Magick (Book 3 in the Coven Series) Page 15

  They comply as Rule and Keller drag Sean into the bed of the truck.

  “Won’t he freeze back there?” Toni asks as she scrambles into the truck after me.

  “No choice,” I say. “We didn’t plan for an extra person.”

  “It’s not that far,” Keller says as he starts the truck and heads down the driveway. I can tell he’s more concerned that we’re going to run into a full coven of dark witches before we can get back to safety. And the air around me is so full of magical signatures from Piper, Sean and me right now that I can’t discern if there’s anything beyond them.

  Keller keeps checking both the side and rearview mirrors, and I try to sift through the signatures. Of course, that’s harder at sixty miles an hour.

  “Anything?” he asks.

  “Not that I can tell, but stop before we get back so I can do a scan.”

  When we reach the turnoff to the Bane’s hideaway, Keller pulls over on the side of the road and Rule does the same. I slide out of the truck after Toni.

  “What are we doing?” Rule asks as he steps out of the Jeep.

  “I need to check out the area, make sure we weren’t followed.”

  The sound of running draws my attention. I look over my shoulder to see Egan skid to a halt at the end of the gravel drive that leads back to the Bane headquarters. He looks scared out of his mind. One heartbeat passes before he and Toni lock eyes and he races to her, pulls her into his arms and kisses her like it’s the end of time or something.

  I close my eyes and reach out with my senses as far as I can. When I find no indication of other witches beyond the ones with me, I breathe a sigh of relief. Still, we need to get beyond the Bane’s shielding.

  “You all scared the crap out of me,” Egan says.

  I open my eyes in time to see Sean sit up in the back of the truck. He looks a bit too blue to be healthy. But what really hits me hard is the haunted look in his eyes. I’ve never seen that much pain in my life.

  “We need to get back,” I say.

  Egan turns with Toni wrapped in the crook of his arm. When he sees Sean, he starts toward him with lethal anger in his eyes. He might no longer have dark magic, but the danger Sean put Toni in hits a very human protective instinct in Egan.

  I step into Egan’s path. “You know it wasn’t his fault.”

  Egan’s jaw tightens.

  I put my hand against his chest. “Get in the front with Toni.” He doesn’t budge, even though we both know I can make him. “Now,” I say more forcefully.

  With a curse, he takes Toni’s hand and they slide into the front.

  When I climb into the back with Sean, Keller gives me a questioning look. “It’s not far,” I say.

  Sean doesn’t move, doesn’t speak, doesn’t even look at me as Keller drives toward the Bane’s home. Sean and I aren’t connected like I am to Egan, not even like my new bond with Keller and Toni, but I’ve gotten my answer as to whether I can still feel my family bond. I feel his pain as if it’s my own. Realizing what I’d done to Amos Barrow had been a raw horror like I’d never known. I can’t imagine how crushing it must be to feel that dozens of times over.

  When we reach the house, Rule and Piper direct the newly bound witches inside. Egan sends Toni in with them while he and Keller stay outside.

  Sean still doesn’t move, not even when it begins to snow and the flakes start to collect in his hair, on his naked hands.

  “We have to go inside,” I say.

  “Leave me out here.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Slowly, he drags his gaze to mine. “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

  “Because what you did wasn’t totally within your control.” I realize in that moment that my hatred of the covens has been misplaced. Every one of those witches is entitled to a chance at life without the noose of dark magic. It doesn’t mean they’ll be good people, but some will be. The weight of responsibility drops onto my shoulders. Only I can give them that opportunity for a second chance. God, how many of them are there? Can I convert all of them, or will it be too much for even my powers?

  Sean shakes his head. “It was. I killed . . . so many people. Innocent people.” I can hear how difficult it is for him to speak past the huge lump in his throat.

  “Because we were imprisoned by dark magic. We couldn’t be who we are underneath.”

  Sean looks off into the distance. The cold soaks all the way down to my bones, but I won’t move until Sean does. This is a test, for both of us. He has to see a path to redemption. And he is the first witch I’ve converted against his will, so I feel like a lot is riding on how this turns out.

  I hold my hand out to him. “And I need your help.”

  He begins to shake visibly. Mother Nature cannot be defeated, not even by an enforcer witch.

  “You’re freezing. Come with me,” I say.

  Sean doesn’t look at me, but he finally puts his big hand in my much smaller one. I’d thought mine cold, but his feels like a block of ice. I glance toward Keller and Egan. “He’s too cold,” I say.

  They hurry to the back of the truck and help me guide Sean to the ground. His knees almost buckle, but they catch him. When I try to release Sean’s hand, he won’t let me. His tightened grip doesn’t scare me though. My instincts tell me he’s holding on to the only thing in his world that seems good, and I can’t deny him that no matter what he’s done in his past.

  With a few more stumbles, we get him inside and down into the underground facility. Caren and Sarah are there with blankets and hot chocolate.

  “Take him to the room across from Egan and Keller’s,” Sarah says.

  Once we get there, Caren throws back the covers on the bed and guides him so that he’ll sit down. When she reaches to take off his shoes, he holds out his arm. “I can do it,” he says. Even though his teeth are chattering, I take it as a good sign that he’s slightly less remote.

