1 WILLOW
Two months later
Whispered words called to me, lingering just out of reach. I couldn’t make out more than the hushed sound of the dead, couldn’t grasp the words they tried to speak to me.
Not even for the woman lying in the casket in front of me could I grab hold of the magic that was not yet mine in truth. If I kept my eyes closed long enough, maybe I would convince myself that the last week had been a dream. A phantom of a nightmare, a figment of my worst imagination, the very day I’d been raised for.
And the one I wanted nothing more than to escape.
The whispers at my back existed within a bubble, separate from the faint hum of my mother’s voice, as if I’d managed to separate myself from the living in my attempt to hear her. Even as all the people who’d murmured behind my mother’s back waited for their turn to say goodbye to the woman they would never understand, I couldn’t force myself to pry my eyes open.
I stood with my feet shoulder width apart, a habit my father had ingrained in me all my life. Ready for anything, for a hunter to attack at any time—or something even worse. The tile beneath my shoes was unnatural, the separation it caused keeping me from touching the one thing that made my soul feel whole.
The dirt beneath my feet.
“Low,” a small voice said.
A hand slipped into mine, much smaller fingers intertwining in a pattern that we knew well. Ash stood at my side even after saying my name, giving me the chance to compose myself. To stop the force threatening to consume me. We’d kept my brother protected from the knowledge of what we were for his own safety, for what would await him if he ever discovered his magic and brought the Coven down on us.
I should have been the one to be strong for him. After all, it wasn’t only my mother who lay rotting in a casket for all to see, but his as well.
I forced my eyes open, staring at the pictures of our mother and our family. Smiling faces stared out at the crowd, looking deceptively human. As if we belonged here, when the only home we’d ever truly had wouldn’t have embraced us if they’d known what we were.
Humans had only so much capacity for understanding in their hearts. They tended to shy away from actual witchcraft, if the trials that had nearly wiped out my ancestors were any indication.
A single, slow look down to my mother’s face made me grimace, remembering why I’d closed my eyes to fight back my irritation.
Her lipstick was wrong. The color was far too red and brazen for my mother, who preferred to blend into the background. It was readily apparent that the person who’d been responsible for preparing her for her services hadn’t known her at all, covering the laugh lines she’d valued as a result of her happy, full life, free of the Coven that would have dragged her back to Crystal Hollow kicking and screaming.
It was bad enough she’d need to be buried according to human customs—her remains trapped in a box in the earth that kept her from the elements—unless my father upheld his end of the bargain. He was meant to sneak into the cemetery in the middle of the night while the grave was still fresh, lay her to her final rest on top of the casket, and bury her all over again so that she could find peace.
I reached forward quickly, grasping the amulet she wore around her throat and pulling until the chain snapped. The amulet tore free as the whispering idiots behind me gasped in shock, but Ash was unbothered when I finally looked down to where he stood at my side.
His brown eyes were a perfect reflection of what I would have seen if my mother opened hers, so different from mine with our different fathers. He had the same deep mahogany hair that was so dark it was almost black, its warmth shimmering slightly in the too-bright lights of the funeral home.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said, nodding my head toward the entrance to the parlor. Ash nodded faintly, casting one last sparing look for our mother.
We both knew what came next. She’d given me very clear instructions on what to do with Ash when she finally succumbed to the illness that plagued her body, taking her from us bit by bit.
Ash released my hand, leading the way through the pews and carving his way toward the exit. He held his head high in a way that nearly made me smirk, his ferocity so reminiscent of Mom’s. I repressed it as the people around me whispered of the death that followed us, of the fact that everyone who seemed to grow too close to my brother and me ended up in an early grave.
Magic had a way of burning through a witch’s surroundings if they didn’t satisfy it with use, and then eventually it would turn on the witch themself if ignored for too long.
As it had with my mother.
Mud covered the white tiles on the floor as we approached the exit, lingering on the bottom of the shoes of those who’d entered to bid farewell to my mother, Flora Madizza.
It was fitting in a way, I supposed. Soon enough, Flora would return to the earth from which she came. She would be placed into the dirt when my father fulfilled her last request. Finally, she would be at home in the place that gave her peace, her power absorbed back into the nature that called to us.
