“Probation?” Violetta repeated. Clearly, she hadn’t heard of witches being put on probation before. And as far as I knew, most weren’t. It was more that if you were a witch living in a city, you were part of that city’s coven. Or you were trying to start a coven yourself.
“Right,” I continued, casting around for the right words to explain this bizarre situation.
Indigo saved me the trouble. “I used to run with a bad crowd. They were terrorists,” she said flatly. “They called themselves the ‘Masked Lords’.”
“Never heard of them,” Violetta said but she crossed her arms against her chest and regarded Indigo the same way everyone else did—with suspicion.
“They were evil men of one flavor or another, banding together against humanity and integration,” Indigo continued, as if figuring this story was bound to come out sooner than later so she might as well get on with it. “Anyway, I’d lost most of my family to the last Blood Skirmish, and I wanted revenge. Working for the Masked Lords was the cost of the power I needed to get that revenge.”
Violetta took an unthinking step back. Indigo caught the motion and smiled thinly as if she enjoyed making the other witch uncomfortable, which Violetta clearly was. “I was mostly a spotter,” Indigo continued. “I identified targets and reportedtheir movements to the others. But then those in control started crossbreeding magic.”
“What does that mean?” Violetta asked.
Indigo shrugged. “Exactly what you would think it means. The lot of them thought they could make themselves stronger by… well, by stealing the abilities from other creatures.”
“What sorts of other creatures?”
“Vampires, fae, demons—the list goes on. If something bled power, they found a way to bottle it. They call it ‘rendering’. Like fat, except they were using magic.”
Violetta grimaced. “That’s not witchcraft. That’s butchery.”
“Exactly,” Wanda said. “And Indigo let them do it to her.”
Violetta looked at Indigo then with a new sense of dawning horror. Indigo just nodded.
“They took the essence of other monsters and fused it with my own magic,” she explained. “It destabilized my soul.” There was a note of bitterness in her voice now. “That’s how I ended up here.” She glanced down at herself as if to say she meant that’s how she’d ended up in Lydia’s body. “A spell meant to kill me failed, but it did scatter my essence. I ended up bound to Poppy’s cousin for close to a year before she acquired a new body she could inhabit alone.”
“So you did turn on them in the end?” Violetta asked, voice quiet and almost… awed. Well, shocked and disgusted as much as awed.
“She did,” I said quietly. “It was really dangerous but she did it, and we’re proud of her.”
“But not proud enough to lift the probation,” Wanda said warningly as she faced Indigo once more. “Three favors you owe me, at least.”
“Three,” Indigo said with a nod. “Got it.” Then she stood up. “May I go now?”
All the while, Smith just stood there, keeping his nose out of witch business. And that was a wise decision.
Wanda waved Indigo away with an airy hand. Indigo gave us all a suspicious look before ducking back out the way she’d come. There was silence for a minute before either newcomer dared to speak.
“So she reallypossessedyour cousin?” Violetta asked me.
I laughed and rubbed my temples. “Oh, believe me, I’m still trying to digest the ins and outs of what happened. As I understand it, Indigo wasn’t exactly planning on possessing Lydia. One of the Masked Lords threw a curse at Indigo during a fight. It was meant to tear her spirit apart, but instead it just… yanked her clean out of her body and I guess she somehow just ended up grafted onto Lydia.”
Wanda nodded grimly. “It was a nasty hex. One that tears you apart slowly, one mote of magic at a time. It had to have been torture.”
“But she just… took Lydia’s body?” Violetta asked, clearly not past that particular point.
“Well, Indigo wasn’t conscious of what she was doing,” Wanda explained. “At that point, I believe her spirit just grafted itself to the closest warm body, without weighing consequences, morals, or anything else.”
“For months, we couldn’t tell where Lydia ended and Indigo began,” I added.
Violetta blinked. “So you’re telling me—”
“—they shared a body,” Wanda said. “Two souls, one lease. And when we finally got them separated…” She gestured vaguely, hands fluttering in the air. “Now they look like twins. Albeit, Lydia’s now hotter due to some demon shenanigans of her own. Things got trulystrangethere for a while.”
Violetta gave a low whistle. “That’s… horrifying.”
“And confusing,” I said. Violetta gave me a questioning look. I shrugged. “You try running into your cousin and her accidental ex-possessor at the same family gathering. You don’t know whether to offer one of them tea or holy water.”
