19

I used to think I never lied to myself. Perhaps, for the first twenty-four years of my life, I didn't, because I lacked sufficient

emotion to suffer the need to evade any of it. I think self-deceit springs from deep, troubling emotions we can't bear to

face, so we tell ourselves a modified version of the truth, wherein we cast a more palatable reflection in the mirror of our

hearts.

I'd nearly killed my best friend. Had I harbored a hint of true malice toward her, she would have been dead.

I might have killed the man in the barn. The jury was still out on that verdict. I'd twice sought wisdom from a dually narrated

book, and I lacked the ability to discern truth from lie. Perhaps both narrators had ulterior motives. For a woman who'd pursued

a single agenda her entire life—keeping her mother alive or, at least, in comfortable misery—it was disconcerting to discover

others had multiple and, to my way of thinking, selfish agendas, designed to solely benefit themselves. Even Este had selfish

aims: obey our mothers' directives while being my best friend, love me while knowing I was being controlled and lied to, and

she was lying to me, too—or in the kindest possible light, withholding crucial information under duress. How did one manage

to live with such inner conflict?

And my mother—God only knew what her motives were.

To survive in this strange new world with intense emotions and lethal powers, I was going to have to start thinking like everyone

else, or I'd never see the next hazard coming. Or, worse, I'd become the hazard myself. Ergo it was time to start thinking

selfishly and self-protectively.

Joanna Grey had raised me to be unforgivably na?ve.

For some reason, she'd been willing to give her own life to keep me that way.

I suffered no doubt that she loved me. Which meant she'd truly believed it was the only choice she had.

Which begged a single damning question: What was she so terrified I might otherwise become?

After Este left, with much hugging and more than a few tears (she was right, healing her shallow though sizeable wound proved

far easier than the destruction I'd wrought), I strode into the courtyard to survey, absorb, and punish myself for my carelessness,

aware that, despite my love for my best friend, I now felt an equally deep wariness of her. I wasn't certain I could soon

forgive her for not telling me the truth many years ago. I had too many emotions to sort through and inadequate tools with

which to resolve them.

Beneath the waning light of the moon, I gathered the ashy remains of animals in a large wicker basket, using the pool net

to scoop out crisped bats and owls (not one of them a Stygian!) from the once sparkling water, while thanking the heavens

above I'd stumbled across no skeletons of bodyguards. The power I'd summoned had come in such a swift, violent rush, I'd had

no clue from whence it sprang.

Then I sat for a time on the sooty pavers as dawn slowly began to gild the obsidian horizon beyond the garage. I was hoping Devlin might step out, being crepuscular and all, but perhaps as a warm vampire, he'd already gone to ground somewhere. Assuming, like cold ones, warm vampires also eschewed the sun and passed their daytime hours in subterranean crypts. Had he appeared, I'd have hammered him with questions.

God, I lived in a world of witches and vampires, destroyed kitchens and courtyards, sentient books and bodies in barns and

murders, attempted and successful!

I endeavored, for a time—as I watched the sun slowly spread the mounts of its fan into an ever-widening display of gold to

pale pink to blue—to convince myself that I'd gone mad, broken by my mother's death, and none of this was happening. That,

indeed, madness was preferable to my current reality.

I glanced into the basket of skeletal remains at my side and sighed.

Real, all too real.

Abruptly, the basket was plucked from the ground, and a voice said stridently behind me, "Return to the manor and clean yourself

up this very moment, Ms.Grey. The matter will be handled."

I turned to stare up at Mr.Balfour. "What are you doing here?"

"Every wi—" He broke off with a muffled curse, then continued, "Every person of a certain ilk in Divinity felt what you did

the moment you did it. I headed up the instant Ms.Hunter left for the airport with Evander. Your... inadvertent mishap

shall be attended to. You need not spare it a thought. But I must insist you remain inside the manor and do nothing—and I

do mean nothing at all —until Tuesday at 12:01a.m., when you read Juniper's letter. Do you think you can, perchance, manage to pass the next forty

hours in an innocuous fashion?"

" You're the one who told me to invite Este here," I replied churlishly.

"I did not, however, tell you to go clubbing with her nor, for reasons unfathomable, decide to go to war with her, nor take it out on the estate in such a highly visible display. Now, go to your room!"

I blinked, astonished. "Did you just tell me to ‘go to my room'?" Not once in my life had anyone ever told me to "go to my

room." I'd had no father, nor had I ever given Mom a reason to say it.

