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While the other spirits held on, I wracked my mind, trying to think of anything useful to ask them. Unfortunately, my brain felt scrambled after being teleported.
“You don’t work for the DHA?” a spirit nearby asked, his indigo eyes falling on the OIB patch at my shoulder.
“The OIB,” I said.
“They’re the vamp agents the OIB sent,” another spirit murmured just before she faded, disappearing into the night.
“We are,” I confirmed.
“You have to tell them the DHA can’t be trusted,” the male spirit rushed to say as he, too, began to fade. “Directors La Cora and…”
That was all I heard before he dissipated completely, but it was enough. I’d suspected for a long time that La Cora and Cyrene didn’t have anyone’s best interests at heart but their own. And now, to hear that these demon hunters’ superiors had sacrificed them? And to hear one of them say that La Cora couldn’t be trusted? I could connect the dots from there.
“The Wildes coven is on their way,” Jax said as he came back outside.
“Warn them not to tell anyone else in the DHA,” I said.
“We will try to return,” Nimue’s mother said as she and her coven-mate faded away. “Tell Nim we love her.”
Those were the last words we heard as their spirits disappeared into the night.
Mel frowned and turned to her own mother’s spirit, clearly fearful she would be next.
“This is Jax,” Mel introduced her final coven-mate to her mother. Nico stepped aside, and Mel gripped my hand on one side and Jax’s on the other. Her grip tightened as her mother’s spirit began to fade.
I held Mel close as she tearfully said her goodbyes.
“I’m so glad to see your new coven in action,” her mother said, glancing from me to Nico, standing just behind Mel. “They match you well, mija.”
“And you don’t hate me for…”
“Because someone else forced you to turn into one of them? Of course not, bebé.”
“I’m so glad you’re safe, Mamá.”
“Thanks to you, mija. But I can’t stay much longer.”
“I know.” Mel choked on a sob.
“Call on me. Perhaps at Samhain, I can—”
“I will. I love you, Mamá.”
“I love you, too, Mela, never forget that.”
And with those words, her mother’s spirit faded from view. I expected a stronger reaction from Mel, but instead, she just turned in my arms, burying her face in my chest. Jax pressed in close behind her, wrapping his arms around us both to give her as much comfort as he could.
“We did it,” I told her. “You saved her. She’s safe because of you.”
“They all are,” Nico added. He didn’t touch her, and his weight shifted from foot to foot. It was almost cute, like the big lug wanted to comfort her but had no idea how.
This was the part that regs could never understand. Seeing Nico’s desire to comfort Mel, the woman who cared about all three of us, that we all cared for in turn? It made me care all the more about him, as well.
He was my coven-mate, too, and although our relationship would never be a romantic one, it would develop in other ways. I hoped one day Nico and I would become the best of friends. He might have thought about leaving our coven once, but now I knew he never would. Sooner or later, he and my brother would find a way past their differences, just as Mel and I had.
Mel straightened, wiping her face before Jax handed her a box of tissues.
“Let’s go inside,” she said, her voice still thick with emotion.
