Magick (Book 3 in the Coven Series) (3 page)

I wish I had learned everything I needed to know, and mastered my white witch power before I encountered Barrow. But wishing doesn’t do me any good now. “I’m sorry, about everything.”

Sarah turns toward me. “I want to believe you are, but words are empty until they are backed up by actions. Don’t tell me you’re sorry or that you want to do the right thing. Show me.”

“I will.” A surge of determination wells up within me despite the doubt pecking away at it like a vulture at a dead animal.

A knock sounds at the door, and Sarah goes to answer it. Amanda walks in with a tray of food and heads toward me. Her eyes are harder when she looks at me than Sarah’s, and I get the distinct impression that she doesn’t have the hope that I’ll redeem myself that Sarah holds. I can’t say that I blame her.

“You need to eat,” Sarah says. “What you’ll be doing in the days ahead will require strength.”

Instead of leaving me alone to eat the cheeseburger and fries, Sarah dives right into my training by going back over everything we’ve already been through in the days since she first agreed to help me. Of course I can’t actually feel my power right now since it’s temporarily in hibernation, but just hearing Sarah’s instructions, remembering what it felt like to move through the darkness inside me to find the light, helps to settle me and prepare me for what lies ahead. I want to rip off the bracelet and do it all for real, but I have no choice but to trust Sarah and her methods. Trying it my way had been a colossal failure.

Though there is no clock in the room, I feel as though the hour is late when Sarah finally gestures with her hands in a way that indicates we’re done for the day. As she heads for the door, the sudden fear that she’s leaving me here for good slams into me.

“Can I see my friends?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea right now,” she says without hesitation.

I can’t help but wonder if it’s because she wants to ensure my cooperation, if she thinks it will cause me to relapse, or if my friends don’t want to see me and she doesn’t want to tell me that yet. It doesn’t really matter why. It all boils down to the fact that I can’t see with my own eyes that they are okay.

“Can you at least unchain me? My back is killing me.”

Sarah stares at me for a moment, then nods to Amanda, who crosses the room and unhooks the chains at my wrists then my ankles.

“Consider this a gesture of reward for your cooperation today,” Sarah says. “Do anything that we see as a threat, and they’ll be back on faster than you can take a breath. And next time your neck will be chained to the back of the chair as well.”

Anger makes me fist my hands, but I force myself to unfurl my fingers. One step at a time, I have to earn her trust and a little more freedom. One step at a time, I have to learn to trust myself again.

Without another word, Sarah and Amanda leave the room and lock me inside with my thoughts, my anxiety and my regrets.

Suddenly, I can’t breathe. The air is too hot. Each time I try to inhale, flames ride the air into my mouth and leave me choking. Air, I need air. The edges of my vision begin to fade as I suffocate.

The darkness stirs within me, but this time it’s not enough. This time, I cry out in agony as I succumb to the flames.

I jerk awake gasping,
desperate for air to fill my burning lungs. The flames, they’re so hot on my skin. Unbearable. I inhale in great gulps, and slowly I realize the air isn’t scorching. In fact, it’s quite cool. My skin isn’t melting. I’m not in hell. Not technically.

As more of the nightmare slips away, I force myself to focus on the ceiling beams. Gradually, reality replaces the dream, not that reality is a whole lot better. I’m still a dark witch, still a killer, and still a prisoner. But I’m not burning. Instead, I’m lying on a thin mattress in the corner of the dungeon-like room where the Bane brought me after I killed Barrow.

I close my eyes tightly, as if that might keep out the images haunting me. But it does no good. The details of the past few days replay in my mind, beginning with the horror of seeing Fiona Day’s body. Tears leak out of the closed corners of my eyes and roll down my temples into my hair.

Fiona became like a grandmother to me during our short acquaintance. Not only did she and her family provide Egan and me with information to help us understand our history as dark witches, but she also showed me what I might become if I could find a way to rid the covens of their dark powers. If I rid myself of that same power.

She was the kindest person I’ve ever met, a descendant of pre-Salem witch trial witches, which meant her family had not taken in the dark magic that fuels the covens today. Instead, they’d fled and become observers, keepers of a three-century repository of information about witches and Salem. She believed I was some sort of chosen one meant to end the covens’ evil reign for good. How wrong she’d been.

The sight of her lying there on the floor of Wiccan Good Herbs, a hole in her chest and her life’s blood pooling beneath her, turned a switch in me. The need for revenge swelled to the point of consuming me. Only now that the blackness had been suppressed inside me could I feel the oppressive guilt of what I’d done—not only killing Amos Barrow but also letting down Fiona.

I consider getting up, but the thought of not being able to go any farther than the confines of this barren room keeps me right where I am. I attempt to push the pain and regret and guilt away by replaying Sarah’s lessons about accessing my white magic. A couple of times, I think I can really feel it, even harnessed as it is. But that must be the fatigue playing tricks on my brain. No matter how much I try, I can’t focus for long. I wonder if I’ve ever been so tired, so lethargic. I can’t determine if it’s still the after-effects of the tranquilizer or if the events of the past several weeks have just finally caught up to me with a physical and mental KO.

But I can’t just fall into a restful sleep that will hopefully prepare me for the work ahead. Each time I drift off, I’m greeted with images I want to forcibly purge from my memory. I’d be willing to forget who I am if I could only stop remembering Fiona’s death. The sound of Barrow’s screams as I sent the equivalent of lightning bolts through his body. The look of pain on Keller’s face as he’d faced the very real possibility of having to put me down like a rabid animal.