"I most certainly did. Once there, you will give yourself a manicure, a pedicure, try on outfits, read a book, take a bubble

bath, indulge in the sorts of activities genteel, temperate women do when they endeavor to relax. You will do ineffectual, quotidian, harmless things. You will not explore the house.

You will not seek answers. You will not test any of your... abilities. You will not, for any reason whatsoever , leave the manor. You will make yourself small—very, very small—and still. Do you understand?"

"I have to be pledged," I muttered. "I'm dangerous this way."

He opened his mouth and closed it again.

"Let me guess," I spat, caustically. "Contingencies. I destroy the kitchen, this once-lovely garden, I kill every night creature

within it, yet still you espouse your damned contingencies."

"Don't forget the front lawn," he spat back. "Juniper said you'd be a lot to handle. I had no idea how perspicacious she'd

prove."

I gaped. "I charred that, too? What about the Midnight Garden?"

He muttered, "Untouchable, even for you. Thus far, you have crossed no lines that are not uncrossable, and I will not lose

you as the Cameron heir."

"What if I lose myself before Tuesday?" I cried.

"That is why you will go to your room this very instant, and do nothing ."

"Why can't I be pledged now? Why can't my training begin? I know I'm a witch. The whole damn town knows it, according to you."

Bristling, he said sharply, "If I had any idea what you were talking about, in this hypothetical world of yours, in which

only those of ‘a certain ilk,' and certainly not ‘the whole damn town' knew things, I would tell you that a minimum of seven

days must pass between the first awakening and the pledging ceremony, or the pledging fails and the Cameron torch will not

light."

"Has that ever happened?" I asked, with a prick of unease.

His gaze darkened. "In this hypothetical world of yours, I wasn't alive then but, once, yes."

"What happened? "

"You'll get a different story from everyone you ask, and no one who was actually present is still alive. The only thing all

agree on is that some type of gray house interference was at the root of it. Allegedly, they contested the pledging."

"Why?"

"That's where stories differ dramatically. I've never heard a version I believe."

"What versions did you hear?"

"Repeating unsubstantiated gossip is speculative libel," he said stiffly. "I only told you to underscore the fact that ideally,

a fortnight is permitted to expire between the two events, to assure auspicious results, but a minimum of seven days and nights

in residence at Cameron Manor is required. To attempt it any earlier would be pointless, futile, utterly ineffective—do you

need additional adjectives, or have you grasped my meaning? Hypothetically speaking, of course ."

"Well, hypothetically speaking," I clipped frostily, "I think this whole damn plan of yours is riddled with egregious flaws, unforeseeable, gargantuan potholes, and nonhypothetical cataclysmic potential. I might have killed my best friend! Do you understand that? It could have been her skeleton in this basket!"

He observed flatly, "It would hardly have fit."

I shot him a look that I suspected—were it laced with the full brunt of my staggering and terrible power—could quite possibly

kill, and realized I was going to have to learn, quickly, to master even my most minute expressions.

"Purely a matter of physics," he said irritably. "A foolish, insensitive comment, and merely my first thought. And yes, that

would have been a far larger problem. Still, not insurmountable. Hypothetically ."

"I tell you that I nearly killed my best friend, and all you have to say is that it wouldn't have been ‘insurmountable'?"

"You have no idea what's at stake. Do you think this kind of legacy, hundreds of millions of dollars, billions in global investments,

the full force of... of a... a... town... standing eternally behind you, comes without struggle, without price?"

I snarled, "That I have to be evil?"

He stiffened ramrod straight. "The Camerons are a light house," he thundered. "We have always been. Proud and true, with a vaunted history stretching centuries into an illustrious

past. You spring, hypothetically , from the most powerful light bloodline in this country and are counted among the dozen most powerful light houses in the

world, amongst all systems of belief and practice."

" Hypothetically ," I growled. "Definition: in a way imagined or suggested that is not necessarily valid or true."

Mom taught me young the importance of vocabulary, to work on it, use it to better myself. Others, she'd said, might look down their noses at us for our poverty but never our lack of eloquence. A well-spoken phrase at a well-chosen moment could silence even the harshest of critics. Here, I merely sought to point out that Mr. Balfour, along with everyone else, was quite possibly lying to me. And that hypothetically was, in my book, an exceedingly dangerous word.

His nostrils flared. " Factually , the Camerons are a light house and among the lightest in the world. As I'm quite sure the friend you nearly killed must

have told you. Evil does not herein abide. Not on my watch."

"You're certain of that."

"Utterly."

"Invite me in," I ordered.

"By your leave," he snapped.

"Drop all your guards," I demanded.

