Chapter 34

TheAlliancepeoplewere quick and careful as they searched the premises. They really did seem set on getting the job done and getting out of here. Not that anyone could blame them. The Lovell estate was a creature of nightmare and legend, and Andy had done nothing to set their fears at ease. The field agents seemed inclined to avoid Aahil after Andy"s warning, so only I noticed when he shared a look with Andy and Zhong, then disappeared. There was a nice, big, locking drawer in the desk in Andy"s workroom. He would make sure the Bestiary was out of sight.

None of us wanted some strangers—let alone the Supernatural Alliance—to get their hands on the book. I was still bound to the book, along with the last creature Andy had yet to free. And there was no guarantee that the others couldn"t be bound again using some sort of high-level tracing spell or the like. The Alliance wasn"t lacking in magical resources.

Of course, the Alliance people didn"t find any illegal demons. The field mage in charge nodded gruffly to Andy as they left, and told our witch to watch her ass. Somehow it felt less like a threat and more like a warning. There was something going on with the organization, and the thought made me feel even more restless than usual.

The others all congregated in the informal living room we had unofficially claimed as our own. I floated through the wall to join them, only mildly struggling to stay in this plane. My tether was getting weaker. I might still be bound to the book, but it seemed all that could do was slow my steady fade from this world.

If I had a body, I"m sure it would go cold at the thought. But the emotions I felt were a shallow echo of that remembered terror.

You were never meant to be here to begin with, I told myself firmly. So why do you feel so hopeless?

I managed to pull myself through the wall and more fully into this plane, forcing myself into some semblance of a shape, rather than the formless ball of aether that was becoming my default. I had to at least see this through—make sure everyone was free from the bestiary and the book was destroyed. Then I could rest. Or fade away completely, or whatever lost spirits did when they reached the end of their usefulness.

"…bunch of uptight dickbags," Andy was saying. She flopped down onto the couch next to Zhong and the gargoyle patted her knee.

I became hyper focused on the flush of color that suffused my witch"s cheeks. Her temper was flaring, and it called up the memory of how warm it felt when I merged with her. How for the first time in forever I had actually felt things when she carried me with her. When she let me participate in her life. In her pleasure. I had never had someone welcome a voluntary possession. And I made sure the witches who controlled me before this thought I was too powerless to attempt an involuntary one. I might be dead and disenchanted, but I was still an angel. I had some faint moral compass left.

I didn"t realize I had drifted closer until my essence brushed up against the warm, living earth magic that suffused Andy"s aura. She looked up a me with curious gray eyes, shoving her forest green hair back from her face. "You okay, Elijah?"

I felt my shape waver for a second before I reformed it. My physical shape wasn"t the only part of me that was fading in and out these days. It seemed my mind was just as unreliable, prone to drifting off on tangents, longing for things that were beyond my reach. "Fine," I said, pushing out a misty appendage to stroke along her aura, just above her shoulder. "Just woolgathering."

She frowned at me, a deep groove appearing between her brows, and I thought she was about to call me on my lie. But Aahil interrupted, drawing her attention back to more important matters. "You need to stop fearing them, witch," the jinn said, his silky voice full of menace. "You hide and cower and make all this effort to be beneath notice. Invisible. And for what? So the whole world can continue to disrespect you and push you around?"

He snorted, little sparks bursting from his fingertips and dancing on the ends of his dark hair. "You"re a fucking Lovell. It"s time you started acting like one."

Andy gave him an unimpressed look. "Yeah, sure. I"ll just go and get to work torturing people and starting wars then, shall I? Did you suddenly suffer some sort of memory loss? Forget how much you loathe Lovells?"

The jinn flicked his fingers dismissively. "You"re always going on about how you"re different. Prove it. Wield the damned power we can all sense stuffed down inside you. The audacity of those people coming in here and violating your sanctum. No other witch would allow it. Stop being a coward."

"Aahil," I murmured. "Too far."

"Fuck you, jinn," Andy snapped.

But Niamh surprised us all. She leaned forward in her chair across from Andy, her elbows on her knees as she looked the witch in the eyes. Her voice was surprisingly gentle for the forthright fae. "He"s right," she said evenly. "And you know it."

"Andy is not a coward," I cut in. "She"s one of the bravest people I"ve met."

The fae waved that away, pausing to shove a wavy lock of golden-brown hair back behind her sharp-pronged antlers. "Of course she"s not a coward. We all know Aahil just can"t risk complimenting anyone. "But he"s not exactly wrong, is he Andy? You"ve hidden away in the human world for most of your life, pretending to be human, to be anything but what you are. You haven"t had any formal magic training, and it seems like you go out of your way to avoid using your magic when other magic users are around." She grinned. "And yet somehow you managed to break through all the nasty Lovell spells on the bestiary and free us. You"ve deactivated who knows how many traps and spells around this mansion. And just yesterday you managed to unweave a centuries old ancestral ward."

"What are you saying?" Zhong asked, his big hand moving to Andy"s back, as if to say he was there for her. I envied him at the moment. I could tell Andy was upset and uncomfortable, but I couldn"t throw myself between her and the others the way the big, living gargoyle could.

"I"m saying," Niamh answered, her green gaze never leaving Andy"s. "She"s been suppressing her magic this entire time. I can feel it. Aahil can feel it. I know you"re not as strong magically as we are, but I"m sure even you can sense it if you look hard enough, Zhong."

Hasumi"s rich, flowing voice cut through the tension in the air, like drops of water falling into a bucket. "Oleander"s magical well is deep. But she"s cut off from it." Plunk, plunk, plunk…as if what they were saying was just natural and everyone knew it.

