16

Three o'clock Sunday morning—thirty minutes after Este headed off to bed so she could catch a few hours of sleep before leaving

for the airport—found me standing on the third floor of Cameron Manor in the inky, charred northwest corridor, arguing with

myself.

Here, the house was dark as a full lunar eclipse, and chillingly eerie. Surely, there was a better time to do this. I had

less than forty-eight hours before I could open Juniper's tell-all letter, which had damned well better tell all, and I'd

devoured enough gothic novels to know the monsters came out at night, not in the middle of the day, and bad things happened

in dark houses when erstwhile heroines went blithely chasing after this strange noise or that odd light, so what was I thinking?

That I couldn't get that dratted grimoire off my mind, wondering what else the tome might offer, were I to solicit it.

Este had burdened me, in the brief time she'd been here, with so much information that one would think I wouldn't actively

seek more. I hadn't even told her the fire that burned our house had been deliberately set, about the seeming attempt on my

life and the body in the barn or the historic cabin and inexplicable book. I'd been too busy trying to absorb all the information

she was throwing at me to share any of my own.

But honestly, lurking beyond that was a deep, unshakeable wariness that stilled my tongue. I'd planned to tell Este everything

down to the last detail when she arrived so I could pick her brain. I'd thought we'd be exploring the dangers of my new life

together. Then I'd discovered she'd known what I was all my life and never told me, and distrust was seeded in my heart. I couldn't shake the feeling that there was something else important

I needed to know, something critical. My best friend, whom I'd trusted blindly and completely, had never told me I was a witch;

what else might she be withholding? At this moment, I trusted no one and nothing but myself. Not even, necessarily, whatever

Juniper might disclose in her letter. How could I, after discovering those closest to me had been lying to me all my life?

Why wouldn't strangers lie even more readily?

Perhaps the book knew something of my mother. That might seem a ludicrous thought, but this was a book that wrote itself,

which was so far beyond absurd, ludicrous no longer applied. Perhaps it contained within it a lineage of all witches, and

could tell me who I was, or at least offer a salient clue.

Run , it had commanded. But why? Initially, it seemed it was trying to help me understand what I was. Then opposing forces had

battled for control of its pages and the right to communicate. Desperate to learn more from either narrator (who struck me

as somehow more impartial than the people around me), I was just anesthetized enough by alcohol, and fueled by brewing anger,

to feel irritably reckless, nearly indomitable.

Armed with two flashlights and a battery-operated lantern I'd looped over a shoulder, I cast a bright enough halo that I felt

reasonably assured I wouldn't be completely wigged out once I entered the inky chute.

But, God, the manor was oppressively cavernous at night! In the dark, it was easy to imagine, as Este had said, that the house expanded infinitely. Were I to walk too far, or fail to pay strict attention, I might stray into some witchy no-man's-land from which return might not be as simple as merely retracing my steps but cost me a debt in blood, or a piece of my soul. Really, there was a turret with no ingress, a door in Juniper's office that didn't open, concealed panels in the walls connecting wings; Cameron Manor was far from predictable.

And I was a witch. How incomprehensible was all this?

As I paused, stoking my nerve, I envisioned the macabre fortress from the outside, recalling my gut impression of it the afternoon

I'd first seen it, and laughed aloud at the idea that here and now, in the middle of the night, I, newly indomitable Zo Grey,

stood in the blackest of pitch, about to enter the even inkier, heavily fire-damaged, most terrifying part of the house.

I had balls these days; I'd give me that. Or a perilous dearth of brain cells.

I realized then that laughter before battle is a suit of armor. Mood leavened, squaring my shoulders, I strode confidently

into the entrance of the smoky, icy corridor, only to be startled by a sudden intensification of the darkness around me, a

thickening of the air itself, as if the mouth of the corridor resisted my entry. I had to shove forward, pushing into it, and nearly tumbled headfirst to the floor when the eerie resistance mysteriously ceased.

