by Sarah Piper
My blood ran cold at her words. All this time, we assumed it was the magic. For so many years, it had always been the magic.
But if what she was saying were true…
God, how many other hunters were doing the same thing? Ditching the old ways in favor of electronic footprints and readily-available spy tech? How could any witch hope to disappear—to go truly underground—in a society where privacy was quickly becoming a currency not everyone could afford to trade?
“How did he track me?” I asked. I didn’t have credit cards or anything else in my real name, and I didn’t use social media. Even my cell phone was untraceable. At least, I’d always thought it was.
“You were different, Rayanne.” Fiona looked up at me, her eyes flaring with jealousy. “He always said you two shared a special connection. He never liked to talk about it with me, though. You were his white whale.” At this, the ghost of a grin crossed her lips, almost as though she were glad he’d finally caught up with me. “He’s been looking for you for a long, long time.”
I fought off a shiver. Darius tightened his hands on my shoulders, and Emilio stepped closer, sliding an arm around my waste.
“Enough, bloodsucker,” Asher said, his lip curling in disgust. “Your boyfriend’s witch-killing days are over.”
“Killing?” Fiona shook her head. “Oh, no. He’s not trying to kill witches. He’s trying to turn them.” She sat up straighter in the chair, her chains clinking as they weighed down her shoulders. “And he’s not just using vampire blood, either. He’s experimenting with all kinds of hybrid techniques—shifter blood, fae magic, demonic possession. The witches who died… that was accidental.”
“But… Why?” Ronan asked. “What’s the point of all that?”
Fiona tried to shrug, but the chains prevented it. “I guess to prove that he can. His father never forgave him for letting Rayanne live. He never said it outright, but I always got the sense that everything he did in his adult life was all just some elaborate scheme to win back his father’s approval.”
His father. Dirty Beard. The man who’d slit Calla’s throat while I watched helplessly from the root cellar.
Once he’d finished with my mother, he’d ordered his son to take care of me. Only, Jonathan wasn’t able to hurt me then—not physically. Calla had cast a protective spell around me, rendering me impervious to any attacks. The only thing Jonathan could do was spit at me and make threats.
Last time I expect a boy to do a man's job, his father had said, smacking the back of his head. Leave her, fool boy. Unless you want to burn.
The guys fell silent again, their minds undoubtedly playing out their own versions of the horror show she’d just painted.
Technology. Inventions. Hybrids. Experiments.
The words spun through my head, blurring at the edges. What did Jonathan hope to accomplish? If his experiments worked, and his father finally gave him that elusive approval, what then? Would they team up, hunt down more witches, set their little half-breed army on the loose?
Every time we got a little closer to the true path, four more branched off in its place, darker and more tangled than the last.
“Where is he?” I asked her. “Where does he do these experiments? Where is he keeping them?”
“That, I don’t know.” Fiona shook her head, releasing an unnecessary sigh I was certain was for our benefit. “He never took me there. After he told me about his experiments, I freaked out. I told him I couldn’t do it anymore.”
“Really?” I asked. “We’re supposed to believe that?”
“Say what you want about me, but I never signed up to hurt or kill anyone. I thought he was just trying to get his magic back. I didn’t want any part of that other stuff.”
“There is no magic to get back,” I told her. “Hunters don’t have magic. That’s the whole point. They’re just trying to steal it.”
“They say the same about witches,” she said.
“What happened when you told him you wanted out?” Asher asked.
She closed her eyes, shuddering. “He said it didn’t matter what I wanted. If I bailed on him, he’d go after my family. My mom. My little brother. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you stayed?” Asher asked.
Fiona nodded. “But things were different between us after that. He stopped telling me about his plans, where he spent his time, what he was working on. He’d come to me for more blood, and that was it. But it was obvious things weren’t going according to plan in Blackmoon Bay. He was unraveling. I couldn’t… I couldn’t stay. I confronted him again, told him I was absolutely done this time.”
“What did he say?” Asher asked.
“Nothing. Not one word. Just nodded and opened the door, waiting for me to walk out. His silence was worse than any outright threat. I’ve spent every day since wondering if today’s the day he’s going to come after me, or worse—my family.” Her eyes flicked to Darius, glazing with what I was certain were fake tears. “I lied when I said I thought you were a visitor. I thought you were one of Jonathan’s men, finally coming to end me. Truthfully, I was relieved. I can’t… I can’t keep living like this.”
“Cry me an ocean, Fiona,” I said, breaking free from Darius and Emilio. “Who exactly are we supposed to feel sorry for here? You? Your mother? Your brother? What about the witches he’s killed? What about the friends and family left to pick up the pieces?”
“You don’t have to like me, Gray.” she said, lowering her head once again. “You can spend the rest of your life hating me—I get it. But if I were in your shoes right now, I’d spend less energy blaming me for a past that I can’t change and more energy trying to figure out how to stop him before one of his experiments actually succeeds.”
“That’s good advice, Feefs,” I said. “You’re wrong about one thing, though. I don’t hate you. Hating someone requires giving a shit about them in the first place.”
“We were friends once,” she said, her eyes softening.
