Page 2 of These Unhallowed Halls (Equinox Seasons Duet #2)

One-Chapters Close As Swiftly As The Wind

Temps

“L izzie!” I threw down the sweater I was folding to put in my suitcase, frustration making my temples throb. “Did you take my necklace again?! I told you a million times that I hate it when—”

But right as I spun around to storm out of the room, I crashed right into her. Lizzie stood just in front of me, laughing as I corrected myself and holding up the necklace. It dangled from her fingers, and I immediately pulled back, trying to ignore the heat that flared through my cheeks.

Three years. Three damn years, and I still react like this around her.

Wearing that classic smirk of hers, the corner of her full, dusty pink lips lifting as if to mock me and my suffering, Lizzie tossed her long braid over her shoulder and sauntered over toward the mirror, taking my necklace with her.

“Why don’t I just keep it right here?” She opened the clasp and put it on, letting the little blue gemstone land right at her cleavage, which she brushed the tips of her fingers over gently. “It’ll be safe and cozy, and if you want it so badly…”

Turning around to face me, Lizzie locked her deep hazel stare on me, and I could feel my chest tightening, not allowing me to take in the oxygen I so desperately needed. My heart was way too loud in my ears, and that pulsing feeling in my core needed to back the hell off.

You’re twenty-two, Temperance Montgomery. You are an adult. Shake it off.

But then Lizzie was crossing the room to stand in front of me, the light-colored floorboard creaking under her soft steps.

She got right up in my business, hardly a centimeter separating us, and I could smell the musky perfume she always wore, moss and cypress, blood and warm fur, with a subtle tinge of gunsmoke and sweet resin.

Something I only knew because I’d gone to the website where she bought the stuff and looked it up.

“...it’ll be right here waiting for you.”

“I…I…” My tongue was clumsy and too thick. I couldn’t move, forcing myself to keep my eyes off the blue gem and the soft home where it now resided.

“Yeah, Temps? You what?” Lizzie’s teasing voice did too many things to me, and I shook my head, stepping backward—nearly tumbling over the bed—and turning around to face my almost completely packed suitcase and backpack.

“We need to get moving. If we miss registration today, it’ll be a pain in the ass tomorrow.”

Lizzie scoffed, a sound I knew too well, and I looked up at the mirror on my side of the room, the one that reflected hers, and watched her spin around, rolling her eyes as she went back to her own suitcase, which was nowhere near packed.

“It’s not like Night Grove is going anywhere.

We’ll be fine. It’s like a fifteen-minute drive.

” In the mirror, I watched as she haphazardly stuffed things into her suitcase.

The majority of our belongings, the ones we’d actually need for classes and such, had already been brought over to the dorms because Mr. Chamberlain insisted on helping out.

“And you know for a fact that I’m only doing this because of what it is. A school for wi—”

“Lizzie, don’t.” I cast a glance out toward the hallway. I didn’t hear my mom or Mr. Chamberlain, but I knew they were just downstairs, ready to see us off, since Lizzie wouldn’t let her father drive us.

“Ugh, they’re not listening, Temps. Chill.” In a flurry of fabric, Lizzie stuffed her things into the suitcase, not being careful in the slightest, and then faced me again. “But if it’ll keep you from having an aneurysm, fine. A ‘post-graduate’ school like this? Yeah, sign me up.”

“Thank you. I’ll…” I looked at my suitcase—the black fabric worn and aged just like the deep purple bedspread it was resting on—and then looped the buckle through my new backpack, the first one I’d bought for myself since high school.

“...get my stuff downstairs and then we can go. And I feel like I should mention that Night Grove recruited us. It’s not like we applied to go, so—”

“Exactly. They want us. Two hot step-sissies who have a little of that old black magic in their blood. If only my mom were here.”

I wanted to point out that she was being less than conscientious again, but Lizzie had mentioned her mother, something she didn’t do often, and it felt like a dick move to yell at her when she was clearly using humor to play off the lingering grief.

She’d lost her mother a lot longer ago than I’d lost my dad, but one thing we’d both been able to agree on was that the wrong parent died.

Which, ouch, horrible thing to think, yes, but not any less accurate.

I wasn’t like Mr. Chamberlain was a bad person.

Lizzie’s dad, who was, yes, technically my stepfather, was nice enough, but he was distracted.

He worked long hours at the hospital, and he’d never been especially touchy-feely, according to Lizzie.

That made things a lot worse when her mother had died back when she was young.

He was that kind of man who just didn’t see things if they weren’t directly essential to his daily life. Brilliant but clueless.

Which was the opposite of how things had been with my dad when he was still alive.

Mom was better then. After his passing, we both sort of drifted, but Mom never got back on track.

Hell, she fell into a deep hole of weird new religious stuff, and where she’d been rather laid back about all that when my dad was still alive—even going so far as to encourage him to reconnect with his native roots since he was adopted and didn’t know much about them—now, she’d just… changed .

I didn’t feel like I could talk to her about this witch business with the school or our own heritage, for that matter.

Apparently, we came from a long line of witches and spellcasters, even some medicine women on my father’s side, per the Night Grove Academy recruiter.

I’d hated that the man had known more about my family than I did and dug right into research mode.

A skill I was well-known for.

Sure enough, way back in the first records I could find from Europe, there was a mention of a woman who’d fled persecution, landing in Rockford, Massachusetts, when it was first being settled. Funnily enough, her name had also been Temperance.

I felt connected to her even though that was ridiculous, but hell, she was my family.

The recruiter for the school had said that the faculty had been keeping an eye on our line for a while now, expecting magic to show up.

