.
Luciana had spelled me. Or cursed me. Or had done something else invasive and unforgivable.
I had to fix this. Now. It was time I dug around in her place.
“Mom. Dad. Thanks so much for coming,” I said as I stood again and managed to stay on my feet. “But I think it’s best if you go now.” The both started protesting as I hustled them out the door. “I’m serious. Things are about to get ugly here, and I think you should go. It’s safest.”
“But what about you?”
“Don’t worry about me. It seems like someone around here has forgotten that I’m an alpha. I’m a bruja. And I’ve been bullied too much in my life to take it anymore.”
“Luciana cursed you. They’re not just dreams,” Mom said. She was a smart lady. I hoped that when I grew up, I was half as good as she was.
“Don’t. Just go. I’ll be okay.” I wasn’t so sure about that. Luciana had spelled me twice. This time she was completely out of line. She’d broken her side of the bargain, and now I could break mine.
Chapter Nineteen
As soon as my parents were gone, I went to my room. I’d known as soon as I fainted that something was wrong. That was what happened to Meredith when she’d been cursed. It wasn’t the same, but it didn’t matter. I hadn’t gotten a vision from anything that was in my room.
When I was searching my room, I’d been looking for something missing. But what if she’d planted something?
I started digging around. I tore apart the room inch by inch. I emptied the closet, knocking on the walls and floorboards, looking for some place she could stash something.
It wasn’t until I moved the mattress that I found it. She’d cut a hole in the box spring so that it wouldn’t make a lump. I pulled apart the torn material and reached between the springs. My finger brushed against something and a dirty, oily feeling came over me.
I jerked my hand back, cradling it against my chest. I knew exactly what it was.
No. She couldn’t have. No one would mess with magic that dark.
A gris-gris.
A few months ago I hadn’t even known what a gris-gris was, but after Imogene accused me of cursing Dastien and using one, I’d done some research. It was a little pouch that carried a curse and was usually inscribed on the outside. Sure, they could be used for good, but I’d bet everything I had that this one was evil.
I didn’t want to touch the thing again. I grabbed a discarded sock from the floor and stuck my hand in it. I picked up the little pouch between two fingers. Whatever was inside jangled as I moved, but I didn’t want to open it. Messing with one of these was dangerous, and letting anything out of it could release a whole world of hurt.
I placed it on the bedside table and stepped back.
As shocked as I was to see it, it didn’t entirely surprise me that Luciana had sunk to this level. What surprised me was that I hadn’t noticed it sooner. Only now did I smell the rotten stench of whatever nasty ingredients were inside; Luciana must’ve warded the pouch against my Were senses.
No wonder I’d slept so well in Claudia’s room. She didn’t have a curse under her mattress.
The front door slammed shut. Raphael and Claudia’s voices were muffled by the distance. Daniel said something, too.
I thought about telling them about the gris-gris, but my gut was telling me that I needed to deal with this alone. If Rosa was right, I needed to start listening to my instincts.
I quickly straightened my room, and put the gris-gris in the drawer of my bedside table. I’d deal with it later. Maybe it was dumb, but I needed to investigate Luciana at least a little before I left. I had to see if this was the kind of thing she was into. I needed into her craft room.
I put on my running gear and laced up my shoes.
I waited until I heard my cousins and Daniel in the kitchen, and then went quickly downstairs.
“Going for a run. See you guys in a bit,” I said.
“Have fun,” Claudia yelled as I left.
I took off down the front stoop and made a few laps behind the houses. That way, if anyone saw me, they’d think I was just exercising.
It might’ve been better to wait until night, but some things needed to be handled on the spot. This was one of them. I’d had enough waiting.
If I left now with the gris-gris, maybe I could even prove that Luciana had broken our deal, but I didn’t want to hide behind the Seven. I wanted to take her down myself. I needed more information. The more I had, the better my argument would be. I needed it to be airtight. I hadn’t been joking about burning the compound to the ground if I were double-crossed.
Luciana had taken me from my mate. She’d cursed me. Twice. I was done.
It was unfair to damn the whole coven because of one person, but in this case, Luciana had already corrupted almost everyone.
As I circled the compound, I used my Were hearing to listen to the conversations inside the houses.
I nearly slowed when I heard her voice in the schoolhouse.
“To prepare the spell, we’ll need the following ingredients—”
That was all I needed. She was teaching, which meant she’d be occupied for a while. Daniel was in my house, and even if he went home, I didn’t think he’d tell his mother on me.
I dashed toward Luciana’s house. The quicker I went, the less chance I’d have of someone seeing me. Or at least that’s what I figured. I’d never been a very sneaky person and my few escape attempts from St. Ailbe’s had only proven that.
I carefully went through the backdoor and closed it softly behind me.
The house smelled overwhelmingly of cloves. Sage burned somewhere too, but it wasn’t enough to combat the cloves. Piles of garbage took up a lot of the room. Stacks of newspaper and flyers. Trash from take-out. Things in shopping bags that had never been used.
