“She suddenly remembered there was a restroom upstairs as well,” Tobias answered me as he placed a hand on my shoulder to lead me out.
“Did you put the memory there?”
“Perhaps.”
He led me toward the back of the courthouse, knowing that the front was full of reporters just itching to get another photo of me. “I think it’s time you met a friend of mine,” he said. “Someone I’ve known for a few decades now.”
“A vampire?”
“No,” he replied. “A luxra. One who specializes in potion making. And supplying necessary ingredients. If you had asked me, I would have provided the necessary tools you needed for your little experiments in the library’s hidden room. Far better than kitchenware.”
I stopped in my tracks. “You let me believe the whole time that I was keeping it a secret. Why?”
“You’re entitled to some sense of privacy. And you can’t be expected to twiddle your thumbs all day. I knew you had to be up to something. And I’m not one to tell a witchling not to partake in their craft. I’d give anything to have mine back.”
We stepped outside the back door of the courthouse and into the roofed parking lot. A man was standing in the shadows of one of the pillars. Even from behind, I knew exactly who it was. I knew his suit. I knew his hair. I knew his tall and muscular stature. It was difficult to forget.
“Nathaniel!” I blinked my eyes a few times, unsure if I was really seeing him. Two months! He went two months with barely a word. Barely a whisper. Only that he was busy on Tobias’s orders and he couldn’t talk.
I walked right up to him, waiting for him to say something. To tell me he was glad to see me. Maybe even embrace me? I honestly don’t know what I was expecting. But it wasn’t for Nathaniel to let his eyes graze over me for a split second and then not even acknowledge my existence.
“Master,” he said with a slight bow of his head toward Tobias.
“Nathaniel,” I interrupted his greeting to Tobias. “What are you doing here?”
He didn’t make eye contact with me. He was strictly focused on Tobias.
“What progress have you made?” Tobias asked, sounding a bit irritated that Nathaniel was there at all.
“We should see the final results tonight,” he answered.
“Good. Head back to D.C. once you’ve finished and we’ll move on from there.”
“Nathaniel!” I practically hollered his name, not caring about whatever vampire decorum I was breaking between the two of them. “Have you been in Dilton this whole time? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was ordered not to,” he said without so much as a glance in my direction.
I looked back at Tobias who seemed pleased. But pleased about what? “What’s going on?” I growled, not liking this pattern of being ignored when there was obviously a detail I was intentionally left out of.
“Sorry, Harper,” said Tobias, finally giving me his attention. “I couldn’t tell you. There was too much risk of discovery. There still is in fact.” He looked back at Nathaniel. “Make sure you’re not seen. I’ll expect you around midnight.”
Nathaniel gave another small nod of his head, standing stoically and obediently before his master.
Tobias brought his arm around my shoulder to steer me away.
“No!” I said, swerving away from his hand. “Tell me what’s going on. If Nathaniel can’t, then you tell me.”
“You’re in no position to make demands, Harper,” he said, back to being a coven master again and not just a sort of bodyguard. “The last time you insisted on doing things your way, you made the vixra quite angry. Don’t be so foolish as to forget your place once more.”
“I know my place!” I hollered. “It was protecting Emily. And my sister. The two of you blocked me from being able to do that. And thanks to the two of you, I failed them both. I’m still failing!”
“We’re leaving now, Harper,” said Tobias, taking me by the shoulders and not giving me a choice in the matter.
I couldn’t help but look back at Nathaniel as Tobias marched me away and into the car parked nearby. Nathaniel finally made eye contact with me. And they said one clear and salient thing. He was sorry he had to be so brash with me. And he wasn’t being given a choice.
I made sure to sit as far away from Tobias as I could once we were in the back seat of the car and the driver took off. I ducked my head once I saw the reporters in front of the courthouse as we drove by.
“They’re out of sight now,” Tobias said after we made it to a busy street.
I raised my head to see Dilton’s town center for what I felt like might be the last time. I wasn’t sure I wanted to return. It wouldn’t be the place I remembered. I would never truly be welcome again.
“What are you doing?” I asked Tobias, angry all over again that he was keeping things from me. He told me to use my anger. So I did. I let my anger brew inside me. Only not in the way he wanted me to. It was aimed directly at him.
His expression was serious. Unmoving and undeterred. “I’m doing what’s necessary.”
“Only what you believe to be necessary,” I spat.
For the first time since I saw Tobias sitting on his throne-like chair beneath the Library of Congress before the entire Catach-Brayin, I feared him. I feared what he might say. What he might do. What he was thinking. He was back to being cold. Lethal. And dangerous. A warning not to pry too deep into his affairs.
“I’ve been alive a great deal longer than you, Harper. I will do what I think best to keep my coven alive. To keep other witchlings alive. And to keep you alive. Do not question my actions and do not ever try interfering with them.”
“I…interfering?” I stammered, suddenly nervous to speak. “What do you think I’m going to do? I don’t exactly have free will anymore. I’m a pawn to everyone around me. To Nathaniel. To you. Even to the vixra. I’m something to be dealt with.”
