Jono shook his head and sat down on the couch, picking up his mug of tea from the coffee table. He gestured for Patrick to take a seat beside him. “You have a thing for misplaced guilt, don’t you? All of the bollocks that happened on summer solstice? It wasn’t your fault.”
Patrick sat down, mindful of his left leg. Even with a witch’s brew pushing his healing weeks into the future, his leg was still sore. “You don’t know that.”
“I know that you weren’t the one who hurt me.”
Patrick instinctively reached for him at that admission but froze when Jono flinched, spilling hot tea over the side of his mug. Jono grimaced and set it down on the coffee table, wiping his hands clean on his jeans. Patrick stared at him, stomach twisting.
“Oh,” he said woodenly, thinking back to the day he’d lost while past the veil. “What did Ethan do to you?”
Jono wouldn’t look at him. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Jono—”
“No, mate. That’s not on you.”
Patrick clenched his teeth, his chest tightening. “Except for how it is.”
More than anyone else in the world, Patrick owed Jono a truth he hadn’t given voice to since he was a child. Patrick scrubbed a hand over his face and slowly dropped his shields. Without them, Jono was a shining beacon beside him that Patrick would never be able to walk away from.
“I’m not very good at talking about my problems. Even my therapist doesn’t know what I’m going to tell you. It’d probably help with my therapy if Icouldtell him, but he can’t know,” Patrick confessed.
Jono’s scrutiny was difficult for Patrick to face, so he didn’t. He looked at the wall, his hands, the floor—anywhere but at Jono. It made it easier to find the words, but they still hurt.
“I was born in Salem, Massachusetts,” Patrick said quietly. “My mom’s side of the family is originally from there. She was a witch, a healer, who belonged to the Salem Coven.”
The Salem Coven was the only group of witches who practiced in that city these days. Everyone in that coven were descendants of those who had survived the Salem Witch Trials. They were one of the oldest covens in the country and the most powerful, a tight-knit group of extended family.
Patrick hadn’t set foot in Salem in twenty-one years.
“My mother was Clara Patterson. She would’ve been the Salem Coven’s high priestess one day. If she had lived.” Patrick picked at a thread on his jeans, dredging up memories he’d buried long ago. “She married Ethan when she was eighteen. She gave birth to my twin sister, Hannah, and me when she was nineteen. Eight years later he murdered her in the basement of our home.”
Patrick swallowed thickly, but kept talking. “Ethan wasn’t around much. He spent most of his time at the SOA head offices in DC than in Salem, or in the field. I think his absence took a toll on my mom. I remember they fought a lot near the end, always over us. But it didn’t matter because my mom was always going to lose against the Dominion Sect.”
“Why?”
“Because Ethan’s family is one of the three that helped found the Dominion Sect. It’s why Ethan believes he deserves to be a god. It’s why he only ever saw his wife and kids as a means to an end.”
Patrick shook his head, trying to shake off the memory of that long-ago night when his world was destroyed. The past he came from was one he’d resigned himself to never fully outrunning.
“I saw your sister,” Jono said quietly. “She was there where they kept me before taking me to Central Park. She wasn’t…right.”
“She’s carried a stolen godhead in her soul for over two decades. There’s nothing left of my twin sister.” The words hurt, but they were true. Patrick scraped a hand through his hair, hunching his shoulders. “I was told when I was a teenager that the Dominion Sect had found Macaria at Harvard. They lured her to Salem for the Halloween festival. Ethan sacrificed us to the spell that was supposed to transfer Macaria’s godhead to him. I don’t know how Persephone found us, but she did. It was still too late to matter.”
“You’re alive.”
Patrick tilted his head back, staring at the ceiling as mirthless laughter escaped his mouth. “Yeah. I’m alive. No thanks to Persephone. She broke me free of the spell and brought me to the Underworld. She left Hannah behind.”
He pressed a hand to his scars, chest suddenly aching. The phantom pains made Patrick dig his fingers into the scar tissue he could feel beneath the T-shirt. He startled badly when Jono pulled his hand away, strong fingers looping around his wrist. Patrick looked at him, his breath coming quicker than was comfortable.
“You didn’t get those scars during your time in the Mage Corps, did you?” Jono asked.
Patrick slowly shook his head. “Ethan had soultakers helping with the spell. One of the demons kept trying to claw out my heart. Both our hearts. The last thing I remember is Hannah screaming for me to help her when Persephone arrived.”
“The immortal saved you.”
Patrick’s mouth twisted in a hateful smile. “She didn’t save me. She enslaved me. Persephone owns my soul debt.”
Jono blinked in surprise. “Oh.”
