“In any case, I’m sure he’ll be over the moon about your sudden reappearance.” Ronan smirked as my mask of indifference fell. He knew that I’d be screwed if Dominic found out about me. “How’d you manage it anyway?”
“Manage what?” I choked out.
He shook me, and my feet abandoned the ground entirely. The breath whooshed out of my lungs with the punch of Ronan’s movement, and I scrabbled at his wrists, desperate for air. “You’re alive,” he hissed. “Dominic’s tried every damn ritual in the book to make his mother and sister human again. Nothing’s worked. Yet here you are. I saw you vanish into the otherworld. For all intents and purposes, you should be as dead as my late wife.”
My voice was barely a croak. “It didn’t take.”
“This will.”
He set me down to grasp either side of my head with both hands, as if he intended to twist it off like a bottle cap. “Say goodbye, Morgan Summers.”
But before he could so much as twitch my neck in either direction, I reached swiftly for the back of my jeans to free the pistol, pressed the barrel to the underside of Ronan’s jaw—“Goodbye,” I said—and pulled the trigger.
A blinding bullet of blue light ripped through Ronan’s face, exploding out of the top of his head. For a second, I saw his eyes widen, then the swirl of tattoos on my arms flared as if in reaction to my use of the pistol. Ronan stumbled backward, releasing me to cradle his own head between his palms. The blue light of his bullet wound flashed again, brightening, and began to devour him whole. With an inhuman scream, Ronan folded in on himself, shrinking into the dark dirt of the forest floor.
And then he was gone. No trace of the ghost remained, and I stood stock still, my hand still frozen in position around the grip of the gun and my lungs working furiously to return blood to my brain.
The tattoos on my arms faded as I gathered myself. Then, with renewed vigor, I ripped through the rest of the forest at a breakneck pace. There was no time to stand around in awe of the pistol’s power. Gwenlyn needed me.
I burst through the unlocked door of the loft, practically kicking it down, then raced up the stairs to the bedroom. Gwenlyn lay slumped over, the bloodstained paring knife still between her limp fingers. The olive-wood bowl had tipped over, spilling her blood across the oakwood floorboards. It had pooled around her, soaking through the fabric of her clothing and matting her hair. I fell to my knees at her side, taking her ruined wrist in my hands. She had drawn a long gash parallel to her forearm, tearing into the artery there. Thankfully, the blood had already begun to clot. Gwenlyn’s unconsciousness was most likely a product of the ritual, then, rather than blood loss.
As gently as I could, I drew Gwenlyn into my lap, straightening her limbs into a more comfortable position. Then I pried the paring knife from her hand.
“Please let this work,” I whispered, my eyes turning skyward. I thought of Dorothy, watching from that warm, safe cabin in the otherworld as I attempted to save Gwenlyn’s life.
I drew a long, shallow scrape on my forearm, a mirror of Gwen’s own wound, wincing at the bite of the blade as blood welled on my skin. I flung the knife away—it skittered across the floorboards like a frightened mouse—and lifted Gwen’s arm again. Pressing my arm to the deep gouge in her wrist, I drew my witchcraft from the deep place in my core where it resided and breathed two words in Latin. Heal her.
For one soul-sucking moment, nothing happened. Gwenlyn remained unconscious, her pulse beating feebly against my own wrist. Soon enough, though, my royal-blue witchcraft snaked its way around our entwined arms. As my blood mingled with Gwen’s, my chest tightened. The tattoos on my arms shimmered again, illuminating the loft with a soft beryl glow. A sudden pain shot through the laceration on my wrist as the witchcraft began knitting my skin back together. In my lap, Gwenlyn stirred, her heavily lidded eyes opening.
“Nice tats,” she mumbled.
“Oh, thank goodness,” I said, folding over Gwen to give her a hug.
She patted my forearm, which was still splattered with blood and mud, then pushed herself up from the floor. Her hair was a mess, matted through with dried blood. She looked me up and down. “For a dead woman, you seem just fine,” she observed.
“Speak for yourself,” I said, smacking her lightly upside the head. “I can’t believe you put me through that.”
