by Sarah Piper
I turned to look over my shoulder. Delilah sat on a bench between Elena and Haley, wrapped in a blanket, sipping hot chocolate that Detective Hobb had brought her. Norah had been magically coercing her for months, manipulating her into doing her bidding. But like Norah’s identity spell, the magic she’d been using on Delilah required precision and clear intent, and Norah, in her haste to escape, had gotten lax. Delilah had begun to remember her true self. And just before they’d stepped onto the plane that was supposed to ferry them out of the country, Delilah pushed back.
“Let me be real honest here, Hanson,” Emilio said. “You’re facing multiple life sentences. I’m not here to play good cop or offer you any favors in exchange for your cooperation. No matter what happens in this room, or in any lawyer’s office or courtroom hereafter, you’re going to die in a cell. You’re going to die alone. And you’re going to die with the knowledge that you were responsible for the slaughter of your own people, and possibly the downfall of humanity.”
I didn’t expect Emilio’s dire speech to have any effect on the woman, but in the heavy silence that followed, her head slumped forward and her shoulders began to tremble. Tears slid down her cheeks and plopped onto the folder in front of her.
It was a long time before she spoke again, but Emilio waited her out, his hip cocked against the table, arms crossed over his chest, his breathing steady and even as if he had all the time in the world.
The strategy worked.
“You’re right,” she finally said, and I heard the break in her voice. The moment when she’d finally realized there was nothing left to do. No tricks, no spells, no lies. Just the truth. “The walls are closing in on me, and I’ve got nowhere left to turn. No hope for a future. No hope for freedom. So what, Detective, could you possibly do for me?”
“You tell me,” he said.
“Shoot me. Right now. Tell them I became violent and belligerent. That I attacked you, left you with no choice.”
“Not gonna happen. But I can offer you one thing, Norah.”
It was the first time he’d used her given name, and she looked up at him, a flicker of hope flashing through her eyes despite the reality of the situation.
“You give me the information I need—information that leads to the capture or death of the dark fae and hunters behind this, the rescue of additional supernatural prisoners, and the liberation of the city of Blackmoon Bay—and I might be able to offer you a few nights’ sleep, knowing that at the end of all your scheming and machinations and plotting, you were offered one last chance to do the right thing, and you took it.”
He picked up the folder and tapped the papers into place, then left her alone with her thoughts, joining the rest of us behind the glass.
“She’s not going to crack,” Emilio said. “I’ve got nothing to offer her. No leniency, no community service, nothing. She’s broken too many human laws for that, and she knows it.” He crossed the room and crouched down in front of Delilah, offering her a compassionate smile. It reminded me of the first time I’d met him officially, the night of Sophie’s murder, when he’d come to our house to investigate. His kindness was one of the few bright spots I remembered from that night, along with Ronan’s rock-steady support.
“How are you holding up?” he asked her.
Delilah blew out a breath. “I’m… okay. I just wish I could remember more. I was with her this whole time, and I’ve got nothing to show for it.”
“Be gentle with yourself,” he said, squeezing her knee, and Haley grabbed her hand, holding it tight. “You’ve been under her spell for months—no one blames you for anything that happened.”
“I know. I just wish…”
Emilio nodded. “We all wish we had more to go on here. But we’ll get there. Together, we’ll figure it out, piece by piece, just like we’ve been doing. Okay?”
She smiled, faint but true, and Emilio rose, heading out with Hobb to get hot chocolate and coffee refills.
When they returned, I downed the coffee Emilio offered me, then said, “I need to see her. Face-to-face.”
“Gray, that’s not the best idea,” Elena said. “She’s unstable, and as we already know, a master manipulator. We’ve got her cuffed and warded, but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t call up some spell, something we haven’t thought to protect against.”
“She won’t,” I said.
“How can you be sure?”
I glanced through the glass again, taking in her dead eyes, the dejected bend of her head. She looked nothing like the Norah I remembered, but there in her eyes, I saw a piece of her broken soul, and I knew. Her guilt ran bone-deep, and it was eating away at her like a poison.
“Because she’s already given up,” I said. “She didn’t lose control and slip up at Sea-Tac today. She wanted to get caught. She’s ready to end this.”
“Then why didn’t she turn herself in to the authorities?” Emilio asked.
“And tell them what? That she’s a rogue witch who betrayed her coven by aligning with witch hunters and dark fae in a magical plot to destroy supernatural and humankind?” I shook my head, biting back a sarcastic laugh. It all sounded so ridiculous, I couldn’t believe this was my life. “She knew if she got booked, Seattle PD would get in touch with you and Elena right away. She’s been a fugitive for months, and she’s known since Sophie’s death that you’ve been investigating her. Then she risks Delilah using her credit card at The Phoenix’s Flame? I’m not buying it. She’s not dumb, Emilio. She’s just… She’d just done.”
Emilio closed his eyes and sighed, and I knew I’d finally gotten through to him.
“Let me talk to her,” I said, reaching for his hand. “The minute anything starts to feel wonky, I’ll back off. You can be in there with me the whole time.”
