by Jayla Kane
That would’ve been funny too, but no.
Hunter stared at me for so long, that same expression on his face it actually made me wonder for a minute if maybe my obsession was one-sided. I mean, it was entirely possible I’d dreamed up his responses to me at this point, right? We kissed ages ago. I’d been reliving it periodically, sure, but maybe the whole thing… I mean, our brains are funny things.
“Why?” His voice was rough; it matched mine, in a way, catching on something in his throat before it joined the air.
“Because of magic,” I said, and sighed, crossing my arms over my chest and looking at him closely. “They really didn’t—”
“They didn’t tell me anything,” he rumbled, still frozen where he stood, staring down at me, his eyes unreadable now as his face returned to its usual blankness. “Nothing. I had no idea what was really going to happen when I—” He stopped short and stared at me. “Did you sign the book?”
“I haven’t yet, no.”
“But she…” He swallowed again, and I realized for the millionth time in the last six hours that I really didn’t know him. Not like my body kept trying to convince me that I did.
“So, when you left, she said the Society dealt in real magic, which I believed, of course, because I’d just seen some douchebag strangle me from across the room while you turned into something from the zoo.” I considered. “Or maybe Supernatural—you ever watch that—”
“Miss.”
“Right. So she explained that I was from the Keller family, which is one of the founding families;” I glanced over at him again, and he was watching me closely, but I still couldn’t read an expression on his face. So sex with me rendered him relatively speechless—which, considering this was Hunter, didn’t say much—or made him… Was that concern? Worry? “She wanted me to sign the book to be something called the Maiden. You know anything about that?”
“No,” Hunter said immediately, and I got the feeling they hadn’t told him anything at all—like, literally anything, except yo, do this, or your sister dies.
Probably better to cut to the chase with Hunter. What would her sales pitch have been? We’re going to turn you into a frickin’ monster, big guy? So you’re even scarier than you are now?
They must not have known anything about him. I could tell you in five minutes that Hunter used his size, sure, but he didn’t go out of his way to intimidate regular people with it. Being a monster wouldn’t appeal to him.
But being further from that hovel he lived in with his sister would.
I sighed.
“She wanted me to sign the book, and then we…” I told her to eat shit and die, basically. Things went a little south. But she read me pretty good, even if she hadn’t gotten a bead on Hunter; she told me that I would be powerful, more powerful than I could dream—more powerful than she was. I sighed and attempted to recreate my conversation with her for Hunter.
“Why would you give me power over you?” I knew better than to ask for details. I would have to wait for that. I didn’t want to seem too eager, because, of course, now I was.
Assuming she wasn’t lying, which I should’ve.
“I want the Ashwood Society to return to its original mission,” she told me, and there wasn’t a hint of deception in her voice. “It seems ridiculous, doesn’t it, that the most powerful people in the world—people who can use magic—aren’t allowed to be open about it? Why are ordinary people running things?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped, “maybe because people like you are magic? And you’re trash?”
“I know what I’m worth,” she said, but I could tell I’d gotten under skin a little bit. I’m a brat. Don’t fucking care. I know my sisters spoiled me, but I also understand the way the world works, and this woman was vermin. There was a good chance someone more powerful was pulling her strings, but it seemed odd to me that she was alone in this wrecked room with only one goonie to help her out—and Mr. Congeniality, the Strangler, was nowhere to be seen. So I thought it more likely she was going rogue.
Making me powerful would somehow make her more powerful.
But how? Because this bitch had to know if she gave me claws like Hunter’s the first thing I would do is tear her to pieces—
I looked at the room around me.
Hunter did this.
“He’s magic,” she said, watching me. I’d given too much away. I sighed and stared down at my nails. “You know, it’s funny,” she continued, her voice that creepy chorus. “I thought he would’ve raped you by now.”
“Fuck you,” I said, then immediately resented being in a position where I had to defend him. “I can put up a hell of a fight—”
“Not against him,” she said softly. “No one can. He has more power than I’ve ever seen, and he’s just barely begun to tap into it.”
“More power than you?”
“Barely got out alive,” she said evenly. “He destroyed this room—it’s five hundred years old, did you know that? An image imported and preserved from the original family… Anyway. He spent ten minutes here, barely in control of the shallowest portion of his power, and almost decapitated me and did this. Charming.”
“Nah,” I said, curling my lip at her. “You’re the charmer. I think his reaction is pretty damn reasonable.”
“I think you like him.”
I laughed. “Like him? The guy that kidnapped me? Are you in high school?”
She was quiet long enough to allow me a full eye roll, still and silent under that black robe. “It’s alright. I know you think you’re better than him—you’re right. He’s an animal, isn’t he?”
“He’s a kidnapper,” I snarled, and I meant it. “I don’t like him. And I’ve met dogs that are ‘better’ than him, animal or not. But I still think he’s better than you.”
“Why? Because I won’t lovingly cradle you in my arms?” I stared at her, wondering how the hell she knew about my dreams, and she laughed out loud. “You should’ve seen the way he brought you here. Looked like he was carrying a baby he didn’t want to wake up—so attentive,” she sneered, and from the slight tilt of her head I could feel her mocking look even through the eerily blank space where her face should be. “Very gentle. Odd, I thought, but then we had someone go back and look, and it seems like you’d met before.”
