Page 2

Chapter 2

T he letter landed an inch from Priya's cup and she immediately pulled it away and held it to her chest. For a silent moment, the two of us stared at it.

"Do you think she cursed this one?" Priya asked.

It wouldn't be the first time.

Despite not knowing where I lived, my grandmother could still magically materialise her letters to wherever I was. When I hadn't responded to the initial slew of letters she had sent not long after I had escaped the family home, she had sent a curse to vent her frustrations. I had avoided it by wearing gloves every time I opened a letter from her, but when Priya had picked the curse apart, we discovered what the dark magic would have done.

My grandmother had designed the curse to shut down every one of my senses, which would have plunged me into total sensory deprivation. I wanted to vomit up the Oreos at the thought. My intense claustrophobia acted out even when I entered a too-small room. Being trapped in my own body with nothing to orient me was a nightmare only she could have dreamed up.

If I had succumbed to the curse, my only option would have been to crawl back to the Bishop family and beg them to lift it. And I doubted they would have without some serious conditions.

"Why don't you throw this one away?" Priya stared at the letter as if it was Hecate's regurgitated dinner. "Nothing they say to you is worth hearing."

"I know." I pulled my biker gloves out of my pocket and jammed them onto my hands. "But I need to stay one step ahead of them and to do that, I need to stay up to date."

That, and their desperation was mildly entertaining.

The first letters my grandmother had sent reeked of false authority. As if hoping that if she sounded stern enough that I would just traipse on back to her and allow them to lock me up in the basement like they had planned before I left. Over time, the letters had remained stern, but devolved into rage that I would have dreaded to see in person, and then into a sheepish but still obnoxiously expectant narrative.

But they didn't exactly want me back. The night I fled with Asher and Hecate, Hecate had activated my power for the first time. In the resulting magical explosion, I had inadvertently absorbed the powers of every person present. The Bishops wanted their powers back. But I had no doubt that they also wanted me to pay for defying them for four years.

"Are you sure you don't want to open that down here?" Priya asked, as I picked the letter up and headed for the hallway.

"No, I'm good." I didn't want an audience to whatever vileness they had sent me this time.

"Okay. Here if you need to talk. Remember that!"

"Got it."

I climbed the stairs, the banister still rickety under my hand from when Edward had slid down it too hard. For all our DIY expertise in this household, we didn't have a woodwork expert.

For that reason, all the runes I had carved into the frame of my door looked like a toddler had drawn them. As a druid, I carved runes into everything of importance. My door frame kept unwanted foreign magic out, and the runes carved into the floorboards under the rug in my room concentrated the power of my spells and rituals. Even my phone case had a rune carved into it to avoid getting lost. A common problem for the likes of me.

My room took up the attic space of the house; a room I had picked the instant I laid eyes on it. Many skylights in the roof made the room feel bigger and allowed me to see the sky. That helped a lot whenever my claustrophobia had a strong hold on me.

When I stepped into my bedroom, I touched a crystal sitting on my vanity next to the door. A flurry of magical lights materialised and bobbed up toward the ceiling, casting a calming light around the room. It was too late at night for electricity.

A fluffy mass stretched out on top of my patchwork duvet and reached toward me with two large paws. Her eyes held starlight, as if they possessed galaxies inside them, glowing in the dark void that was her midnight fur.

"Apologies, your majesty." I lowered into a deep bow. "I didn't mean to disturb your slumber."

Hecate yawned and licked her lips. Any human would have mistaken her for a Maine Coone but supernaturals, at second glance, would have known her as a grimalkin.

Grimalkins fell under an umbrella of the animal kingdom called Spirit Creatures ; animals that possessed magical powers. Many spirit creatures led packs of regular animals or went on to guide people, human or supernatural, in their lives. Hec was… different.

I sat down on the bed and rubbed her tummy, her purrs rumbling under my palm. As she rolled over, she revealed several sparkling pieces of jewellery, all awkwardly entwined.

"Hec, didn't I tell you to steal things from me if you really had the urge?" I teased the handful of jewellery out from under her. "Laura asked you nicely not to take her stuff anymore."

A hardened blacksmith by day and a girly girl by night, Laura didn't have it in her to hold a grudge against anyone. But having lived with her for years, I had learned she had her limits. She just wouldn't speak up if anyone crossed them.

Hecate rolled over and glared at me with her starlit eyes, projecting her complaint into my head with her gods-given telepathy. "It's no fun to take things I already have access to."

"It's not fair to Laura."

"She'll forgive me. She always does."

"One of these days she might not and put a lock on her door," I said.

"I hope she does. It'll make things more challenging."