A hand wrapped around my forearm as I walked toward the exit, following behind my brother as he hurried to escape the stifling, suffocating oppression of being in a room with so many who didn’t like us. He might not have understood the fear so many had of us, but he saw it no less.
My head snapped to the side, glaring at the man who grabbed me. His fingers tightened on my arm for a moment before he swallowed.
“It’s customary for you to remain so that the town may pay their respects and offer you condolences,” he said, watching as my eyes trailed down his chest and to the hand that touched me without permission.
He removed it slowly, feigning ease, as if he’d only released me because he was good and ready. I flicked my eyes back up to his, smiling crookedly when he flinched from the eye contact with what he probably deemed to be a demon. I’d seen the eerie stare every time I looked in the mirror. The amber of one eye was natural enough, if not paired with the faint violet of my left eye. Most assumed it was an odd shade of blue, unusual but not unheard-of. It was only in close proximity that people realized the truth.
A gift from my father’s lineage—a trait that had faded away centuries prior.
“When have I ever cared for your customs, Mr. Whitlock?” I asked, pulling my loose gray cardigan tighter around myself as the wave of his distrust washed over me. I turned to face where my brother waited at the exit, pursing my lips as I took the first step toward him.
They would do what they wanted with my mother’s body from here, and I would continue to exact her wishes as she’d requested. Ash pressed into my side when I reached him, then tugged open the door to allow him to walk through. I cast a lone glance back toward my mother’s casket, knowing that soon there would be no turning back.
Without my mother’s wards, the destiny my parents had chosen would come for me whether I wanted it or not.
* * *
“Get your things,” I said, swallowing past the surge of emotion that seemed to clog my throat. The humans in town often called it a frog in the throat because of the hoarseness. I’d never understood the analogy, instead feeling as if it were grave dirt coming to claim me from the inside.
“I don’t want to go,” Ash pleaded, staring up at me as I swung the front door closed behind me. It closed easily, so at odds with the way the wood swelled in the humidity of summer, making it difficult to squeeze into the frame. I spun, giving Ash my back as I clicked the dead bolt into place and drew the chain across the gap that let in far too much of the unseasonable air.
September wasn’t usually so cold, even in our little town in the mountains of Vermont.
I kicked off the black flats I’d worn for Mom’s service, nudging them to the side as I turned back to face my brother. Even with Mom gone, even knowing that soon enough this house would sit empty and forgotten, I couldn’t bring myself to disobey her rules.
Rules that she no longer cared for.
Tears stung my eyes as I bent forward, touching my mouth to Ash’s forehead. I felt him sigh beneath the touch, his gaze holding mine when I pulled back.
“You know we can’t stay here,” I explained, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. I tugged him out of the cramped entryway, heading toward the stairwell at the entrance to the living room.
He shrugged me off, rounding on me with his face twisted into a scowl. “Why not? Why won’t you tell me where you’re going?”
I closed my eyes, knowing that the secrecy my mother had sworn me to was for his own protection. I just wished I could make him understand, that he could see just how little I cared for the duty they’d given me.
If I’d had it my way, destiny could kiss my ass.
“I’ll tell you when you’re older. I promise,” I explained, heading for the stairwell.
I placed my hand on the old walnut railing and glanced up toward my bedroom as I took the first step. The urge to bury myself beneath the blankets was all-consuming; to hide away from the world, from the responsibilities and the expectations pressing down on me.
“You’ve been saying that for years! When?”
I ran my hands over my face, moving down from the step and squatting in front of Ash. “When you’re sixteen, I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”
“Why not now?” he asked, his bottom lip trembling.
Our mother had never meant to have another child, not after the reality of what I was and what that would mean for those closest to me. The least we could do was protect him with everything we had—even if it meant abandoning him to people he barely knew in the process.
Living with his father’s family was far better than dying alongside me in this stupid, foolish duty that I couldn’t seem to escape.
“I wouldn’t leave you if I had a choice. Please believe that,” I said, taking his hands in mine. I squeezed them tightly, and I knew from the tears pooling in his eyes that he did. All his life, he’d been my entire world. He’d been the one my mother used to motivate me to practice the magic that felt so distant at first.
The promise of protecting him was all I needed to know to believe that it was worth it.
