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Chapter Four

Sutton

“I’m okay, Boo.” My sweet familiar was pressed against my cheek, trying to comfort me.

He’d been doing that a lot lately and had sought me out when I got home this morning.

He should have been asleep. I rubbed my hands over my face.

Gods, last night was one big hideous blur.

My brain’s way of trying to protect me, I guess, and I would’ve been happy to keep it that way.

Unfortunately, there was now video evidence, not only filling in the blanks in my memory but making sure that everyone else on Nightscape had every single gory detail of my humiliation locked in their minds as well.

My mother, and the rest of my estranged family, would have definitely seen it by now.

It was too awful to think about. Too painful. Too…everything.

Stop . Don’t go there.

I would not waste time thinking about the people who didn’t want me in their lives. Nope, I’d focus on the people who knew the real meaning of family. My coven, my friends.

That’s when I remembered seeing Luke at the Dogwood fights last night. He was alive and well, thank the goddess, so why wasn’t he answering my calls? And why the hell had he run from me?

It didn’t make sense—unless he was in some kind of trouble.

There was a tap on my door. I glanced up as Phoebe poked her head in.

“How you doing?”

“Rejection’s my middle name, remember?” I said, then made a silly face. “All good here.” I’d just gotten off the phone with Fern checking on me again as well.

“Don’t joke about that, Sutton, what he did?—”

“He made his choice, and I’m making one as well.

I’m not going to cry into my pillow about him.

I’m not going to let his choice break me.

I don’t need a male, I have you, and Fern, and the rest of the coven.

That’s all I need.” And maybe if I told myself that enough times, then eventually I’d believe it.

“I can stay,” she said. “We can hang out.”

The others were packed and ready to leave for the conclave, something Luke had been seriously looking forward to.

He’d been excited about it for months. It was the first year we’d been invited.

He was a little anarchist, and he couldn’t wait for our coven to walk in and take our rightful place among the others, and hopefully piss a few people off.

Especially now that Fern was mated to a hellhound.

Relic had agreed to going along as protection.

I’d, of course, imagined Jagger going as well. Stop.

“I love you for offering, but I’ll be working the whole time anyway.

” I’d told everyone that Jack needed me to work, which was a lie.

I’d already taken the days off to go to the conclave, but despite all my big talk, I wasn’t in the mood for company, but most of all, that video…

that’s what had changed my mind. I couldn’t face my mother, knowing she would have seen it.

Someone would have recognized me and relished showing her. My sister probably.

Phoebe’s eyes were soft. “I don’t like the thought of you here alone.”

“I’ll be fine. I could do with a little me time.”

Pheebs gave me a look that said she didn’t believe me, but she didn’t push. “I don’t like leaving without Luke either, but he’s still not answering my calls.” Her lips tilted down.

“I saw him last night. So I know he’s okay. He’s probably just decided to go to the conclave with his girlfriend. You know what he’s like. He can only focus on one thing at a time.”

Phoebe laughed. “Yeah, you’re probably right.” She pulled me in for a hug, then gave Boo a pat. “We’re about to leave, but if you get lonely, call, and I’ll come straight back.”

“I promise, I’ll be fine. Just have fun, okay?”

She squeezed me tighter. “Love you.”

“Love you too.”

I followed her down the stairs and waved everyone off, forcing a smile that felt utterly wooden. I closed the doors as they drove off, and the stifling silence closed in around me. I was in pain, I could recognize that, but I would survive it. I’d get through it.

I’d spent a good portion of my life waiting, hoping the people who were supposed to care about and protect me would realize they were wrong and they’d love me back—it never happened.

I wasn’t going to waste time hoping that Jagger would change his mind and want me. That was a fool’s dream. It wasn’t going to happen.

He’d had three months to decide what he wanted, and how he would communicate that to me when we were finally face to face, and he chose to act as if I didn’t exist. As if I were imagining what we were to each other.

Maybe I was wrong, and he didn’t feel it, but how could he not?

To me, the pull between us was huge , all-encompassing.

When our lips had touched…yes, it was cliché, but the earth moved.