My confidence quickly waned. The hallway got icier and strangely narrower the further I walked, began to feel oddly skewed,

tilting precariously out of square. Shivering, I felt as if the walls had shifted crushingly close, the floor slanting. A

time or two, I stopped to stretch my arms out and measure the width, to find the corridor hadn't changed; only my impression

of it. Somehow, the house was making me feel claustrophobic and unbalanced when there was no reason to be. After a time, I

glanced back but could see absolutely nothing. Not even the faintest glimmer of light behind me. It was as if I faced a solid

black wall. I briefly debated retreating to my room, but the view behind felt somehow more menacing than that ahead, so I

resumed walking.

And walking. I had no idea how the hallway could possibly be so long, but the northwest wing seemed to suffer some spatial anomaly with which the rest of the manor was unafflicted. Several times as I strode past seemingly endless closed doors, I could have sworn I heard a... rustling slither.

Still, I felt no sense of mortal threat, and I could conceive of rats perhaps having nested in this abandoned wing and making

such a noise. As my life was so surreal anyway, I refused to be deterred from my mission. The doors, after all, remained closed.

Nothing terrifying was shambling or exploding out, not that I was about to turn a knob to peep into a single one of those

rooms. I think a part of me rather hoped something would come out and confront me, so there might finally be a tangible, identifiable

threat in my life to face off with.

Finally, I reached the pale gray stone of the turret. I was in the narrow dark chute, walking for what seemed an hour, then,

finally, at the door to the cabin.

This time, I paused to study the etchings, committing to memory the symbols, to look up later.

Then I pushed open the door and shined my flashlight high and low, assessing the cobwebby kitchen. Finding it unchanged, I

marched determinedly through to the apothecary/library, looking neither left nor right.

The archaic grimoire lay open on the pedestal, emitting a faint greenish glow.

"Hello," I said, feeling foolish, but something herein was sentient, and I thought I'd do well to greet it.

As I stepped forward, a sentence inked itself.

Greetings, she with mystery and magyck in her blood. Why have you come?

"I have questions."

What are you?

"I am—" I broke off, on the verge of saying a witch , and switched instinctively to "Cailleach."

Yes.

"Do you know who I am?"

You just told me. Beyond that, all is choice.

"I mean which house, light or dark?"

All is choice.

"Am I a Cameron?"

The words remained. Nothing new was written. I tried three more ways of asking questions about my heritage, but the words

simply remained.

Finally, I demanded, exasperated, "Who was my mother? What was Joanna Grey's real name?"

Abruptly, the pages were filled with words, and stepping closer, I began to read.

There are countless misconceptions about binding a witch's power. It can be done but carries a steep price. If a witch binds another's power—a heinous act undertaken only in the direst circumstances—both will die. An accident will swiftly befall the pair, and their demise will be gruesome and painful. Often a witch takes his or her own life rather than passively submitting to whatever gruesome fate the universe has in store.

If thirteen witches work in concert to bind a witch's power, only the bound witch dies, but each of the thirteen will soon

suffer grievous injury and loss. Sliced into thirteen wedges of pie, retribution is a more palatable just desert, but getting

thirteen witches to agree on any topic is nearly impossible: the ingredients of a simple potion, the roundness of a full moon,

even the color of an entirely black cat can give rise to heated debate.

So, I thought with a snort, witches were just like everyone else, opinionated and prone to disagreement.

A witch can suppress another witch's power, even prevent it from being awakened, but if continued for an extended period of

time that too will result in the oppressor's death. Using power to suppress the power of another drains the life from the

body, eventually sickening the witch with myriad incurable diseases, and although it may take decades if the witch is Highblood

Royal, death will come, and their life will be tragic and illness-ridden until it does.

The suppressed witch will also suffer; at best, a flameless candle, capable of only shallow passion, chafingly aware on a

subconscious level that they are a mere shadow of who they were meant to be; at worst, their sanity fractures, driving them

to terminate an existence they are unable to bear.

