Gwenlyn’s nose wrinkled as though she couldn’t understand why we were so dim-witted. “Everyone has a coven. It’s your family.”
We stared at her in consternation. I doubted that Dad and Adrienne were a part of mine and Nora’s “coven.”
“What’s your name?” Gwenlyn clarified with an impatient roll of her eyes.
Her index finger curled in a “come here” gesture, and a twinkle of green energy flickered at the tip of it. I felt the answer spilling out of my mouth without my express permission.
“Kennedy,” I said. “Kennedy McGrath.”
Gwenlyn’s lips parted in what almost looked like recognition, but she quickly hid her reaction. “You didn’t know either, did you?”
“Know what?”
“What you are.”
When I didn’t respond, Gwenlyn let out a whistle. “Wow,” she said, wiping her brow. “I’ve never met anyone your age like that. Your sister is kind of understandable. I found out when I was sixteen, but you’ve gone this long?”
Nora shuffled from one bootie to the other. If she knew what Gwenlyn was talking about, she didn’t show it.
“How is it possible?” Gwenlyn murmured, more to herself than to us. “You cast an offensive spell in the square without even thinking about it! And you have some kind of ward around you. My hits should’ve made you vomit your brains up, but you powered through it.”
I tried to stand up, but Gwenlyn’s energy bound me to the dirt. “Look. Gwenlyn, right? I’m not here to cause trouble. I just came to get my sister back.”
Gwenlyn circled around to inspect me from head to toe. “You’ve never trained? No one taught you anything? What about your mother?”
“I don’t have a mother,” I bit back. “Nora and I—”
“Ah, that would explain it,” she interrupted. “Magic travels through the maternal side of the family. What’s your tragic backstory then? Are you an orphan? Abandoned? Parents killed in a tragic car accident?”
“None of the above,” I growled. “Now can you let me up so we can talk about this witchcraft crap like adults?”
“Oh no,” Gwenlyn said, shaking her head. “I’m not taking any chances.”
With a wave of her hand, she cast Nora aside. Nora slid across the grass, responding to Gwenlyn’s green power than her own will. The feeling returned to the lower half of my extremities, but before I remembered how to move, Gwenlyn summoned a pair of handcuffs out of nowhere and clasped my hands together behind my back.
“On your feet,” she said, grunting as she helped me to stand. “It’s time for you to officially meet Morgan.”
15
I stared across the length of the dining room table. Morgan Summers stared back, her cool green eyes narrowed in equal parts suspicion and intrigue. Nora sat on my left-hand side, watching our silent contest, while Gwenlyn leaned against the arch that led into the entryway with her arms crossed like a grumpy sentry. Now that I was inside, it was plain to see that the Summers house had not been built in recent times. The interior design was influenced by a peculiar mix of colonial and gothic looks, but certain clues—like the patterned wallpaper and updated laminate wood flooring—hinted that the witches used their abilities to maintain the house however they saw fit. The strangest thing about the house wasn’t the hodgepodge of interior decorating or the women that resided there but rather the power in the air. I had felt it as soon as Gwenlyn pushed me through the front door, breathing it in like a heavy perfume. It was weirdly energizing, and I swore that I could separate certain “auras” from the mix. Nora’s was easiest to recognize, even though it was the least prominent. Gwenlyn’s hit me like a smack in the face, but maybe that was because she was so adamant about keeping me restrained as we made our way into the dining room. Morgan’s was the strongest yet the most subtle. It spread through the house like a warm blanket. I had a feeling that no matter where you sat or how you adjusted your perception, you felt her in essence.
I rattled the cuffs around my wrists, shuffling in my seat to prevent my hands from pressing uncomfortably against the high-backed dining room chair. “Are these really necessary?”
She tilted one delicate brow. “I’m surprised you haven’t found a way out of them yet.”
“How would I have done that?” I asked. “I’m not a criminal. I’ve never been in handcuffs before. I have no idea how to escape them, and I don’t have the key.”
“You’re a witch,” she reminded me, and I cringed internally. “Release yourself.”