He went still as stone. "That I cannot and will not do. If you are unable to read my heart with such guards as I deem necessary

to hold, you are not who and what I believe you to be. Hypothetically speaking. There are parts of my life that will never

be yours to peruse. They have naught to do with you. There is a sanctum of privacy within a man's soul that Juniper never

violated."

I'd never thought I could despise the word hypothetically more. I wanted to rip into him savagely. That was what angry Zo would do. I would not be that woman. I met his gaze levelly

and delved gently, with great care, reaching for his heart, not his mind.

It was strong and true. He loved his wife endlessly and deeply. He'd loved his daughter beyond reason. Part of his heart would

never be intact again since he'd lost Erin to the fire. There was something... something else he'd lost, too, something

barricaded behind unbreachable walls.

He cared for me. Very much indeed, I was surprised to find. He feared for me, worried for me, wanted only the best for me and from me. It was the closest to paternal emotion I'd ever felt, and it nearly undid me.

"But I screwed up everything!" I cried. "How can you feel that way about me?" That I shone, and had great value, would one

day do much good, that I was an impeccable choice to lead this town and coven.

"Hypothetically," he said quietly, and with a note of weary resignation, "we had few choices. Forty hours and seven minutes.

That's all the time you need sit still and survive quietly without harming yourself or anyone else. Then you can open Juniper's

letter, and I can answer your questions. We will pledge you, although I would strongly prefer to wait the fortnight and spend

that time teaching you. The Cameron torch will burn brightly again. You will be safe, always. We will not allow you to be

lost. We will stand behind you, gathered round you, for so long as you live, while doing everything in our power to assure

you a long and happy life."

His face softened. "It is our fault it had to be done this way. We didn't find you soon enough. You bear no blame for what

happened. Let it go. The darkness we become— if we become it, if we permit ourselves to become it—transpires because we lose faith in ourselves. Easier to believe the worst of ourselves than to face

the rigors of the battle necessary to regain lost faith. Do not tread that perilous, emotional path, Ms. Grey. Each of us is flawed. None of us are spared. To obsess over our flaws defies, and undermines, the very purpose of our existence. If you see only bad when you look within, you render yourself incapable of bringing good into the world. Ms. Bean is a prime, damaged example of that, and very nearly a lost cause. Check. Your. Emotions. Eschew blame you don't own. Stay still. You're nearly there. Now," he rebuked me firmly, "off with you. Shower. You smell dreadful. The next time you view this courtyard, it will be precisely as it was."

I stared. "Is that possible?"

"In Divinity, under the right circumstances, with the strength of a Kovan, anything and everything is possible." He added,

quickly, "Hypothetically, of course."

"I thought the word was coven ."

"Hypothetically, a coven is thirteen witches. A Kovan is thirteen families of Highblood witches, comprising one hundred and

sixty-nine. This will be the first time the Kovan unites behind you. There will never be a last. Of course, this is all—"

"I know," I muttered irritably, "hypothetical."

Neither of us, at that moment, had any idea how swiftly his latter assertion would be tested.

In one of the many whatnot boxes, there was a manicure and pedicure kit, with a dozen shades of tasteful pastel polish. I'd

smirked when I'd seen it. What point in doing nails on hands that worked themselves to the bone every day or toes clad eternally

in sensible shoes?

No longer smirking, I dug out the box, showered, exfoliated, shaved my legs, deep-conditioned my hair, dried it, then sat

down to do my fingernails.

Terribly.

How the hell did women with a single dominant hand do this?

It took me four tries—polish and remove, polish and remove—but finally both my hands and feet sported identical iridescent

pearly light polish, done reasonably well, or at least not crusting my cuticles anymore.

Okay, I'd killed three hours. Yay for me. I now had thirty-seven hours and seven minutes to occupy myself with such utter trivialities that I couldn't possibly feel one speck of strong emotion.

Too late for that. Strong emotion was frothing and roiling in the pit of my stomach, fueled by incessant questions. Who was

I? What or who was my mother running from all our lives? Who was my father, and how did he fit into all this? Was I even a

Cameron? (And right there, I very nearly lunged up from the bed to go searching the manor from top to bottom for genetic testing,

yet this house had proved to hold multiple inflammatory volumes, and with that thought, I eyed the books on the shelf with

a wealth of unease, praying one wouldn't abruptly fly off to tell me something else upsetting.) Why had my best friend never

told me the truth?

