Page 31 of Adepts and Alchemists

“Eventually. He scampered and came back a year later with one of those pathetic mundanes who prostrate themselves for a chance to undergo the transformation. He shot my sister in front of her two girls.”

“Is that why you joined Murrain? To take care of them?”

I sighed. “Partly. It was a complicated situation.”

“Show me.”

I took a deep breath and allowed my mind to travel back to the worst mistake I’d ever made in my long life.

Chapter Fourteen

Indigo

There were only a handful of our coven still alive to attend Mother’s funeral.

We still weren’t sure how our addresses had been leaked or how many vampires from the local clan were involved. I only knew there were holes in our magic where my coven members should have been.

It felt like I was setting fire to my own heart when I lit the pyre. It had taken a few hours to stack the wood high and wide enough to accommodate our dead. Twenty-two souls had joined the Goddess on their journey to their next life. The spelled flames would purify anything foreign found in their bodies. But it still hurt to watch Mother blacken, every beloved feature licked away by the flames. Twenty-two of twenty-seven. Only five of us were now left alive. That meant we’d be easy pickings for the bloodsuckers if we stayed in our homes. No, we had to leave this city behind.

They’d stolen more than our coven from us. They’d taken our safety. Our trust in each other, because the only way the vampires could have passed our wards was if they’d employed magic against us. And everyone knew vampires didn’t possess magic. Which left only one option. None of us knew for certain that the traitor was a witch, but the thought haunted us all. The alternative was worse. That another magical nation had sided with the vampires to wipe us out. Easier to believe there was a turncoat in our midst than imagine an even more dangerous enemy waiting for us out there.

Eden was trying to shush Estelle. The poor girl hadn’t stopped crying since she heard the news. She was always close with her grandmother. If there was anyone taking the loss harder, it was my sister and my nieces. She was the youngest.Mother had babied her, grooming me for leadership instead. It meant she looked to me. They all did. And I had no idea how to protect them from this. We were teetering on the edge of war. No official declaration or open fighting was allowed, but they were chipping away at our numbers, little by little. How did I protect them from that?

I turned my back on the pyre first, coughing as the wind turned the smoke into our faces. Singed hair was an acrid odor and not one I wanted to breathe. I moved away from the fire and into the cool and quiet edge of the woods, trying to gather my thoughts. I had to think. To plan. I had to keep the rest of my family safe.

Wanda paused the memory with a flick of her wrist. I watched myself in the vision slow to a stop, face twisted with anguish. My eyes were hollow, my cheeks sunken. I’d become a shadow of myself in the months that followed. The fear and crushing burden of responsibility had stolen what innocence I might have had left. I’d never imagined I’d suffer that much pain.

Wanda cast me a sidelong glance, pulling me completely from the memory and back to the present. There was a searching look in her eyes as she examined my past, and now the present. Lydia and I barely resembled each other. She’d been of a similar height, but that was where the commonalities ended. Her face was softer than mine. Sweeter. I hadn’t realized how much the cynicism and misery had aged me. I knew I looked like a creased page someone had flattened on a hard surface. I was technically in one piece, but you could see where the world had bent me.

“You were a part of the massacre in Nevada, weren’t you?” Wanda asked, voice gentler now.

“Not me. I was out of town that weekend. A friend invited me to a Beltane celebration. When I got back, it was already done. Already over.”

I tried to keep my voice flat and unemotional... and failed utterly. My voice cracked and I felt tears bead on my lashes. I blinked furiously against the desire to let them fall. I wouldn’t crack, wouldn’t cry.

“Your coven,” she amended. “They were involved.”

“Yes,” I answered tightly. “We had to flee to Phoenix to escape the group hounding us. My sister was shot by a vampire’s daytime errand boy a year later. It left me to take care of her girls. Everything I did, I did for them. I wanted a safer world. One where they never would have to live in fear.”

Wanda’s gaze hardened once more. “By hurting your fellow monsters.”

I sighed—there was no getting around this particular point. “Yes. I did terrible things. And, yes, I regret them. The power to destroy their killer wasn’t worth what I sacrificed.”

“Power?” Wanda repeated.

“The Koloth,” I said. “Fire magic. It’s one thing all vampires are vulnerable to. I marked it for death. It was the testheset up for me.”

“Murrain?”

“Yes.”

“Show me,” Wanda ordered.

I just nodded.

Murrain had always frightened me. I’d only met him a few times when I’d been a much younger witch. He’d made an impression, even then. Mother met with him in secret off and on for my entire childhood. She’d only introduced him officially once, when I’d been a bubble-headed twenty-year-old who didn’t care about much more than herself. I was having the time of my life as a young thing. I hadn’t been aware of the danger. I hadn’t known what would befall me, nearly a century later.

There’d been something about the gleam of his eyes, far back in the cloak. He never revealed his face to me. The first hint of skin he’d shown was when he took a fistful of ash from Mother’s urn, letting it trickle through his fingers into the foaming waves that lapped the shore. From nature we’d started and to nature we returned.