  I nod for the others to leave. Keller and Egan linger at the door. “It’s okay,” I say. “You can wait outside.” When they step out and close the door, I crouch next to Sean. “You need to take off your coat and shoes and get into the bed. You’re close to hypothermic.”

  With slow movements, he removes the coat and shoes. When he slides under the covers, he stares at the ceiling. “Why are you helping me?”

  “Because I want to. There’s been too much hate and revenge. It’s time for the opposite.”

  He falls quiet, and I let him. I simply sit next to him as his shivering slowly fades. I sense Keller and Egan tensed outside the door.

  “What did you do to me?” Sean asks.

  “I drained your dark magic.”

  “Will it come back?” The fear in his voice is so at odds with how I’ve always viewed my cousin that it’s heartbreaking. He’s only three years older than me, but it seems like he’s been an adult a long time, expected to take on the enforcer role the moment he turned seventeen.

  “No, it’s gone forever.”

  He turns his head on the pillow and looks at me. “How?”

  “There’s a lot to tell you, but right now you need to rest. Honestly, so do I.”

  “Can you do that to any witch?”

  I nod.

  “How many?”

  Something about his question sounds an alarm in me. “I’m not sure, but only one at a time. Why?”

  “Because the covens have called a Conclave. They know you’re in Salem, and it’s all my fault.”

  “When is the Conclave supposed to happen?” Sarah asks when I share Sean’s news with everyone several minutes later.

  “In two days,” I say.

  Rule leans against the bookshelf in the study. “Not exactly a lot of time to prepare.”

  “How can you possibly prepare?” Adam asks from his spot in one of the high-backed chairs. “There will be hundreds of witches here. Not just the coven leaders, but their entourages, their protectors and scouts.”

  “We’ll have to try to pick them off a few a
t a time as they arrive,” Keller says.

  “Even for Jax, it’s too many,” Egan says.

  “We’ll manage,” I say, thinking about how I might have to pull extra power from the fissure despite my determination not to. “I will fight when I can, but when I’m draining witches I can’t do anything else.”

  “We’ll have to form a protective circle around you,” Hope says.

  “And every person without magic needs to be paired up with someone who has it,” Sarah says. “Our numbers will slowly grow as Jax finishes conversions.”

  “You’re sending the non-witches out into the middle of that?” Adam asks.

  “They’re battle tested,” I say. There’s the part of me that is terrified of Keller and Toni going to full-on battle with us, even Rule and Adele with their very limited powers. But the truth is we need all the help we can get, and not even my powers will keep them away from this. They’ve come this far with us, and they deserve to finish by our sides.

  “Won’t we all collapse like Sean after Jax does her spooky mojo on us?” Rinna asks.

  “It affects every witch differently,” I say. “Sean’s was an extreme case because of the enormity of what he’d done with his dark magic.”

  “You mean killed a bunch of people,” Caleb says.

  “Yes. Even if you don’t realize it while under the yoke of dark magic, each kill takes a bit of your soul.”

  “Did he say that?” Adam asks.

  “No, I know from personal experience.” Before the questions can start, I share the story of my struggle with the dark magic within me, how I killed Amos Barrow, and the path to learning I am this generation’s white witch.

  “I think I just fell down the rabbit hole,” Adam says as he leans forward and drops his head against his palms.

  “So we’ll be what when you drain us?” Rinna asks as she nervously picks at her fingernails. She glances at Egan, the only person in this room she really knows.

  “Pale witches,” he says. “You’ll still have your abilities, but no dark magic.”

  Adam pulls himself to his feet. “If we need to be at full strength, then we better get this done.” He crosses the room to where I’m standing next to the wall opposite the door. “What do I do?”

  Whoever claimed Adam was a coward is dead wrong. “Give me your hands.”

  “Your girl sure does hold hands with a lot of other guys,” Egan says to Keller.

  Keller gives him a punch in the shoulder. The teasing cuts the tension in the room, which is Egan’s intent.

  Adam’s conversion is much easier than Sean’s. When it’s finished, he plunks himself down in the chair beside me.

  “What’s it like?” Rinna asks him.

  He looks stunned for a few moments then a smile stretches his lips. “Amazing. It’s like I can breathe for the first time.”

  By the time I finish all three conversions, I’m surprised by how okay I feel. Maybe I’m building up a tolerance, strengthening my white witch muscles so to speak.

  We all settle into a circle on the couches and chairs and start mapping out how to handle different scenarios, different numbers of attacking witches.

  “It’d be helpful if we knew where this was going to take place so we can scope it out,” Egan says.

  “I can help with that.” We all look toward the doorway. Sean stands there bracing himself against the doorframe. He still looks pale and weak, but at least he isn’t shivering anymore. He meets my eyes. “They’re meeting at your ancestors’ property.”

  “The Pherson land?”

  “Yes.”

  I glance at Keller, and I see the same realization in his eyes. The covens are coming back to their birthplace. I shift my gaze to Sarah, asking her without words if all these witches can draw from the same fissure to increase their already incredible strength. Her expression doesn’t give me any comfort.

