Chapter 17

Chapter

Seventeen

W hen he pulls into my driveway, I feel like I should linger, thank him for helping me, even though all we did was find more questions than answers, but I climb out because I have to talk to my mom. I have to get this thing straightened out with her.

He waits until I have the door open and am half inside before he pulls away. I look back to wave a second too late for him to see. So, I take a breath and walk inside. Mom is, of course, waiting for me.

“Robbie Joe!” But then she meets my gaze and hers is the one that softens. I’m angry, although I’m not sure why. “RJ?”

I have the picture in my fucking hand and I should say something but I don’t know what. She’s lied to us—to me and Aimee—for the entirety of our lives and what if he really is a syphoner? A syphoner is born into every generation. For balance. Maybe.

No.

They would’ve told us .

“Who is Viktor Hadley? And why is Dad in this picture?” I hold it out for her to see.

“Where did you get that?”

“That doesn’t matter. What matters is that Dad is in this picture and he’s called Viktor Hadley. Is that his name?” My voice is steel, or whatever is harder and tougher than. I’m tired of being lied to, tired of being treated like I’m a fucking child.

I stare at her, my gaze as hard as my tone.

Before she can answer, Aimee comes down the stairs and stops. “What’s going on? RJ? What’s wrong?”

I sigh and look at my mother. “You want to tell her? Or you want me to do it?”

Mom looks at me. “I knew this time would come.”

“So, you have your lies ready then?” I’m past angry.

“Sit down, girls. We need to talk.”

Instead of telling her that she had the chance to tell us the truth every day, I sit and wait for Aimee to sit beside me, although the words are there, dying to be spoken.

She holds out her hand for the picture and I hand it over. She pinches it between her thumb and index finger and traces my dad’s face with the middle finger of her other hand. “He was so young here.”

He looks exactly the same in the picture as he does in the one over the television, which was taken while Mom was pregnant with Aimee.

She breathes out slow. “He was on the…on the board for the Institute. A founding family. One of the Firsts.” So that is him. I knew it. I fucking knew it. “Things were going so well. He was the headmaster. Everyone loved and respected Viktor. He was a master at magic.” She smiles. “Like you girls.”

But we all know she means like Aimee. I’m just more angry so she’s trying hard to kiss my ass and keep me calm so I don’t explode all over her.

“He worked day and night to make sure the wards were in place and the dedication magic was ready.”

“You knew him then?” I nod to the picture. “You knew him when the Institute was being built?”

She nods. “Of course, I did. I helped decide the curriculum based on what I’d learned and what helped me when I was a student.”

Added to her list of sins was my Magic Theory class. Who the hell needed to know the theory of magic?

Mom glances at me as if she can read my mind. And maybe she can. I’ve never asked the specifics of her magic or what magical facet is her special skill.

“RJ, Aimee, there was a mistake when Viktor was born.” She shakes her head. “He has magic. So much beautiful and powerful magic. He has the art of illusion, restoration, the power of divinity, and all things psychic—all at his command.” She speaks of him with such reverence and her love for him is obvious.

“Then what was the mistake?” I need to know.

She sighs and wrings her hands and takes a sip of a drink I don’t remember seeing in front of her a moment ago. It’s a dark amber colored liquid that smells of alcohol. But that can’t be right because my mother doesn’t drink. She doesn’t even keep alcohol in the house.

She holds up the glass. “It’s whiskey. I’m a conjuration witch. That’s my facet.” She sighs, toasts the air, and drains the glass.

“What was the mistake?”

“He had all that magic but couldn’t use it. He needed the magic of another witch to use it. ”

I stare at her. “He was a syphoner. So they were right.” All those accusations had been spot-on truth.

She nods. “He was part syphoner. And they threw him away because of it.” There’s a sadness in my mother that I hadn’t noticed before, although I doubt it’s ever been hidden.

“Is that why he left?” I’ve always wondered but have never asked because I didn’t want to be the one who made my mother sad. When she nods, my blood burns. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Your father shouldn’t have been a syphoner.” I don’t know if she has some metaphysical reason for saying so or if she’s lamenting that he is, or was, one.

“Why?” I need more than her opinion. I need a cold hard fact. Or I’ll just face that he’s the syphoner and I have to…end him.

“In each generation of the first families”—which I now realize we are—“there is only one born. Our generation had two.” She sighs and it comes from deep in her chest, makes her seem deflated by the time she’s finished. “It never happens. I looked in the annals of magic, searched all the information I could find, and never before had two syphoners been born into the same generation. Much less into the same family.”

“So, Dad is out there bleeding power from other witches?” I mean it to sound blunt because she lied to us. For the entirety of our lives. I want her to feel bad for it and, if I have to use Dad and her feelings for him to do it, then I will.

Mom shakes her head. “No. Your father would never.” She stands and walks to the photo of her and our father that hangs on the wall in our house. “There was a mistake when your father was born. He was given both sets of power. The divine power of a witch and the ability to drain such power as a syphoner.”

“Okay.”

“Your father isn’t one of the syphoners who steals from others because he has always had his own power inside of him. He’s rare and as far as I’ve ever been able to find out, the only one like him. It took him years to learn how to use his magic.” She glances at the grimoire that’s now open on the table. “That’s his. Has some of his power stored in it.”

