Page 42 of Unbound

“The only way we’d get those details would be to talk to someone from the Blackwood line.”

Except that happened years ago. There’s no one alive today who took part in that ritual. But I’m sure the story was passed down. There have to be relatives or members of that coven who know exactly what happened. Which means facing them. Telling them I was tricked into undoing everything they fought so hard to accomplish.

The shame of it clings to me like a sweater that’s two sizes too small, making me hot and itchy and desperate to crawl out of my own skin. Except I don’t feel like I’m allowed to take it off. I feel like I deserve the discomfort. The guilt. The shame.

Then I look at Antonio and wonder if he feels the same way. None of this was his choice. But the only reason he’s alive is because of Vaelric.

Devon pulls Mabel’s notebook from a kitchen drawer and flips to the last page. She drew a stick-figure army of eleven demons standing in front of Vaelric. Devon crosses one out.

“We know for certain we’ve taken out one of these guys. We don’t know if any others were killed before now, and at the moment, we don’t really have a way to find out.”

I hear the question in his voice, and I cradle my head in my hands. “The more we try to figure this out, the more desperate it feels.” I lift my head again. “We keep talking in circles. Going over the same information again and again. It doesn’t change the facts. We’re not suddenly going to have some miraculous realization that the answer was sitting in front of us all along.”

I sigh. “Because it isn’t. And then there’s…” I stop myself. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay, you can’t leave me with that,” Antonio says.

“There’s a notebook.” I close my eyes for a second before continuing. “It has names in it. Witches the Order has been using.” Antonio’s expression changes. “My name was in there. I found it at the warehouse with the vials of my blood and a vial of someone else’s. Most of the names are crossed out, which makes me think those witches are dead.” I swallow. “But not all of them are.” Neither of them says anything. “And I can’t let it go.”

The admission feels heavier than I expected.

“I know none of that matters compared to everything else going on, but I keep thinking about them. What’s the point of rescuing witches from the Order if the world is going to end because I freed a demon who’s going to bring about the apocalypse?”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Devon says, holding up a hand. “He’s not actually going to end the world, is he?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I reply honestly.

“We’ve faced a lot of demons over the years,” Antonio says, trying to reason with me. “None of them brought about Armageddon.”

“Yeah, because we stopped them.”

“Look, Wren, as much as I’d love to give us all the credit in the world, I don’t think the world ending is a realistic possibility.” Antonio sounds confident when he starts. But by the end, even he doesn’t seem entirely convinced.

“I think I’m gonna go upstairs and try to get some sleep,” I say, fully knowing I’m probably going to end up doom-scrolling on my phone or watching reruns of Gilmore Girls. I put my plate in the dishwasher and head upstairs. I climb into the large, empty bed, wishing there were a TV in here.

Xavier doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who watches much television, let alone someone who would lie in bed and watch reruns of an old sitcom. I remember reading a study once that said bedrooms should be reserved for sleeping and sex, and that putting a TV in the room could be damaging to a relationship. I thought it was an odd study at the time. Not that I had a relationship to put to the test. Or even a bedroom without a TV in it, really, because I spent almost an entire year on the road after reading that article. I don’t think having a TV in our bedroom would dampen anything between Xavier and me, but as I prop my phone on the nightstand to watch something mindless, I can see how the idea has some merit.

I don’t even make it through the opening credits before I feel too restless to stay in bed. With a sigh, I get up, turn on the lamp beside the bed, and pull the leather notebook from the nightstand drawer. It feels silly keeping it hidden away like some sort of secret diary. Though, in a way, I guess that’s exactly what it is. I flip through the pages absentmindedly while I think. There are no dates written beside any of the entries. The ink doesn’t look faded. And up until I was sold to the Malus family, I was still very relevant to the Order. Hell, until literally yesterday, they were still trying to figure out exactly how to free Vaelric.

If this notebook contains relatively recent information, then there’s a chance some of the names that haven’t been crossed out belong to people who are still alive.

Alive and trapped by the Order in one way or another.

The thought makes my stomach twist. And sitting around waiting for Vaelric to strike is going to drive me insane. Possibly quite literally. I get up and grab the laptop Xavier gave me when I first got here. Then I open the Notes app and start typing out the names. There are seventeen names in the notebook, including mine.

Only three aren’t crossed out.

Is that because they’re still alive? Or because whoever was running these experiments never got the chance to cross them off? I stare at the list of three uncrossed names until my vision starts to blur.

I wish I were more in tune with my intuition like Marie is. Deciding to just go with whatever my gut is telling me right now, I open Google and type in the first name.

Brianna.

My fingers hover over the keyboard as I stare at the screen, unsure what else to add.

“Missing,” I say out loud. Then I hit enter. The first thing that comes up is a well-documented case from the early 2000s. I don’t think it’s her. I scroll quickly through the results, but everything I find circles back to the disappearance of a sixteen-year-old girl named Brianna who vanished after leaving work one night.

I do a quick search on her family, but nothing jumps out at me as remotely witchy. Then again, witches and werewolves alike live ordinary lives and look like ordinary people. I tap my fingers against the laptop while I think. There were several vials of blood in that bag, and every single one was labeled.