I pulled a face at her and turned my hand into a claw, ruffling her belly a little harder. Hecate grabbed at my gloved hand with both paws and gnawed on my thumb.

Damn it, she was right. Nobody could say no to anything that cute. No wonder she had gotten away with her kleptomaniac antics for so long.

I put Laura's jewellery on the bedside table ready to take down to her in the morning. Maybe I could apologise in person and we could have a chat. If what Priya said about Laura's concerns were true, we were overdue a talk.

"What's that?" Hecate rolled onto her stomach and stared at the letter in my other hand.

I had almost forgotten about it.

"Just another letter from the devil," I said.

"What if it's cursed again?"

"I know. Priya said the same thing." But I couldn't throw it away. A part of me felt that I couldn't truly detach myself from my old family until I learned what my prophecy foretold.

My grandmother knew, even if the rest of the Bishops didn't. That prophecy was the reason she had locked me up in the first place. Plenty of times I had wondered if I could strike a bargain with her and ask for what she knew about the prophecy in exchange for their powers. But I knew full well that if I returned their powers, nothing would stop them from hunting me down again. I couldn't risk it.

I squinted at the envelope as I turned it over in my hands and held it out at arm's length to pop the flap open. The flap bounced a little under the shaking of my hand, but nothing else happened.

"No curse this time," I said. "How nice of them."

"That's about as nice as they get."

"Too right."

I pulled the letter out, crumpled the envelope up and tossed it into my bin. Something told me the letter would soon join it.

"Beatrix." I attempted to mimic my grandmother's trademark dual harsh and condescending tone. "Your silence is tiring and speaks volumes as to how you have matured in recent years."

"Burn. Did she at least send you some aloe vera cream?"

"Ha. Ha." I cleared my throat before continuing. "We have waited long enough for your response and it appears you don't care at all about the impact your actions have had on our quality of life and our standing in the community." She wasn't wrong there. "I expect an immediate response or you will force me to take greater action to resolve this matter."

Greater action? I snorted, balled the letter up and lobbed it into the bin.

Hecate placed two paws on my forearm and reached up to nuzzle my cheek with the top of her head.

"Didn't she say that last time?" she asked.

"And the time before that." The more she said it, the less seriously I took her. She barked louder and louder in the hope she would scare me into doing things her way. But I wasn't alone anymore and she had no power over me.

Hecate jumped off the bed and pottered over to her favourite mouse toy at the foot of my dresser. I rested my elbows on my knees to watch her play.

I had no intention of walking back into my old life to eat scraps and do their chores for them, only for my grandmother to lock me in my room when I was done. Now they knew what it felt like to have their fates in the hands of someone who didn't give a damn about them.

When I first escaped with Asher and Hecate, I wondered if they would contact the magical police force, Nexus, to get their powers back. But as time went on, I realised they couldn't risk the authorities finding all the skeletons that had built up in their respective closets. The entire Bishop family, headed by my grandmother, Pearl, had specialised in anonymously supplying powerful curses and hexes to dangerous people.

Her small empire had depended on all three of her surviving children doing her bidding. Thornton and Timothy, my two uncles, had never married but that hadn’t stopped Timothy from having a son, Paul. All three of them worked as Pearl’s puppets, doing anything she asked. Even if that meant turning people into pigs and serving them up for dinner.

But perhaps of all the Bishops, the one I most loathed was Louisa, my cousin, and daughter of my aunt Lucille. She had a vindictive streak that she loved exercising, especially on me. She had made my life a shade more hellish every chance she got. It had given me no end of pleasure to take her power from her.

Louisa’s power to turn anything into gold automatically made her the family favourite. Once she had learned how to wield her power properly, the Bishops were never without money. I wondered how her ego was doing now she had no power to play with?

According to Pearl, my parents had died in a nasty altercation between them and such dangerous people not long after I was born. For whatever reason, the culprits had escaped my grandmother's reach. But Asher hadn't.

I snorted at the memory of her shrinking Asher down and stuffing him into a jar. If only I could get her to do the same thing now. He had crossed Pearl and her punishment for him would have likely been far harsher than a lifetime in a jar. He was lucky we had escaped.

Without Asher and Hecate, I would probably be scrubbing more of my uncle's boots or hand washing Louisa's expensive dresses, drowning in feelings of inadequacy.

Hecate stopped batting the mouse and primed herself to pounce as a folded piece of paper slid under the door. I narrowed my eyes as she picked it up in her mouth and pottered over with it. Who was sneaking notes this time of night?

I took it from Hecate and unfolded it.

Didn't want to tell you face to face. Asher's coming home for Laura's birthday. Don't kill me. Love, Priya.