But then she crossed her arms and inspected her fingernails, settling into the Priscilla I knew. It was almost impossible to reconcile that image with anything other than the bully I’d despised for most of my life. And I couldn’t help wondering again how she’d managed to convince Creep, Jake, the head of the coven, and possibly even Ambrose if my suspicions were right, that she had some other redeemable side.
Unlike Priscilla, her mother looked confused, lips pulled thin and eyes narrowed as she stared beyond my shoulder.
Her voice was nothing like the lullaby-soft song she’d used to lure me outside when she said, “You’re supposed to be dead.”
Ice flooded my veins as I realized she was talking to Ambrose.
Was that how he’d escaped? Had he faked his own death? He hadn’t wanted to talk about it last night, and now I wished I’d begged him to tell us everything.
Isadora turned to Priscilla, confusion warping her features. “You told me he’d died. Just... faded into the shadows.” Her brows drew tight, as if she knew what she was saying wasn’t quite right, but couldn’t understand why.
But Isadorahadto know better. Incubus demons didn’t simply fade into shadows when they died. She’d lived in the coven for eighteen years. Maybe she hadn’t been invited to any funerals, but she had to know they left real bodies behind when it was their time.
And then two truths hit me at once.
Priscilla had compelled her mother to believe that lie.
And she’d done it so my mate could escape.
Ugh. I couldn’t believe I was starting to entertain the possibility that Priscilla-fucking-Raisin might actually be a not-bad person.
Priscilla, still not bothering to look up from her nails, merely shrugged. “I presumed that when you hadn’t fed him, he’d starved to death. But if he simply escaped into the night...” Sheflicked an imaginary speck of dust from her fingertip. “Well, I guess you should’ve kept a tighter leash on him.”
The slap cracked through the open field like a gunshot.
It took me a second to connect Priscilla crumpled on the ground and Isadora’s raised hand to the sound of a mother striking her daughter hard enough to knock her off her feet.
Static sparked from my palm and raced up my arms as I gathered every scrap of magic I had. It was the first time I’d ever felt anxious about being born an alchemist witch, because I knew I probably only had one, maybe two decent hexes in me before I’d be reduced to hurling my cauldrons like blunt weapons.
And the fact that I was about to spend all of it defending Priscilla of all people nearly made a hysterical laugh bubble up my throat.
My mates’ shadows swirled around me, clinging to my feet and sliding up the backs of my legs as if they were barely holding themselves back from spearing them straight through Isadora’s chest.
Which would be aterribleidea right now, to kill her without definitive proof that we were acting in self-defense.
Sure, she deserved it. And if we’d been back at my coven, this would’ve been simple: a trial, the head of the coven weighing the evidence, judging our actions with full knowledge of exactly what kind of evil creature Isadora Raisin was.
But we weren’t back at the coven.
Ifell under my head of coven’s jurisdiction. But I wasn’t sure if my mates did yet, having never even set foot there. And since they’d mostly broken from their clan to live in the mortal realm—and now couldn’t return because of the mating bond with an earthbound supernatural anyway—they were stuck in a legal no-man’s-land.
In the worst-case scenario, they’d be hauled before the Council. And the Council was notoriously unforgiving when they were forced to convene a trial.
All the defense would need was a halfway decent lawyer to argue that it was Isadora’snatureto sing, and that killing her for doing what sirens did was disproportionate.
And just like that, the trial would swing against them.
Short of Isadora making the first move, my mates had to rein in their murderous urges. I pushed that thought down our bond as hard as I could, hoping their sensitivity to emotion would compensate for the lack of a verbal warning.
I felt them shift slightly behind me and prayed to every God and Goddess I knew that they understood.
Priscilla rose gracefully from the ground, as if she’d been knocked down on purpose, and resumed her bored inspection of her fingernails. The only sign she’d been struck at all was the swollen, angry red handprint blooming on her cheek.
Isadora had already lost interest in her daughter. Her gaze slid to me instead.
“Foolish little witch,” she sneered, her voice as sharp as splintered ice. “I remember this house from the coven. That run-down shack isn’t the one I would’ve chosen for myself,” she added, lips curling as the house groaned in anger, “but I suppose it will do... for now.”
My mind whirred, scrambling for a plan. Priscilla—if she really was on our side, which, given how her mother had just treated her, I was starting to believe—needed to be far enough away from Isadora that she wouldn’t be caught in the crosshairs of my hex.