  “There’s a reason they’re meeting there,” I say. “It’s where the first covens pulled their magic from the earth.”

  Everyone stares at me, stunned.

  “The actual spot?” Egan asks.

  “Yeah, there’s a fissure on the property line between the original Pherson land and that of the Davenports.”

  Egan curses, and I see a lot of sudden anxiety on the faces of everyone else in the room.

  “One other thing. I may have to pull from the fissure to have enough power to take on a lot of witches at once.” I detect the coming questions and head them off. “Sarah says that the dark magic won’t affect me in a negative way.”

  “How do we know that?” Rinna asks.

  “From everything we know about white witches, once their power is fully realized there’s no going back,” Sarah says. “She may have no choice but to use that extra power because the coven witches will surely try to do the same. And considering how they already upset the balance of nature, if they pull more dark magic it could prove cataclysmic.”

  That sobering thought brings a hush to the room.

  I know what will have to be done. “When the battle is over, I’ll destroy the fissure so it can never be used again.”

  “Going to be a cold meeting,” Rule says. “There’s no house on that property, no barn, nothing.”

  Sean slips his hands into his jean pockets. “They don’t anticipate being there long.”

  The significance of his words hits me. “Only long enough to siphon Egan and me.” Cold dread shoots through me at the memory of my mother’s agony in the middle of another Siphoning Circle.

  Sean nods. “Tell me what you need me to do. They don’t know I’m not on their side anymore.”

  We make plans late into the night until we all start getting droopy-eyed. Toni looks at the clock. “Hey, it’s Christmas.”

  It couldn’t feel less like a holiday.

  The next morning we all wake up early despite our late night. I suspect everyone else is as filled with anxiety and the need to just get this all over with as I am. So I’m surprised when I wander into the dining room to find a huge breakfast spread out on the table, a decorated Christmas tree in the corner and carols playing.

  “I’m still asleep, aren’t I?” I say.

  “Um, didn’t expect this,” Toni says beside me.

  The others filter into the room behind us.

  Sarah props her hands on the back of her chair at the head of the table. “We don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and there’s nothing we can do today but wait. So I see no reason why we can’t do something enjoyable.”

  “Maybe next year we can do the whole traditional Christmas thing with presents,” Toni says. “With our families.”

  I hear the sadness in her voice. Determination floods me to get everyone in this room safely through the next day and whatever follows, to get Toni and Keller back to their families, to make it a safe world for the rest of them to follow whatever dreams they have.

  “We’ve already received the best Christmas present we could ever hope for,” Rinna says. I catch her gaze. “Freedom.”

  I choke up at her words, and Keller takes my hand.

  As a feast of food is passed around the table, I notice Sean hasn’t joined us. I lean closer to Keller. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “You want me to go with you?”

  “No. You stay.”

  He squeezes my hand. “You’re a good person.”

  “I know what he’s going through, at least a little.”

  When I knock on Sean’s door, he doesn’t respond at first, and I wonder if he’s asleep. But then I hear movement inside.

  “Come in,” he says.

  When I open the door, he’s sitting on the side of his bed. It’s odd to think of a guy as tall, as wide and as powerful as Sean looking lonely, but that’s the impression I get. I sit on the empty bed opposite his. “We’re having a Christmas breakfast. You must be hungry.”

  “I’m okay.”

  He looks about as far from okay as a guy can get. I notice the notebook on the bed
next to him.

  “What were you doing?”

  He hesitates a moment then picks up the notebook and opens it to the first page. I see he’s written something on every line. “Listing the names of the people I’ve killed at the coven’s command.” His hand grips the notebook hard. “I can’t remember them all.” He looks up at me, tortured. “How can someone kill so many people that he can’t even remember them all?”

  “I know this is hard, but you have to realize that the person who killed those people wasn’t you.”

  “It was. I can still hear their pleas, see the light go out of their eyes, remember that it gave me pleasure. Pleasure, Jax!”

  I grab his hands and hold on tight when he tries to pull away. “I understand. I killed someone, a hunter. And I relished every minute of it. If I could have killed him all over, I would have. I burned him beyond recognition. But that was the dark magic taking me over, suppressing who I really am.”

  “At least you had the strength to walk away from the coven. Egan, too. Those others. I just blindly obeyed them.”

  “And you were trained, indoctrinated to do exactly that from the moment you were born.”

  He tightens his grip on my hands, hanging on for dear life. “I have to pay for what I did, turn myself in.”

  “It’s not that simple. We’re still witches, Sean. And even if I manage to convert every witch in the world, we’re still supernatural and normal humans cannot know about us. They don’t do different well, even among themselves. It would just lead to more witch hunts, and it wouldn’t end well. I don’t want to tempt having this cycle of retribution start all over.”

  “But all those people’s families . . . how do I live with this guilt?”

  “You atone. For the rest of your life, you help people. You save them, more lives than you ever took.”

  “It feels like nothing will ever be enough.” When he looks at me, there are tears in his eyes.

  “All you can do is take it one step at a time. That’s all any of us can do. And you start by helping us tomorrow. Even with my power, we’ll be horribly outnumbered. But you have to make me a promise.”