“Is this a test?” I glanced at Nora, who shrugged back. “Because this whole witch thing is new to me. I had no idea.”
“I find that very hard to believe,” Morgan replied. Her fingers traced absentminded patterns on the mahogany tabletop. “You see, Kennedy, when a witch suppresses their own power for so long, there are only two outcomes, neither of which are fun to experience. The first is that your power builds so uncontrollably that when you finally do release it, you do so in a way that is intensely harmful to whoever or whatever may be around you.”
My mind flickered to that moment in Chad’s apartment. That had to the kind of thing Morgan was talking about, but Chad came out of it unscathed. Or had he? I’d never really bothered to go back and check other than to make sure he was still breathing.
“The second,” Morgan went on, “is that you work nonstop to subdue the energy within yourself. While you might succeed for a time, this eventually morphs into your destruction. When a witch bottles all of that power up for such a long period, it festers and darkens. It eats away at your soul. Then, when the witch can no longer withstand such deterioration, she lets everything go, and her power devours her from the inside out.”
My throat constricted as she spoke. Every word haunted me. She had summed up my entire life experience in a matter of minutes. Except for that last part of course. Thanks to Nora, I hadn’t quite reached the point of no return.
“Take Gwenlyn for example.” Morgan indicated the younger woman pouting in the corner of the room. “She came to me roughly ten years ago. She was sixteen, like Nora, and just discovering who she really was. Gwenlyn’s gift is a rare one. She’s a medium, which means that dead souls follow her at every twist and turn in her life—”
“I’m sorry. What now?”
“I can see dead people,” Gwenlyn clarified. “So can Morgan. We’re the only two psychic mediums in the United States, unless there are more witches like you out there who refuse to cooperate with the coven alliance.”
“Alliance? I—” I let that one go. “You can see dead people?”
Morgan thunked a fist on the mahogany tabletop, demanding our attention. The room fell quiet. “Thank you,” Morgan said. “As I was saying, Gwenlyn grew up without knowing what she was. As a result, she spent more time in foster homes and juvenile psychiatric wards than with her own kind.”
Gwenlyn pursed her lips and left her guard post to push through the swinging doors into the kitchen. Though she had been a part of the Summers coven for over a decade, it appeared that certain wounds still stung. I could relate. I’d never known my mother either. It had apparently been a detriment to the both of us.
“The point,” Morgan continued, reclaiming my focus, “is that had Gwenlyn not found us when she did, she might have suffered a crueler fate. What I’d like to know is how you managed to go so long without your craft imploding. Who did you train with if not your mother?”
“No one,” I answered, exasperated. I pointed at Nora. “Unless you count my little sister, but we just started working together about a month ago.”
“A month?” Morgan repeated. “You learned to dismantle a defensive ward of that proportion in a month?”
I jostled the handcuffs again, gritting my teeth as they bit into my skin. “Look, lady. I don’t know how to get this through your head. I don’t know anything about witches or covens or spells or wards, all right? I’m just trying to not blow everything up.”
As if on cue, heat coursed th
rough my arms. The handcuffs lit up orange, like someone had dropped them into a pit of fire, and they vanished in a puff of smoke. I groaned, stretching my arms above my head.
Morgan leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up on the next one over. “See?” she said. “You knew how to free yourself after all.”
I rubbed my sore wrists. “I didn’t do that on purpose.”
“No, witchcraft is mostly instinctive,” Morgan conceded with a nod. “I’ll give you that.” She regarded me from across the table. “So you’re an elemental witch.”
“Sorry?”
Morgan held up a finger to silence me and turned to Nora. “Did you forget about the muffins?” she asked my sister.
Nora glared at her. “I’m not your personal baker.”
“If I recall, you volunteered to make those.”
“Gwenlyn volunteered me.”
“Ah,” Morgan nodded understandingly. “In that case—”
She snapped her fingers, and a pile of steaming blueberry muffins appeared on a doily-lined china plate in the middle of the table. The tops were slightly crispy, but they smelled divine all the same. My stomach rumbled. Morgan helped herself to the first muffin then slid the plate across the table toward me. I turned away.
