The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1)(6)

“Then there will be another witch to hate you when you feed from her. I should think you would be used to it by now,” Susannah said, barking something that almost resembled a laugh as she pulled open the doors and retreated from sight.

I spun on my heel, going to gather Juliet and Kairos for our journey across state lines. At least she was only a few hours’ drive away, and we’d reach her quickly enough.

One of the Red witches caught my eye as I passed, smiling sultrily as she looked at me as if I were her next meal and not the other way around.

They hated us, but that didn’t stop them from wanting the hate sex that so often came with feedings. Centuries of disdain couldn’t stop the fact that a witch and a Vessel were very well suited in some ways.

My fangs throbbed with the need to feed, but I pushed them back. It could wait until I returned.

There was work to be done first.





3





WILLOW





I stood from the table, leaving Ash to finish his dinner as my cell buzzed in my hand. Stepping out of the kitchen and heading for the stairs, I answered with a quiet murmur.

“You know it’s too dangerous to be calling me right now.”

“Why haven’t you disposed of your phone or your brother yet?” the male voice on the other end of the line asked.

“I am not disposing of my brother,” I snapped, glancing back toward where he remained in the kitchen as I kept my voice hushed. My black jeans hugged my legs as I ascended the stairs slowly, trying not to draw attention to the urgency I felt. “Ash made it clear that he doesn’t want to go without me. His father is meeting us at the bus stop tonight, so he’ll be there to help if he refuses to go alone. I can’t risk being the one to drive him to Maine. Not now.”

“You should have sent him away days ago. What were you thinking?” my father asked, his voice dropping low with the scolding tone that I was far too familiar with.

I’d have been more concerned to have him speak to me without it.

“I was thinking he deserved to attend his own mother’s fucking funeral,” I whispered, swinging my bedroom door closed and leaning against the back of it. I’d packed a small bag, mostly to convince Ash I had every intention of joining him at his father’s house. But I’d filled it with the small pieces of my life that mattered to me.

I wouldn’t be allowed to wear the clothes I preferred, the gray and black tones that covered me from head to toe not suited for a Green. My boots scuffed over the carpet in the bedroom as I moved toward my bed and sat on the edge, hanging my head in my hands.

“You’re playing with fire, girl. If they find out about him—”

“I know.” I sighed, rubbing at my eyes. My fingernails were painted a matte black, the polish chipped at the ends. I frowned at them as I pulled them away from my face.

“If he wanted to attend the funeral that badly, then you should have left and gone elsewhere. His father could have taken him,” my father, Samuel, said.

“You’re demanding I give up my entire future for your revenge. The least you can do is understand I would want to attend my own mother’s funeral,” I said, dropping onto my mattress with a sigh.

“It is not just my revenge. She was your aunt, Willow,” he argued, and his voice went quiet in the way it only did when talking about her. The older sister who had given everything to protect the knowledge of his existence. The one who had stolen her baby brother from his crib and sent him to grow up somewhere far away from the Coven.

So no one could make him choose between his magic and his ability to sire children.

What a loving relationship he’d fostered with that gift, turning his only daughter into a weapon designed to do the one thing he couldn’t…

Find his sister’s bones.

“I know she was,” I said.

Even if I’d never met her, I couldn’t help but want to avenge the young woman they’d murdered fifty years ago. I just didn’t want it enough to never see my brother again. As much as I wanted to earn my father’s approval and do the one thing he and my mother had raised me for, I’d have walked away from all of it if there had been even a chance of Ash and me finding a safe place to hide.

“She deserves to find peace, Willow,” my father said, his voice softening before he continued on. “And you deserve to have what is yours by birthright.”

“I don’t give a damn about my birthright,” I said.

The confession hung between us. Collecting the bones was a means to an end, a necessity for my aunt and all those who came before her to find their way home.

Most of the witches of the Coven drew their power from nature. The Greens, like my mother, from the earth; the Whites from crystals; the Yellows from fire.

But the Blacks had been different.

We drew our power from the bones of our ancestors, from the magic that only existed within our line. Without those bones, we were nothing, and they were tucked safely within the boundary of Crystal Hollow somewhere.

I felt them—knew that they existed. Any wise person would have burned them with salt when they killed off the last of us just to be safe, but someone had kept them instead.

A perverse collector’s item, I was certain.

The last of the necromancers.

I scoffed as my father spoke, his words a regurgitation of everything he’d said over the course of my life. I’d been too young to remember when he taught me the principle of summoning, of how to use my blood and wear the bones of my ancestors to raise the dead.