“That was a long time ago.”
“For what it’s worth, I… I’m sorry.”
Her voice broke on the last word, tears streaking her face. For a fraction of a second, my heart hurt for her. She’d spent her entire life loving a man who never loved her a back. A man whom I suspected was incapable of loving anyone but himself. She’d sacrificed her humanity for him, and in the end, he’d probably betray her anyway, just like he’d done to me.
So maybe I should’ve felt sorry for Fiona. For the girl I went to school with, the one who followed us around and wanted so, so badly to be liked.
But this thing in front of me was not Fiona; as far as I was concerned, that girl died. She was merely a vampire who’d colluded with the man who’s family killed my mother. She’d helped him murder Sophie. Because of her actions, he was able to kill and hurt and kidnap other witches. He was hurting them still.
And then, when she finally decided to grow a shred of a conscience, instead of trying to make things right, she turned tail and ran.
Now she wanted me to believe that she was actually sorry?
Burn her…
“Fiona?” I said, and she nodded, a faint hope flickering in her eyes.
“Your blood is the reason my best friend is dead. So as far as I’m concerned, you can take your apology to hell.” Magic flamed to life in my hand, encasing the stake in a blue glow. In a blur so fast I barely saw it happen, I slammed it straight through Fiona’s thigh, reveling in the sound of her agony.
Her leg trembled, then stopped, the poison from the hawthorn wood quickly working into her bloodstream.
I had no idea what effect, if any, my magic would have on her. But damn, that had felt good. Better than good. Fucking amazing.
“You have no idea what it’s like!” she shouted, her body twisting as she began to lose control of her muscles. “It’s so easy for you, isn’t it? To have friends. To have people who care about you no matter what.”
“It’s never easy as long as people like you are o
ut there, destroying lives for no other reason than your own life didn’t turn out how you wanted it.”
“It’s not fair,” she said, her voice growing faint.
“Nope. But you got into bed with the devil anyway.”
“Yeah? And how long were you in his bed before you led him straight to your mother’s house?”
Her words should’ve cut me deep, but they didn’t. They couldn’t. Those particular grooves in my heart were well-worn, sliced open and scarred over so many times by my own incessant guilt that I could no longer feel them.
“I was a dumb kid who didn’t know any better,” I said. “I was in love with him.”
She leveled me with a final glare, her movements slowing as the paralysis spread up her torso and along her arms. Through gritted teeth, she choked out three final words, and they lodged deep in my heart, far beneath the magic and the scars and every last regret, where a tiny seed of empathy bloomed in the darkness.
“So. Was. I.”
Twenty-Five
GRAY
When I was a little kid, I loved to spin.
Even during the harshest upstate New York winters, I’d stuff myself into my snowsuit and tromp out onto the frozen Arctic tundra of our yard, looking for a prime spot. Once I found it, I’d extend my arms out, tip my head back, and twirl, round and round and round so fast not even the snowflakes could catch me. When I couldn’t take another second of it, I’d drop onto my back, stare up at the sky, and hold on for the ride.
It was the only time I felt completely out of control, no sense of my body or my mind or whether some great mystical hand would reach down from the clouds and pluck me right off the earth.
Back then, the feeling was addicting.
I was no longer spinning, but lying in the grass behind the house and staring up at the sky now, I felt the same loss of control, as if I’d been twirling around for days and suddenly decided to hand over the reins of my life to some great unknown force whose intentions were still a mystery.
But unlike the games of my happy childhood, this one wasn’t fun. It wasn’t a rush. My entire life seemed to be unraveling in the wind, and no matter how hard I tried to hold those threads together, they kept on slipping through my fingers.
“In the mood for some company?”
I’d come out here to be alone, but the sound of Emilio’s gentle voice was like a hug I didn’t even realize I’d needed, and I smiled.
“That depends,” I said, peering up into his warm brown eyes. “Did you bring brownies?”
“You know, querida, they say it’s the thought that counts. And I’m definitely thinking about brownies. Fair enough?”
“Fair enough.” I sat up and patted the grass.
Settling in next to me, he leaned back on his hands and said, “Can I ask what you’re thinking?”
“I’m thinking that sometimes the world feels too big.” I blew out a breath, forcing some of the tension out with it. “Or maybe I’m just too small.”
“Maybe a little of both, yeah?”
“Maybe.” I rested my head on his shoulder, closing my eyes and inhaling his sweet, earthy scent. It calmed me, as always. “Where are the guys?”
“The demons are in the kitchen arguing over whose turn it is to make dinner and whose to wash dishes. Darius is downstairs keeping an eye on… our guest.”
Our guest.
I still couldn’t believe that little Fiona Brentwood—Feefs—was the vampire that had helped Jonathan. She’d been such a tiny, peripheral part of my life back then, I never could’ve imagined that one day she’d have the power to completely alter its course.
Yet she did alter it.
I closed my eyes, remembering all those times she trailed after Jonathan, her eyes full of hope. What if he’d paid more attention to her? What if they’d started dating instead of he and I? If only she’d gotten her wish… Maybe she never would’ve become a vampire. Maybe Sophie would still be alive. Maybe Jonathan would’ve been so focused on Fiona he never would’ve discovered that Calla and I were witches. Maybe Calla would still be alive, too.
