Page 55 of An Oath at Midnight

I dropped my shirt. “At least that’s something.”

Bram sat and quietly sipped his drink while I got back to flipping through the yearbook. The same people had been on the prom committee for two years in a row, going by the pictures in both books, and there were other pictures of them together as well. “They were friends outside the committee,” I said and flipped the page. There were pictures from the prom itself, and several members of the group were together, laughing, dancing, and a few other candid pics around the school as well.

I sat forward. “Check this out.” Isaac and Maria Watson had gone to prom at Roxburgh High. Isaac was beside Clara, and Maria had her head on Chase’s shoulder. I studied their faces. “They’ve all been friends since they were teenagers.”

Bram slid his arm along the back of the couch behind me and took a look. “And somewhere along the line they pissed off the wrong person?”

“Yeah, or they already had a complete psycho in their midst.” I studied their faces. They looked close, really close. Isaac was a prick, but would he murder people who were so obviously his good friends to get back at my sister? I wasn’t so sure—but then people were capable of a lot of horrible things with the right motivation.

Willow defeating his brother, Elmer, and causing their coven to lose the mothers gifts was enough to send someone like Isaac over the edge, but then Warrick killing Elmer defending Willow—that was some seriously strong motivation right there.

Bram studied the prom pictures. “You sure you weren’t disappointed you didn’t go?” he asked, surprising me. I’d asked Bram if he’d go with me my last year of school, and the look on his face had been answer enough.

“I honestly don’t think about it, like at all.” We hadn’t talked like this for so long, and these last couple of days, having him here, had been awesome, but different—definitely not how things had been before. It was like we were trying to establish our new normal, because there was no going back to the way we used to be. We’d both been through some things, had been forced to grow up a lot, and had too many secrets.

“I should have taken you,” he said, glancing over at me.

“Neither of us like people. We would’ve hated it.” I took his hand, linking our fingers. “I don’t feel like I missed out. If I remember correctly, we had our own prom. We hung out up here, eating pizza and listening to music.”

The song changed, and he stood suddenly, tugging me to my feet.

“What are you doing?” I said, laughing as he pulled me into his arms.

“What I should’ve done that night. If we were having our own prom, we should’ve danced,” he said, holding me close.

I chuckled and wrapped my arms around him as well, resting my head against his chest. “I much prefer this prom.”

“Me too,” he said low, his voice rumbling through his chest.

Suddenly I became highly aware of the way he felt pressed up against me. We stood close, slept close, but we’d never done this. “Have you ever danced like this before?” Today was the day I asked all the questions apparently. He said he hadn’t dated, but it didn’t mean he’d never danced with anyone. He went to The Bank…and The Vault, it was highly probable he had.

“No,” he said.

I lifted my head, looking up at him, and grinned. “Is it everything you hoped it would be?”

His lips curled up. “And so much more.”

We were just being Bram and Mags, but there was something else between us, something new—that tension was back. I forced myself to ignore it and hung on tight.

Goddess, he was everything to me. Everything. What would I ever do without him? “What happens when you meet someone?” I said, the words, Payne’s words, yanked from me by an invisible force. They were pulled from a place of fear, so much fear that one day I would eventually lose him, that what we had couldn’t last forever. Over time things changed for everyone, and that included the relationship between a witch and their familiar. We were proof of that.

His expression was utterly unreadable. “Meet someone?”

“Your mate,” I choked out, each word a spike in my throat.

Something that looked a lot like pain filled his eyes. “I’m not leaving you, Mags. Not ever.”

“You deserve to be happy.” My throat grew tight. “When I went to Clayton…when I fucked everything up…I didn’t just hurt my family, I hurt you. I kept what I was doing a secret, and when you found out, you stuck by me, you never tried to make me feel shame or guilt, you were there, like you always have been.”

“You did nothing to be ashamed of. Fuck, Mags, you were trying to help your sister. We all fuck up. We all make mistakes.” His expression hardened. “You’ve more than paid the price for it.”

“I just… I want you to know when I was with him…” Bile churned in my gut, and my forearm burned, the phantom ache there flaring up. “While I was being held by him—”

“You don’t need to talk about it,” he said, his eyes dancing with undiluted fury.

If Warrick hadn’t killed Clayton that day at the cemetery, Bram would have hunted him down and torn him to pieces. I knew that with complete certainty.

I’d tried to talk to him about it several times, what happened while I was with that monster, but it’d always been too hard, the memories too painful. He knew about the emotional torture, the images Clayton had projected into my mind that had almost driven me insane, but not the rest. My sisters did, I’d recently shared it with them one night when we were all together, but talking to Bram about this stuff had been way too hard.