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“Because each week you do a video where you turn into someone else. Either Gany or one of the characters you change yourself into for your makeup channel,” Gideon says, as if that makes perfect sense.
I shake my head. “I use makeup to make myself look like someone else. Paint and eyeshadow and contour and colored contacts. I don’t actually become someone else.”
“Have you watched your videos?” Fielder asks. And I can’t help but laugh at him again.
“I edit them, Harris. I watch all the footage and edit them into a cohesive and shorter video. And then watch that video to make sure it makes sense.”
Gideon pulls out his phone, and it takes me a moment to realize what he’s doing, until he thrusts it at me with one of my ASMR videos pulled up. It’s just a picture of Gany, black hair, blue eyes, thick black glasses. When I do my makeup for her, I contour the shit out of my features, creating higher cheekbones, thinner nose, more pointed chin.
But as I look at myself in the video, I can’t see the makeup that I used to do that. I can’t see the edge of the black wig. I can’t see anything that would indicate that this is, in fact, a disguise. It just looks like Gany’s features, like I did actually become an entirely different person.
That’s someMission Impossibleshit right there.
Huh, why have I never noticed that?
“Okay.” I draw the word out. “So Shadow and Veil. Who’s the head of that house at Septem Stellae?”
“Julie.”
“You’ve gotta be shitting me.” I run a weary hand down my face. “So Morgan must be another head, and who’s the seventh? Not Iris?”
“Gabe.” I don’t bother to hide the shudder that works over my body as I remember him pushing me onto the ground, his hands tearing my clothes and bruising my skin, trying to force my legs apart.
Nausea swells, but I swallow it down. I’m safe, nowhere near him.
“We would have gotten rid of him after Halloween,” Hardin says, “But the bloody bastard is as entrenched in SSU as we are. His family would have come after us.”
“As it was, the best we could do was beat the shit out of him and make sure he stayed away from you,” Gideon adds. “He had to spend a lot of time recovering, which is why he was gone for almost three months.”
I nod, plucking at a loose string on my leggings. “So tell me why my being a witch means I needed to be kicked out of SSU? If anything, it seems like the place to go if you’re a witch? And you obviously didn’t know until right now. ”
Fielder’s frowning. “That we don’t know. Back in October, when my father saw you over parents’ weekend, he sort of lost his mind and demanded that I do everything in my power to get rid of you. At the time I thought it was because he could tell…” his cheeks turn a shade of pink I’ve never seen on him and he looks away from me. But after a moment, he meets my gaze and says resolutely, “I thought he could tell I wanted you. He’s not very good at letting me have what I want. When he pushed, I thought if I just showed that I wasn’t interested, that I didn’t think you were worth my time, that he would let you stay.”
“But he didn’t,” I say, thinking of the argument they’d had int he woods, witnessed by a man with a thick mustache. “He reiterated his need to have me gone, and the rest of you went along with it? No questions asked?” I glance around the room.
“We took a vote in the coven,” Ezra winces. “It was a long debate, but ended five to two.”
“Who voted to get me out?” They all look at each other, and I can tell they won’t tell me. But I know that at least Fielder voted to get me to leave, so I run through the numbers out loud. “Fielder, Morgan, Julie, Gabe to get me out.” I look at Hardin. “You wanted to fuck me, so I’m guessing you voted against?” He smirks, so I look at Ezra and Gideon, considering them. I think back to when I first met them. To how Ezra seemed standoffish, Gideon had too, but when I’d stumbled on Fielder and his dad in the woods, Gideon had seemed worried about what I’d seen, about me. Though Ezra had warned me repeatedly that I needed to leave.
“Ezra for, Gideon against.”
Ezra scowls at me, and Gideon shakes his head slowly. “You’re close, but not quite. Hardin and Gabe for you to stay.”
“He wanted to fuck you, too.” When I flinch at that statement, Hardin stands from the bed and comes to perch on the arm of the couch near me, ringed fingers running through my hair.
“Well, that is fucked,” I mutter, hugging my knees to my chest. “Almost as fucked as all of you agreeing to ruin my life without knowing why exactly you were doing it. You just guessed at the reason, you didn’t… you didn’t ask?”
They’re silent for so long that I think maybe they didn’t hear me, or that they’re going to ignore me. But then Gideon says softly, “We weren’t trying to ruin your life. We were trying to make sure you kept living.”
I frown. “You think my life was in danger? Is in danger?” As soon as I ask the question, I know the answer. Yes, of course, that is what they think. I was just attacked in a cemetery in London.
“The warning on your wall,” Hardin says, fingers still stroking through my hair. “That wasn’t us. We were ready to give up, that’s part of why I stayed over break. I wanted to try and make it up to you, to get you to see that we could be nice if we wanted to be.”
“And man, did we want to be nice to you, Ro,” Ezra says, squeezing me gently.
“‘Look what you made me do’ wasn’t a warning to you. It was for us,” Fielder explains, crossing his arms over his chest. “We weren’t completing the task set to us. And someone didn’t like it.”
“Morgan and Julie?”