Luciana was a hoarder. My nose crinkled. It wasn’t dirty per se, but it was dusty. There was no way someone could really clean with this much junk everywhere.
I watched my steps as I moved deeper into the house, not wanting to disturb anything. The layout was pretty similar to the one in my cousins’ house. From what I could tell, most of the houses at the compound looked the same. It made sense if the same contractor had built all of them.
I wandered toward where I thought her craft room might be. If there were something I could use against her, it’d be in there. I let my feet carry me along until I found myself staring at a navy blue door. Fingerprints smudged the black lacquered doorknob.
My gut said that I wouldn’t like whatever was beyond that door.
My palms were sweating as I reached for the knob and hesitated, not quite touching it.
All the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. This wasn’t a place I wanted to be, but I needed to go i
n there.
In and out, I told myself. I’d be fast. And then I was leaving the compound. Going home to St. Ailbe’s. Home to Dastien.
“Fuck it,” I said to myself, and gripped the knob, twisting until it opened.
I immediately put my hand over my nose and mouth, to stop myself from gagging. How had my Were senses not smelled it sooner?
The floor was shiny black and almost entirely covered with a pentagram. Candles burned at the five corners of the star, and from the orientation in the room, it looked like the star was pointed downward.
Seeing what was on the altar at the center of the pentagram made my hands shake.
A dead black-feathered chicken lay across it next to a bowl. Inside the bowl was a picture of Dastien and me. We were on campus, sitting in the quad. There was a notebook in my lap, but I was laughing at Dastien. The picture was wrapped with some kind of fine, dark brown string. The color of my hair.
I wanted to grab it, but the tips of my toes were at the edge of the circle surrounding the pentagram. I’d watched enough movies and read enough books to know that crossing that circle could be bad news. I’d either alert her I was here or unleash something ugly. Either way, I wanted no part in that.
A brown matte substance was sprinkled all around the floor. I squatted down to get a better look, but I didn’t want to touch it. I gave it a sniff and it smelled of iron. I hoped it was blood from the chicken, but it could’ve been from anything.
I stood and took in the rest of the room. A closet in the corner of the room was half opened. A few black robes hung inside, but the door wasn’t open enough for me to see anything else.
The walls were stuffed with books. Lots and lots of books. I watched where I placed my feet as I went around the circle. As I stepped on a half-rotten floorboard, a loud creak sounded.
I paused, waiting to see if I could hear anything, but the house was still silent.
I wiped my palms along my jeans and stepped closer to the bookshelves along the back wall. Some of the books looked like the ones at my cousins’. Others were in a language I’d never seen before. I’d been careful not to touch anything so far. I’d been even more careful not to have a vision here. From the state of things, I had a feeling this room held more than I ever wanted to see. But holding back was a chickenshit move, especially when I’d come here to gather proof.
What should I touch?
I glanced back at the altar. The dead chicken’s head lolled, revealing the deep slit along its throat. With the picture next to it…I couldn’t think of many things more horrible.
I swallowed and turned back to the walls. I closed my eyes, held out my hand, and let my gut instincts take charge. Blindly, I reached for whatever I could.
Flashes of dark and light. Smells of death. Decay. Burning things. Rotting.
It was too dark to see anything. Too quiet.
And then there was a voice. It sang and my heart sped.
I didn’t have to know Latin to know this was bad. The tune, the cadence, told me everything I needed to know. I made out the word ‘Satani’ and chills ran along my skin.
The scent of sulfur filled my senses. It was suddenly hot. Scorching. It felt like I was baking alive. Burning.
I screamed and threw what I was holding.
A knife. It spun into the closet as I ran for the door.
I wasn’t thinking as I fled the house, leaving the door to Luciana’s craft room wide open. I didn’t care about getting caught anymore. I just needed to be gone.
The feeling that I would never be clean after touching that knife filled me.
That smell. Sulfur. The scent of hell.
Were demons real? Could Luciana call one to her?
Even if she could, why would she?
I was halfway to my cousins’ house before I slowed down. I hadn’t noticed if anyone had seen me leaving or was following behind.
As I hit the front stoop of their house, a realization hit me and even in the Texas heat, I was cold.
Daniel had to know his mom was doing black magic.
He seemed to be on our side, but why wasn’t he doing more to stop her? He hadn’t told us about it. Or at least he hadn’t told me about it, but there was no way he could be oblivious of that kind of evil in his own home.
Was he fooling us all? Was he really siding with Luciana?
I crashed down on the couch in the living room. The floral print that I’d found hideous before now seemed positively charming. I’d take anything over a black lacquered floor.
“Who’s here?” Claudia said as she walked down the stairs. “Oh. Are you okay?”
I grunted, not lifting my head from the couch. “Not really.” My voice was muffled from the cushions.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
I shook my head. “I think I saw a little sliver of Hell just now.”