“This is a small town. That’s it.”
“He held you for four hours,” she said slowly, and I imagined it, remembering the way I’d dreamed of him that night, my body alive with the feel of him. “Wouldn’t put you down—I guess he thought we might try something if he did. I wonder how much sleep he’s had in the past couple of days?” She moved her head again, and I could practically picture her, creating an image of her out of nothing as she taunted me. “He’d make a very loyal dog.”
“Why are you talking to me about this?”
“Because one of the many rules made to control people like us—people descended from the original families that formed the Ashwood Coven—decreed we cannot ‘meet the beast unto one another,’” she said, her tone adding the italics, the sarcasm coming through even with the eeriness of multitudes of voices crooning together. “We can’t have sex with members of the other families, can’t marry or have children.”
“Fine,” I said, shrugging, but she tilted her head.
“Do you know why?”
“Of course I don’t,” I said, glaring at her. “Because the thought of you procreating makes me nauseous?”
“Because it magnifies our power,” she snapped, and I was glad she wasn’t immune to my vindictive tongue. “Because the spells used to create the original coven—layers of them, blood magic requiring sacrifices you can’t even fathom—relies on the essence of Binding and Unbinding, of Life and Death.” She paused, staring at me. “Sex and murder, Artemis Keller. That’s what created the Ashwood Society, that’s what it’s founded on. That’s your legacy.”
“No,” I said, and I wasn’t able to keep the tremor out of my voice. The origi
nal coven. Spinning yarn into gold. Not so much, Ma. “This is all bullshit.”
“Is it?” She let out a slow breath, and as I watched, my sister’s face stared back at me from under the hood. Raven. My beautiful, brilliant, stubborn sister, so pig-headed and proud and… I couldn’t keep myself from gasping. Another exhale from her, and Hunter filled the corner, the black robe unable to cover the thick forearms, the hands as big as bike wheels. Another blink… And then it was my mother watching me from the shadows.
“Why should I believe anything you say?” I twisted my fingers together, then got my shit together and gave her a bored look. Entirely feigned; icy sweat dripped down my spine. “Everything about you is a lie. Including your face.”
“I have a face of my own,” she said softly. “And if you don’t want to claim your birthright, I’ll find someone else—the bloodlines are all out there, all over the county, the state. The country. Yours is especially powerful, and you have this… Connection, for lack of a better word, with Hunter Black.” Mom gave me a smooth smile, a practiced one I’d never seen on her face before, and then she dropped it, her lips barely more than a snarl. “Sign the book. Fuck Hunter Black. And you will be more powerful than you can possibly imagine, more powerful than anyone can.”
“I still don’t understand why you would give me the opportunity—”
“I understand human nature,” she said, her eyes flashing. “I know what you’ll do. You won’t give a damn about what happened here when you feel it running through your veins—the rush. The way everything alive sways towards you, then back again, in fear, in awe. You will be a god, girl,” she hissed, and I understood that this was the truth, the real meaning; she was envious.
“Why not you?”
“I can’t,” she said, abruptly leaning back. “I don’t have the potential—my bloodline won’t produce the same effect. I was able to alter my own appearance before I signed—small things, things that could’ve been explained away with make-up or a good trip to the salon. But then I changed my hair color by accident and I understood something was different.” Mom tilted her head, and it was easy, for a second, to imagine that I was talking to someone I trusted. “I grew up with the stories. Didn’t you?” She must know I had. She must’ve been watching us for a long time, if she knew about my run-in with Hunter. “So I started to believe, and then I started to dig. We’ve been magic all along,” she said, leaning forward in invitation, wanting me to understand, to share her excitement. “But we’ve been suppressed, controlled, misguided. I signed the book, and my power exploded—I can become any living thing now, but that wasn’t until I accepted the call of magic and slept with someone like me, someone descended from the founding families.”
I wanted to make a joke about how fucking your cousin doesn’t generally give you superpowers, but I couldn’t find the words, the spirit. I sat and stared at my mother’s face, still so lovely, so persuasive, even with the grit of so much resentment in the back of my throat. Whoever this bitch was, she had my mom down.
And I did understand what she was saying, was the real problem—I understood the appeal.
I would do anything for my family. Anything.
I would accuse a boy of raping me if he so much as gave my sister a shitty look. Even if I liked him. I would pretend to be a helpless, thoughtless drama queen if it meant my family had a reason to talk to one another more often, if it pulled Zella out from behind the counter and made Charlie come home once a week just to stick her head in my bedroom and ask if I was alright. I would give Raven a place to be, a way to know that she was important even if it meant waiting for her to pick me up after school every day. Life is so fragile—the emotions of the people around you, the people that matter, are buried under so many layers of suffering that it can be impossible to find a way to remind them that we are alive. We are free. We are beholden to no one, we owe nobody anything, our lives are our own. All we need is one another.
If I was this powerful, there wouldn’t be any more Creepy Kellers.
