by Sarah Piper
And I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
We were all in the living room now, Gray next to me on the couch, the others leaning against walls or broken furniture. She was exhausted, clearly traumatized by having to live through this nightmare again, but the guys were strung tight as drums, the energy in the room crackling with barely contained fury.
We might not have always agreed on everything, but we were on the same fucking page about this.
The men who’d done this to her would pay.
“I stood in the root cellar,” she continued now, voice shaking like an earthquake but still fierce as fuck, “frozen with fear as Calla's body burned. Her hair singed and disappeared. Her eyes melted. All that was left of the mother I loved was a pile of charred black bones.”
Fucking horrifying. There were no other words for it.
Fiery rage surged through my limbs again, pushing me off the couch and into pacing mode. I was still pretty weak, but that was fading by the second.
No kid—wait, screw that. No person—should ever have to go through something like that. Yet Gray had. She’d faced that brutal attack, lost her only family, and fought her way across the country. Fought her way here to Ronan. To all of us.
She might not realize it, but the thing that had always been so apparent to Ronan had just become crystal clear to me, too. Our girl Gray Desario was so much more than a witch.
She was a fucking warrior.
“You survived, Gray.” Emilio crouched down in front of her. “You damn well survived.”
“But I didn’t,” she said. “That wasn’t my doing at all. Calla’s spell was like a bubble around me. I never even smelled the smoke.”
Jesus.
I glanced over at Ronan, but he was leaning against the hearth now, a million miles away, no doubt struggling with his own thoughts on all this. He’d known. All this time, he’d known exactly what had happened to her, exactly how it’d all gone down.
He’d been there.
No wonder he was so damn tormented all the time. So protective of her. Yeah, he loved her. But it was so much more than that.
I got it now. He’d seen her face down death, probably more than once. All these years, he’d wanted to make it okay for her, to stop this from ever happening again, but he couldn’t.
All he could do was be there for her when it did happen again. Fight by her side through the battles, help her patch up her wounds, hold her when the tears fell.
And one day, he’d have to let her go. Likely, she’d never forgive him.
Such was the nature of a demon at the crossroads.
My fucking heart hurt for him. For both of them. Hell, for all of us.
“How did you finally manage to escape?” Darius asked.
“I waited,” she said. “Days, maybe? My body went into survival mode. I rationed out the water and food, not sure how long I’d be down there. It was Thanksgiving break—no one would even miss me until school started again on Monday. I had no idea if anyone had seen the smoke—we lived out in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t know if the man who’d knocked on the door to warn us would come back.”
Emilio shook his head, shock and disbelief written all over his face. “You must have been terrified.”
“I don’t remember,” she said. “I think I was more numb than anything else. I just knew that she’d ordered me to survive, so that’s what was in my head. Survive. I kept repeating it, over and over, even though my voice was shot and my throat burned.”
Ronan disappeared into the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bottled water for her. She twisted off the cap and took a long swallow.
“Eventually,” she continued, “the fire died. The cellar door had finally collapsed, but when I got out of there, I realized most of the stairs were gone, too. I found some metal shelving in the basement and used it climb up to the first floor. When I got outside, it was night time, and so, so quiet. Everything was blanketed with snow, and the moon made it sparkle like diamonds. I remember being angry—like, how could anything have the nerve to be so beautiful just then? It was, though. I stood there for a moment, and I felt Calla’s presence move through me.”
Gray wiped away a tear, then leaned her head back against the couch and closed her eyes. Emilio sat down next to her, taking her hand in his.
“After that, I just… I ran,” she said. “I made it into town, got on a bus to New York City with the cash I’d taken from Calla’s room—less than two hundred bucks, but I stretched it as far as I could, taking on odd jobs until I could afford to hop on another bus, then another, never staying in one place more than a month or two. I stopped using my magic. I learned how to make myself look younger or older, to become whatever I needed to become in order to get fed at night, or find a warm place to crash. For two years, I just kept running.”
“And you kept surviving,” Darius said. “Through all of it, love. Do you know how amazing that is? How amazing you are?”
Gray lifted her head off the couch, those crazy blond curls brushing her shoulders. I fought not to reach for her, to wrap my hands in her hair and pull her to my mouth again.
“I kept running,” she said. “That’s not the same thing.”
“Running,” Darius said, “was the means to a very important end. Your mother told you to survive, love. She didn’t tell you how. You figured that part out on your own.”
“And now you're here,” I blurted out. I hadn’t meant to, and the words came out brash and clipped. Ronan glared at me, and Gray…
Damn. Her eyes flashed with anger, even as her face crumpled in pain.
“Sorry to inconvenience you, demon,” she snapped. “Sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan.”
Fuck.
I opened my mouth to explain, to apologize, to promise her that I’d spend the rest of my damn existence tracking down the monsters who’d done this. But unlike the vampire, I’d never had a way with words.
“So are we getting out of here,” I said, “or what?”
Forty-Nine
Gray
You’d think ignoring Asher would’ve been second nature by now, but he had an uncanny ability to push every one of my buttons, including some I didn’t even know I had.
