Page 11 of An Oath at Midnight

He was dead, but when Bram was gone, my fucked-up mind brought him back to life. The darkness let him creep back in, reminding me of how stupid I’d been, how naive, how I’d let him use me to get to the people I loved most in this world, and no matter how hard I tried to force him back out, I failed every damn time.

Voices traveled in from the hall. Else and Connor, and there was no missing the alarm in their voices. I strode out, and as soon as I spotted Else, I knew something was wrong.

“What’s going on?”

She turned to me and all color had drained from her face. “There’s been another one,” she whispered, her hands shaking. “I knew there would be, I goddamn knew the council was trying to downplay it. Idiots.”

“Another murder?” A rock settled in the pit of my stomach.

“Another execution.” Else sat heavily in the seat behind her, a look on her face I’d never seen before.

I gripped the doorframe. “Who?”

Pain filled her eyes. “Margot Huxley.”

Margot was my age. We’d gone to school together. She and I and another guy named Jamie had been kind of friends. We’d all been loners, preferring our own company, but we’d hung out sometimes, occasionally ate lunch together if we were in the cafeteria at the same time. If we were forced to do an assignment with someone else, or some other group activity, they were my first choice and I was theirs. I hadn’t seen her in a while, but whenever we ran across each other, we made time to catch up. “Is there a chance it could be unrelated?” I asked, my heart a lump in my chest.

She shook her head. “They carved judgment into her skin, Mags…” Her shrewd brown eyes locked on mine. “You need to be careful. Don’t go anywhere on your own, not until this animal is found. Promise me.”

I nodded and walked woodenly back into the workroom, still in shock. The first victim, Clara Hope, had been older than Margot, and the same word had been carved into her when they found her. I hadn’t known Clara. She was Willow’s age, but their deaths had to be by the same psycho.

Roxburgh already had its fair share of monsters. We didn’t need another one.

Images flashed through my mind—of my own monster.

The way he’d touched me, making my skin crawl from the utter wrongness of it, of the images he’d projected into my mind. Images so horrific and real—

Gasping, I grabbed on to the edge of the counter as more of them filled my head, one after the other.

Blood, gore, flaying skin, dismembered limbs—the screams. Oh goddess, the screams of my family, of Bram.

I squeezed my eyes closed and tried to fight it.

For hours Clayton had filled my head with horror, until something had broken inside me, until I believed what I saw and heard. Until my screams were just as loud as the ones in my head.

And now I heard Margot as well—I heard her screams of terror and pain. As though the darkness in me was on the same frequency, broadcasting that horror right into my mind.

Opening the small box on my workbench, I slid the false bottom aside, took out the key, and rushed to the old dresser across the room. I quickly opened the heavy wooden doors and crouched, moving the stack of old recipe books out of the way. I’d found the key over a year ago and had no idea what it was for. Then several months ago, I’d discovered the drawer. I unlocked it now, taking out the small, black leather book I found there, and ran my hand over it. It had belonged to my grandmother and was half full of spells she’d created, spells I knew without doubt she’d kept hidden. Because Gran had been like me—more than I’d ever known.

A sense of calm washed over me immediately.

I’d put hours of work into the contents of this book. Hours alone in this workshop while Else was out and about, while Bram was gone, hours deep in my fear, in my rage, in my terror that history would one day repeat itself—of Clayton gripping my arm, pumping me full of dark magic while he whispered in my ear, reminding me of the horrors he’d made me see, of what could happen if I wasn’t vigilant, if I wasn’t strong enough—turning words into a twisted reality in my head.

This little book full of spells and recipes, of potions and elixirs, was my safety net. This was how I slept at night. When I channeled my anger into the spells I wrote in it, the same book Gran had used, it calmed me, it banked the inferno in my gut like nothing else could.

If anyone came for my family again, I could destroy them with what was written in this book, with my words, my magic.

Flipping to the back, I lifted out the small business cards there. One from Rose, the name of a counselor she wanted me to speak with. I don’t know why I’d kept it, probably because it’d seemed so important to her. The last thing I wanted was to dredge up my pain to a complete stranger.

I put it back and studied the second—Umbra Sanitarium. It was an institution, a place for witches who skimmed too close to the dark side, those who dabbled in dark magic and got burned or needed help back to the light.

It was touted as a place of healing. But Umbra was also a prison. We recently found out that was where Cora had been sent. The evil bitch was Else and Gran’s cousin. She was being held in a separate area, a place for those who couldn’t be saved, who didn’t want to be. I clenched my teeth. Two and a half years ago, Cora and her grandson Brody had plotted against our family, and with the help of Clayton Whitlock, they’d made their move. Cora had murdered the previous Keeper of our coven in the hopes the position would pass to her grandson, but instead of her branch of the family, it went to ours—and she’d almost succeeded in killing us all to get what she wanted.

Willow was Keeper of our coven now, but after she passed her tasks and trial, the mother had thrown us a curveball. Because the position of Keeper had moved to a new branch of the family, each of us—me, Rose, and Iris—had to pass a task and trial of our own to prove our line was worthy of keeping the magical gifts she’d bestowed on our coven over the centuries. To lose those gifts would be devastating. A coven that couldn’t hold on to its power became a target for those who could.

My sisters had all gone through their trials and passed. It was now down to me.

The ritual was nonnegotiable and included a demon-infested forest and some up-close-and-personal time with a giant serpent possessed by Mother Nature. I wasn’t looking forward to her inevitable bite, which would pump me full of her magical venom, leaving behind a permanent tattoo-like mark. The black tattoo would eventually become colorful, if I passed the ultimate task she gave me. But that wasn’t all. A magical combat trial was the final piece of her twisted puzzle. If I didn’t win that? Bye-bye magical gifts.