There wouldn’t be any more exhausted mornings when Zelle got up at four to bake the muffins Ma forgot about. There would be presents at Christmas, maybe in Boston, when we all went up to visit Raven at Harvard. Charlie could buy the damn orchard, whatever—the point was, real power, flexible power like magic could shift into money and time and safety. That, more than anything.
We would never be at anyone’s mercy. Never again.
Not even each other’s.
“Sign the book,” she urged, and I knew she could tell what I was thinking, that she and I had something in common. Something dangerous.
But Hunter didn’t see it that way.
I relayed the entire conversation to him, and was rewarded with a single, slow blink, as if he was absorbing the information all at once. A normal person would at least need to sit down; they’d have questions, even if I couldn’t answer them.
But Hunter just leaned against the wall, and the only way I could tell he was ruffled was that instead of watching every corner of the room the way he had until now he stared down at the floor. Utterly still, frozen in place.
“Hunter.” He swallowed, then glanced up at me. “I don’t know what the positions on the Council signify, do you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like, what does the Maiden do?” He somehow seemed so vulnerable, so lost, even with that incredibly unreadable face; I was starting to recognize some of his inflections, the kinds of tiny micro-expressions we all have that signify some change in our emotional state, no matter how well balanced or good at hiding how we feel we might be. Hunter was better than everybody at it, but we’d been in a couple of really, really intense situations together now and I was starting to notice those changes. “What does the Wolf do?”
“I think we know,” he said softly, and stared down at the ground again.
“We don’t,” I told him, urging him to look up at me—to stop looking so goddamn hopeless. “For all we know, really, it’s a coincidence.”
“It’s not.” He sighed. “Jake signed the book. Your sister must have, too.” He glanced up at me sharply. “Have you noticed any changes in her?”
“Just that she’s got hickies all of a sudden and looks like she hasn’t slept in a year.” I sighed. Fucking Jake Warfield. “Jake and Raven are in the Society? You’re sure?”
“The Rose didn’t say?”
“She said something about Raven, but I’m not going to believe anything just because she said it. She’s a piece of shit.” He harrumphed a low agreement and looked back down at the floor, then surprised me by speaking without having to be asked another question.
“She said the Wolf was the Society’s character assassin, but it was pretty clear she meant murderer.”
“On behalf of the Society?” I wrinkled my forehead, thinking. “If you’re made to do so much damage, how do they imagine they can control you? Why wouldn’t you just murder them?”
He was quiet for a long moment. “Molly was their leverage. And… I think she was expecting me to be excited about it. She thought I’d… Take advantage, I guess.”
Her question about him raping me rang in my head. “They didn’t do any research on you at all?”
“There’s nothing they could find would tell ‘em different.” His accent rounded out the words he said, made them gentler, somehow; it was an odd discrepancy with the rest of him. He looked up at me again, those dark eyes flashing. “Why, miss?”
“Stop calling me miss, Jesus.” I sighed, vividly remembering the first time I heard him say that word, the way the sun sparkled in those exquisite eyes when you were standing at just the right angle. “Well, anyone who talked to you for five minutes would know you—” You weren’t a rapist. Not even close; you didn’t like the kind of power your size gave you, and you certainly wouldn’t use it on someone you deemed defenseless. “You aren’t that kind of guy.”
“You think I’m that kind of guy,” he said dismissively, and it was true; I
had expected him to be exactly the kind of person that would lord his strengths over someone else. I thought if my pussy was too close to him he’d fill it with no regrets and a snarl on his face; I thought he’d rip that guy in the hallway apart; I thought he was a big, dumb redneck who probably had an assault charge or two under his belt.
“I mean, you are and you’re not,” I said slowly, and he didn’t move, still staring at the floor. “You… You could’ve hurt me pretty bad, back when we met.” This was the first and only time I’d alluded to the incident, and neither of us acknowledged the past with so much as a lift of our eyebrows. “And last night.”
“Why would I?”
“Because I threatened you,” I said softly, but he still wouldn’t look up at me. “I insulted you.”
“Never a good reason to hurt someone that way,” he said, and there was a snap in his voice. He didn’t even like talking about hurting women. Fine. What about men?
“You get in a lot of fights?”
“Relative term,” he said, then stood up and leaned on the wall, watching the door. I’ll take that as a yes.
“What kinds of fights?”
“Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Because that’s the other piece, Hunter,” I snapped. “I sign the book, I get some powers. I sleep with you? I’m Dark Phoenix.”
“I don’t know what—”
“I get super-powers. The way she talked about it… She was jealous, Hunter. She was envious of the amount of power I would have.”
“So? She’s…” He let the words trail away, but I’d seen the look of distaste on his face. She revolted him. The ideas she represented, the values she held dear, all of that repulsed Hunter to his core. How sweet—he was an idealist.
“Listen, that’s well and good for you to say,” I told him, thinking it all over. “You signed the book and now no one in their right mind will ever fuck with you again. You can do whatever you want—”
“Hardly.”
“You know what I mean,” I snapped. “You have powers, Hunter. You’re a character in a comic book now, you’re not frickin’ real, you can jump through space and time. So shut up with your judgment, okay?”
