I knew I was being mean, but we were on a time crunch, had people to save, books to retrieve, and demons to trounce.
I turned my back on her. I heard her gasp and call out my name. Tears slipped down my face as I rushed away.
“You should be ashamed of yourselves, all of you. A disgrace to everything the coven has ever meant. I may be young but even I know that this isn’t right on any level. Just because you’re afraid doesn’t mean you look for an easy way out because you’re too lazy to find another way. Disgusting,” Braxton told them as he slammed the door.
I stopped on the stairs with Jordan at my side and peered over my shoulder at him.
Braxton looked angry but rather sheepish, even cringing as he took his hand off the door. “Sorry Bridges. My apologies for slamming the door.”
“Tis’ alright consort Braxton,” was the reply he got, and the voice sounded amused.
“This really is going to take some getting used to.” He grinned, shaking his head as he joined me on the stairs. He cupped my face in his hands, wiping the tear tracks away with his thumbs. “I’m sorry that this is breaking your heart so, love.”
I gave him a sad smile, leaned up, and kissed his lips softly. “Thank you. I love you too. Now let’s go save the world.”
“You say the sweetest things.” He winked. “Ready to get some payback, Jordan?”
“Oh yeah, let’s do this.”
Jordan and Braxton helped Dad get Becca into the house. We had little time left, yet here I was standing in front of my own home afraid to go inside. I was scared to talk to Bess and her Dad, to let them know what Caroline had been up to. I was afraid of doing this spell that would allow us to work with the charmed rings. But most of all I was terrified I was going to mess everything up, not retrieve the book, and get Nick killed. Maybe he was even already dead. How did I know?
Having just turned eighteen shouldn’t be this hard. So much should not be resting on my shoulders. Becoming numb to my emotions was the only way I could even make it through the day.
Standing there in front of my house wringing my hands, I looked to the sky above me and wondered why the Great Divine would put such a magical weapon within me. How was it possible that I was to be a magical weapon against demons? It didn’t make sense.
“You’re thinking too hard,” Bess whispered, breaking me out of my reverie.
“Don’t I always?” I tried to smirk at her.
She paused, giving me a considering look. “What else is going on there, girl? Not that there isn’t a lot going on right now, but there is definitely something else above and beyond when you left here. What aren’t you telling me?”
I still didn’t know what to tell Bess about her mother. Would I break my best friend? Would she believe me? Would I end up losing my best friend because her mother made a bad decision?
“I honestly don’t know what to tell you …” I started, pausing in frustration.
“You girls get in here. We don’t need anyone scooping you up and kidnapping you too!” my mother demanded, standing on the steps with her hands on her hips and giving us a rather sour look that made me consider staying outside and not going anywhere near the front door.
Bess and I smirked at each other. She picked up my hand, giving it a squeeze.
“You know that no matter what you have to tell me that everything will be okay, right? You will always be my best friend. Till death do us part, girl.” She gave me a reassuring smile.
“I hope it never comes to that. I’ll settle for getting old, sitting in rockers, and catcalling cute boys while drinking iced coffee.” I grinned at her.
“I like that idea better.” She chuckled, pulling me up the steps.
“Everyone is in the dining room, or if Baxter has it his way, the war room command center.” My mother gave a resigned sigh, shaking her head.
Bess giggled. “Baxter has been playing too many video games.”
We walked into the war room, all eyes turning to us.
“Let’s get the party started, shall we?” I looked around the room. “Where’s Becca?”
“I had your father put her in the spare room down the hall. She’ll be able to hear us when she wakes up.” My mother answered, handing me a can of soda.
I gulped some of it down. “Thanks. Okay then.” I took in all the papers, maps, and laptops spread over the dining room table again. “What have you all found out?”
“I want to see your charm,” Baxter chirped. “Brax’s is cool. Is it the same as yours? And what about this talking house called Bridges?”
“The house gave its name?” My father glanced up from the papers in front of him in shock.
I nodded at him. “I asked, and it said to call it Bridges and requested we come back to talk to it later.” I shrugged.
The adults in the room seemed rather flabbergasted. The look of shock, dropped jaws, wide eyes, a few shaking their heads in amazement.
“The house has never spoken to anyone else before. People have tried, of course, but the house has usually just ignored everyone.” Bess’s father sounded astounded.
“And it called Brax a consort!” Jordan snorted in laughter.
That made everyone chuckle, breaking up a rather tense situation.
“Shut up,” Braxton muttered, shaking his growing-red face and slugging Jordan in the arm.
“Did you see Mom? She said she was going to the coven house to see what she could find in the archives to help us find the Coventry family,” Bess asked, enthusiasm in her voice.
My eyes went wide, all of us instantly silent at the question.
“What? What’s wrong? Did something happen to my mom?” Bess sounded panicked.
“No, no she’s fine,” I whispered.
“She was going to plan with the others on how to best get ahold of Sky and turn her over to the demons, wasn’t she?” Colin asked, his voice sounding broken and forlorn.
“You knew?” My mother gaped at him but the outrage in her voice spoke volumes.
