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“A favor?” Tabit spat. “You dare—”
Zara cut her off with a wave of her hand. “I made a deal, a magic swap in exchange for listening to her plea. Let us hear our prodigal daughter out.”
“Who cares about this favor?” Willa cut in, her eyes red as she reached across the table, capturing one of my hands in both of hers. “Forget about those outsiders and rejoin us. Witches belong with other witches, after all, and my doorway has sorely missed you. What can that awful world out there offer you that your family here cannot?”
“Are you insane?” Tabit cut in. “If we let her in, we’ll all be dead by the end of the year. Can’t you feel it around her? Thatmalevolent shadow of hers has only grown more powerful. Morehateful.”
“I appreciate your offer, Auntie Willa,” I said, leaning down to kiss the top of one of her hands. Since when had she developed liver spots and deep wrinkles there? I knew that plenty of time had passed, and yet it was strange to be so starkly confronted by the evidence of years marching by. “But I can’t abandon my friends.”
“Not like you abandoned us?” Zara said. Her tone was nonchalant, but I heard the hurt there. I felt damned if I did, damned if I didn’t, pulled between caring for the feelings of everyone I loved and wanting to keep them safe.
“The favor I have to ask is not a light one,” I continued. “But there is a powerful warlock, who’ll try to rush our borders and kill thousands of innocent civilians in order to weaken us and cause unrest. He wants bloodshed to demoralize us, traumatize us, and force us to fall back.” I took a deep breath, and miraculously, no one interrupted me. “I know it is not in your nature to help the outside world, but our coven has always been one to protect the weak, the helpless, the cursed. That’s why you took me in, after all, wasn’t it?”
There were a couple of nods of agreement, so I kept going, knowing I was my people’s only hope.
“What would you have us do about it?” Tabit asked flatly. “Leave our home? March in your war as a soldier, as you did?”
“No, nothing like that. I simply ask for a temporary use of one of our ancestral relics. I should be able to use that to amplify my own magic into a powerful spell—one that will allow the other magic users at our base to lend me their power as well.”
“Clever girl,” Willa remarked, still wiping at her eyes.
But Tabit, naturally, wasn't as impressed. “The outside world is a dangerous place, and our coven needs all the protection we can get. Why should we risk ourselves for someone who notonly endangered us, but then abandoned us in the middle of the night?”
I didn’t answer that. Instead I just locked gazes with Sara, internally begging her to do what was right, to help me save countless citizens about to be slaughtered.
The silence stretched on impossibly long before my closest mother-witch sighed and propped her pointed chin in her hand. “We will help you, but you in turn must help us.”
“What would you have me do?”
“There are certain…spells we wish to do to help cleanse our coven of the last vestiges of your shadow. One of the ingredients is quite difficult to get. The blood of a living vampire, not one sired or tuned, but one born.”
“A living vampire?” I said. I'd absolutely no idea where to go about finding one of those.
“Aye. That is the price, my sweet. A difficult, expensive price for the great risk you ask of us, and for buying the lives of your friends.”
“I see.” Standing, I bowed to the coven, my stomach twisting itself in knots. “I will inform my companions.”
I held my composure all the way out of the house, but it was hard not to crumble once I saw my friends. They looked so on edge, so unhappy, and I felt like I'd just risked their lives and wasted all of their time. I should have known better. We could have all been at the fort, preparing in more practical ways, rather than going on a wild were-goose chase.
“What’s wrong?” Kai said, crossing over to me immediately and wrapping me up in his strong arms. I knew I should pull away, that he was just going to end up facing the same dangers that my aunties and mothers had, but I didn’t. I let myself be embraced. I just wasn’t strong enough to resist anymore. Maybe I'd be once we got back to the fort, but for the moment, I allowed myself to be weak.
“They’ll help us but at a price.”
“How very like witches,” Mad Dog remarked before Kai gave him a sharp look. “Oh, sorry. Present company excluded, of course.”
“What’s the price that’s clearly upset you?” Irina said, as unruffled as ever. What I wouldn’t give to have kept my cool like that, but I supposed that went with living for hundreds of years.
“Yeah,” Darla chimed in. “Surely it can’t be too bad, can it?”
Taking another deep breath, I explained what was needed. The rest of the group looked just as baffled as I felt, similar levels of dejection crossing their features. Well, except for Irina, that is, who looked borderline bashful.
“Provided they haven’t packed up and fled,” she started. “I might be Chekov’s gun here.”
“What do you mean by that?” Mad Dog snapped, obviously surly about the bad news. “You gonna shoot a vamp? I didn’t even know your type could be born, by the way. The fuck is up with that?”
“Chekov’s gun isn’t literal, and what I mean is I heard whispers of a living vampire within reasonable distance of this area.” She paused, and I knew she wasn’t done yet. “On the enemy’s side, however.”
Damn.