Morgan rolled her eyes. “They aren’t poisoned.” She seemed to reconsider her statement and turned to Nora. “Are they?”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Nora replied sharply. To me, she said, “Go on, Kennedy. You look like you could use one.”
With Nora’s blessing, I took a muffin and bit into it. Either it was the most delicious muffin I had ever tasted or I was just that hungry. Warmth flooded through me as the tart blueberries burst like candy in my mouth. I felt better and stronger immediately, but there was something more to the muffins than butter and sugar. Nora had somehow infused her healing power into the batter.
“Did you—?” I began to ask her. Nora nodded. I took a second bite. “Wow. What else did they teach you?”
Morgan cleared her throat, and I remembered that this was an interrogation, not a sister-bonding culinary experience. I tossed my muffin wrapper across the table. “What’s this about elemental witches? Are there different kinds?”
Morgan gave a dismissive flick of her fingers and the wrapper disappeared. “Yes. Each witch has a specific ability that she shapes her craft around. For instance, your sister is a healer. You, my dear, work with fire.”
I felt a turn in the conversation. Morgan’s tone had transitioned from demanding to educational. “Is that… good?”
“It’s just what you are,” Morgan replied. “An ability isn’t good or bad. How you choose to wield it determines that outcome.”
“Are there other fire witches?”
Morgan nodded and finished off her muffin. The bags around her eyes deflated in response to the healing spell Nora had worked into her baking. “Elemental witches are common. We have a few fire witches in our coven. I would invite you to speak with them, but I’m afraid we’re facing more than a few complications as of late.”
I wrinkled my nose. We would get to the complications later. If Morgan wanted to know about me, then she would have to answer a few of my questions too. “How large is your coven? I thought it was just the three of you here.”
Morgan tilted her head. “You’ve been watching us.”
“Observing,” I corrected. “You did kidnap my sister after all.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t feel comfortable sharing that information with a witch I’m unfamiliar with.”
“Says the woman who stole a teenager from the comfort of her own home for a reason she has yet to explain,” I countered. “I’ll answer your questions if you answer mine. That way we can leap over this annoying stalemate.”
Morgan folded her hands in her lap, relaxing in her seat. “For a witch without a coven, you certainly embody the elements of a clan leader,” she noted. I remained silent, meeting her unblinking stare, and she relented. “Fine. As of this moment, the Summers coven consists of forty-six witches total, not including the seven children who haven’t been fully trained yet.”
“Forty-six?” I repeated. I looked around the empty room. “Where is everyone then?”
“Home,” Morgan answered shortly. “We don’t all live in one house. How did you get through the ward around Yew Hollow?”
“I honestly have no idea. I didn’t even know there was a ward.”
Morgan’s fingers drummed on the table. “It took fifteen witches to build that ward over a period of three days during the waxing moon. No common fire witch should have been able to waltz through it.”
“I don’t know anything about waxing moons or dancing through wards,” I told her. “My car broke down at the Yew Hollow sign so I walked the rest of the way here. That’s the whole story.”
“And yet I still don’t trust you.”
“Right back at you,” I replied. “Which brings me to question number two. Why did you kidnap my little sister?”
Nora straightened up. We hadn’t had the chance to fill each other in on the details of the last few days before Gwenlyn had caught up with us. What had I missed in her life? What had the Summers coven done to her?
“Perhaps you’ve noticed that I don’t appear exactly well,” Morgan said, gesturing to herself as if to indicate her poor health. “It isn’t just me. Our whole coven is likewise affected. Gwenlyn is healthy because she’s not a descendant of the original five, but anyone else with Summers’ blood is currently under the weather. Your sister—” she nodded to Nora across the table “—possesses a healing ability.”
“I know,” I interrupted, scooting closer to Nora to clasp our hands together under the table. “But I saw that salve you used on Gwenlyn’s face earlier. Don’t you have your own healers? Make yourselves better.”
“You speak as if we didn’t already try,” Morgan replied. “We were too sick to heal ourselves. We needed someone outside the Summers coven to help us, someone who wouldn’t fall ill to whatever ails us. Fresh rumors of a young healer with extraordinary powers reached our ears. Nora, for reasons unknown, has exceptional ability. She’s easily ten times stronger than some of the best healers I’ve ever encountered.”