She examined her wrist. A long, raised scar was the only reminder of her sacrifice, though it gleamed with the same neon-blue light of my tattoos. “It was the only way to get you back,” she said, running a finger over the scar. “Plus, I knew you wouldn’t let me die. I guess we’re officially blood sisters now.”
“As creepy as that is, I thought I’d feel different,” I said. It was true. Other than relief at Gwenlyn’s survival, I didn’t feel anything that might indicate a deeper connection between us. “I mean, a blood bond is meant to share a witch’s power, right?”
“You and I have the same ability, remember?” Gwenlyn pointed out. She reached out to take one of my arms, scrutinizing my tattoos. “We’re both psychic mediums, so why would we feel any different?”
“I guess we’ll find out when we try to link everyone else.”
“Wait, what? Who are we linking?”
I stood up, taking in the mess that we had made on the floor of the loft. I had tracked in mud all the way up the stairs, and I’d probably never be able to get the bloodstains out of the oakwood floorboards. I bent down, collected the paring knife, and stuck it in my back pocket.
“That’s how we can free the rest of the coven from Dominic’s trance,” I said, wiping my hands on the seat of my jeans before realizing how fruitless the action was. My jeans were just as saturated with mud as the rest of me. “If we bind the witches together, they’ll also become mediums, and Dominic won’t be able to control them anymore.”
“That’s genius,” said Gwenlyn. “Why didn’t we think of that before?”
“Because it’s not exactly an option that we can take lightly,” I said. I opened the door to my closet, unearthed two bath towels, and threw one to Gwenlyn. “We can’t do anything looking like a pair of corpses. Take a shower. Wash the blood out of your hair. It’s freaking me out.”
When we had both rinsed off and redressed, we sat at the small breakfast table on the first floor of the loft to regroup. I filled Gwenlyn in on some of my adventures in the otherworld, including the details of how I had acquired my new handgun. Then we tried to come up with a plan. Somehow, we had to link ourselves to every other witch in the coven, but with Dominic’s trance, it was sure to be a challenge.
“We’ll just take it one witch at a time,” suggested Gwenlyn as she chowed down on a package of stale mini donuts that I had unearthed from my long-abandoned pantry. I opted for an overripened apple. Apparently, nearly dying had quite an overwhelming effect on the appetite.
“You don’t think Dominic will know when the trance has been lifted?” I asked, peeling the sticker from the apple and pressing it to the tabletop.
“Not sure. But we don’t really have any other choice, do we?”
I sighed and picked at a dark spot on my apple before taking a bite. “Nope. We’ll start at the main house to track down my mother and sisters. If we get Cassandra first, that will definitely make things easier. The head of the coven is bound to have a huge impact on the bond.”
Crumbs fell from Gwenlyn’s mouth as she devoured another donut. “What do you think is going to happen when we get all of the witches connected?”
“I’m hoping we evolve into an all-powerful superunit that can take down Dominic’s army of living dead without a hitch,” I admitted, though I knew the chances of that were pretty slim. As much power as the blood bond would give the coven, it still remained that my new pistol was the only way to get rid of Dominic’s thralls for good. Even so, I wanted my backup to be as prepared for the upcoming onslaught as possible. At the very least, the witches had a much better chance of survival if we all shared each other’s abilities.
I took one last bite of my apple, tossed the rest of it into the nearby garbage bin, and confiscated the donuts from Gwen.
“Hey!” she protested, licking powdered sugar off of her fingers.
“You’re going to crash from the sugar high,” I explained, throwing the package into the trash. “I need you on high alert. Are you ready to go?”
Gwenlyn blinked at me. “Right now? I nearly just died.”
“I was dead,” I countered. I fetched her bloodstained tennis shoes from near the door and deposited them at her feet. “We can’t waste any more time. Let’s go, kid.”
Once Gwenlyn had wiped the majority of the donut evidence from her face and put on her shoes, we turned out the lights at the loft and headed out into the dark forest. I had walked the path between my loft and the main house a hundred times, but now there was something ominous about the way the trees loomed above us. Even the light of the moon, pale and soft, was disturbing, much too reminiscent of the silvery pallor of a ghost’s presence.