If only. What if. Maybe. Three of the most dangerous phrases in the English language.
“So does our plan fall apart now that we know our bait is a teenaged girl?” I asked.
“Fall apart? No. But Fiona definitely changes things. Not because she’s a teenager, though. Or a girl, for that matter.”
“So what changed?”
“You tell me.”
Gazing into his deep, soulful eyes, I knew exactly what Emilio wanted me to say—that unlike the evil, traitorous vampire we’d envisioned, Fiona wasn’t some opportunistic bloodsucker looking to make a fast buck at the expense of witches. I may have stabbed her with a stake, but she was still a victim. If we used and manipulated her to our own ends, we’d be no better than the hunter who was holding the witches captive.
On some level, I understood that. I really did.
But whether she was coerced or not, Fiona still played a part in killing Sophie and the other witches in the Bay, and who knew how many others before that. No, maybe I didn’t want to see her tortured for it, and maybe I was starting to feel slightly guilty about staking her—okay, more than slightly—but I wasn’t ready to let her off the hook.
“So you believe her, then?” I asked, avoiding his question. “About why she went along with it, even after learning about his plans?”
Emilio held me in his gaze for a long time before he finally responded, and when he did, his voice was soft and sad. “People do all sorts of misguided things when they’re trying to protect the ones they love, querida. Let’s just say I know something about that.”
His eyes misted, and he looked away, suddenly fascinated by a blade of grass at his side.
I swallowed the tightness in my throat and reached for his hand, hooking my pinky around his.
Since Emilio had come back into my life after Sophie’s murder, he’d been so focused on helping us try to hunt down Jonathan and piece together this whole insane puzzle, I’d almost forgotten that it hadn’t always been this way. That he hadn’t always been here with me. That he’d had an entire life before I was even born, likely filled with love and heartache and sacrifice and pain. I saw it sometimes—the ghost of some old memory flickering through his big brown eyes—but I’d never found the right time to ask.
Maybe, like Asher, he just couldn’t talk about his past.
Maybe he felt like he had a lot to atone for, too.
Whether he was to blame or not, my heart ached when I thought about him suffering in silence. I had no idea what he’d been through, only that I wanted to ease his pain the way he’d so often eased mine.
I leaned in close and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, close to the corner of his mouth, my lips lingering just a beat too long.
When I finally pulled back, he was blushing.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he said, his lips curving in a shy smile, “but what was that for?”
“You’re a good man, Emilio Alvarez. I hope you know that.”
His smile faltered, but he didn’t say anything. Just put his hand on my back, strong and reassuring, the warmth of his touch spreading out across my skin.
I rested my head on his shoulder again, releasing a deep sigh. “Did anyone ever tell you you have a seriously calming effect on people? Especially crazy-ass witches?”
“No, mi brujita loca. Only you.” He laughed, but the moment was cut short by the emergency ringtone on his phone.
“Jesús, María, y José,” he grumbled. “What now?”
“I guess you need to get that, huh?”
“Yep.” He fished the phone out of his pocket and hit the answer button. “Alvarez. What’ve you got?”
His golden face paled, his eyes suddenly wide with horror as they locked onto mine.
“What’s wrong?” I mouthed.
“Thanks,” he said into the phone. “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
“More vampires? A
nother witch missing?” My heart was in my throat. “Emilio, what’s happening?”
“Your house in South Bay,” he said, the shock still plain on his face.
“What about it?”
“It’s on fire.”
Twenty-Six
GRAY
They wouldn’t let me go to Blackmoon Bay.
Ronan tried to make me a cup of mint tea, but he didn’t do it right—not like Emilio always did. Darius alternated between checking on me, interrogating Fiona, and apologizing to her for my actions, as if he still couldn’t decide whose side she was really on. And Asher did what Asher did best lately—stayed away from me, locking himself in his room, probably obsessing over his sketchbook.
I paced. I jogged around the yard. I showered. I paced some more. Nothing could calm the anxious energy zipping through my bloodstream as we waited for news from Emilio.
It was several hours before he finally returned to us, walking through the door like a ghost, his face covered in black soot, his hair gray with ash, his eyes red.
“Is there anything left?” I whispered.
Emilio took my hands in his, gently shaking his head. “I’m so sorry, querida. Your house… It’s gone.”
Gone.
Such a small word for such an immense, irrevocable declaration.
Calla was gone.
The house I’d grown up in was gone.
Sophie was gone.
The house she and I had shared was gone.
How could anything so solid, so real no longer exist? How could something be here one moment, close enough to touch, and then just… not?
I dropped onto the couch and closed my eyes, trying to process this devastating news.
Emilio told us that no one had been hurt, and for that, I was truly grateful.
But the house… It was still the loss of something I cared deeply about. A place where I’d made some of my best memories—a place where I’d hung my heart. And though none of us had talked about timelines, deep down I’d always hoped I’d be able to return someday, even if that someday was a year from now.
