He shrugged and looked away from her. "I feel a little invested now that I've kept you alive this long," he said, "and a little bad because Visha poisoned you. You know, I didn't really have much planned before you dragged me into this whole mess. I was about to leave the Jumpers and go nomad." He held his cell phone up. "I was gonna try to make things right with my siblings, the ones who came with me to Skadra in the first place, but they’re not even answering my calls. Right now, getting you cured is about the only good direction my life can go.”
Gentry nodded, seeing nothing for him to gain by revealing that sad truth. She didn’t have the energy to ask about Kit’s siblings and why they didn’t want to talk to him. By ‘siblings’, she assumed he meant other orphans raised by Sophia. It tracked that there was some drama. There’d been some tension between Kit and his foster mother.
“I didn’t know you had a family aside from your dad”—Kit changed the subject— “that complicates things. I was going to suggest we run off to the Wilds for a few months, let the heat die and then find a way to break your curse. That won’t work, huh?”
“No, it won’t,” she agreed, a little moved that he’d come up with a plan with her well-being in mind. "Besides, I don’t want to live with this”—she gestured to her arm—“for any longer than I have to. This ends in two weeks.”Whether it ends poorly for me, or not,she added in her head. No one else was dying for her cause.
Oh, is that right? You’llselflesslygive yourself up when it’s time? That sure sounds like you.Her inner self was vicious, and brimming with self-hatred.The panic closing her throat didn’t exactly give her confidence in herself, either. Death wasn’t her worst fear, but rather spending the rest of her days caged.
“Do you have a plan on where to go next?” Kit asked, blissfully unaware of her insanity.
“I’ll… need time for a plan,” Gentry admitted, flushing a bit. “Dad gave me the key to his apartment, so I thought we’d start there. But also, he said a few things I need to…” She trailed off and pointed at her keyboard.
Kit instantly understood. “I’ll get out of your hair then. We have to hightail it out of here soon. By the way, try not to worry your pretty little head if you don’t find anything. Sam mentioned a place we could try.”
He sauntered out of the kitchen and out of the house, the leaves of nearby plants caressing him on the way out. Gentrywatched, her mouth dry with both want and also jealousy. She remembered the vines at the bunker. This house reeked of Visha. Even when absent, the bitch was staking her claim on him.
And you want to claim him? There you go, Greenbriar, there’s your usual brand of ‘selflessness’, her inner self sniped.
God, but she needed to see a therapist after this.
Gentry focused on her computer, her brain working sluggishly through her bloodsoaked memories of her father dying. Each second replayed like a drum in her already pounding head. She opened a text document up and started typing, determined not to forget a single word of what he said. His love for Beckett and her mom. For her. But also the hints he’d given her.
The Cobalts, he sold me out to the Cobalts.
Meticulously, she started working through her usual forums and channels for mentions of the coven. At first, there were no hits. Absolutely none. But then she caught one user sharing an anecdote on a vamps-only site:
Heard about some bloke who Made his dead wife into a vampyre. The Weavers gave him the Cobalt treatment. Stupid bastard.
Extrapolating that, since the Cobalts had been punished and weren’t in recent sites, Gentry set her search date to ten years ago. Then twenty. Thirty. Bingo. The internet back then was far smaller, more niche. Witches had yet to make the switch over, but the Weavers had let the government-run newspapers in Skadra back then. Most likely so that everyone could hear about their atrocities.
She clicked on the first article.
VAST VAMPYRE RING TAKEN DOWN.
INFAMOUS COBALTS TO BE PUNISHED BY DARISIUS HIMSELF.
Gentry skimmed through the article and all the other connected ones. Thirty years ago, Skadra’s magic-less wererelentlessly preyed upon by a horde of vamps, all of whom were under the control of the Cobalt coven. The Weavers had issued an emergency curfew and corpse burn order to lessen deaths while they’d gone to war with the other coven, which had apparently rivaled the Weavers’ own power at the time. It’d been bloody, with multiple casualties on both sides.
For two years, the Cobalts and Weavers had fought until the former was placed under siege once their vampyre force was depleted. Within six months, the Weavers publicly executed all Cobalt members, including their leader, Freya.
Gentry stopped reading once she came across a grainy photograph of Freya’s corpse hanging in the town square. A giant vulture sat perched above it. She shuddered, but didn’t need to read any further.
The Cobalts as a coven ceased to exist the day Freya died. The Weavers had forbidden any future covens to take the name.
So why had her father said the Cobalts were responsible for her curse?
twenty-seven
Gentry
They left the Jumper camp only thirty minutes after Gentry had stopped her useless research. Kit’s friend Samar had said goodbye to them after providing a killer breakfast of eggs and bacon. He’d been a charming, nice witch, but Kit had been kind enough to test the food out first without Gentry asking. Thankfully, Samar had found the interaction delightful rather than disrespectful.
Kit’s kindness was beginning to look more like the rule rather than the exception. He’d bundled Gentry in several jackets (her fever had yet to break) before they took to the air, and he’d packed enough magic-less medicine to kill a small horse.
Unsure whether she should be touched or freaked out by the witch’s change of heart, Gentry focused on the broom ride instead. Air whipped around them and she tried not to be hyper-aware of his arms around her as she sat on his lap. This was only her third or fourth time up in the air, albeit she didn't know if she'd count the time when she was poisoned, as she'd been too cold and miserable to notice much. But it still felt as if it were the first time. He flew faster than her father ever had, and sheresisted the urge to grip at his arms around her stomach. What would she have done to be able to fly like this on her own?
Kit disrupted her wonder by saying in her ear, “Hold on tight. I’m going to touch down at the edge of town so we can walk.”
