It had to have happened during the mapping spell. He’d been so distracted staring at those shiny new wards, thinking about what they meant for him and Katherine. Worrying about her hating him, when he should’ve been thinking about the fact that he had opened his magic to an unhinged, powerful witch with a lifelong grudge against his family. Sharing power was a dangerous thing, predicated on the assumption of trust and respect—two concepts he should have known would be foreign to Sylvia Page.
He had opened his magic to her, and she had given him death in return.
He didn’t know how she had unsettled magic to curse him with. Maybe there was still some lingering in the blood of every witch who had been born that way. Maybe she’d somehow used that girl he saw at the coven meeting.
Maybe Katherine helped.
Noise. Just noise in his head.
One foot in front of the other.
A keening wail sounded over the low hum of the mourners’ prayers. Silas’ neck pinched from the effort to resist turning toward the source of the sound. His mother had made that sound in that office too. Screamed her sadness to the heavens when she realized what happened. What Silas did.
Even then, confronted with the greatest grief she’d ever known, Nina was better than him. His mother had still been able to gather herself enough to tell her shell-shocked son that they needed to clean this up. She forced him to look at her, to listen past that noise in his head while she told him what their story would be. Stilled his shaking hands as he made cut after cut in his palm, spell after spell to try to undo what he’d done to the study.
They managed everything except the body.
Ten more steps and they’d be there. Ten more steps and he could be done with this. Ten more steps and he could go home, lie in his bed, and let the wave drown him.
His mother cried again, and this time he looked.
The pain on her face knocked his legs from under him.
He heard the collective inhale of the crowd as he tripped, and a part of him wanted to laugh. Becauseof coursehe would cap this all off with one more reminder to his father that his son had never been able to do even the most basic things asked of him.
The hands of the other pallbearers caught him before he or the casket could tumble to the ground. Silas mumbled a thank-you. Forced himself to take the remaining steps. Laid the casket down inside the door. Tried to block out the wailing that continued from outside.
Watched his father’s body be taken away. Stepped back out into that still-shining sun.
Just noise. Everything was noise.
Later.
He was at his parents’ house, his back pressed to the hard wood of the wall, hundreds of people streaming by him, a mix of faces he couldn’t make out. Someone had put a drink in one hand, a plate of appetizers in the other. They tasted like dust in his mouth.
He couldn’t count how many times he thanked people for their sympathy. How many half-hearted hugs he gave and took. He was a robot of grief, programmed to repeat the same motions over and over until his battery ran out.
A hand landed on his shoulder, and he went for another empty embrace, not even seeing the person in front of him.
“No way are you getting away with an auntie hug with me, Silas.”
Silas blinked until his eyes cleared enough to see that it was Anika. She’d called him as soon as the news broke, but he hadn’t answered. She was crying in the voicemail she left, begging him to call her back.Apologizing profusely for the things she’d said to him, even though there was nothing to be sorry for.
Everything she said about him was true. That she still cared about his feelings at all when he so clearly didn’t deserve her sympathy was a gift he didn’t know how to thank her for.
He had the sudden urge to cry.
She must have read that in his face, because she took the plate and cup out of his hand and set them on a nearby table before giving him a gentle pat on the shoulder, her face lined with concern. “Come on. Let’s find somewhere to talk.”
She pulled him through the crowd until they reached the stairs. Luckily, the mourners cleared as they made it to the second floor, giving him a moment of blessed quiet before they reached his bedroom.
He hadn’t lived here for years—his parents had bought him his own penthouse apartment when he graduated college, after instantly spotting a host of code violations in the Brooklyn walk-up he’d signed a lease for. (“Come on, Silas. We raised you to be more responsible than this.”) They’d left his childhood bedroom untouched. Of course, there were no posters or Little League trophies lining the walls. No, he’d lived in a dignified, wood-paneled room since his early teens, surrounded by shiny mahogany furniture he couldn’t leave a scratch on and decorations he didn’t pick. The room was elegant, minimalist, colored in deep browns and reds that were meant to convey a clear message to him from that young an age: It was time for him to grow up.
Looking at it now… it looked, Silas realized, a lot like his father’s study.
Bile surged in his throat.
Anika navigated him to the bed, pushing him down to sit before pulling over the chair from his desk and sitting across from him.
