“I used to think we werealllucky,” Haley said, bringing me back to the conversation at hand. “Norah seemed like such a great leader. She helped us get in touch with our gifts, with each other… and now it’s like she’s just… I don’t know. Turning off the tap.”
I was no Norah fangirl, and the woman was definitely hiding something. But I couldn’t fault her for wanting to lie low during an international witch hunt, or to try to protect her coven—especially young witches like Reva.
“You don’t think Norah’s got a point?” I asked. “Maybe youshouldsit this one out.”
“And let the others fend for themselves? Knowing how much power we have together? I couldn’t live with myself, Gray. None of us could.”
Wrong.Icould.
I opened my mouth to say it out loud, but in that moment I realized it was no longer true.
I’d stayed off the radar for seven years, denying who I was, pushing away witches like Haley and the others as if that was enough to keep me safe. The only witch I’d let into my life was Sophie, and now she was gone.
In the end, isolating myself hadn’t kept me safe. And it hadn’t been living. Not really.
“I went to see Jael on Monday,” I finally confessed. “Sophie left the book for me, but I’m still trying to figure out what it means. I just… I need a little more time.”
“I understand.” Haley’s face softened. “I can’t even imagine what you’re going through right now. I was just getting to know Sophie, but you… you were everything to her.” Her eyes shone with emotion, her smile warm and genuine. “All that stuff Delilah said… God, I love Delilah, and I really, really need her to be okay. But she was way out of line.”
“I wasn’t exactly on my best behavior, either.”
“Sophie was never disappointed in you,” Haley said. “She looked up to you, Gray. She said you were the closest thing to a sister she ever had.”
I wanted to tell her how much that meant to me, how those words melted some of the ice from my heart, but when I opened my mouth, all that came out was, “Hungry?”
Haley beamed. “Starving.”
With most of the tension between us easing, Haley followed me into the kitchen, taking a seat while I dished up piping hot lasagna and opened another bottle of Merlot. Sophie’s bar tending job had kept us well-supplied in booze, and I poured a glass for her as well, setting it on the table between us.
After we clinked glasses, Haley gestured to Sophie’s tarot cards. “Sophie told me you guys used to draw Tarot every day after work.”
I smiled warmly, picking up the Page I’d drawn before Haley’s arrival. “Yeah, it was one of our rituals. Tea and Tarot. Catch up on the night. Look ahead to the next one.”
“That’s so cool. I never learned Tarot. I’m more into the blood magic.” Haley laughed. “I know, not creepy at all, right?”
“Only slightly creepy. But hey, if you keep showing up at my door with food, I might offer to teach you Tarot.” I set the Page back on top of the deck, face up. “You can keep the blood stuff to yourself.”
“It’s a deal.” Her smile faded, her gaze shifting back to the Page of Cups.
“Whatever happened to her and the other witches,” Haley said, suddenly serious, “I feel like it’s connected to something so much bigger. The other covens, other cities… Something is happening.”
“I agree.” If what they’d learned from the other covens was true, the killings weren’t isolated to the Bay, and they probably weren’t just the work of one lone psychopath. “What are you thinking?”
“I want to find who did this,” she said. “Who’sdoingit. Who they’re working for. Who else is involved. And I want to continue what Sophie and I started at the coven.”
“Strength in numbers, that whole thing?”
“It’s important work, Gray. Reaching out to the other witches, reconnecting. Reclaiming our power.”
She sounded so much like Sophie in that moment, I wondered once again if my little Page of Cups was stopping by to say hello.
“Look, I know you don’t have many reasons to trust anything I’ve said.” Haley reached for the wine, pouring us each another glass and titling the bottle back up without spilling a drop—a trick I’d never mastered. “And we didn’t get off on the right foot at Norah’s place. But Sophie believed in you, and she believed in me, and she was an awesome judge of character. So I say we team up.”
Team up…
I was distrustful of most people by nature—a policy that had served me well in the years since I’d fled New York. If I’d been more cautious as a teenager, I might’ve avoided the betrayal that had led the hunters straight to our doorstep.
But I was just a kid back then. Scared, alone, ashamed, on the run for my life.