The entry ended there. A chill slithered up my spine, and I stared blankly. Read it again.

My mother was sick all the time because she was suppressing me.

Doing it was draining the life from her.

My mother knew why she was sick all the time. She'd chosen it.

I was the reason my mother was dying. And if she hadn't burned, I would have been the reason she died.

She was willing to die to keep me from being a witch, at least while she was alive. Why? What would keeping my power from

me until she died accomplish? It didn't make any sense.

More words appeared.

If the witch succeeds in suppressing the victim's power until they either bear a child without their power fully awakened

or turn twenty-five, the magic will be vanquished from the suppressed witch's bloodline forever. The victim and all progeny

will be Paleblood for all time. In such savage fashion, some of the most powerful Royal descendants of all time have been

destroyed, and the world deprived of their gifts.

Oh, my God. A fist of razor blades clenched my heart.

There are times when suppressing another witch's power is claimed to be an act of love.

There is never an excuse for it.

Individual power is part of the universe's way. Each person is granted a fair measure of it, theirs to use, squander, or abuse

as they choose, not someone else's to control.

How many times had Mom encouraged me to have babies, lots of babies, no need for a husband, get started right now! It was the surer bet, to get me pregnant at eighteen or twenty,

no need to wait until I was twenty-five to eradicate my power, my birthright.

I would be twenty-five on November 1, All Saints' Day, born one minute after midnight, Mom always said with a faint, wry smile.

Before it's too late , Este had said. And twice, she'd broken off when talking, saying before—er, before the cancer took her. That was bullshit. This entire masquerade had hinged on Mom surviving her "myriad illnesses" until I turned twenty-five.

Or got pregnant. Este also said she thought Dalia would tell me before it was too late—meaning before I turned twenty-five.

I guess if I'd gotten pregnant, I'd just have been screwed. I was suddenly grateful I'd condomed-up on those occasions I indulged.

Hand to my throat, breath rapid and harsh in my ears, I staggered back.

Este knew . She'd known all my life why my mother was dying, as had Dalia. They'd known from the day they met her why my mother was

always sick.

And never told me.

It was bad enough that Este had withheld from me the truth about what I was, allowing my mother to suppress my power, but

I'd just learned the information she'd concealed would have saved my mother's life , if she'd told me while I was young, before Mom had developed not one, but three rare forms of incurable cancer. Before this moment, this horrific revelation, I'd had no idea that Mom suppressing my power

was what was killing her.

My entire existence dwindled to a single emotion, one of such anguish, grief, and rage that I nearly doubled over, keening

and howling.

If Este had only told me the truth when we'd first met, I could have prevented it!

My mother would still be alive. I wouldn't have this aching, enormous hole in my heart that nothing would ever fill again.

The page blanked, and once again, the book began to write, but the ink was dashed away. The temperature in the room plummeted so sharply that my breath frosted the air, and tiny icy crystals formed on the sides of the pedestal. I watched as the tome repeated the same battle for dominance I'd seen last time, a desperate war between would-be narrators for control of the pages. Clearly, neither narrator wanted the other to communicate with me.

The book heaved and whumped back down, releasing a cloud of dust from the pedestal, and I sneezed. It shuddered violently,

exploded abruptly into the air, wildly fanning more pages than it could possibly have, then slammed back down, open.

A single sentence manifested in crimson ink for all of three seconds before it vanished, but not before that sentence was

burned, scarred, seared with horrifying permanence into my mind.

YOU KILLED MAN IN BARN YOUR POWER EXPLODED HIS HEART YOU DID THAT!

Gasping. I stumbled back.

YOU KILLED YOU KILLED YOU KILLED

Filled the entire page with bloody slashes of crimson ink.

DO IT AGAIN

The laughter of many layered voices filled the small room, echoing off the walls.