Sighing gustily, I leapt from the bed, grabbed my purse, and dug through it for a bottle I'd been given by a neighbor in Frankfort,

Indiana, as I'd slumped, sobbing in the street. Mrs.Hawthorne, a harried mother of four children whose husband had recently

left her—and whose kids participated in every sport under the sun, which she was constantly transporting them to or retrieving

them from—had slipped an arm around me as I'd wept. She'd thrust the small bottle into my trembling hands as we'd huddled

together. Said it wasn't a weakness that sometimes you just couldn't feel all the feelings, all the time.

I eyed it warily.

Not once in my life had I used a mood-altering drug of any sort. Admittedly, there'd been times I'd stared at my mother's

endless bottles of pills, many for pain, many promising somnolence, wondering if I might get a decent night's sleep were I

to take one, but I was never willing to dull my senses, lest she wake in the night and need me.

Now I read the label, searched the internet to discern precisely what the drug did, then shook out two small round yellow pills and tossed them back with a swallow of water.

A GABA potentiator, surely it would calm the dragon within.

I curled on my side, tugged the blankets over my head, and waited. Thirty-six hours, fifty-two minutes to go.

Eventually, blessedly, I slept.

And dreamed.

It was unlike any dream I'd ever had.

Far more lucid and tactile even than those I'd been having since entering Cameron Manor.

I was in a dark place, so black, so pitch, initially I thought I was dreaming I'd gone blind.

But eventually, eyes straining to define something, anything, far in the distance, I espied a pale orange glow. Dim, shadowy,

cloaked and hooded figures circled a statue of something I couldn't describe, other than that it was giant, towering over

them, and the outline of it, for reasons unknown, struck a chord of atavistic terror in my heart.

The figures were chanting, a fast and rhythmic staccato, over and over, but I couldn't make out the words.

I was startled to find I was crouched on my hands and knees in the darkness, as if hiding from someone or something. Indeed,

I felt I was in forbidden territory where, if caught trespassing, a terrible price would be demanded of me.

It was so tactile and real: the stone floor rough and cold beneath my bare knees and hands, the acridity of bitter herbs smoking the air, an enormous cauldron emitting a coppery scent as it bubbled over a low blue flame. I was seized by the urgent need to know more, as if I must be here for a reason, as if perchance the drug had carried me beyond the confines of my mind into the ether (in which case perhaps I'd never dare take a drug again), so I began to inch forward, creeping with silent stealth, eventually dropping to my belly to squirm nearer. At last, the words were clear:

Make her suffer, drive her mad

Bedevil good luck into bad

Sow fear to make the heir fight back

Drown her light in blessed black

As we beseech, so mote it be

We troth our very souls to thee

"The heir," they'd said, and there was no mistaking who that was. I gasped. I couldn't help myself.

Instantly, the chanting ceased and the shadowy figures whirled as one in my direction, although how they could possibly have

heard my soft gasp over their chanting was beyond me.

Wake up, wake up, wake up, Zodeckymira! I shrieked silently. Pull back, pull back, flee!

I wanted to know who they were. I needed to see the faces of my enemies.

They moved impossibly then, together as one, cloaked haunts whisking on wind. Even the statue seemed to ripple and undulate

as if turning to look, and I knew I dare not linger. Abruptly, I sensed additional presences and whirled to find a thick gray

mist moving toward me from behind and, within that oddly terrifying, icy fog, the shadowy outlines of hooded faces.

Dark before me, gray behind!

I thought of Mom burning, how heinously she'd been murdered, the agony of her suffering, and used it as a stake through my

heart to force myself awake.

When I shot up in bed, gasping, hand to my heart, trembling from head to toe, the room was so dark that, for those first terri fied few seconds, I feared I'd not escaped. But slowly, as my eyes focused, I was able to make out the shapes of furniture that told me I was, indeed, back in my room.

I glanced swiftly at the French doors, beyond which fairy lights twinkled and blue bottles clinked together on jute cords

in tree limbs that had not been there this morning. I realized I'd slept so long and deeply that night had fallen, and I would

be able to open Juniper's letter in roughly... I checked my phone... twenty-five hours.

The Kovan had apparently done as Mr.Balfour had promised. Erased the devastation I'd wrought, as if it had never transpired.

My first thought should have been, Who are my enemies, and how do I continue to safely pass the hours I have left?

Instead, they were of crepuscular hours and, of course, Devlin.

It was 11:32 p.m. when I paused with my hand on the doorknob of my bedroom, fully intending to disobey Mr.Balfour's orders

and leave my room (I mean, at the very least, I had to eat, which meant the kitchen was clearly within bounds, so why wouldn't

the garage be?) to steal a last glance at myself in the mirror.