I made a sighing sound, or the best approximation I could manage, just to convey my annoyance with them all. "Obviously. But why the sudden insistence on pushing her?"

Andy just glared around the room at us all. "You fuckers. Stay out of my aura!"

Aahil just smirked, completely unrepentant for poking around learning her secrets. "The push is because she"s being stupid. Thinking small. It doesn"t suit you, Andy. My pet might cower for me, but she shouldn"t show weakness to anyone else. It"s embarrassing."

Andy lifted her middle finger. Aahil flicked his own fingers at her and the ruby at her throat flared with magic, making her hiss as if she"d been burned.

Their flirting was uncomfortable. I never knew if they were going to try to kill each other or start having violent sex right there in front of everyone. I reeled my wandering thoughts back in from that tempting tangent.

"You think whatever is wrong with the Supernatural Alliance is a threat to us?" It finally clicked in my poor, misty mind.

Aahil winked at me. "Good job catching up, spook. Nice of you to join us."

Niamh shrugged. "Whether or not they"re a threat is beside the point. Poking around with the wards ended up exposing us and decreasing your security. Every time you work with the bestiary you risk blowing yourself up. You need to learn to work with your magic so you can protect yourself."

Aahil nodded. "Let the world know you"re not to be fucked with and at least some of them will take the hint and get lost."

"It really would serve you," Hasumi added, coming to perch their ethereal rear end on the arm of Aahil"s chair. "You"re a wonderful woman," they said easily, "and you"d make an astoundingly powerful witch if you learned to embrace your magic. Hiding and flying below the radar has served you well thus far. But the others are right, the agents the Alliance sent here were brimming with discontent, worry…foreboding. And your efforts to help us have made you more visible. You should seek out another earth witch to teach you formal magic."

Andy moved through me when she stood, her warmth like a sharp stab through my being, welcome but sudden. Then it was gone. She threw her hands up in the air, her voice just shy of a shout. "You don"t think I"ve tried?" She shook her head, her voice full of poison. "No one will teach me. The clean witches are too afraid I"ll sully their reputations or their magic. And ones who would have me are already rotten. They just want a chance to use me or learn all the dark Lovell secrets and spells. I tried." Her voice quieted to a flat whisper. "For years I tried."

The raw hurt in her voice shocked us all, I think. She didn"t deny that she had been downplaying and disregarding her true power. She didn"t tell us we were wrong about the need to defend herself. It was worse. It was like she had torn open her chest to show us the gaping wound to her heart. "No one wants a fucking Lovell witch getting better at magic."

No one wanted her, her tone and her posture said. Witches needed community. They needed fellow magic workers and covens to support them magically and emotionally. But the entire magical community had shut her out.

I reached for her, attempting to twine with her, to offer comfort. But she moved away, storming from the room. "I have shit to do," she snapped. "One more person to free from that goddess cursed book before I can go back home and forget any of this even happened."

The room was quiet after she left, everyone soaking in what Andy had just said. That all she wanted was to wash her hands of this whole mess. That once the bestiary was gone, she"d be gone too.

That she planned to leave us.

"She"s just hurting and defensive," I said into the aching silence. "She didn"t mean it."

Aahil snorted and puffed out of existence, transporting himself elsewhere. Probably to his room to sulk. Hasumi gave me a sad, watery smile and did the same, maybe chasing after the jinn to keep him from setting anything on fire.

Zhong and Niamh shared a look that said they"d expected this all along.

I couldn"t stand it. The lack of faith in Andy. The heartbreak they were all feeling.

My heart was broken too, but not by this. I always knew I couldn"t stay. That I"d only have her for a moment before I was gone. But it had to hurt worse, to think she was the one who would be doing the leaving.

I shifted realities and flowed through the dark, cold space in between, reappearing in the material world, in Andy"s workroom.

Sure enough, our witch had the bestiary spread out on her workbench, muttering to herself as she flipped pages.

"Do you need any help?" I asked, loving how she didn"t even start at the sound of my voice. She was a strong medium. She had probably sensed me before I even fully crossed over into this plane.

She huffed and pushed up the sleeves of her baggy sweatshirt, clearly still angry and defensive, but determined to channel it all into solving the puzzle before her. "I can"t figure out what the hell this last one is. There"s no name here, just like with the boogeyman. And these abilities are all so random and obtuse. Who the hell knows what they meant by this? Could be anything." She scoffed. "Shadows. Transitions. A bunch of mundane magic any witch could do. Useless."

"I wish I could be more help," I said, moving closer. "But whatever they are, your ancestors never called them when one of us was active. Maybe they never had cause to combine our abilities. Or…perhaps they were just that scared."

She snorted. "Lovells aren"t scared of anything. That"s why they were all so terrible. And why they"re all dead."

My eyes caught on a word near the bottom half of one of the pages of description. "Wait. What was that. Go back."

She paused and let me peruse the book. There, in the middle of some Greek sentence that all looked like gibberish to me—except for one word. "Psychopomp," I murmured.

She ran a finger over the text, her gray eyes darting to me. "Psychopomp? But that"s…I"m a psychopomp, technically. Anyone who can speak to spirits is. That doesn"t really tell me anything."

But I could see the gears turning in her head as she scanned the page of attributes again, with the argument about fellow witches fresh in her head. "Fuck me," she bit out. "They trapped another witch in there."

She snarled as she grabbed a piece of notebook paper and started scribbling spell components and ideas. "You fucking degenerate, backstabbing bastards," she hissed. "Who the hell enslaves their own kind?!"

But we both knew the answer to that. A Lovell, that"s who.

And it was a Lovell who was going to free whatever poor witch had the misfortune of crossing Andy"s ancestors.