I’d been the first in generations, and when I’d noticed that I could work some easy spell found online, I’d thought I’d gone nuts.

Until, that was, Lizze confessed to being able to do the same.

And something totally different, too.

Since I was young, I’d had an affinity for plants. A green witch, apparently, and alchemy, and I were regular buddies. I was mixing concoctions for as long as I could remember in some shape or form, and I’d gotten pretty good at doing it sneakily just before Dad died in a car wreck.

Tea and a few mushrooms couldn’t stop a drunk driver from careening across the median and killing him, though.

Lizzie, on the other hand, wasn’t the green girl I was. Oh no, Lizzie’s specialty lay in reading people, and she meant that pretty damn literally. She could touch you and see all your vibes, your secrets, what lay ahead for you.

Reason one million and two that I tried so hard to keep my distance from her.

Number one, of course, was because if she did, if Lizzie got too close, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep myself from enjoying that way too much.

Sure, she’d only been in my life for three years, and we were both adults now, but Lizzie was still, in fact, my stepsister. There were rules, and I wasn’t the type of person to just start breaking them willy-nilly.

You break one, and you might as well break them all.

It occurred to me that I’d been staring down at my bag for far too long now, and I shook myself, zipping up my suitcase and getting it down on the floor as I slung my backpack over one shoulder.

This room wasn’t much, but it’d been mine my entire life.

I’d only shared it with Lizzie during college breaks, and that wasn’t very often, considering how regularly she went out to do “other shit.”

Her words.

So, leaving the place now, for what felt like a much more permanent evacuation, felt…

weird. There was no time to be overly sentimental, though, and we both still planned on visiting the house during breaks.

I just wasn’t totally sure when those would be.

We were headed to an academy for practitioners, and everything had been pretty mysterious about what precisely that would entail.

Circling my bed, I pulled my suitcase along the short-fiber rug at the foot of my bed and parked it so that I could close my closet.

My bookshelves were mostly empty now, the books having been carted off to the dorm in that moving truck that came by yesterday.

I was glad that the academy had allowed us to have things delivered early.

Our dean, Professor Owens, had been very understanding about us coming to the school with no other magic folk in our lives, and somewhat late in the game, considering Lizzie and I had already graduated from college.

With oh-so-useful degrees in English and Art.

My plan had been to teach. I had no idea what Lizzie planned on doing with a BA in Art History, but knowing her, she hadn’t thought that far ahead either.

“Girls! You should get a move on!” My mother called up the stairs, and I snapped back to the present, forcing myself out of the worry over the future and regret over the past—a limbo I frequented more often than I’d like.

“Well, you heard Barbs, Temps. Let’s roll.”

Rolling my eyes, I adjusted my backpack and grabbed my suitcase again.

Lizzie had a way with nicknames, and “Barbs” was pretty accurate with how warm and cozy my mom could be.

Following her out, I ran my stare over Lizzie’s outfit again, both admiring the way her slim curves looked in the black leggings and the strip of flesh visible where her white crop top and leather jacket ended, and feeling sorry for myself because I just wasn’t like that.

We trekked down the hallway, the white trim and teal walls so bright compared to the deep blue I’d painted my room when I was finally allowed. My style was very nightsky meets too many books, while my mother was much more the “Live, Laugh, Love Your Obsession With Bird Motifs.”

It wasn’t horrible. It could have been a lot worse, but there came a point where I was pretty sure it was illegal to own that many cheesy block quote decor items and pseudo-rustic bird cage thingies that were always paired with some generic watercolor print.

At the foot of the stairs, said bird lover—who’d never actually gone bird watching or owned one or even given them so much as a second thought—stood clutching her little crucifix that she’d taken to wearing after joining that support group for widows and widowers.

She smiled up at us, and then Mr. Chamberlain came up behind her, resting his arm over her shoulders.

“We’re so proud of you girls. Drive safe and let us know when you arrive, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah, Dad. I’ll text. We’re twenty-two. Cut the umbilical.”

“Elizabeth!” Mom said, her expression morphing from one of embarrassing nostalgia to horror. “Don’t speak to your father like that.”

I bit my tongue as Lizzie rolled her eyes, going straight for the front door with her stuff and snagging her keys off the hook that hung on the wall, another whitewashed piece with a tiny bird-shaped hole drilled through the back.

“He’s got to be used to it by now, Barbs.” Casting a look at me over her shoulder, Lizzie gestured at the door with her head. “Come on, Temps! Train’s a’leaving.”

And that was it. That was the big goodbye. I hurried along after Lizzie, knowing with certainty that she’d leave me hanging if I didn’t, and the door shut behind me as I tried to catch up. Lizzie slid into the driver's seat of her BMW M3.

Having a well-off doctor for a father had its perks.

Putting my stuff in the trunk, I made sure it was shut and then got inside next to Lizzie. She fired up the car as we buckled up—it always shocked me that she actually wore the damn thing—and then she hard-reversed out of the driveway and sped off down the road out of town.

“Witch school here we come!” She rolled down the window, sticking her arm out, and cheered. “Get fucked, normies!”

I couldn’t help but laugh, and then, of course, Lizzie was rolling down my window.

I would only be twenty-two and a new student at Night Grove Academy once right?

So what was the harm in living it up a little?

This was going to be the best time of our lives, finally able to use our gifts and grow them.

For the first time in a while, I finally felt like things were looking up for “Towny Temps and Her Terrible Back Luck.”

Sticking my hand out the window, I mimicked the way Lizzie when up and down like riding a wave and smiled from ear to damn ear.

“Here we come, Liz.” My voice was too quiet for her to hear over the roaring wind that launched our hair this way and that. “Here we come.”