Remi
Elena’s fancy living room wasn’t made for real people, but it felt even more like a cold mausoleum today because of the frigid witches and wizards that were staring me down. The nine of them sat with impeccable posture like someone had posed them there.
While we waited for Elena to join us, I caught several of them looking at my tattoos with disgust. I guessed praising a hunter with my inked skin had offended them.
Elena had asked all of us to meet her here at the ungodly hour of 7 A.M. I assumed it was to plan our next move.
It was almost 7:20.
“Have you seen her this morning, Sam?” her uncle asked.
“Yes, sir. She woke me up, but she left in a hurry and didn’t say where she was going. She should be here any moment.”
Unless Christine and Lydia have already killed her.
I didn’t say that out loud because I wasn’t sure how long I would’ve lasted in a fight against them. The coven had dwindled to ten, but I wasn’t out of my mind enough to take them on.
At 7:30, Elena finally joined us. She was dressed like she’d just climbed out of a black and white photo from the eighteenth century. She looked like someone that should’ve died a long time ago. Her black dress glided along the marble as she walked. Her lace sleeves stretched all the way to her knuckles, and a lace collar covered her neck. Next to her, I looked like I’d sell my body for the right price.
That couldn’t have been further from the truth. I’d loved Kamon for as long as I’d known what love was, and we hadn’t taken our relationship past kissing, so I was going to die a virgin, whether I lived a hundred more years or not.
“I apologize for my tardiness,” she said. “I had preparations to make.”
“For our original plan, I hope,” her brother said. “No offense to our new friend, Remi, but we worked hard to get to this point. Years. And now we’ve abandoned everything to follow a teenager.”
“I’m twenty,” I said. “But whatever.”
“She’s young,” Elena said. “But she knows these people, my lord. That’s going to come in handy for our next and, hopefully, final scheme.” Elena looked at me with those creepy black eyes of hers, and said, “You’re the most crucial piece of this plan.”
We were apparently beyond her asking for my help, and from the intense look in her creepy eyes, I gathered that I didn’t have much of a choice.
“I’ll give you more details once I have everything in place,” she said. “If you will excuse me, I haven’t had time to say goodbye to the souls we lost. If anyone would like to join me, I’ll be outside, giving them a proper send off. Sam, take me to my room, will you?”
Elena didn’t look sick or weak enough to need Sam’s help, and hadn’t she just said that she was going outside? I waited for her to stand and leave the room, but she only closed her eyes and faced the window behind my head. I turned around.
A black bird pecked at the grass just outside of the window. Suddenly, it shuddered and took off into the sky.
I turned back to Elena. She was slumped over her brother like she’d fainted, and Sam walked to her calmly like nothing odd had happened.
I turned back to the window and watched the black bird fly away. It took me several cycles of looking at Elena, then to the window, then to Elena again, to realize what she’d done … and what she was.
Magical children like me were warned of a few things—hunters like Kamon, the monsters they breed, and dark witches and wizards who steal bodies in an attempt to live forever. No one was safe. Not humans, other witches, or ex-panthers. Elena was a jumper, which meant that the rest of these people probably were, too.
Yara Vaughn and my entire family would’ve called this deplorable magic. The darkest of the dark. The lowest of the low. Monsters like them weren’t on anyone’s side, not magic, not human. They only cared about themselves. They’d sacrifice anything or anyone, take over anything or anyone, and these particular monsters wanted to rule the world.
No wonder they had time to plan a rebellion and didn’t mind waiting in the shadows for years. What was time when you never had to die?
I stared out of the window again. Elena had mixed with the other black dots resting in the trees. That explained why hundreds of birds lived on their property. They could jump inside of anything, even animals.
It was entirely possible that Sam wasn’t Sam, her uncle wasn’t her uncle, and that I’d gotten myself into something darker and more dangerous than I’d imagined.
How far into the shadows was I willing to go to kill Christine?