Grant’s disbelief about Loki had faded some, but Patrick could still hear shades of it in his voice, as if his uncle didn’t think the gods his coven and others prayed to were actually real.
Patrick sighed. “Technically, that’s classified.”
“She’s ourmother, and we love her, but that’s not the only reason why we need her back,” Madelyn said.
“Maddie,” Grant warned.
She turned her head and gave him such a cold stare that he wilted beneath it. “I am head of this coven until our mother returns. I am well within my right to speak our secrets.”
Oh, Patrick did not like the sound of that.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked.
Madelyn sighed heavily. “If Ethan has your grandmother, then he has access to the nexus under Salem.”
Patrick stared at her. “Why would Ethan have access to a nexus just because he has Eloise?”
“The nexus under Salem is small. It’s an offshoot of the one beneath Boston. Our family has retained control of it since our ancestors arrived in this country.”
Which was a polite way of saying they’d stolen it from the indigenous people who’d lived in the area first, but Patrick let that thought slide away. Any nexus and the ley lines leading to them were always monitored for activity. Only mages could access those rivers and lakes of power, but governments were usually the ones to oversee their protection.
“Are you saying our family is the only one with the right to tap that nexus?” Patrick asked.
Grant shook his head. “No. We’ve always allowed other mages access to it. But our family, our coven, is responsible for the protective wards that contain it, not the government. That was agreed to during the Salem Witch Trials.”
“Who controls the anchor points of the protective wards?” Their silence was answer enough, and Patrick’s stomach twisted. “Fuck.”
“The SOA, and all the agencies that came before it, have been aware of our claim on the nexus for generations,” Finley said.
Patrick wondered if Priya even knew or if she was still so busy trying to get a handle on filling Setsuna’s spot that she hadn’t absorbed everything yet.
“Ididn’t know.”
“You aren’t in charge of a federal agency.”
“Setsuna was.”
Grant snorted derisively. “Forgive us if we still don’t view her in a positive light for her actions in keeping you from us.”
“Your mother was supposed to be the next high priestess of the Salem Coven. Clara would’ve excelled in that role. Ethan knew what she was going to have access to with that rank. I’ve always believed he loved power first and our sister second,” Madelyn said quietly.
Patrick squeezed his eyes shut for a few seconds before opening them again, trying not to think of a bloody basement. “You wouldn’t be wrong.”
He’d known Ethan had taken Hannah to keep Macaria’s godhead alive and always thought his father had used Hannah’s magic the same way a parasite drained energy from a host. It seemed Patrick hadn’t been far off the mark with that comparison, if what they were saying was true, if their family had the ability to tap the nexus beneath Salem with no one the wiser.
The Pattersons had generational claim to a nexus, one the government hadn’t been able to pry out of their hands. No wonder his grandmother was always listened to whenever she went to Capitol Hill to chastise Congress about the Dominion Sect.
No wonder Hannah had been able to support a godhead in her soul for as long as she had, if Ethan could draw from a nexus through her without anyone tracking his access, because blood would always let blood through. Patrick wondered how many times Ethan had taken Hannah back to Salem to support her soul until it no longer worked, until it took godly interference to keep her alive.
He wondered if the breaking point was when she became pregnant.
“This is information my superiors need to know. Most likely they’ll send mages out of the Boston field office to barricade the Salem and Boston nexuses like we did during the Thirty-Day War,” Patrick said.
Barricading the ley lines and nexuses in the Northeast would take a level of coordination and power the government could probably deploy in time, but there was no guarantee. Bureaucracy was the government’s lifeblood at all levels, and not even war could make that move quickly. He hoped General Reed would be able to make something happen though.
“Please find your grandmother. She never stopped looking for you and Hannah after we buried Clara,” Madelyn said in a quiet voice that broke a little on her sister’s name.
“You all thought we were dead for years.”