He didn’t answer me. Nor did he try to suggest that I was wrong. He was quiet all the way back to my house.
I didn’t move to take off my seatbelt when we pulled up the driveway. I sat there with my hands folded in my lap, too afraid to move. I had turned into a dog who was afraid of her master. Afraid to step out of line. After all, the last time I stepped over the line I was intentionally imprisoned by blood magic to stay in my sister’s house. Even when she was trying to kill me.
“Go inside,” said Tobias. “Gather whatever you want to bring with you back to D.C. You won’t be coming back for a long time.”
I opened the car door and went inside. As I walked through the house, taking a few items here or there and packing them in Caleb’s old backpack he used for work, I did my best to remind myself Dilton hadn’t been good to me lately. Caleb died here. Emily died here. Madison nearly died here. I never fit in at school. I was practically a hermit for most of my life. And I was too afraid to leave. That choice was taken from me. Nearly all my choices were being taken from me. Except which items I could and could not bring with me. Would Tobias demand to see what was inside? Which was nothing more than a few of Caleb’s pictures and some sentimental items. I wouldn’t ever turn over Caleb’s pictures again. Not after going for two whole months without seeing his face. Except in my memories, which were getting so distant they often felt like a dream. A life that happened so long ago that I often questioned whether it happened at all. Was my life normal once? Was there a day when I didn’t wake up feeling nervous?
I stepped onto the front porch, closed the front door, and locked it. Not once after I turned around toward the car did I ever look back.
“You can revisit from time to time if you like,” said Tobias once I got back in the car.
“Afraid all your renovations were for nothing?” I retorted.
“No. You might come to miss it one day. This was your home.”
‘Was being the primary word in that sentence.’
We spent the flight back to D.C. in silence. We walked back into the manor in silence. We se
parated in silence. Or so I thought. It wasn’t until I was headed up the stairs and back to the room I occupied for two months that he finally spoke up.
“We will meet with my friend tomorrow to ask about what can be done concerning your situation,” he said. “Then I hope you will join me for dinner.”
“Alright,” I said, continuing to walk up the steps without looking at him. Because let’s face it. He wasn’t going to give me a choice. No one was. I was meant to be obedient. Nothing more. Tobias wouldn’t even let me go on believing that my potions were a secret. He had to make sure I knew that he was aware of what I was doing upstairs on my own time.
“Harper,” he called out to me.
“What?”
“Leave the lights on while you’re sleeping.”
“Why?” I asked, stopping on the top step but refusing to look down at him.
“Croxra are like insects. They prefer coming out after dark.”
A shiver ran down my arms causing every single hair to stand up. Was I in for another visit from Emily? Was she going to continue haunting me?
Before I could ask I heard Tobias’s footsteps walking down the hall and a door closing. I was alone again. And the last thing I wanted was to be alone.
I walked the long hallways back to my wing. The wing where I naively thought I had a little privacy. I wasn’t ready for bed just yet. I went to the library and set Caleb’s backpack on the couch then crashed into the couch next to it. It didn’t take long for me to regret that decision given that the scratches all over my back burned with insufferable fury the second I leaned into the couch. I managed to rest on my side during the flight home. Chairs and couches, however, would probably be off limits for a while.
One of Tobias’s maids must have known I was coming back soon because there was a fire going in the large fireplace to my left. I sat there for a solid ten minutes, not sure what to do with myself. Then I begrudgingly went over to the hidden doorway and pushed it inward. I sat inside the small room with Eli’s notebook in front of me. I reached for the pen I had used before and opened up the notebook, ready to give Eli an update and hope that he wouldn’t be as distant as he was before. Hope that he would say my sister was ready to come home. Hope that this nightmare might eventually end and the vixra weren’t actually holding my sister captive until they decided what to do with me.
Eli,
The trial will be over soon. My testimony didn’t go particularly well. I did my best not to reveal anything. I don’t think I put anything necessarily at risk but I also don’t think I can go back to Dilton. At least not for a long time.
I will check for any updates in the news but it doesn’t look good for Congressman Larsen. I have a feeling they’ll probably convict him.
How is my sister? Any idea when she will be headed home?
Harper
I set the pen down and got up from the desk, not expecting Eli to be there or even read my message until morning. Until it occurred to me that it was probably morning already in Budapest. And Eli was probably awake. He probably had the notebook nearby given the trial was about to end. And he was certainly reading my words.
The ink evaporated into vapor over the page, and I started getting a familiar sensation of falling as the floor beneath me disappeared.
‘Oh shit! The pen! There’s still some of the potion left inside it!’
I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t know what to do or where to go looking. But in a matter of seconds, I was standing back in Eli’s home. I was nothing more than an invisible spirit. A spy. A lurker. Completely out of my body and only with my essence to walk around Eli’s enormous family home.