My head snapped to look at him. I watched him collapse into the chair at the table, head in his hands. Bess looked like she was going to drop, which she did a moment later, her legs giving out as her knees planted on the floor.
“No, no, there is no way that Mom would do something like that. She loves Sky like a second daughter,” Bess murmured, lifting her head to look at her father. Her face was awash with tears, her mascara making black streaks down her face.
Colin lifted his own head, his gaze falling on his daughter. He looked just as lost as she did. He slid off the chair to kneel beside her, taking her hands in his. Releasing a deep sigh, he started. “Your mother loves you more than life itself and is scared. Yes, she loves Sky, but she would do just about anything to keep you safe. Even if it meant sacrificing someone else to do it.” Speaking the last words so quietly I could hardly hear them, he raised a tear-stained face to meet my gaze. “I am so sorry Sky. I didn’t agree with her. That’s why I’m here. I knew all of us could figure it out and find a way to save everyone, but I couldn’t seem to get through to Caroline. She was bound and determined to make this all end in one fell swoop.”
I couldn’t say anything. I could only stare. This was the end of a family. This was the beginning of a broken family. How did one come back from something like that?
“What did she do?” Colin asked me as he held his broken, sobbing daughter in his arms.
“She tried to convince me that being handed over to the demons was the right thing to do and that it would solve all the problems. That it would save Bess. Kept asking me if I understood, saying it was reasonable to do it. That the Great Divine would forgive her for doing something like this,” I answered him, sliding into the chair that he had just vacated.
“Is she safe?” Colin whispered.
“Bridges”—My father struggled over calling the house by that name—“has all of them secluded in the house and will not let them leave until this whole situation is resolved and Braxton an
d Sky go back to the house.”
Colin nodded at him. “Good. That’s good.”
Baxter knelt to rub Bess’s back in consolation, looking absolutely miserable. Bess pulled back from her father, swiping her hands under her eyes to wipe away tears. She looked at her tear-stained, mascara-smudged hands and made a sound of disgust.
“I’m going to get cleaned up and then we’ll deal with the task at hand. We found out some stuff that we all need to know.” Her voice was hollow and somewhat lost.
“Honey, you can stop—” Colin started.
Bess turned cold eyes to her father. “No, she made her choice and it was the wrong one. She should have trusted us and helped us. Not went against the Great Divine. She made the wrong decision and we’ll deal with it after this. Not right now. She isn’t important anymore.”
Bess got up, Baxter giving her a helping hand.
“I will always have your back, Sky. You’re my sister. No one or nothing will ever change that.” She stood in front of me, hands on my forearms. Her eyes searched mine as if she thought I would deny her in some way because of what her mother had done.
“Till death do us part, girl,” I whispered back, almost choking on a sob.
She nodded at me. “Damn skippy.”
She strode from the room with the dignity of a queen.
Chapter Twelve
“This is what we found out and where we’re pretty sure the demon duo Coventry is hiding out.” My mother leaned on the table, pointing out a spot on the map.
“Why there?” Braxton asked.
My mother looked to Braxton’s father Bishop, who had joined the research team after we had left to go to the coven house. I hadn’t even realized he was there until we all sat down. We had quite the crowd. The Conrads, the Hamiltons, and even Becca’s husband Steven Churchill arrived after Bess had left the room.
“Leylines. Leylines are all about power and that is exactly what these two are going to be all about,” Bishop answered. “We live in a very powerful and magical place, and it really wasn’t all by chance that witches moved here. There is power here. But here …” He stopped to point to one spot on the map.
“Hockomock?” Baxter asked. “That spooky swamp that we were told to stay away from as kids because it’s haunted?”
“The same. It is haunted. Runs right through a leyline and is, and has been, known for many hauntings. You’ve all been taught about the cult killings that have happened there since the times of the witch trials. It actually makes sense that this would be where they would go,” Bishop mused.
“Why wouldn’t they still use the house they have here in Fall River?” Bess asked.
“Not enough power there. Besides, the pretense of being normal witches is over so they don’t need it anymore,” my father said, raising his voice. He had a tired look, the dark circles under his eyes troubling.
“True, but what Bishop is forgetting to mention is that we found an old book in the archives that had a picture and history of notorious witches. We found Emerson, Willow’s father,” Callie, Braxton’s mother, said.
“But it can’t be that old. He’s your guys’ age,” Braxton said, confusion clear on his face.
“Ah, and that is the fun thing about demons. They can be any age really. Emerson Coventry is actually Emerson Crey, born 1670,” she said. Most of us sat there stunned. “Emerson, it seems, was a boy who thought the world should bow down before him. Very powerful in his own right and was always seeking more power to become bigger and better.”
“The problem”—Bishop took over—“is that during his quest for power, he made a deal with demons and became one himself. What he had not realized was that he had been intended for great things. The Great Divine had chosen him to be a balance of power for the weather witch of the time.”