I must fall asleep again at some point because I come awake with a gasp when someone touches my shoulder. A potent fear pulses inside me, a lingering effect of whatever nightmare I’m having this time. As sleep recedes, I notice Sarah rising to her full height beside me and taking a step back. I can’t identify the expression on her face, but I get the weirdest impression that part of it is sorrow.

“Another nightmare?”

I nod as I push myself up to a sitting position. “I can’t sleep without them. I guess it serves me right.”

“Perhaps.” She doesn’t sound entirely convinced, and I wonder what thoughts are going through her head. But I’m too tired to ask, and I’m not entirely sure I want to know.

“Time to work, I guess.” Although I don’t know how effective I’ll be when I feel as though I’ve been dropped off a skyscraper then run over by a really large truck.

“I think perhaps a shower and some clean clothes might make things a touch easier.”

At her mention of a shower, I realize there is almost nothing I want more than to scrub a couple of layers of skin off. It’s like if I can shed enough I can truly start over. With a grunt that would sound more at home coming from a person three times my age, I get to my feet.

“Once we leave this room, know that you’ll be no closer to escape. This facility is locked down.”

“Where would I go?” I ask. “Anyone I care about is probably in this building somewhere, and all I want is to see with my own eyes that they are okay. Even if they all hate me.”

“That’s all you want?”

I meet Sarah’s eyes and get the distinct impression that this question is a test just as much as me trying to control my power will be. “Make that the first thing I want. Then mastering my power and somehow earning everyone’s trust again. And finally defeating the covens once and for all.”

A part of me whispers that none of these desires will ever be satisfied. I don’t deserve my friends. I’ve proven my magic is stronger than my willpower. And if I can’t control myself, how in the world am I going to defeat hundreds, thousands of dark witches?

Sarah nods. “Good answer.” She gestures for me to follow her toward the door.

Once we’re outside the room, it looks totally different. Gone is the dungeon décor, replaced by plain white walls. The stone floor gives way to large blocks of gray tile. I never thought I’d appreciate generic drywall, but it’s so much brighter than the stone-and-timber room that I feel as though I’ve just been exposed to sunshine after being in a cave.

Sarah’s heels click against the tile as she heads down the corridor to the right. I get the feeling this Sarah of the slick clothes and high heels is the real Sarah Davenport, not the average, forgettable librarian. But if the Bane’s goal is to stay hidden, the public Sarah was much better at it. I wonder if perhaps we have that one thing in common, having to hide who we truly are in order to survive. Then I remember the vague image of her in that field beside the cemetery in those few moments after I killed Barrow.

“What was with the red cloaks?” I ask as I follow her. “Cloaks always look cool in fiction, but aren’t they a pain in the ass in real life?”

She glances over her shoulder at me. “A bit of homage to our founders.”

“Little Red Riding Hood?” I don’t know why I’m joking. I can only recall one time when I felt less like joking, and that was in the days after my mother’s murder. Maybe I’m not just dangerous but also truly unhinged. Really, who makes jokes when they’ve killed a person and face potential annihilation?

Sarah slows, allowing me to come alongside her. “Penelope.”

As in Penelope Davenport, one of the original members of the Bane.

Sarah’s answer surprises me, and I pull myself from my crazy thoughts and pay attention.

“Her grandmother gave her a red cloak for her birthday only weeks before the witch trials began,” Sarah says. “Once the accusers started pointing fingers, her parents told her to burn the cloak because it drew too much attention. Survival demanded witches not draw attention or seem too reclusive. They had to keep a delicate balance. So instead of burning the cloak, she hid it at the bottom of her trunk. She hoped that she might be able to wear it again once the hysteria passed.”

“But she never got the chance.”

Sarah shakes her head. “When her family accepted the dark power, she realized that the human accusers were the lesser of the two evils. Her grandmother spoke out against the new covens, and her own son, Penelope’s father, killed her for it. That’s when Penelope knew she had to disappear. When she left her family, she took the cloak with her in honor of her grandmother.”

For a moment I’m stunned by the story of Penelope’s grandmother, and in my mind the woman looks like Fiona. I swallow and blink against tears. My heart breaks that I’ll never see her again, never watch as she bundles herbs, never talk to her about what witches are supposed to be like.

“They were all so much stronger than me,” I say, wishing I had a tenth of the strength of those early witches who resisted the dark magic.

“Let’s hope that’s not really true.” Sarah stops outside a door. “They were fighting for their own survival. You’ll be fighting for the survival of us all.”

“No pressure there,” I say under my breath.

Sarah opens the room to reveal a bathroom. In case she might suddenly change her mind, I hurry inside and close the door behind me. When I notice clean clothes folded on the end of the vanity, I quickly pull off the ones I’m wearing and shove them in the trash can. I never want to see them again.

When I step below the flow of hot water and lather my skin, it feels better than anything I’ve ever experienced. At least until I start scrubbing so hard that it feels as if my skin really will peel away. But no matter how hard I scrub, the nasty feeling of being cloaked in darkness doesn’t go away. I lean my palms against the side of the shower, letting the water beat against the top of my head and flow down my back. I consider crying again, but all that will get me is a pounding headache and itchy eyes. Crying won’t bring me any closer to ensuring my friends’ safety, no closer to mastering any remnant of white magic I might possess. So instead of giving in to tears, I stiffen my spine and resolve to deal head-on with whatever comes, no matter how much it might hurt.