I just saved his life. Just shared an explosive kiss. Just…
It didn’t matter.
Shoving aside that memory for now, I finished my water and thought again about the amulet. About what it meant. About the past.
There were things about that night I’d never forget—the fierce protectiveness in Calla’s eyes. The Hunter’s cruel words. But there were other details, long since lost in the recesses of time, sharpening as I told the story as an adult, out loud for the first time, start to finish.
I knew now that my magic hadn’t failed me. Calla had temporarily bound my powers to keep me safe. She must’ve known I would’ve tried to save her magically, and I probably would’ve died in the process.
She’d also cast a very potent protective spell over me.
And someone had warned her that the Hunters were coming. Calla seemed to be expecting it.
At the end, the final piece clicked into place, and I snapped my gaze to Ronan, my eyes wide with sudden shock. “It was you.”
“What?” he asked.
“The man at the door that night. Calla made some kind of deal for my life."
Ronan lowered his eyes. His silence was all the confirmation I needed.
Everything about that night shifted in my memory, making room for this new knowledge.
I gasped. “Her soul—”
“Was never part of the deal."
I breathed a sigh of relief. “The what—”
“I… I can’t, Gray.” He looked at me again. The raw pain in his eyes matched the regret in his voice, and though it cut deep, I knew he was telling the truth. “I’m sorry.”
Ronan had shared so much with me tonight, so many secrets and personal demons. But he’d still never be able to share the details of the dea
l that had brought him into my life.
“You’re her… guardian?” Emilio asked. “All this time?”
Darius wore the same shocked expression. Only Asher, clearly more steeped in Hell’s politics than the rest of us, seemed unfazed.
Ronan remained silent.
I closed my eyes as other pieces of my life’s puzzle slowly, methodically clicked into place.
When I’d met Ronan here in the Bay, I’d felt an instant spark of familiarity, though I could never place it.
Turns out he’d been with me all along.
It explained so much about my time on the run. Life had been a shitshow back then, but despite the rough circumstances of living on the streets, I’d always been strangely fortunate—a narrow escape from a mugger here, an offered cot in a spare room during a storm there, a job turning up just when I’d run out of cash.
“So it was always you,” I said. “Saving me.”
“You’re strong all by yourself, Gray,” Ronan said. I noticed he didn’t confirm or deny it, carefully skirting anything too close to the specifics of the deal. “Always have been. There’s nothing you can’t survive on your own. The point is, you don’t have to.”
I looked down at the water bottle in my hands, slowly peeling off the label, a million questions rushing through my mind. Ronan had arrived at—or possibly been sent to—Calla’s house to warn her of the impending attack, giving her just enough time to protect me. Somehow, he’d kept an eye on me for two years as I slowly made my way across the country.
And at the end of all that, we ended up here, in a city where he already had friends. A life. The other guys.
I wondered if he’d somehow guided me here, nudging me along the path from the east coast to the west.
But deep down that didn’t ring true. My gut told me that despite Ronan’s connection to the Bay, I’d found my own way here. I wasn’t saying it was coincidence—it never was. But Blackmoon Bay had called to me for other reasons, all on its own.
Despite everything, I truly believed I was meant to make my home here. To reconnect with Ronan, to make these friends, to bond with these fiercely protective, incredible, and yes, sometimes infuriating men.
To become part of something bigger than myself.
“So what comes next?” Emilio asked. “The killer is still out there, and chances are it's the same perp who trapped Asher and took Haley Barnes. He might have Delilah, too.”
“I couldn’t get a visual,” Asher said. “Guy jacked me from behind, stabbed me with a syringe. I was out. Woke up strapped in that chair, a guy in a mask snapping a pic with his cell phone.”
“What about your connections in New York?” Ronan asked Darius. “Anything on the Grinaldis?”
“Not yet,” Darius said. “And I’m still not sure about the vamps that attacked Gray and me at the morgue. But I’m thinking that the rogue Grinaldi vamp is the connection Hollis mentioned—the one who’d gotten cold feet and backed out of his arrangement with the hunter. It would explain the blood I scented in the first three witches.”
“Makes sense,” Ronan said. “If we could track that vamp down, he might have a lead on our man.”
Our man. They were talking about the hunter. The boy I once loved, now a man I feared. A man who’d stop at nothing to carry out his demented vengeance.
In ten years, the Hunter’s threat hadn’t faded. It always lingered in the back of my mind, whispering from every shadow and dark corner across the streets of the Bay.
But I’d learn to live with it. To survive with it, just as Calla had asked me to, because ultimately that’s all it was—a threat. Words.
Until now.
When I find you, I will burn you.
But not before he toyed with me. He’d asked those vamps to leave me alive tonight. Why?
How long had the Hunter been in the Bay? How many more witches would suffer or die before he finally took his revenge on me?
Would I be the last, or was this only the beginning of a much more sinister plot? The vampire and shifter blood, the kidnappings, the demon trap… The more I thought about it, the more I realized we were only just scraping the surface.