“You bet your witchy little ass I can be.” He wrapped his hand around my fingers, his touch warm and protective, like always. Then, pressing a kiss to my palm, he said, “Alright, mi brujita. Let’s see what kind of interrogation skills you’ve got.”
Thirty-Eight
GRAY
“Why?” I asked, knowing I didn’t need to elaborate.
It was the same question I’d asked Fiona the night Darius had brought her back from New York. The same I’d asked Jonathan. The same I’d asked anyone who’d ever gotten to such a dark place in their lives that they truly believed bringing harm and death to witches—to anyone who was different than them, for that matter—was the only way out.
But unlike Jonathan, who’d always treated his mission as if it were God’s work entrusted to him by an army of holy messengers, or Fiona, who’d been temporarily blinded by love and devotion to a despot, Norah had no such convictions. And when she finally glanced up and met my gaze, I saw the echo of a thousand regrets in her eyes.
Her shoulders trembled again, her face crumpling like wet paper.
Like Emilio, I crossed my arms over my chest, prepared to wait her out. It didn’t take long; it seemed she was almost out of tears.
“I had two… two… d-daughters once,” she said, suddenly and softly, the words barely finding their way out of her mouth. I got the sense she hadn’t said them in a long time.
“Did you know that?” she asked.
I shook my head, shocked. I’d always assumed Norah was a self-contained, self-sufficient, superwitch. The idea of her raising children was almost impossible to reconcile, even knowing she’d taken Reva in. Of all the words I’d thought to describe Norah over the last few months, motherly hadn’t even been a contender.
“No, I suppose you wouldn’t,” she said, a small, faraway smile touching her lips. “It was a long time ago. They were around Reva’s age back then—fourteen and seventeen. Their father lost his battle with cancer when they were just out of diapers. I’d raised them up by myself.”
“I… I’m sorry,” I said, hating the flicker of sympathy in my chest. Hating that Norah was getting under my skin, but letting her do it anyway. “That must’ve been difficult.”
>
Norah nodded. “Oh, but it was worth it. They were beautiful. My greatest challenge, yes, but also my greatest joys. There’s nothing I wouldn’t have done for them, nothing I wouldn’t have given them.” She took a deep, shuddering breath, and my skin erupted in goosebumps. Whether it was more manipulative bullshit or the purest truth Norah had ever spoken, there was no way this story had a happy ending.
“I will spare you the gruesome details,” she said, “because they are irrelevant. Suffice it to say my daughters died at the hands of witches. Witches who sold them out to the highest bidder, leaving me to linger, to try to make some semblance of a life when all I wanted to do was evaporate clean out of existence.”
I glanced at Emilio and shook my head. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe her; I knew what it was to crawl through the endless hellfire of grief searching for a loved one who would never return, no matter what bargains you whispered into the darkest hours of the night. The pain in Norah’s voice rang true.
I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Could anyone really be so blind? So willfully ignorant?
“You’ve done the same thing, Norah,” I said. “Can’t you see that?”
Norah shook her head, willful till the end. “I know you think I’m a coward. I can see it in your eyes—all of you. Delilah, too. Even after she’d been under my enchantment, I’d still catch her looking at me that way. Judging. Pitying.” At this, her face twisted into a scowl, and she turned a fiery, wild gaze on me. “But you’re the one who turned your back on who you really are, Gray. It was so easy for you, wasn’t it? Walking away. Pretending that the witch inside you—that sick, flawed part of you—had never even existed, when all along it was festering, rotting you from the inside—”
“Alright, we’re done here.” Emilio reached for my hand again and nodded toward the door, but I held firm. I appreciated the backup, but I wasn’t done here. Not by a long shot.
“What you call sick and flawed?” I leaned across the table, getting right in her face. “That has nothing to do with witchcraft, Norah. It’s called being human, and it exists in all of us. Even you, and yes, even me. Especially me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life—hell, I’m probably making a few right this minute. But I have never sold out my own kind. Never turned a sister over to the hunters. Never bought into their bullshit about witches being evil and wrong. That’s on the witches who murdered your daughters. That’s on you.”
But Norah only laughed, bitter and manic, the sound of it making my skin crawl. “Do you know what it’s like to hate yourself so completely, to look in the mirror every single day and force yourself to find another reason not to carve out your own eyes? Not to slice open your veins and spill your own blood down the drain?”
I exchanged another glance with Emilio, then shook my head, fighting off a shiver.
Even at my lowest points, even when I’d cocooned myself up in blame and guilt over the deaths of the people I loved and all the pain and suffering they’d endured, I still couldn’t imagine such self-loathing. Such emptiness. Such a desperate need for the final escape.
“You are blessed, then,” she said with a defeated sigh. “Truly blessed. Perhaps you should take that blessing, turn your back on all of this once again, and walk out that door. Because trust me, Gray. This is not a road you want to go down.”
I turned toward the glass and closed my eyes, trying to gather my thoughts.
All the time I’d been thinking about Norah, going over every detail of our conversation at her house the day she’d banned me from the coven, poring over Sophie’s book of shadows for more clues, looking for something that would tie her to Sophie’s death or to the disappearance and murder of the other witches… In all that time, it’d never once occurred to me that she might be suffering so deeply. That something—someone—had broken her, just like someone had broken Jonathan. Just like someone had tried to break me.