I wasn't lying to myself at that moment. I knew what I needed. Sex. Precisely twenty-four hours and twenty-eight minutes of

it, and since driving to New Orleans to see the man (witch!—and I wondered desperately from which house) I truly hungered

to see would constitute a violation of the rules far greater than venturing to the garage, which I felt was only a slight

infraction of his express orders, Devlin it would have to be. I'd figure out how to handle the fallout from breaking one of

my own inviolable rules once I was pledged. Devlin was only around at night. Surely I could manage to avoid him in the future.

If I could keep myself thus occupied until 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, I was certain I could stay out of harm's way and prevent myself from being the cause of any.

And if Devlin had to remain somewhere all day tomorrow in the dark, all the better. I'd stay with him. Tucked away with a

man I'd judged with my deep sight as constant and true. Really, there was no other place for me to go, and I knew myself too

well.

Here, alone, traipsing morosely between kitchen and bedroom, I'd eventually succumb to one of my countless anxieties and fears,

going off to search the manor or seek tomes I dare not consult at this juncture—and I couldn't shake the feeling that the

dream I'd experienced in such palpable detail had been more than a mere dream. That somewhere out there, a dark coven was

cursing me, summoning whatever they worshipped to wreak havoc, to sabotage me. To prevent me from becoming the Cameron heir.

And I could only construe that gray mist as "the abyss" Este had warned me not to gaze into. It sure as hell seemed the abyss

was gazing into me, at least in my dreams.

A week ago? Ludicrous thoughts.

Tonight? All too frighteningly plausible.

Although the Kovan had repaired the damage I'd done, I was not yet pledged to them, nor, more significantly, I suspected,

were they to me. Mr.Balfour had ordered, so they had obeyed. I supposed it would have been difficult to explain to the many

Palebloods in Divinity how the immediate estate grounds had burned overnight but only to the perimeter, and none of the house.

Wiser to repair it all before the oddity was noted.

I'd considered reading the notebook Este and Dalia had composed for me, but deemed that dangerous, too. Not only might I find something upsetting in their tutorial (aside from the constant reminder that the two women who'd penned it had lied to me for decades), but who could say one of the noncorporeal narrators in the house might not usurp its pages?

I trusted nothing. Neither written words nor spoken.

What was left to me?

The nonverbal language of the body, a dance as old as time, one that predated language of any sort. Given the immense difficulty

men and women seemed to have communicating with each other, I thought drolly, perhaps it should have stayed that way. Silent

but for grunts and moans.

I hungered to vent the enormity of my volatile emotion on a man's body. Pour it out of me, drench him with it. Distract myself,

forget myself, lose all sense of time and place in the eroticism of a man's explosive lust. Stand up stronger, clearer, more

controlled, for having released it.

Perhaps, as a witch, my passion would make grass grow lusher and flowers bloom, I thought with a faint smile. I found it difficult

to believe the way I felt when I was having sex could possibly put anything but good into the world, were anything at all

to manifest. Surely, like humans, for witches, sex was just sex, right?

Sighing heavily, I assured my reflection I looked pretty and desirable and Devlin would be thrilled to see me, turned the

knob, stepped through the door, and fell flat on my face.

Groaning, I rolled over to see what I'd tripped on.

Oh, God.

I stared at it for a long moment. I didn't need to look at the return address to know what it was.

Still, for Mr.Balfour to bring it here was an act I deemed incredibly risky. Unless he'd already opened and resealed it,

pilfering anything that might make me feel strong emotion.

My hand trembled only slightly as I reached for the sheet of Balfour and Baird letterhead atop the cardboard shipping box.

Contrary to what you think, I did not open it. I am your solicitor and champion, not oppressor. I trust you will do your utmost to contain your emotions. If you feel unequal to the task, text or call me. I will be there anon, and will guide you safely through.

I could nearly hear his heart-heavy sigh in the next line:

Young Zo, you remind me and Lennox so much of our children. Erin, too, was... a lot to handle. Some are born with more.

Our daughter came with more in excess, yet her light far outshone her rebel ways, as does yours. Have faith in yourself. Never

lose it. It cannot be taken from you. It can only be given away. The thieves who try to steal it know that. They count on

you not knowing that.

I tugged the package toward me and sat for a long moment, cradling in my arms the box containing the contents of my mother's

fireproof safe. Whatever she'd decided to protect from potential calamity, either to hide from me or to leave with me, I would

find within.

Answers at last?

Clutching it to my heart, I surged to my feet, hurried back into my room, and closed and locked the door behind me.

Sex with Devlin would have to wait. And might prove far more necessary to maintain my grasp on temperance, depending on what

I found within.