Page 179 of Bedeviled

Several coven sisters carry out the stacked chairs lining the walls, while a few others lug in pack after pack of mini bottled waters, which they set in the middle of the room like kindling for a pyre.

While Nero lounges in a corner, I help pull out candelabra from a supply closet and fit the tapered candles into them. All around me, my sisters cackle and chat. It’s lovely and familiar, and I can almost forget that nearly everything else in my world is wrong at the moment.

Olga brings in an ancient grimoire from the house’s library. Supposedly it was the first official spellbook used on Henbane campus. Magic wafts off it, and slowly the conversations die away.

“Sisters, gather around,” Cordelia calls. “It’s time.”

The group of us form a loose circle.

Someone flips the lights off, throwing the room into darkness.

For a moment, my pulse spikes. I can make out the stack of water bottles in the center of the circle as well as the shadowy forms of my coven sisters, but nothing else.

My misgivings, ones born from the first doomed spell circle I participated in, rise up. But tonight, there are no robes. No masks. Just witches who’ve come together to protect one of their own. To protect me.

I’m going to have to trust my sisters over my fears.

“This is a leaderless circle,” Cordelia announces to the room. “There is no high priestess, just a group of witches who stand before one another as equals.”

Her voice grows somber. “Several of us have been through horrifying, inhumane ordeals. And we have done awful things to each other—most of them without our own permission, but we have done them all the same,” she says. “That ends here, tonight. Do we all agree?”

It’s quiet for a moment, the weight of her words settling on us.

“Yes, sister!” Sybil finally says, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” Olga says, then Mai.

“Yes,” I breathe. My chest is still leaden with pain that might be mine or it might be Memnon’s, but there is another part of me, the part that is present right here, right now, that is rising—rising in this moment.

“Alright,” Cordelia says as the last of the agreements trickle in. “Good. One of our sisters needs our power and our blessing tonight.” Her eyes touch on mine for a moment. “And we have all gathered here to give that to her.”

Several shouts of agreement ring out, and my heart clenches at the sentiment.

“With that, let’s begin.”

There is hardly any light to see by, but I just manage to make out Olga’s form as she lays the house’s grimoire open on the floor before returning to her spot in the circle. I don’t have time to wonder about what spell it’s open to before Cordelia says, “Now, sisters, please clasp hands.”

All around the room, we do so. The moment the circle is complete, power starts to trickle from one palm to another.

Sybil is the one who begins to speak. “Though many we are in number, in magic we are one. Through power we share our blessings, our highest good be done.”

We repeat the incantation. If before power dripped from one hand into the next, now it readily flows, moving into my palm, through my limbs, and exiting my other palm, the magic passing clockwise around the circle. Faster and faster it flows, growing with every circuit around the ring of witches.

It fills my veins with a bubbly, effervescent feeling. Had I been worried before? I cannot fathom that fear when I have so much power moving through me.

With a whoosh, the dozens of candles around us alight, throwing the darkened room into light.

Someone cackles. Then another witch joins in. I’m quickly getting drunk on the sound and the power coursing through me. I tilt my head back and laugh.

From the laughter, a voice speaks out: “Maiden, Mother, Crone, Goddess who art holy, bless this water and will it to protect me.”

Magic is now flooding my system, roaring, raging, faster and faster, up one limb, down another, filling me, filling me. All of me. I have many legs, many arms and eyes. Many hearts that beat as one. Many minds that think as one. As one.

The room seems to crackle with energy, and the air above us shimmers—now filled with color, now soft glowing light. It floats down, then settles onto the bottles of water.

And still the power races through us, so fast that I cannot tell where one of us ends and another begins. We are one.

Another cackle, then someone breaks away from the circle. The magic feels like it’s still flowing round and round inside me, light yet potent.