“Ah, but therewasa child,” he says, a new tenderness sneaking into his voice. “In the year before her death, Calista became pregnant by the boy she loved. As you can imagine, that sort of thing was quite scandalous in those days. Her parents were overjoyed—they didn’t care about the laws of propriety. But they wanted to protect her from the fallout such a scandal would inevitably cause. Her mother took her to a relative’s home in Pennsylvania, where the two women lived for the duration of the pregnancy under guise of apprenticing Calista’s aunt as midwives. Calista gave birth to a daughter, Davina, and when they returned home, baby in tow, her parents claimed they’d found her abandoned in the woods. They raised her as Calista’s sister.”
“So the baby survived? The hunters didn’t go after her?”
“They didn’t know about her magic, only that their own power grab was a failure. They blamed Calista, said she wasn’t a worthy sacrifice. Again, we only know bits and pieces here, from testimonies and rumors documented decades later. But the Wielders also didn’t realize Davina was Calista’s child. By the time her powers came in, it was too late. The hunters had, for the time being, moved on in search of easier prey. Davina, in the meantime, only grew more powerful as she aged. She learned how to connect with the demons who first granted the magic, and they taught her how to summon and bind chaotic entities,to channel their magic and fuse it with her own. To become who she was meant to be.”
“Just like you and me.” My smile finally breaks, my heart feeling lighter. A miracle, all things considered. “A full circle moment, Professor.”
“Yes, well… teaching is a great responsibility. Almost as great as learning.” He turns the color of a ripe apple, whips off his glasses, and furiously begins to polish. “I don’t take either lightly, Miss Bonnivarde. Nor should you.”
I nod, and here in the place of the dead, it feels like I’m making a promise. One I intend to keep.
In the silence that follows, I think back on the conversation with Helena. She mentioned witch hunters too, but before she got to the good part, Rachel had her little meltdown.
God, there’s still so much I don’t know. Are my sisters and I in actualdangerover all this stuff? Was my mother? Can we trust Helena?
Can we trust Dr. Sutherland?
“Are the Wielders of the Righteous Flame still active?” I ask. “Do I need to watch my back?”
“They never quite achieved the level of political power they had before your ancestors came into their magic, and the assumption is they eventually died off. We’ve not heard of any activity in several decades, but it’s never a bad idea to exercise caution. In any case…” He slips his glasses back into place, upping the trustworthy factor once again. “The most important thing is the portal. It requires constant magical upkeep, yet it’s been neglected since your mother’s death, if not longer.”
I roll my eyes. “Neglecting things is one of my mother’s core values.”
“In this case, it wasn’t entirely her fault. We’ve been sensing irregularities for some years. The Bonnivarde witches, in partnership with the Council, ensure the boundary holdsand deals between witches and demons are ethical. But many witches can summon and harness the power of demons. Unfortunately, not all of them have acted ethically, and their unscrupulousness has further weakened the portal. That your mother shielded you from this duty when you should have been apprenticing from a young age is… inconvenient, to say the least. But not necessarily negligent.”
There are alotof inconveniences stemming from being tossed out like a piece of trash as a kid, but I keep that to myself. Right now, it’s taking almost all my admittedly diminished brain capacity to process everything about this portal situation.
“So witches summon demons for their magic,” I say, “making some kind of deal or whatever to bind them. Hunters, on the other hand—they just wanted all the magic for themselves.”
“In a rather shallow nutshell, yes. Witches have their own magic, which is what allows them to summon in the first place, should they choose. Demonic magic can then be bound and directed to various spells and purposes. In the case of your family line, demonic magicisyour magic. So, for a Bonnivarde witch, summoning and working with demons is both easier and more powerful than it is for other witches.”
“Sounds peachy in theory, but if demons have so much power, why do they allow themselves to be used? What’s in it for them? There has to be a catch.”
“Not a catch, Miss Bonnivarde. Just…” He glances away, gazing out across the mist, the headstones bobbing like lost ships. “An opportunity to matter.”
He says it so softly, I wonder if he even meant for me to hear it. But then he sighs and looks at me again with that strange intensity and says, “Hell isn’t how it’s portrayed in religious texts or modern media, some barren landscape of endless fire and brutal torments. Those things exist, yes, and a great many terrible humans find themselves eternally damned to suchtortures. But the real point of Hell—the true secret weapon—is dehumanization. That’s the ultimate punishment, even for an entity that was never human at all. It strips away love, it strips away memory, it strips away a sense of self, a sense of meaning. Hope.” He swallows hard, shaking his head. “Answering a witch’s summons… no, it’s not glamorous. But itdoesoffer a purpose. A meaning, of sorts, to an otherwise cursed and empty existence.”
The words hit a little too close to home, and now it’s me who can’t hold the eye contact.
“Perhaps becoming a Guardian wasn’t in your life’s plan,” he says. “But itisyour destiny. You can choose to claim it, or you can attempt to dismiss it. Go back to your old life, bury your head in the sand, and let the chips fall where they may. Either way, you must make the choice willingly. I can not force you.”
My old life, sure. One where, much like the demons of Hell, I had no purpose. No hope. Even before all the stuff happened with Brendan.
Despite our estrangement, I know my sisters well enough to predict how this witch business will play out. Rachel will do everything in her power to convince herself it isn’t real. Kate is the more open-minded of the two, but she’ll go along with Rachel because she hates conflict. And they’ll assume I’ll fall in line because I always do.
Except for the last time. The Incident. That night, when everything went to shit, I simply ran away. If not for my mother’s death, who knows when I would’ve spoken to my sisters again.
The familiar guilt nips, but I ignore it. I can’t get sidetracked by regrets. This is too important.
Am I in, or am I out?
I think of Calista. Of Davina. Of the entire line of witches who came before me. I think about the demons, too. What Dr.Sutherland said about finding meaning in an otherwise cursed and empty existence.
Now, for the first time in my fucked-up life, I actually have a chance to do something great.
Maybe even to matter.
“Okay, I’m in,” I say, and Dr. Sutherland smiles, and the moment feels so right. So good. “But before we get into all this magic school, portal-securing business, I do have one very important question.”
