Page 30 of Adepts and Alchemists

Wanda aimed a gimlet glare at her cousin. “This little asshole—”

“Hey!”

“Used a mix of Double XX Oil and Past Lives Oil to make a brew that could swap consciousness for an indeterminate amount of time. I woke up in a place I’d never been, in a body that wasn’t mine, and I had to track him down to make him swap our bodies back.”

I looked at Maverick. “Why would you do that?”

“He was mostly doing it to get into the Hollow again,” Wanda answered. “We’d had a fight that had ousted him.” Then she glared at him. “And I invited you back.”

“Because you needed me,” Maverick said mildly. “You knew you’d need numbers to go against Celestine, and it turned out to be a good choice.”

“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” Wanda barked back

Maverick raised one brow. “Tell me you could have rescued Astrid in time without me.”

Wanda’s ire melted like snow under rain when the name fell from his lips. It was said in such a sad, gentle tone that it gave even me pause. The warlock’s expression hadn’t changed much when I glanced up, but his body language was a little tighter. Pained.

“Maverick...”

“Don’t,” he said with a sigh. “Just... take the potion. If she measures up, you can amend the coven’s numbers pretty easily with your magic, even under the influence of a potion. It’s not asstrong a tie as when we all participate, but we don’t have time or the right conditions to make it official with a proper ritual.”

He wasn’t wrong. There were ways to attach a witch to a coven without bringing them into the collective well of magic that imbued a high witch. It was a lot like putting training wheels on the use of my power, binding me to the loyalty of the coven without the magic of it. But, just as I wouldn’t benefit from their magic, they wouldn’t benefit from mine. In any other circumstance, I would have refused. I wanted to be an equal or not included at all. Right now, I couldn’t afford to be that picky. I could swallow my pride... for a while. For Lydia.

“Fine,” I said, taking the vial from her, tossing it back like a shot of whiskey.

The taste was tangy, like lime. It reminded me forcibly of the tequila shots I’d do with my mother and sister when we met up for holidays. And then later, when Estelle and Livinia had been in their young and wild party phase, when I’d been forced to mop up after them when they came home plastered. I’d done it with grace, the same way my mother had for me. We’d all been children once. Children were meant to have fun.

The fog began at the edges of my vision, swirling like phantoms in the gloom. It felt as if a wind blew my hair up and around my face, though I knew in reality I simply looked meditative, head bowed, eyes closed. Flickering light started behind my eyelids, jumping in fits and starts until the vision coalesced around me. I was only tangentially aware of Wanda scooting to my side, hand sliding into mine to keep me grounded even as my past rose to consume me.

I knew something was wrong, even before I hit the front gate. Mother’s familiar, a hulking mastiff named Duke, should have been barreling down the drive toward me. I was the only one to regularly visit in this fraught time. He was usuallyecstatic to see me. It was half-amusing to watch a dog the size of a small lion loping down the drive, tongue lolling.

But there was no joyous chorus of baying and barking from the house situated at the head of the hill. The grass stirred fitfully beneath my feet, long stalks of fescue bending beneath the wind. It was getting colder, and the chill was beginning to bite at my nose. I hurried up the drive, feeling oddly like I was moving in slow motion. I kept squinting past the whipping wind to see the house. It wasn’t until I ducked behind one of the towering oaks that bordered the yard that I could finally make out the details of the small, mid-century modern she’d settled in a few years ago.

The door was ajar. That alone was enough to send a prickle of unease over my skin. Mother wasn’t the lazy or stupid sort. With tensions high between vampires and our covens once more, no witch moved alone or forgot to lock her doors at night. Not only lock them, but shelter behind a sanctum spell and however many wards we could apply to the vulnerable points in our home. I doubted she would have left the door open for me. I’d only called when I was ten minutes out. Not enough time to dismantle every single one of her defenses.

Unless they’d failed catastrophically. Unless someone or something had torn through them like tissue paper.

I was moving before I had time to think better of it. My feet carried me forward on autopilot. My heart seemed to understand something that my head didn’t, because my pulse was pounding hard enough to drown all other sound. Silvery fear shot into my veins, and I was mounting the porch two steps at a time, bursting through the door like that anthropomorphic pitcher in those mundane commercials.

The living room was in shambles. The glass coffee table had been shattered, raining glass shards all over the teal area rug she’d set up in the middle of the room. The rug had bunched intoa crumpled mass and was smeared with a thick, dark red. The sectional sofa had been turned on its side, beige fabric slashed so that the stuffing extruded obscenely from the cushions. Long furrows had been carved into the hardwood as someone was dragged along it, desperately trying to scrabble away.

My breath caught in my chest as the puzzle came together. I didn’t mean to call her name aloud, but it slipped from my lips anyway. There was no reply. The silence was almost as deafening as the thunder of my heart.

I found Duke in the hall, curled on his side. He hadn’t died peacefully or well. Someone had kicked him hard enough to send him partially through the wall. He was slumped over a pile of drywall, his lifeblood staining the dust a deep shade of crimson. I couldn’t see which wound had ended his life, but just the sight of him lying there, cold and still, was enough to make my stomach heave. I wanted to bend double. Instead, I shuffled toward the kitchen, dreading what I knew I’d see.

I had to step over overturned barstools to reach her. The appliances had been swept off her quartz countertops and lay in ruins on the floor. Several of the cabinets and their contents had been blasted open by some spell or another. Probably Mother trying to defend herself. I prayed the pair of legs poking from behind the island belonged to some filthy bloodsucker.

That happy thought was squashed a moment later when I rounded the corner and saw her. She looked younger somehow, in death, all the tension easing from her face so that the lines seemed softer. Her inky hair had formed a dark halo around her head. A slash of bright red showed against the pale skin of her neck. She was too pale to be anything but a corpse.

I gave up the fight with my stomach and threw up noisily in the hallway. I couldn’t do it in the same room as her. It felt disrespectful to be violently ill only a few feet from her body. I couldn’t help the reaction to the sight of Mother lying dead onthe ground. Worse was the thought that she wasn’t truly dead. That the leech who’d done it could have paid her the ultimate insult and tainted her body before she’d died. I’d have to burn her, just to be sure. It was what she’d want.

I was so lost in the spiral of panic and grief that I didn’t immediately pick up on the sound further into the house. When it finally registered, my heart tried to ride up into my throat. I stood shakily and stalked forward, spell already crackling into being as I stalked toward the master bedroom.

Someone was going to pay for this. I’d make sure of it.

Wanda waved her hand with a grimace, bringing the grainy film imagery to a halt. She looked pale and a little sick. I was glad I wasn’t the only one. Reliving Mother’s death had been as painful as the first time I’d experienced the crushing tableau.

“Did you kill the vampire who did it?”