The words vanished.

DO NOT DO IT AGAIN, MUST PLEDGE—

The tome snapped closed and went still and dark.

As did something inside my heart.

A good friend would have let Este get those few hours of sleep before heading to the airport.

I wasn't feeling like a good friend. In fact, it felt like quid pro quo to wake her up and make her life miserable. I mean,

wasn't that what she'd done to me by honoring our mothers' demands over the life of her alleged best friend, and the life

of that friend's mother?

Everyone knew everything, except me, and it was the very people who claimed to love me most who'd been lying to me all my

life!

Whirling, I stormed from the cabin. This time, the darkness didn't feel suffocating or dense, it felt comforting as a rich,

velvety cloak. I barreled through it, my eyes blazing as fiercely as the halo of light I cast.

Leaving the abandoned, charred wing proved far easier than getting there, as if the northwest corridor was eager to expel

me. My exit was void of mysterious rustlings, nor did I encounter any of that gluey resistance as I stalked from the wing

into the house proper.

I had no idea which room Este had chosen, but knowing her, she'd stayed on the same floor as me, so I loped down a flight

of stairs and began opening each door I passed, ducking my head in. I spied a bathroom light shining though the jamb of a

mostly closed door in the third room, noted a mound in the bed, and stepped furiously into the room.

When the mound didn't move, I flipped on the overhead light. There was no mound in the bed; it was pristinely made and tucked. Nor was the bathroom light ablaze beyond the jamb. I was so angry, I didn't care that either the house was dicking with me or I was losing grasp on the basics of reality. Just pivoted and stormed off to continue my search for the woman who'd never told me that she knew why my mother was dying.

And that her death had been preventable !

Had I really killed that man?

Was the book lying to me, too? If I couldn't even tell when people were lying to me, how would I know if a book was?

"Oh, God, that's my reality now. One where I have to wonder if books can lie to me!" I seethed. Everything I'd believed, my

whole life, wasn't true. How do you move forward from that? How do you build a future for yourself when you don't even know

the truth about your past? Who was I?

A good witch, a good witch, a good witch , I willed fervently to the universe. One who hadn't already killed a man without even knowing it.

Who were my two narrators? I deemed it safe to surmise one was malevolent, but which one? One had told me to "pledge." One

seemed to be goading me to kill again. They didn't like each other and didn't want the other to talk to me.

I found Este in the kitchen, sitting at the far end of the island. Her head whipped up when I walked in, her calypso eyes

wide, concerned, and wary.

She should be wary. I knew the truth now, the terrible truth she'd concealed from me all my life, claiming to be my best friend,

saying that she would always have my back, battle at my side, forever sister witches. "My ass ," I hissed.

Rising from the stool, hands spread in supplication, she said in an intense rush, "Zo, babe, I don't know what's going on, but this house is seriously messed up tonight. I've been feeling such rage emanating from the walls and... something so dark and... insanely hungry that I couldn't sleep, and I went looking for you—"

"You knew why my mother was dying all along, didn't you?" I demanded, stopping at the opposite end of the island, fisting

my hands so hard my nails gouged my palms. I deemed it wise to keep the twenty-foot span of marble between us, because at

the moment I itched to pick a physical fight. To launch myself at her, hammer out my pain and betrayal with my fists. While

others had learned, over years of familiarity with intense emotion, to temper anger, I had no experience, no tools to tame

the dragon snorting fire in my belly.

She searched my gaze a long moment, then said quietly, "Who told you?"

"How the fuck does that even matter?" I snarled disbelievingly, slamming my fists into the counter. " You didn't. For decades you didn't. You let me work my ass off to support Mom, let me bleed out what little heart I was allowed to have, let me live small and lifeless, and you never once told me that Mom didn't have to die! That our life could have been completely different!" I was shouting, I was so angry, punctuating my words with violent gestures.