Yet rather than just talk things through with me, in private, he’d chosen to publicly humiliate me. Then to act like nothing had happened, and have the gall to ask for another photo? That hadn’t just been messed up, it had been cruel.

So, I was done. I decided I would choose the people who chose me a long time ago. And that was enough. It would be enough.

Since I’d lied to Phoebe about working the next few days, I’d occupy myself in other ways, like figuring out what was going on with Luke.

Maybe I was right and he’d show up at the conclave.

At least I hoped so. But until I knew for sure, finding him was my number one task.

Then I could yell at him for worrying me.

I took the stairs, heading up to the second floor, and strode down the hall to Luke’s bedroom. Usually, I wouldn’t dream of invading his privacy, but the moment he ran from me, and then continued to ignore my calls and texts, his privacy became forfeit. He was in trouble. I was certain of it.

Walking in, I turned in a slow circle, then screwed up my nose. It smelled like gym clothes and smelly running shoes.

Luke was twenty-two, and like the rest of us, he had been rejected by his coven when his mixed blood had made itself known. I’d found him on the streets five years ago, skinny, grubby, and selling drugs on a corner for another witch.

Luke was a healer like me. He was talented, funny, smart, and I loved him like a little brother.

The more time he spent away, the more I got this feeling that something wasn’t right.

I felt it in my bones. Yes, Luke was easily distracted, and he was known to ignore calls and texts, especially when he was with Evie, his girlfriend, but never from me, and if he didn’t answer immediately, he always called back the same day.

His bed was unmade, his laundry basket overflowing.

His dresser was cluttered with odds and ends, receipts, body spray, and the awful aftershave he bought when he first met Evie.

His computer was in the corner, and I leafed through the papers he’d scribbled notes on beside it.

A stack of herbology books was there as well.

Nothing jumped out at me. The books were standard for what we did.

I had all the same ones. I’d helped him source them when he first came here and asked me to help him get a deeper understanding of his gift.

I’d been teaching him so that he could eventually work at the clinic as well.

A notepad was on the floor, and I picked it up, flicking through the pages.

Nothing was written on it, but I could feel indentations on the top page.

Grabbing a pencil from the jar beside his monitor, I did what I’d seen private detectives do in movies and rubbed the side of the lead lightly over the top.

Success.

It was a list. “What do we have here, Lukey.” I ran my finger down the page. The first few ingredients listed were pretty standard stuff, but the rest… “Shit.” Were not.

These were all things Fern sold in her store, Malicious Brew.

Witches who veered toward the darker side frequented my best friend’s establishment, and I immediately recognized the last five ingredients on the list. They were all things Fern stocked, but she stored them in the back because they were too dangerous to put on the shelves.

They were also ingredients she’d told me were missing when she’d done her stock inventory—an inventory that Luke had volunteered to help her with.

“What the hell are you up to, Luke?”

Fern’s store had been broken into just as she and Relic got together, and she’d had no idea what, if anything, had been taken.

When she finally found the time to go through her inventory, she’d been surprised anything was missing at all, because the goal of the break-in had been to send a message, to scare her, and not to rob the place.

I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, then looked around more closely.

My gaze was drawn to something black and glossy poking out from under his bed.

I grabbed it cautiously. People hid all sorts of things under their beds, and there were certain things I had no interest in knowing about him.

Thankfully, it was only a notebook. On the black cover was a hand-drawn symbol in silver ink. I flicked the book open and cursed.

Recipes for different potions—potions he most definitely should not be making—were carefully detailed on the pages.

But what had the hair on the back of my neck lifting were the annotations written beside each ingredient, additions that when combined, changed each ingredient in a way that would alter its cellular makeup and its purpose.

When used, or taken, it would react in a completely different way than it was originally used for.

Luke was making drugs.

That little idiot was making fucking drugs!

I needed to find him, and fast.

My gut had been trying to tell me he was in trouble, and I’d let this thing with Jagger throw me off. I’d ignored my gut. Now Luke was incommunicado and, going by the evidence, doing something seriously stupid.