Page 18 of Our Covenant

Coming to the gym tonight? I could use a spotter.

Another text goes unanswered. They likely want to nail down my location and confront me, proving they have become too comfortable at the top of their perceived food chain.

I drop my bag on the counter and lift the lid of the pot my roommate has on the stove. It would typically be my turn to cook, but tonight is special. I take another deep whiff, relishing the smell of what I’m sure is directly from heaven. Who knew that a biological engineer major would be such a phenomenal chef?

The luscious stew bubbles away, wafting the essence of garlic, thyme, chilis, and melt-in-your-mouth beef. I would marry her if she wasn’t already engaged. I grab a spoon from the drawer and dip it into the thick gravy, but before I can bring the piping hot liquid to my lips, I hear: “Don’t you dare!”

Anissa steps out of her bedroom in a fluffy robe. “Eileen is on her way over and expects us both to be hungry for dinner. She’s bringing cake and ice cream.”

“I won’t fill up from one taste,” I whine, inching the spoon closer to my watering mouth.

She eyes me, her brow lifting in a scolding scowl that not even my mother could have pulled off better. “One taste . . . for salt. Then you have to wait.”

“You’re being awfully bossy on my birthday. Shouldn’t I get to do whatever I want?”

Her eyes roll, and I slurp at the rim of my spoon.

“You’re spoiled and you know it.”

“Thanks to you and my other-other mother.” I give her a wink and put the lid back on the pot. “It’s perfect.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go out after dinner? We could go see a movie. Or there’s supposed to be a really terrible improv show on campus tonight.” She meets me in the middle of the living room and holds out a hand for me to take. “It seems wrong to celebrate just the three of us. I’m already packed and don’t leave until tomorrow afternoon.”

Anissa and Eileen got together years before I met them. But no matter what the bigots say about homosexuality, Eileen was raised Catholic and refuses to live in sin until after their big gay wedding in June. Anissa, on the other hand, works for a local lab as a night-shift tech as well as taking on a full class load and sees no reason to impose that lifestyle on her fiancée before she has to.

“I’m sure. I just want a quiet night at home so we can binge watch a terrible show that should have gotten the second-season chop.” I squeeze her hand, and she turns back around to her room.

“That sounds perfectly elderly. I’m here for it,” she says over her shoulder.

We might be staying in, but knowing my roommate, she’ll still get all dolled up for the fun of it. When I transferred in at the start of last year, I answered a roommate request on the student forum. I’ve never felt so at home as the moment I met Anissa. She’s smart—of course—but also witty, charitable, beautiful, and everything I wish I could be if it weren’t for the damning prophecy lingering over my head.

Then I met Eileen, who’s on the school’s basketball team, president of the international women’s debate team, and on track to be at the top of her class at Harvard Medical School. I’d marry her, too, if she weren’t so perfect for Anissa. Both of them have showed me that female friendships are the most important ones we can have. Which is the only reason I’m willing to participate in any birthday shenanigans.

It’s a reminder that I am one year closer to being the downfall of one of the oldest covens in the country. I wish I could say that I don’t believe any of it, that it’s all a lie made up by Alric to weaponize me and my mother’s thirst for prolific drama. But my long departed ancestor, Sarah Noyce-Hale, wrote of our reemergence in one of her last entries in the Hale grimoire. Our line will not only merge the most powerful bloodlines, but I will become the reigning legacy. She was a powerful seer, so who am I to deny her prophetic vision?

I have no intention of merging the bloodlines, though. My body carrying any of their spawn sounds like a fate worse than the impending death hanging over my head each year. There’s no reason to continue their lines in my eyes. Seducing them into a power transfer, then killing them painfully slowly sounds more like my style of revenge.

I could send Thorne a scandalous picture. Or answer Maddox with a flirty text. But instead I finish showering, wrap myself in a towel, and head to my room to dress.

When I reach for my doorknob, it heats at my touch then becomes so cold it sends a shock of ice down my spine. An unwanted guest is lying in wait on the other side. Swinging the door open, I flick on the light and find Alric leaning against the far wall near my window.

The corner of his crooked smile pulls into his cheek, bringing out boyish dimples that have never aged in the time that I’ve known him. Standing among my books and belongings, he almost fits in. While some women my age whisper about the young professor that distracts them during his lectures, all I can see are his unwavering features that I’ve known for twenty years.

My mother isn’t here to add to her collection of pictures she’s taken of the two of us through the years. To her, they are proof that I am, indeed, his dearest asset. But to me, they’re a testament to his vile, unnatural existence. In them, I get progressively taller, my cheeks thinner, and my breasts grow little by little until we could be mistaken for classmates or worse . . . friends.

Anissa wouldn’t have let him in. Her door is still shut and the living room is quiet.

I step inside and wait for the click of the latch before addressing the serpent in my den. “What do you want?”

He chuckles, the lazy sound making my skin crawl. “Can’t I wish you a happy birthday?”

I should know better than to think that he’d miss his chance to ruin the one day that belongs to me. But Alric’s views on birthdays are just as twisted and fucked up as he is. Why would he miss such a special occasion when I will have so few of them?

I’ve wasted too many birthday candles wishing that I’d never have to see him again, and this year will be no different.

“Thanks. Now, get out before you’re seen. A faculty member breaking and entering into a student’s home will be hard for the coven to cover up.”

Dropping my gaze, I rummage through my drawers for a clean set of comfortable pajamas. Alric showing up unannounced, likely to drill me about why I haven’t done what he’s set me out to do, isn’t how I want to spend this evening.