Braxton and I just stared at them in shock. I was sitting on his knee at the table and leaning forward, which was good because I might have fallen to the floor if Braxton hadn’t had his arms wrapped around my middle.
Callie smiled at her husband and took up the story again. “When he turned dark, of course, that left his weather witch out of balance and her powers were out of sync, spiraling out of control. Sarah, the weather witch, and Emerson had grown up together, which made things even worse. Sarah tried to talk to Emerson, to get him to turn back to the Divine. She loved him. But he was too far gone in his search for power. There was a power struggle between the two. A rather epic battle of magics according to the books. But in the end, Emerson killed Sarah, though Sarah managed to severely injure Emerson, so he slunk off to lick his wounds. The coven thought he had died along with Sarah, but we all know that’s not true now,” Callie finished, looking up to her captive audience.
“So, what about Willow? And more to the point, why do you think they’re holed up at Hockomock Swamp?” I asked.
“Willow would be a quarter witch because of Emerson and her mother—a demon we assume. After everything that has happened, it’s the only explanation we can come up with,” my mother answered as she placed yet another cup of coffee in front of us. I nodded my thanks to her.
“What a mess.” Baxter’s mother Abby said.
“That’s an understatement, Mom,” Baxter muttered, nodding his thanks to my mother as she passed him a mug.
“So how do we find them? How do we defeat them?” Braxton asked, one arm hugging me closer to him.
“First, we need to do that spell that Bridges told us about.” Jordan thumped the book that the house had given us onto the table.
“Frig, I had almost forgotten about that,” I mumbled, placing my cup back on the table.
“I don’t ever remember seeing that book in the library,” Steven Churchill said as he reached to touch the book.
“I don’t know what to tell you. We asked about how to work the charms and this is what Bridges gave us. He said that there was a spell to use in emergencies to have the knowledge of how to use them quickly,” Jordan said, glancing at his watch and seeing how few hours we had left. Every single one of us looked exhausted. “I think this constitutes an emergency.”
Nods and murmured agreements filled the room.
“Then let’s get brewing, shall we?” He grinned.
Bridges had been right. The spell had been a simple one to cast. It stated we would have instant knowledge and know-how on how to use the charm rings, but after five hours that knowledge would leave and we would really have to buckle down to learn how to use the charms properly. The spell could only be used twice in the lifetime of the chosen couple, so it had better be put to good use. We figured this was one of those times for sure. Hopefully, we would never have to use the spell again anyway.
Just as we had finished spelling, my cell phone rang. Nick’s name appeared on the screen. I saw Jordan’s anxious face when he saw his twin’s name. Braxton gave me an encouraging smile. I swiped the screen to answer it and hit speaker so everyone could hear us.
“Hello?” I said cautiously. I knew it would be too good to be true that Nick had managed to get away.
“Well, hello to you, too Sky. How are you doing? Ready to give up your magic yet?” Willow’s cute southern voice purred.
Jordan actually growled. Willow giggled.
“Oh my, is that the dear twin of my lover here? Is that you Jordan?” she asked, still giggling. “Do you even want your brother back? I mean, he is demon tainted now. Does that matter to you?”
“Of course I want my brother back.” Jordan spoke through clenched teeth.
“Then convince dear Sky that she needs to give up her weather witch power and you can have your brother back,” Willow said simply. “Easy as that.”
“Don’t listen to her Sky! She’s lying. She won’t ever let me go. Don’t do what she asks!” Nick yelled.
“Enough of that!” Willow snapped. We heard an extremely hard slapping sound. Without seeing it, we all knew that Willow had just smacked Nick.
“Don’t you hurt him! Don’t—” I blurted. I
was braced against the kitchen island, almost poised as if I could jump into the phone and try to save Nick right then and there.
“Don’t what?” Willow interrupted me. “I will do whatever I need to do to get what my father wants. He wants you Sky. He wants your power. You will give it to him to save dear Nick and get the book of the coven back, or things will get really dicey. And you really don’t want to know what will happen then. So be a dear and surrender now.”
I hung my head, tears falling to the countertop. Braxton put his hands on my shoulders in comfort. Jordan reached over to hold one of my hands, Baxter and Bess both grabbing the other one. I wasn’t alone in this. I knew that, but dang if this wasn’t a bit overwhelming.
“Where do we do this? And what guarantee do I have that I get Nick and the book back?”
She started to laugh. “You have none, of course. I’m a demon. I’ll call back in a little bit with the details.” She hung up.
Chapter Thirteen
We had done several spells while brewing. One had been a tracer spell. Becca had woken up when we started brewing and suggested it. It was a spell that used Jordan’s blood, and since he was Nick’s twin, there wouldn’t be a stronger one. It had shown right on the map that it was indeed Hockomock swamp that we would be heading to.
Braxton and I drove together. We knew that Willow and Emerson wouldn’t allow anyone else near them. That didn’t mean we were going in alone, though. All the others were in separate vehicles and coming in at different points as backup.
We were almost to Hockomock swamp when my cell rang again. Braxton pulled over to the side of the road. We didn’t want them to hear that we were driving when we answered.
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