“So come with me,” he said, sinking his teeth into his bottom lip. “My dad will take care of you until you find a new job. You know he will.”
He would. Ash’s father wasn’t like my own. He was human, good and patient, loving and warm. He was everything a father should have been, and it was only due to our mother’s need for secrecy that he hadn’t been able to spend more time with his son. In contrast, my witch father had been allowed to spend far too much time with me, molding me into the perfect instrument for revenge through whatever means necessary. There was no affection between us, no warmth or love.
I was nothing but a means to an end to the man who had sired me for one purpose only.
But Ash’s father couldn’t protect me against what was coming, and worse yet, he couldn’t protect Ash from the danger of being at my side when it did.
“It isn’t that easy, Bug,” I said, the term of endearment I hadn’t used in months rolling off my tongue. It was the name Mom called him, but her illness had taken her ability to speak in the end.
Using it without her had seemed wrong.
Mom’s coat seemed to sway on the rack as if a phantom breeze passed through the house, sending a chill up my spine. A reminder of how impossible it would be for me to go with them when they came. As the last remaining Madizza witch, my place at Hollow’s Grove was assured if they wanted to continue Susannah’s bloodline.
“It could be. Just promise me. Promise me that no matter where we go, we’ll go together,” he said, burrowing further into my chest. I pulled him tighter, swallowing past the burn in my throat and resisting the urge to sniffle.
I did the one thing I’d sworn never to do.
“I promise, Bug,” I said, squeezing him tighter.
I lied.
2 GRAY
I rolled my neck to the side as I entered the Tribunal, casting my gaze around the circle. To either side of the dais where the Covenant waited, six witches sat in their colored ceremonial robes.
“Two summonses in as many months. What has made me so fortunate to be deemed worthy of your presence this time, Covenant?” I asked, waving my arm in a mocking flourish as I bent at the waist.
“Careful, Alaric. While we find you entertaining most days, even our patience wears thin,” Susannah warned.
I shrugged, looking at the witches, who watched me in disapproval. “I wasn’t aware you could feel at all.”
Susannah raised a bony hand to touch her face, running it over her skull as she swept back her hood to reveal the worst of her irritation. It was so difficult to determine a being’s moods when they didn’t even have skin.
There were no rolled eyes, no twitches in the cheek or pursed lips. Deciphering the Covenant’s moods had become something of a game for me in the centuries I’d spent trapped in this half-mortal flesh alongside them.
“We have one last student to collect before classes begin in two days’ time,” George said, helpfully navigating away from my enjoyment of tormenting those who would rid the world of me if they could. Fortunately for me, they lacked the power necessary and would be stuck in this eternal misery with me.
I preferred the fires of Hell to the confines of the body crafted to trap me here.
“I was under the impression that we’d already collected two new students for each of the magics. Am I incorrect in that assumption?” I asked, furrowing my brow. My men had successfully collected two Whites, who channeled via crystals; Purples: the cosmic witches; Grays, who channeled with air; Blues, who channeled with water; Reds: the sex witches; and Yellows, who channeled with fire from outside the magical barrier surrounding Crystal Hollow. We’d also collected a single Green witch, marking the absence of one of the legacy families. The Madizza line had been absent since the death of the final descendant two decades prior, leaving only House Bray to provide the magic of the Greens. They were joined by Houses Petra and Beltran of the Whites, Realta and Amar of the Purples, Aurai and Devoe of the Grays, Tethys and Hawthorne of the Blues, Erotes and Peabody of the Reds, and Collins and Madlock of the Yellows as the remaining legacy families. House Hecate, the sole Black legacy, had gone extinct in the massacre fifty years prior.
“A new witch has made herself known to us,” Susannah explained, sitting up straighter upon her dais. She looked to the lines of symmetry at her side, to the twelve witches who led each of the houses within the town. They were representatives of the original sixteen families that founded Crystal Hollow—all that remained of those noble lines in the centuries that had passed.
“Then surely, she can merely attend next year? If she’s sixteen, she’s far too young to begin at Hollow’s Grove for another four years,” I said, spinning in a circle slowly as I waited for any of those gathered to echo the sentiment. Hollow’s Grove required all students to be at least twenty years of age, given the rituals that happened within the school walls once a week when the Reaping came.
Copyright © 2023 by Harper L. Woods