Murder? That was just the tip of the iceberg.
“Hunters have been quiet for too long… The witches believe we're on the verge of another Great Hunt.”
The words from Sophie’s book of shadows danced through my memory, mingling with the things Hollis had just shared.
“Ranting about wars and elemental magic and rightful guardians. Real crusader…”
I closed my eyes, wishing I could ask Calla for advice.
But I didn’t have Calla anymore.
“There’s nothing you can’t survive on your own. The point is, you don’t have to.”
Ronan’s voice echoed, grounding me once again. Bolstering me.
Whatever his secrets, whatever the terms of the contract that bound us, I trusted him. I loved him. And I believed that he was my true guardian, always having my back.
And now I had a whole pack of guardians.
Being here with them like this, working together, looking out for each other… If I’d had my tarot cards with me, I knew without a doubt the Ten of Cups would turn up. Just like the beings in that card, we were a family in the truest sense of the word. Crazy and intense and infuriating. Supportive and loyal and fierce.
Even Asher, for all his stupid outbursts.
Being with them… it just felt right.
It felt like home.
If that hunter thought he could take that from me now, he was even more deranged than anyone thought.
So. How many more witches would die?
Easy: Not a single damn one.
“I know how to find the Hunter,” I said suddenly, a renewed sense of purpose giving me strength. “But there’s something I need to take care of at home first. Will you guys come with me?”
Ronan smiled. “We’ll go anywhere with you, Gray Desario.”
Darius nodded. “You don’t even have to ask, love.”
“We’ve got your back, querida.” Emilio reached for my hand and squeezed.
Asher met my gaze, a brutal storm raging in his eyes. I held my breath, waiting for him to scold me, to remind me how I’d put them all in danger, how it was somehow my fault that he’d ended up in the devil’s trap.
But with a sudden flash of that bad-boy grin, he opened the front door for me and stepped aside, gesturing for me to pass through. “Lead the way, Cupcake. We’re right behind you.”
Fifty
Gray
The shovel pierced the earth with a satisfying thwack.
“Please tell me it’s not a dead body,” Asher said, leaning against the back fence.
“It’s not.” Liam, who would definitely know if I was digging up the dead, repositioned his flashlight, shaking the blond swoop of hair from his eyes. “And what is a dead body, anyway? The body is simply a vessel, never quite alive in its own right. It’s the soul that makes it so.”
Asher grunted and shook his head, jerking a thumb toward Liam. “Is he always like this?”
“You get used to it,” I said, biting back a grin.
Liam had shown up in my backyard just after the rest of us had arrived, arriving in an explosion of smoke and feathers that I was beginning to think was all for show.
Still, I was grateful for the support. I knew it was risky for him to be here in human form, and something about his presence comforted me—especially after he’d helped me with Asher tonight.
“You sure I can’t do that for you, love?” Darius asked, his own flashlight bobbing.
“Nope. I have to do it.” I hopped on the shovel, driving it into the soft earth, again and again and again, churning up the dirt. After only a few more minutes of hardcore digging, the spade hit something solid. “Bingo.”
With renewed urgency, I cleared away the rest of the dirt to reveal a small waterproof safe about twice the size of a shoebox. My heart thumped wildly in my chest, adrenaline
making my fingers tingle.
No, not adrenaline. Magic.
I clenched my fists, holding it tight, still getting used to the feel of it. Still recognizing that I had a choice in the matter.
So often in life our choices were taken from us. Sometimes we never even had choices at all, maybe because of the life we were born into, or because of deals made before we were even born, or because of people in positions of power who believed that our choices—that our lives—belonged to them.
No matter how long I’d lived on my own before coming to the Bay, I realized now that my life had never truly belonged to me. To any witch, really. For millennia, the lives of witches had been shaped by corrupt men—men who’d see us driven away in fear or killed—all in their endless quest for power.
Me? Crossroads deal or not, I was done letting other people decide my fate. Done giving away my power, living in fear. Done letting other people write my story and make my choices and decide who I was meant to be.
It was time to start choosing for myself.
I tossed the shovel to the ground and dropped to my knees, reaching into the hole and hauling out the safe. I turned the combination dials on the front, then popped open the lid.
There in the center, right where I’d tucked it so many years ago, was my book of shadows. I reached for it, the triple goddess design on the cover immediately responding to my touch and warming the air around me, filling me with a sense of rightness and wholeness I hadn’t even realized I’d been missing.
I pulled the book out of the box and turned the front cover, and a tarot card slipped out—one I didn’t remember putting in there.
It was the High Priestess from Calla’s favorite deck, a beautiful winged woman with waist-length black hair and blue robes, holding a scepter topped with a crystal ball. She stood on a crescent moon that pointed upward like the one from Calla’s amulet. Butterflies danced around her.
Warmth filled my chest. Calla was still with me. She would always be with me, just like Sophie. Just like my vampire, my wolf, my two demons, and even my strange, enigmatic Death, who had somehow become as much a part of my story—my destiny—as the others.
