I don’t respect you. I never could.
Stay out of my coven’s business. Out of my business.
“Does it look all right?”
That last phrase was said out loud, by Sylvia, and Silas coughed, wiping a bead of sweat off his brow. The heat must be getting to him—he was dizzy, he realized, his body swaying as his brain tried to chisel its way out of his skull.
“Yes,” he said. “Thank you for handling that.”
“Great.”
Sylvia pulled her hand back, and Silas nearly fell over as the dizzinesstripled. He swallowed vomit as he found a death grip on the desk, barely keeping himself upright.
No one moved to help him. Katherine stared right past him, her mind elsewhere. Already done with him.
Finally, the dizziness eased, and Silas stood. He took the gauze Sylvia proffered and pressed it to his bleeding palm. She didn’t say anything else, but her meaning was clear—the wards were fixed. The cauldron was in his possession. She wouldn’t sell altum anymore, and no one would be in danger. And per their deal, that meant that he could leave now.
“You get to go home.” His head shot up at Katherine’s voice. He couldn’t read her face, her eyes shuttered back to the complete, crushing emptiness they’d held when she’d first looked at him. “Aren’t you happy?”
Wasn’t he happy.
He pictured all of the things he missed about New York—the warmth of walking over a subway grate in the freezing cold; the hole-in-the-wall restaurants he and Anika spent weekends seeking out; the soft purr of the tortie cat at the bodega by his apartment. He’d be back early enough in the semester that he could take over his class again. His head should be spinning with lesson plans and project ideas, but instead, he was stuck on everything else that would come with his return.
The crushing expectations of his family. The stifling weight of pretending to be someone he wasn’t. The constant feeling that he wasn’t, and would never be, good enough.
He’d be back here. He knew his parents wouldn’t let Aestas go. It’d be next year, or the year after that, or the one after that, but eventually, they’d nail Sylvia with something strong enough to get her out. Any delay in her dismissal would be taken out on her with a more outsized punishment—and the burden would fall on Silas to deliver it. And when it was all done, he’d be stuck in Los Angeles, with the woman he was desperate to impress hating his guts.
Silas nodded, because he didn’t trust himself to speak.
Katherine kept staring at him with that cold expression. “Have a safe flight.”
He nodded again, and then he walked out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Silas ignored the honking taxis and the whir of the subway underneath the sidewalk grates as he was buzzed into Anika’s building. He bounded up the stairs and used his key to let himself into her apartment, dropping the bag of takeout he’d brought with him on her kitchen table before slinking down onto her couch, rubbing his temples.
“The call went that well, huh?”
Silas glared at his friend as she started unpacking their food.
“What do you think?”
Anika plopped down next to him, setting a steaming container of lamb biryani in front of him.
“If I had to guess… your parents are not buying the jet-lag excuse and want you to come over tonight. They’re eager to hear why, exactly, you came back to New York without Sylvia’s head on a stick. At multiple points, the wordsdutyandresponsibilitywere mentioned. And also, they think I am incredible and amazing and you should probably buy me at least three new purses as a thank-you for being such a good friend.”
“All accurate, except they stuck to thinking that last bit instead of saying it out loud.”
“Bummer for me.”
Silas’ stomach grumbled, angry at him after an afternoon of travel and anxiety. He grabbed a fork and started eating, but he had trouble getting more than a few bites past the lump in his throat.
“Okay, come on,” Anika said after a few moments of silence. “You pushed off the parents, but I am unpushable. Why are you back here?”
“I told you already. They fixed the wards. There was no reason for me to stay anymore.”
“You weren’t supposed to take no for an answer.”