Again, I was reminded of this lesson, this simple truism that we as people—as witches, as supernaturals, as gods and goddesses, as cosmic forces and elemental energies and unfathomable beings as old as time—just couldn’t seem to grasp:
Hatred was made, not born.
And unless someone did something to stop the cycle, it continued. I could rally a hundred witches, a thousand, a million. Unite all the covens on the planet, kick that prophecy up into high gear, wipe out the hunters and dark fae, and establish a new world order where everyone wore yoga pants to work and spent our free time playing with puppies and having amazing sex and coloring mandalas in adult coloring books. But even with all of that, hatred would always be the biggest threat, the poison that could seep in undetected and rot us from the inside out.
If we didn’t find a way to end it, it would surely end us.
Thirty-Nine
GRAY
“You can still honor your daughters, Norah,” I said softly, compassion sneaking into my voice against my better judgment. I turned to face her once again. “It’s not too late.”
Another bitter laugh. “They’re dead. It doesn’t get any later than that.”
“So honor their memory and do the right thing here. Help us.” I leaned across the table again, close as I dared. The violet in her fake eyes was starting to fade, the natural slate gray peeking through underneath. “Who is Orendiel of Darkwinter working for?”
“I was not involved with the dark fae specifically,” she said, breaking our gaze. Her whole body had gone rigid with fear. “My arrangement was with the hunters.”
“Jonathan Reese?” I asked.
Norah shook her head. “Phillip Reese. Jonathan was just a pawn.”
“Our understanding,” Emilio broke in, “was that Phillip didn’t become involved until shortly before Jonathan’s disappearance.”
“Your understanding—or, rather, your lack thereof—is the reason this was able to escalate so quickly.”
“Explain,” he demanded. And this time, whether she truly was ready to cooperate, or just wanted to make us suffer at the telling, she obeyed.
“This has been an operation years in the making, detective. Phillip has never lost track of his son’s whereabouts, nor his aspirations. And while Jonathan has always been unstable, Phillip recognized the genius in many of his ideas, if not the execution.”
She went on to tell us that Phillip allowed Jonathan to develop his weapons and run his experiments under the misguided belief that he’d rid himself of his father’s influence. But Phillip had a hand in things all along, sending rogue supers to infiltrate Jonathan’s operations under guise of joining the cause, tracking Jonathan’s every move and discovery. He’d been aware of the experiments with vampire blood, of Fiona Brentwood’s involvement. Even the hunters in Raven’s Cape that we’d assumed were loyal to Jonathan had been moles planted by Phillip.
“What about the witches in other states?” I asked. “Countries? Washington wasn’t the only state affected by this. Sophie told me that she and Haley had found communications from other covens, asking you for help.”
Norah closed her eyes, her lips pressed into a thin line. When she looked up at me again, her eyes were fully back to their natural color.
And fully engulfed in regret.
“Jonathan had already begun experimenting in other locales long before they reached the Bay, making a lot of mistakes and risking exposure at every turn. But through those mistakes, he also revealed much about the inner workings of his mind, about his plans, about the hybrid technology he’d been working on. Phillip saw the seeds of true brilliance there, but knew Jonathan could never pull it off himself. That’s when Phillip took a more active role, sending in his spies and surreptitiously nudging Jonathan toward the Bay. From that point forward, things began to coalesce quickly.”
“So you knew all along,” I said, unable to keep the venom from my voice. “The witches from the other covens that’d reached out to you for help—you turned them down. Not because you wanted to keep your head down and protect the Bay Coven witches, bu
t because you wanted to protect Phillip. You wanted to protect yourself.”
Norah didn’t bother denying it. “Phillip and I have known each other a long time, crossing paths many, many times over the years. For most of that time, we kept an uneasy truce and stayed out of each other’s business. It’d been a few years since we’d even communicated, when he suddenly reached out for a meeting. There, he shared with me a glimpse of his plans, and offered me a deal. Protection, survival. All I had to do was give him a little bit of information now and then, and turn a blind eye to his and Jonathan’s activities.”
“You are unbelievable,” I said.
Norah merely shrugged. “At the time, I thought he was my best shot at survival. This war was coming whether I helped Phillip or not. The hunters had come out of the woodwork, developing an international underground network that, unlike the witches, was united in a single purpose. There would be no stopping the coming storm. Who are witches to stand up to this kind of power, Gray? Who am I? We can’t even agree on the best way to cast a banishing spell.”
Rage boiled in my gut at her words. How could she doubt us so much? How could she take such an easy way out?
I took a deep breath, reeling in my anger. Hadn’t I doubted us, too? Wasn’t I still doubting us? How many witches had gathered in the lodge, all of them willing to come together against a threat with a thousand faces, all because they knew fellow witches were in trouble? That our community was in grave danger? And I’d yet to trust them. To fully join them. I was there, sharing the space with them, helping with odds and ends, sitting in on some of the trainings. But I was still separate. Still holding myself apart. Still not claiming my magic or my blood.