“What?” Power stored in it?

She nods. “A syphoner can save magic or store it, if you will, in an object. If it’s stored, it cannot be stolen.” That was how it opened to the specific page I needed. “It can be retrieved and returned when the spell is taken off the object.”

“Whose power did he put into it?”

She smiles softly. “It’s a mixture of mine and his.”

I shake my head. “This is all a lovely story, Mom, but I need something. A scepter. A wand. The pearl of illusion.”

Her face pinches. “How do you know about that?”

“I did some poking around.” And when her frown deepens, I continue. “I’m an adult and a witch. I can protect myself.” I don’t tell her that the syphoner had been unable to take my power. “I did some research with Zane.”

Aimee twists her head to look at me. “Nice.” And gives me a thumbs up.

“We need the wand to create the Scepter of Power to kill the syphoner.” Another syphoner, so I have to find my dad. “Do you know where Dad is?”

Mom shakes her head. “I don’t hear from him. Occasionally, I’ll open the top drawer of my dresser and see a note in a spell that wasn’t there before. But I don’t know where they come from.” She shakes her head. “And since you girls found the grimoire, I can feel him as though he’s nearby, but I believe it’s only his magic from the book.”

As angry as I am at her, her sadness cuts me. It’s so visceral. “How did you know how to tend to Aimee? Is it because of the grimoire?”

Mom looks at Aimee then at me, then she nods at Aimee as if Aimee is the one who asked. “Because of RJ, Viktor wrote in the grimoire what to do in case…”

“Because of RJ?” What the hell does that mean?

Mom glances at me and nods. “We knew from the time Aimee was a few months old that she had the gift. She filled her room with bubbles when she was six months old.” Yeah. I’ve heard the story before. “Since she had magic so young, we knew she wasn’t a syphoner.”

“And that means I am?” It explains a lot, even if I don’t particularly want to believe it.

“We started checking with other families to see if there was a syphoner. It was no easy task.”

I scoff. “Yeah. I’ll bet.”

“We were in the middle of rebuilding the Institute so we were all around one another.” I stare at her through narrowed eyes. She’s saying I’m a syphoner. It’s a broad change of fucking tune from all the years she was telling me to use my magic, call on my magic , feel my magic . Anger burns inside of me as she continues. “We checked the children of all the first families for the girls. Because if the syphoner in one generation is a man, the next generation will be a woman.” She closes her eyes as if she’s remembering. “But it doesn’t have to be his daughter.”

I nod. “All the others have magic of their own.” Because of course they do. “So that means you thought, or maybe you think , I’m a danger to Aimee.” I don’t phrase it as a question because there’s no question to it. “So you’ve had the antidote spell ready since I was a baby.”

Mom nods. “You were young and we didn’t know what we do now.”

“Which is?”

“You have to know that you can take the power. You wouldn’t know to try until you were told. And it isn’t as easy as just taking someone’s power.” Although it had certainly looked that way when the syphoner I’d seen—one whose identity I still don’t know—was draining the power from my sister. Apparently, she isn’t going to tell me how to do it either.

I stand because no way in hell am I going to let my mom justify not telling me what I am as a matter of safety. She’s my parent. If she was worried about me using my power for evil instead of good, she should’ve told me what I am and then taught me how to be the good version of a syphoner.

“You should’ve told me.”

She nods. “Yes.”

Nothing like agreement to take all the wind out of my anger. “Why didn’t you?” She’s my mom. The person who tells me when my jeans make me look shorter or my hair needs a good conditioning. She tells me when I’m hurting Aimee’s feelings. She could tell me anything. I might get mad, but I would hear her. I always hear her.

She sighs. “Because if you didn’t know what you could do, then you couldn’t do it.” She shakes her head. “Syphoning magic is a conscious decision. You can’t do it by accident. Can’t stumble on how to do it.”

“And you didn’t trust me?”

“You don’t know what that kind of hunger for power will do to you.” She tries to reach for my hand, but I cross my arms and sit back. “It brings all the darkness a witch is to the surface.”

“So it was better to let me think I was inadequate? Better to let me…suffer?” Weren’t parents supposed to want to help their kids, make their kids stronger, better? “Thanks for that, by the way.”

I can’t even see past how angry I am at her. How disappointed I am that they didn’t trust me. That there’s a spell in the fucking grimoire that was written in case I hurt Aimee.

“We thought being at the Institute would help the magical cravings. You would be able to use the magic of the buildings and the other witches to satisfy your need to do magic.” I’d never thought of it as a need before, but it was. As much as I needed to breathe, I needed to do magic.

She crosses her arms and looks at me, turns her entire body to face me.

“RJ, we did everything we could think of to keep you safe and to keep Aimee safe.” Her voice is soft, a plea, and I can’t hear it right now. I’m so angry that I can’t even look at her.

Now I’m the one shaking my head. I’m hurt and angry and I can’t believe they hid this from me instead of showing me how to fight the craving for power and overcome it. Instead, they chose to lie to me, hide who I am, what I am, from myself.

I get up and walk to the door. “I’ll be back later. I need to think, and I can’t do it here.”

“RJ!” Mom calls after me, but I’m already outside. Aimee will talk to her. Or she won’t, and Mom will worry either way. But, right now, I have to figure out what to do with all these emotions and all this new knowledge.