But then she just started laughing again, happy tears like mine streaking her cheeks, and I let out a big, fat sigh of relief.
“Sisters?” she asked, bewildered. “But… how?”
How?I wanted to make a sex joke. Like,Well, Haley, when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much…
But I couldn’t. Our motherhadn’tloved our father. She’d murdered him. She’d made four babies with him, and then snuffed out his life, nearly snuffing out ours, too.
“There’s… more,” I said.
Haley was still beaming. “I’m all ears. Tell me everything.”
“No, I mean more ofus. Our parents had four daughters. Somewhere out there in the world, we’ve got two other sisters. We were all separated as children and raised separately to keep us safe, because there’s this whole prophecy thing and our mother wanted our magic and… God, this is a long story.”
My heart was in my throat, my magic buzzing beneath my skin as I thought of our mother again. Even the hounds picked up on it—they bounded back over to me, pressing against my legs, sniffing all around.
“It’s okay, girls. Mama just needs to chill.” I blew out a frosty breath, then steadied myself, waiting for my magic to settle. When it did, I turned to Haley and told her the whole story—as much as Deirdre had told me, anyway: The Silversbane Prophecy, and our mother’s visions about it during her pregnancy. The four of us. How she’d desperately wanted our magic. How Deirdre believed she’d killed our father. Our near-drowning at her hands, and all the ways our lives had irrevocably changed as a result.
“Drowning…” Haley closed her eyes, her voice soft in the winter air. “When I was younger, I used to have this recurring dream. There were four little girls—sometimes I was one of them, and other times I’d be watching them like a movie—you know how dreams are weird like that. Anyway, the girls were always dressed in white, and we were always walking through the woods. Sometimes we’d pick berries, or build a tree fort, or look for cool rocks. That part was slightly different each time, but the dream always ended the same way. Whether I was one of the girls or just an observer, we’d reach the river, and then one by one, we’d vanish. I was always the last one left standing—or I’d watch the last one standing, and she’d become a spitting image of me. And in that moment, I’d be overcome with this feeling of such loneliness…” Haley shook her head. “Sometimes the feeling would stay with me for hours after waking up. Like, some part of me knew that something was missing.”
“Somethingwas. All of us—we were missing from each other.” I put my arm around her shoulder, and we bent our heads together, our breathing synchronized.
“I grew up with good parents,” she said. “But they died in a car crash fairly young. My mom’s mom—Nona—she raised me after that, but she passed away when I was a freshman in college. I couldn’t afford the tuition. I ended up in the Bay—like a lot of witches without a family.”
“You had a family, though. We both did. We just didn’t know about each other.”
Haley nodded, snuggling in closer. “I guess that’s why I ended up joining Bay Coven. I wanted that family. That sisterhood. It didn’t turn out exactly as I’d hoped, though.”
“But it did,” I said. “Never mind Norah. You got Sophie out of the deal. And Delilah and Reva and all the others. And after that, you got all the sisters you kept safe in the prison.”
“No, you’re right.”
“You also have me, Hay. And guess what? Now that I’ve found you, I’m not planning on letting you out of my sight again.”
“And I can’t escape you, even if I wanted to.” She reached down to pat Sunshine’s head. “You’d send these two to hunt me down.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
We sat in silence for a moment, both processing things in our own ways. I sensed Haley had a million more questions, as did I. Deirdre might be able to fill in some of the gaps, but the last time I’d seen her was when I’d come back from the realm with Emilio. Once we knew Emilio was out of the woods, she’d said her goodbyes, telling me she had to check in with Sebastian and would be back when she could.
I hadn’t heard a peep from her since.
“There’s a lot more that Deirdre hasn’t told me yet,” I said, “but we’ll figure it out. We’ll find the others.”
“We’re sisters,” she said, her smile widening. “I still can’t believe it. And we’ve got two more.”
“Do you think they’re in a coven?” I asked. “Or practicing magic at all? I wonder if they’re in Washington, close to the Bay. Deirdre said we’d all be drawn there eventually, but right now it’s like looking for a needle in—”
Two low, dangerous growls stopped my stream of consciousness babble, raising the hairs on the back of my neck.
“Sunshine? Sparkle? What’s going on?”
“Do you feel that?” Haley held out her hands, then hopped off the log, looking around the woods as she rubbed the chill from her arms. “It’s like it just dropped by about twenty degrees.”
“Now that you mention it, yeah.” My breath, which had been a thin white mist all morning, was now a dense cloud. I stood up and peered through the trees, looking for a patch of sunlight I was sure had been there seconds earlier.
When had it gotten so dark?
“What time is it?” I asked. “How long have we been out here?”