As we neared the main house, the trees thinning out ever so slightly to reveal the backyard, Gwenlyn grabbed my hand and wrenched me back into the shadows.
“What?” I hissed at her, peering through the leaves.
“I heard something.”
I stopped breathing to listen. Sure enough, the faint murmur of a silky voice met my ears. Pushing aside a particularly bushy branch, I peeked into the backyard of the Summers house.
“It’s Laurel,” I whispered.
My lungs expanded at the sight of my youngest sister. She lay on her back, near the edge of our thicket of trees. Her long blond hair fanned out in the grass around her as she gazed up into the stars and cooed absentmindedly to the trees. Laurel had the ability to communicate with nature, so it was no surprise to find her out in the yard. If anything, it was a stroke of luck. One more witch to help us reach the rest of the coven.
“How do we go about this?” Gwenlyn asked, her voice just a breath of sound in the breezy night. “Should we just surprise her and pin her down?”
“Laurel doesn’t do well with violence,” I said. I leaned against a tree, contemplating our options as I watched Laurel swish her fingers through the grass at her sides. “Besides, I want to know what the coven thinks happened to me. What fantasy did Dominic plant in their minds, you know?”
“What are you going to do?”
Before I could lose my nerve or before I could think better of my stupidity, I stepped out from the shadows of the trees and into the moonlight. Behind me, I felt Gwenlyn’s fingers grapple for my arm, trying to pull me back, but I shook her off. I needed to know if my own sister still recognized me.
“Laurel?” I said in the gentlest tone I could manage with my wavering voice.
Laurel stopped singing to the trees long enough to glance up. Her vacant eyes drifted over me, almost as if I weren’t even there. Then she said, “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”
I approached her warily. “Am I?”
“Yes,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. “Are you a ghost?”
I knelt down in the grass beside her. “No. Laurel, it’s me. It’s Morgan.”
She tapped my nose playfully with her index finger, making me rock backward in surprise. “You can’t trick me, Dorothy. Why have you appeared to me?”
I stood up again, looking back at Gwenlyn. “She doesn’t even know who I am,” I said as Laurel gazed up at me in oblivious indifference. “She thinks I’m Dorothy.”
Gwenlyn stepped out from the darkness of the tree line, braver now that Laurel’s reaction was so subdued. “It could be worse,” said Gwen. “Dominic could’ve made them hate you or something.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said. I took a knee beside Laurel again, extracting the paring knife from the back pocket of my jeans. Thankfully, not every blood bond had to be as drastic as the one I shared with Gwenlyn. A prick of the finger would do it. I forced the point of the knife through the skin at the tip of my thumb, squeezing the blood out, then took up Laurel’s hand to do the same.
In an instant, Laurel’s long, delicate fingers—fingers that, in any other case, would never dare to hurt any creature of the earth—wrapped around my neck, her thumbs pressed to my windpipe. For the second time that evening, I fought for my own breath, except this time, I couldn’t simply pull the trigger of a ghost-killing gun to escape. Laurel’s expression was still serene and impassive, as though unaware of her violent attempt to murder her own sister.
My vision popped and spasmed with bursts of colorful light, but I could still make out the movement of Gwenlyn rugby-tackling Laurel, effectively dislodging her hands from my throat. Wheezing, I watched as Laurel managed to land a solid right hook to Gwenlyn’s cheek. Thankfully, Gwenlyn was much taller and broader than Laurel. She pinned Laurel’s hands to her sides and then straddled her, immobilizing my sister in a matter of seconds. Where Gwenlyn had learned her scrappy fighting skills I didn’t want to know.
“Get the knife,” Gwen said in a rather docile voice for someone who was sitting on the chest of another person. I plucked the paring knife from the grass and neared my sister, still massaging my damaged throat. Between Ronan’s and Laurel’s attacks, I was bound to have some gnarly bruising there tomorrow. If we lived through tonight, of course.
Gwenlyn dug her knee into the crook of Laurel’s right arm to prevent her from fighting back, then spread the fingers of Laurel’s hand. With some trouble, I managed to dig the paring knife into the skin of Laurel’s palm then pressed the small puncture wound in my thumb to the blood welling in Laurel’s hand.
