“What do you mean?” Marcus’ voice wavered.
“The time will come when they ask you to do something you don’t want to do. I guarantee it. And if you try to say no, they’ll threaten Rishi to get you to do it.”
“Not Rishi!” Marcus scooped up his cat, who purred against him. “I can’t lose him again!”
I tilted my head. The way he said it suggested there was a deeper story there. “Again? Did the gang go after him to get you to join?”
“No,” he said quickly. “I meant…”
“You meant what?” I demanded. Marcus was avoiding the story, which worried me. “Look, I get that we all have secrets around here, but I never thoughtyouwould keep a secret from me. If we’re going to be friends again, we have to be honest with each other.”
He breathed a heavy sigh. “It’s not a secret per se… It’s just never come up.”
“Well, you sound pretty hurt by it,” I pointed out. I wanted to help, the same way I wanted to get him out of that gang.
Marcus fidgeted for a few moments before finally speaking. “You might not know this, but the reason cats are so special to the Miriamic Coven is because we believe our cats are reincarnations of our deceased loved ones. They return to support us on our life journey.”
“Rishi was someone you loved?” I asked carefully.
Marcus’ chair squeaked as she shifted uncomfortably. “You know how an Elementai’s soul resides within their Familiar?”
I stroked the top of Oberi’s head. “Yeah, I’m aware.”
“Well, in my culture, we believe twins are two parts of the same soul,” he continued. “If one twin dies, the other can survive. It’s not like if a Familiar dies. But you lose a piece of yourself. It’s rough. So when one twin dies and comes back as a cat… you kind of share a soul. It’s as deep of a bond as you and your Familiar.”
My stomach dropped. “Marcus, are you a twin?”
“Yeah,” he said sheepishly. “I had an identical twin brother.”
I reeled back. I didn’t know what to say to that. All I could manage to spit out was, “What… what happened?”
Marcus didn’t answer the question directly, like it was too hard. “His name was Dean, not Rishi. We give our cats different names than they had in their old life. Dean died a long time ago. I don’t really want to talk about it. Every time I do, I just… I don’t know whyhedied and I lived.”
I felt so bad for him that I didn’t push it. He didn’t need to tell me for me to know Dean’s death had messed him up.
“Rishi’s been with me my whole life,” Marcus rambled. “He’ll probably live just as long as me. Cats in the Miriamic Coven live longer than other animals. I can’t imagine losing him again. I just can’t.”
“Hey,” I said gently. “We’ll make sure he stays safe. We’ll get you out of the gang.”
“I can’t,” he argued. “I’m already a part of it.”
I couldn’t tell if Marcus actually wanted to stay, or if he was just too scared to leave. It didn’t matter. I knew a prison gang was nothing but bad news. One way or another, I was going to get Marcus out. I just had to figure out how.
“It doesn’t matter,” Marcus said, changing the subject. “We should probably start looking for those keys. I mean, if they’re at the Institute and all.”
My shoulders slumped. Even though wehadnarrowed it down, it seemed finding these keys was still impossible. “The Institute is pretty big. It could take years of searching this place before we found one. There’s gotta be a way to narrow it down further.”
“Maybe Ava or Kallie know a spell that could help,” Marcus suggested as we rose from our chairs.
“Maybe… at the very least, we should probably tell them what we found. And stop talking about this shit out in the open, or someone worse than Alistair might overhear. Use code words or something.”
“Okay,” Marcus agreed as we headed out of the room. “What’s a good code word for keys?”
“I don’t know. What’s something that wouldn’t raise suspicion?”
“Penises,” Marcus deadpanned.
“Are you freaking kidding me?”