"Zo, you need to calm down," Este exclaimed. "And stop gesturing so wildly with your hands! You can't do that with your power

awakened."

I roared, "What I need is to know in what reality my supposed best friend thought it was okay not to tell me my mother was dying every damned day of her life because of me ! It was one thing to not tell me I was a witch. Entirely another to make such a life-altering decision for me. You had the ability to keep my mother from dying, if only you'd told me when we were kids, before she got so incurably ill! Who were you being loyal to? What was all that crap about always having my back? You telling me the truth could have saved her life! You knew," I raged, circling the island toward her. She backed away, which pleased me, and I was fairly certain in a dim sort of fashion it shouldn't. "You knew that if she managed to survive until I turned twenty-five, I'd never have known what I was. I'd have lived a bland, miserable half-life all my life , buried in debt, grieving her, working three jobs, never having children because I'd never have let myself bring them into

such a difficult existence. And you know how much I want children, but no, you—"

"I would have told you!" she shouted back.

"I might have gotten pregnant at any time! You didn't know that I wouldn't! Who were you to decide you could wait until closer to my twenty-fifth birthday?"

"Listen to me, you have to calm down. It's imperative—"

"Fuck you," I thundered. "I don't have to do anything anymore. No one controls me and never will again. I am not your bitch

to leash and lie to, and I will never—"

"Zo, you can't let your emotions have rein. It's too dangerous. You're unpledged."

I had no idea how to subdue the storm raging inside me. I'd been lied to, crushed, and devastated by the two women I loved

most. I was the reason my mother's life had been such a living hell, and the choice she'd made—which everyone had known about but

me—was the reason my life had been. My emotional squall had gained such momentum that it was sweeping me along, a hapless victim of its wrath. And frankly, it felt good to vent it, to let it out. It felt as if I had decades of bottled fury. "I can do anything I want," I snarled. "I'm free. And that's what you didn't want, isn't it? Because I'm a Royal and more powerful than you. Admit it, you liked being stronger. You enjoyed being mightier than poor, stupid Zo Gray-as-the-goddamned-color, who worked and worked, and never

complained while everyone talked about her behind her back and controlled her, and you went off and became a successful, famous

artist. While my life just kept going further to hell in a handbasket."

Not fair, Zo , a faint voice said inside me, and you know it. Este isn't like that. But I couldn't see my best friend standing there, beyond my haze of crimson fury. She was, at that moment, a traitorous enemy

who had lied to me all my life. Who had watched my mother die.

"That's not true," she retorted. "I lived for the day you'd be free. I love you, Zo. Listen to me, I love you!"

"Love doesn't lie," I said in a terrible voice. "Not when it means someone's mom dies because of it!"

"Sometimes it has to! I was controlled, too, by both our moms! Do you have any idea what your mother threatened me with?"

"I don't care," I spat. "Everything is choice. Isn't that what you told me? Or did you lie about that, too? Or maybe it only

applies to others, not the illustrious Este Hunter, who was raised by loving parents, always knowing that she was a witch?

I may not have been capable of intense love, but I know this much—love nurtures, it creates. Love does not deceive."

"Yes. Focus on that," Este said intensely. "Focus on love, Zo."

I couldn't. Fury was scorching my heart. At my mother, Dalia, my best friend, at the whole damned world. "We had to run all my life because you never told me the truth. Do you know how many middle-of-the-night dashes we made and how terrified I always was? If you'd told me when we were young, our lives would have been completely different. All the bad things were preventable; our constant running, me having to work three jobs all the time, Mom's illness and death—all of it. If only one of the two women I loved most in the world had told me the truth. You're a witch, your mother is suppressing your power, and it's killing her in the process . That's all you had to say. A single sentence."

"I was afraid of her, and, Zo, right now, I'm afraid of you, too," Este said with quiet intensity.

"You should be! You ruined my life while claiming to be my best friend."