She sat on the chair next to me. “What do you mean?”
I didn’t look at Claudia. “I decided to sneak into Luciana’s house.”
“You did what?” She yelled.
“I went into her craft room.” I finally met Claudia’s wide-eyed gaze. “Did you know she was practicing dark magic?”
She opened and closed her mouth a few times before speaking. “I had my suspicions. Her aura is really dark. Black as pitch. But I didn’t want to really believe.”
“You don’t have to believe. You don’t need to take it on faith. I found a gris-gris in my box spring. That’s what was giving me the nightmares. I’m leaving, but I wanted some more evidence first, so I went there hoping for…” I shuddered. I hadn’t even thought to bring anything with me. I’d just run. “There’s an upside-down pentagram on her floor and a dead chicken on her altar. Plus a picture of me and Dastien wrapped in what I think might be my own hair. But that’s not the worst of it.”
“What’s the worst?”
“I had a vision while touching some sort of ritual knife—”
“There are a lot of ritual knives. That doesn’t mean that this one was bad.”
I narrowed my gaze at her. “This one was bad. I touched it, and I was in a dark room. It was scattered, but I felt alone. Terrified. So scared I could barely breathe. The smell of sulfur was so strong. And I felt like I was burning alive. Whatever that knife is—whatever she’s done with it—it’s evil. It’s possible that it wasn’t always bad, but it is now.”
Claudia blinked a few times before covering her face with her hands. “I didn’t know.” She pulled her hands down. “I swear. I didn’t know.”
“I believe you.” And I did. I didn’t know much about my cousin, but I knew for sure she wasn’t evil. “The question is, how much does Daniel know? How much does the rest of the coven?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t think Daniel knows anything. He would’ve said something. He’s not allowed into the craft room at his house. He always uses ours.” She rubbed her hands along her temples. “I would’ve said that we’d never allow that kind of darkness in la Aquelarre, but I guess I was wrong.” She sighed. “This coven might not be worth saving.”
No shit.
After my reception at the schoolhouse and the fact that only a handful of people had even come by to say hello, I’d been thinking more and more that the coven was a lost cause. La Aquelarre needed to be dissolved. Disbanded. Whatever it was called, but it needed to go away.
But after what I’d seen in Luciana’s house, no fucking way. This place was bad news and just breaking the coven up wasn’t going to cut it.
My gut was telling me to run. Now. Fast. Before anything else happened.
I wasn’t sure if I’d even closed Luciana’s back door. She was going to know I’d been there. And if she was really involved in dark magic, she was going to retaliate. She didn’t want me around. She wanted to control me. To manipulate and use me. But I wouldn’t allow that.
Dastien had been right. Caving to her had been a bad idea. I should’ve never come here.
I stood up. “I
f you come with me—if you and whoever you know, and I mean know, is good—come with me to St. Ailbe’s, the pack can protect you. But I’m leaving. If I ever come back here, it won’t be on friendly terms.”
Claudia blinked as she tried to take in my words. “I…I…I’ve got to get Raphael. And the others. We need to pack. I can’t just go right now. We need time.”
The urge to go now was riding me hard. I’d left Luciana’s maybe ten minutes ago. I wanted to be gone within the next ten. “How much time do you need?”
“I don’t know. A day.”
A day was too long. I shook my head. “No. We need to go now. Like within the next fifteen minutes.”
She paced away for a second, wringing her hands, before turning back to me. “Raphael is out by the creek. It’ll take me time to go get him. Please wait for me. I’m scared of what Luciana will do if you leave and we’re still here. I just…Please. Do this one more thing, and I swear I’ll make it up to you. I’ll get everyone as fast as I can.”
Crap. I didn’t want to leave her stranded. If Luciana did come looking for me, Claudia and Raphael would need protection. I couldn’t leave them to deal with the backlash of what I’d done.
“I can give you one hour—and I don’t even want to do that—and then I’m leaving with or without you. My offer of protection will stay on the table, though. You’re welcome with the pack, but I’m not sticking around.” I stood up and felt woozy. I slammed my hand down on the table to keep from pitching forward.
Claudia shot over to me, steadying me. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I think that gris-gris is still messing with me.”
“A gris-gris!” Claudia said with eyes wide.
“Yeah.” I was so tired. I hadn’t been sleeping, and I probably wasn’t eating enough. And I hadn’t shifted. It was all weakening me. My body needed to run free, but I’d been following the rules.
“Okay. I’m going to know about that, but just give me a little time to go get the guys. We can be good to go in an hour. I’ll make it work. And then we can figure out what to do about the gris-gris and everything else once we’re off the compound.”
I took a breath to calm my nerves. I still wanted to leave right this minute, but I didn’t want to screw Claudia over. She was going to be leaving everything she knew. Of all people, I knew what that was like. “Okay. Okay. But be fast.”