As soon as our blood mixed, Laurel’s entire body relaxed. She stopped fighting the pressure that was Gwenlyn, and the vacant look in her eyes cleared away. In my head, a sudden awareness of the world around us flooded my senses. I could smell the crisp, dewy scent of each blade of grass. I could sense the maze of tree roots that extended in every direction beneath us. I could hear the breeze singing to me, humming lullabies into the night. The blood bond had taken hold. Laurel’s affinity with nature was now my own, and if the hazy look on Gwenlyn’s face was any indication, she had also been bonded with Laurel. I nudged Gwenlyn, encouraging her to roll off of Laurel, and looked down at my sister.
“Morgan…” For a moment, Laurel only looked horrified, tracing the angry red marks at my neck with her fingers. Then she threw her arms around me, drawing me into a tight hug.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled into her hair.
Laurel pulled away, her gray eyes shining with tears. “What happened? What’s going on? Did Dominic—”
“It’s a long story,” Gwen interrupted her. “Here’s the SparkNotes version: Dominic is an ass, Morgan has been to the otherworld and back, and now we have to bond the entire coven together by blood in order to put Dominic in an early grave. Got it?”
Laurel’s mouth dropped open. “You’ve been to the otherworld?” she asked me. “How? And we’re blood-bonded now? Morgan—”
“Laurel, I’d love to fill you in on all of the particulars, but we’re kind of in a rush,” I said. My voice was raspy, and I wondered if it was permanently damaged by all of the abuse. There was only so much a healing spell could do.
Together, Gwen and I hauled Laurel to her feet. She squeezed my hand. “All right, then. Who do we link next?”
“Mom, preferably,” I said. The three of us started across the backyard toward the main house, moving quietly through the tall grass. “She has the biggest pull on the rest of the coven.”
We crept up the steps to the back porch, wincing every time the old wood creaked with the pressure of our footsteps. I motioned for Gwenlyn and Laurel to stay back, tiptoed to the kitchen window, and spied inside. At first, the kitchen appeared empty, but then a familiar figure passed through the dining room doorway and laid a small, faceless doll on the kitchen counter. I ducked beneath the windowsill.
“Why is Karma still awake?” I hissed at Laurel. “And why the hell does she have one of tho
se damn dolls in her hands?”
Karma, our second eldest sister, had the ability to manipulate people with, for lack of a better term, voodoo dolls. But Karma, in any other circumstance, was so aware of the ramifications of her power that she hardly dared to ever use it. The fact that she was carrying one around was unsettling to say the least.
“It’s only eleven o’clock,” Gwenlyn pointed out. I glanced up at the placement of the moon. For some reason, it felt like the middle of the night.
“And Karma hasn’t slept through the night since you disappeared,” added Laurel. “Dominic may have altered our memories, but we can still feel that something is inherently wrong. Karma’s probably worried about you and doesn’t understand why.”
“Because she’s worried about someone who, to her, doesn’t exist,” I said, cursing Dominic’s trance once again. Not only had he turned my own family against me, but he had also drawn a dark curtain over each witch’s existence. For however long I had been trapped in the otherworld, my family had been suffering.
Laurel joined me at the windowsill and chanced a peek into the kitchen. “What’s the plan?” she asked. “How do we link Karma?”
“Well, we sure as hell don’t send Morgan in,” Gwenlyn whispered fiercely. “You nearly killed her.”
“Excuse me for not being a fancy medium and immune to Dominic’s power, Gwen,” Laurel shot back in a low voice. “I’m usually quite the pacifist.”
“Pacifist, my ass—”
I held up a hand to stop them from bickering. “Are you two seriously duking it out right now? You can fight over who’s the best youngest sister later. For right now, Karma’s in there with a very sharp pin and a doll with my name on it, which isn’t exactly an ideal situation.”
“Laurel should go in and lure Karma outside,” Gwenlyn suggested, still glaring at my youngest sister.
“What? Why me?”
“Because Karma trusts you more than she trusts me,” said Gwenlyn with a shrug. “Once she’s out of the house, Morgan and I can take her down and do the blood bond. Bada bing, bada boom.”
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