"I am your best friend," she said desperately. "You have to understand—"

I didn't have to understand anything. I understood all I needed to. Mom didn't have to die. I'd been defanged, declawed, neutered,

and lied to by everyone I loved. I'd been given no choices at all. It cost my mother her life.

The incendiary rage inside me turned abruptly icy, as if all my fury had congealed in that instant into a lethal killing frost,

and I knew, just like I did in the barn, that if I didn't expel it, I would end up being the one harmed. Este's lips were

moving, but I couldn't hear a word she was saying. Blood was thundering in my ears, deafening me. The lethal cold grew and

grew, expanding in my center, spreading outward, and I knew if it reached my skin, if I allowed it to fill me completely,

I would either explode or become something so entirely unrecognizable to myself that I wouldn't even care that I'd become

it. This... black, cold monstrosity was not me, but it was consuming me swiftly, and it was instinct to scrape it all into

one big mass and shove —

"Zo, don't! For the love of all that is light and sacred, resist! You can do this! I can teach you. Breathe, Zo, breathe!"

It was too late to teach me anything. The time to teach me was long past. She'd had that chance. They'd all had that chance,

and none of them took it, so they didn't get to claim it now. She should have told me the truth when I was nine and Mom was

young and healthy. That was the time to teach me.

I shoved with all my might to be free of the dark miasma, but it wouldn't budge. It wanted to be inside me. It wanted me . Yes, yes , it was whispering, we are power, and united, no one will ever be able to hurt us again . I needed something to help evict it. Closing my eyes, mind racing frantically, I tried to remember what Este had told me

about using power, that it took more than thought in the beginning. But I had no time for spells or objects. I needed—

Energy to help me eject it, a rich source of energy, equal to this horror that was gaining strength inside me with each passing

moment and beginning to feel utterly seductive.

I stopped shoving and reached outward, opening myself, seeking a source from which to draw. The moment I expanded, searching,

I felt as if the world came vibrantly alive in a way that I would later learn most witches experienced at birth. They come

into the universe knowing the wonder of that intimate connection, because their first awakening is performed before they even

leave the womb, by loving parents who don't lie. I was astonished to discover that every physical thing in the kitchen and

far beyond it, from the tenderest blade of grass to the animals in the forest past the Midnight Garden, the two bodyguards

in the courtyard, and my ex–best friend, to even the chairs and table in the kitchen, all held a degree of tangible, usable

energy, many far richer than others.

Eyes squeezed tightly shut, I focused and drew, trying desperately to take only what I needed, and only from sources I was willing to sacrifice, but I was clumsy and untried. The moment I commanded, energy surged into me with violent swiftness, as if helpless to deny my will. I gathered that rich, golden energy, corralled the heinous offense within its radiant light, and shoved frantically with all my might. I pushed so hard that when the monstrous thing finally began to give, its volatility caused a ricochet effect as it erupted from my body. I went flying backward from the island and slammed into the wall so hard, the back of my skull hit with an audible crack, my vision went dim, and I saw stars.

Blessedly, though, with a final, mighty thrust, the darkness vacated, with much screeching of timber and a thunderous crash

and a woman's distant scream, then seemed to simply vanish.

A word from future Zo: the darkness we create—it never simply vanishes.

It damages. It takes. It carves. It lingers and haunts you.

I'd made that darkness. I put it out there in the world, and I'd taken sloppily, savagely from the world while doing it. My inability to control emotion

had given birth to a terrible thing, and I despised myself for it.

Gingerly, I felt the back of my head to ascertain I wasn't bleeding and opened my eyes.

And despised myself even more once I saw what I'd done.

"It's over," the man said quietly into his phone. "It's not quite what we were after, but Zo Grey will never be the Cameron

heir."

After listening for a long moment, he replied, "There's no longer a need to kill her. Divinity won't accept her now."

He paused, then said with a soft laugh, "Indeed, for this, they may well kill her themselves, and so long as she is unpledged

to a house, they can."