Nora’s fingers tightened on mine.
“What happened that night?” I demanded. “The police found Nora’s dress covered in blood. What did you to her?”
Morgan sighed heavily. “We had to test Nora to determine if the rumors were true, so we sent a security guard to scare her friends away and compelled Nora to stay. The blood was part of an enchantment to throw off anyone who might come looking for her. You only need a drop of it for the spell to work.”
“And the test?”
I couldn’t ignore Nora’s wince.
“Was unpleasant,” Morgan admitted. “But Nora came through unscathed. A feat of excellence, if I do say so myself.”
My chair toppled over, banging loudly against the floor as I detached myself from Nora to rise to my full height. “Did it not occur to you,” I began, planting my palms on the table to look Morgan directly in the eye, “that forcing a sixteen-year-old girl to harm and then subsequently heal herself might classify as both physical and mental abuse?”
“It did indeed, but we had to know—”
“What about Nora’s state of mind?” I thundered. My anger boiled over, dialing the volume of my tirade up to ten. “Or did you not care that you ripped an innocent girl from her life and family? What if she hadn’t been able to heal herself? Would you have let her die?”
“Certain sacrifices—”
I slammed my hand on the table. My aura rocketed out, pulsing through the room and shaking the window panes. “You do not sacrifice a child!”
“Kennedy,” Nora whispered softly.
“No, Nora. It isn’t right!”
“It’s not that. Look around.”
I glanced away from Morgan, who appeared annoyingly collected at the head of the table. A moment later, I
understood why. Every witch within a reasonable distance had sensed trouble. Ten to twelve women of various shapes and sizes—all bearing distinctive genetic markings of the Summerses’ bloodline—had silently appeared in the house. They stood in the doorways or half-hidden in the hallway or perched on the stairs. Their auras glowed subtly. Most of them were shades of blue or purple, but the occasional bright yellow or pink stood out too. Their attention was trained on me, and though all of them sported bloodshot eyes and heavy postures, I didn’t doubt their capability to collectively boot me out of Yew Hollow. I backed up, hoping to put a wall behind me, but ended up bumping into another witch instead.
I held up my hands, letting my orange aura extinguish itself. “Easy. I’m not going to do anything rash.”
Gwenlyn had returned from the kitchen, her own aura shimmering as well. “Oh, good. You have a little common sense in you after all.”
I swallowed my retort, staring at each ill witch in turn. “What happened here? I read about Yew Hollow. I thought it was supposed to be some kind of gimmicky tourist trap. Where are the fall festival decorations? The bustling townspeople? The tourists?”
“It’s the off-season,” Gwenlyn answered. Morgan chuckled.
“Bull,” I countered. “Halloween is around the corner. This place should be teeming with out-of-towners. You can’t tell me that no one else lives here.”
“That’s the nature of the problem, isn’t it?” Morgan piped in. “Yew Hollow isn’t meant to be like this. In less than a month, we fell ill, the townspeople scattered, and everything within the district died. This is no occurrence of nature, Kennedy.”
“Then what is it?”
“An attack,” Gwenlyn said gruffly, crossing her arms. “Entire covens don’t suddenly contract the same disease all at once.”
The meaning of the conversation was finally beginning to dawn on me. “You think someone’s done this to you. Another coven or witch.”
Morgan nodded wearily. From behind her, a witch with a lilac essence who bore a remarkable resemblance to Morgan offered the leader of the coven a mug of steaming liquid. As Morgan thanked her, the scents of turmeric and black pepper wafted through the air. After a sip, she looked at Nora. “Darling, there is no doubt in my mind that I owe you the sincerest of apologies,” she said. “I’ve refrained from offering it to you for many reasons. Pride, spite, doubt. Take your pick. I am truly sorry to have caused you pain and to have brought you here to our town against your will, but I would not alter my actions had I the option to turn back time and try again.”
Witch Myth Super Boxset: A Yew Hollow Cozy Mystery Page 58