Chapter 8
I looked over at Eli writing diligently on his desk with a fancy fountain pen. I searched everywhere around me to get a sense of where I was. It was clearly his bedroom and walled with stone and tapestries, much like the hallways had been. The door was carved with an intricate design and a heavy lock. Not that it would deter me from leaving. I ran through the door’s thick wood as though it didn’t even exist and rushed down the hall, peering through each and every door I came across to see if I could find my sister.
I must have been in a completely different part of Eli’s home than I was before because the halls seemed endless. Until I came to a large room that had a gigantic dining hall with a long wooden table and at least ten chairs lining each side.
There was a man in a suit sitting at the opposite end with candle light glowing before him. The same man I saw the last time I was here. The one who looked a bit like Eli. Or Eli looked a bit like him. He had to be Eli’s father. He sat there reading a book, not disturbed at all by my presence given that he couldn’t see or hear me.
Or so I thought.
I walked closer to him in order to get to the door on the opposite side, hoping there was another hallway leading to more rooms I could check over while I still had time.
No such luck.
“That door leads to the servant’s hall and down to the kitchen,” he said. “I don’t think you’ll find what you’re searching for in there.”
He stood up from the large chair and pushed it back then came around to look right in my direction.
I froze into place, watching him as he brought his hand up and a spiral of red light erupted from his hand and struck the center of my chest.
It didn’t really hurt but it definitely gave me a jolt. In addition to making my body come crashing down to the floor on my hands and knees. I could feel the floor beneath me. Which could only mean one thing.
He broke the potion’s spell. I wasn’t just a spirit walking around the halls and peering through corridors. I was there. In the flesh. Standing in Eli’s dining room with a man who was probably hundreds of years old.
“I thought I felt a presence the other day,” he said. “It appears my instincts were correct.”
I swooped my hair out of my face and peered up at him.
“Don’t stand there gawking at me,” he exclaimed with a rather elegant English accent that strongly resembled Eli’s. “Get up and face me.”
I slowly raised myself up to a standing position and hoped that I wasn’t visibly shaking.
When I was finally up he made a face that I hate to say I was getting used to. A face that told me he was equally as shocked as everyone else by my appearance. A face that told me he knew Georgeanna and he couldn’t quite believe the resemblance I had to her.
“What have you to say?” he asked. “Nothing?”
Was I even permitted to speak? This man was undoubtedly a vixra. Not just because he was residing in Eli’s home but also because he used his magic with ease to break the potion’s spell and command my body to form in front of him. Should I curtsy? Bow? Kneel? Use any sort of formality to address him?
One thing was for sure. I was more than a little out of place. More than just in a little bit of trouble.
“Are…” I stammered.
“Speak up, girl!” he shouted.
“Are you keeping my sister hostage?”
He grimaced slightly as if the question was bolder than he expected. “Hostage? Hardly. We’ve provided her with the best care available. Our top witchling healers are helping her.”
“But is she alright? Is she free to leave when she wants to or are you forcing her to stay?”
He stood up a little straighter as if to say ‘who is this kruxa and how does she even dare speak to me that way?’
“No. No, she’s not. Not until we can figure out a way to put an end to this curse.”
“Curse? What curse?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve stayed with Vallas for two months and nothing came of it. Are you deliberately trying to remain dense?”
Want a way to piss me off quickly? Leave me in the dark then accuse me of being ignorant because of it. It’s not like I had control over anything anymore.
“The vixra practically exiled us and we don’t get the newsletter on everything that’s going on while living in rural parts of the
world. So no, I don’t know what’s going on. Tobias hardly tells me anything other than what he thinks I need to know.”
He placed his hand on the back of the chair in quiet frustration. “Your sister will be free if and when we figure out how to lift the curse and move things forward properly.”
“What do you mean? Nathaniel said it was a prophecy. Not a curse.”
“The only prophetic part of the curse is the reality that you being here means we are in a state of decline. Witchlings are under direct threat and our kind may not even exist in fifty years. This could all have been avoided if not for Georgeanna’s mistake.”
“What mistake? What does this have to do with my sister?”
He edged closer to me. I was tempted to take a few steps backward but I forced myself to stay right where I was standing. Only my eyes looked down, trying to show him due respect and remain defiant at the same time. I wasn’t succeeding. He knew I was terrified. He knew I was perfectly aware of my place. And he knew I wasn’t going to understand what the hell he was talking about.
“You have no right to invade my home,” he said, refusing to answer my question.
I continued staring at the floor, not sure of what to do or say. He wasn’t wrong. I had probably broken some other form of witchling law by brewing that potion and using it to try finding Madison in the home of a vixra.
“Harper, what are you doing here?” Eli walked in and saw me cowering at the other end of the table. “Father?” he asked, looking to the man who I was now firmly intimidated by.
“She brewed a tolepa potion,” he said. “She was using it to find her sister. Unfortunately for her, I helped create that potion over two and a half centuries ago. I know the signs of it being used.”
‘My luck just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?’
I let my eyes wander up enough to see Eli’s expression of disapproval. And irritation. “I just wanted to see my sister. You’ve been keeping her here away from her children for over two months.”
“We’ve been helping her!” Eli’s father shouted down at me.
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