“Cov…Silver Seas.”
“Coven of the Silver Seas. That’s where you’re from?”
The witch blinks her response. “Protect her…love her.” Her breath shudders, her eyes opening to gaze at her baby. “I…love…”
The witch fades away, and Mom slowly tucks the child in deeper. “Rest now, sister. Your daughter will be cared for. Go forth to Hecate and Blessed Be.”
The vision changes slightly as Mom walks away from the baby, who’s no longer crying and is wrapped in more blankets, resting between couch cushions that were dragged to the floor. She returns a bit later with the deceased witch and rests the woman on the ground beside her—besideme.
Carina, that witch said. “Carina…her name.”
Mother and daughter lay beside one another for the final time while the woman who I came to know as Mom whispers prayers to Hecate.
The vision transforms again, this time to a rainy afternoon with the coven all standing within the burial ground. “I”—seeing through Mom’s eyes—stare down at the fresh grave. Closest to my right is a young version of Harlow’s mother.
In her arms: a sleeping child with light brown hair.
“What are you going to do with her?” Emily asks, nodding to the bundled child.
“I’m going to keep her, exactly as she asked me to. I’m also going to figure out how she came to us.”
“Have you reached out to the Coven of the Silver Seas?”
“Yes. There wasn’t a response.”
Emily grimaces. “Why don’t John and I take a couple others and go to Vancouver to check things out?”
“That would be good, thank you. Carina has a family out there, and while her mother clearly was running from something, we need answers about what we’re up against.”
The vision changes, this time as Emily and John Sinclair cross our front yard.
The couple shares a look before John murmurs, “There’s no one there. Where the coven resides is empty; not even a trace of magick. It’s like they were never there to begin with.”
Covens can go years without communicating with one another, and it’s so rarely in person. We’re too spread through the world and generally prefer one another’s company to outsiders—even of the same species. Only in passing have I’d heard of the Coven of the Silver Seas. Nothing about them being missing, and only of their existence as one of the four original covens.
Mom lifts her head as the vision drops—right alongside everything else in my life that I’ve come to know and trust.
I’m not from here.
“Now do you get why you can’t go?”
Weakened by reality, I fall backwards and land on the couch. My gaze is lost in limbo, staring at the place where the vision last hung while replaying it in my head. Witnessing it felt like an outsider’s viewing; I was watching and taking it all in, but reliving it puts it into place—into perspective.
I was the baby held by a dying mother—my real mother, whom I never knew about. A baby with another family.
“It’s why you have water magick.”
I’m the only one in the coven that has it. Considering Highridge was created by the Sinclair family and soon joined by air witches, it’s where most of our power comes from. Over thecenturies more Earth element witches have joined, and fire has died out. But there’s never been a water witch—only me.
Being that children don’t always adopt their parents’ powers, though it’s more common they do, I never really thought twice about Mom having air magick while I don’t. But now, it makes sense.
Why she and I look so vastly different. She always claimed I took after my bio-father or suggested it was DNA skipping generations.
“I’m from another coven.”
Mom’s shoulders bow in and she nods. She’s nervous. Scared, even. She fears this will destroy our relationship—and the family she’s given me. Herself, Jasper, his parents, and once, the Sinclairs, when they were alive and considered honorary family.
But it won’t.
