Sylvia’s lips pursed. “How strange.”
“I know that you were there that night,” Silas said, keeping his face blank. “And I know why.”
At that, Sylvia’s body went rigid, her eyes narrowing to slits. The air heated with anger, and Silas instinctively started to reach for his caster. He made himself stop, putting his hands on the desk, showing Sylvia that he had no plans to hurt her.
“I’m not going to tell my parents about it,” he said. “I just need you to stop.”
Sylvia’s head cocked to the side, but her body didn’t relax.
“Selling altum is a serious offense, Sylvia. I can guess where it started. Running a coven is incredibly taxing on anyone’s magic, and for you to have been running a coven as large as Aestas for this long must have been difficult. Not to mention everything extra that you’re doing to help unsettled witches and how much power that must have taken. I know the high from the altum must have helped a lot with the exhaustion.”
She didn’t say anything, keeping her expression neutral as she listened to him.
“But selling it to other people is dangerous,” he continued. “You of all people should appreciate the havoc that altum can wreak if it gets in the hands of someone who unknowingly has unsettled magic in their blood. What happened on Halloween… that can’t happen again.”
Silas waited for Sylvia to respond, his gaze holding steady with hers. She stayed silent for a moment, and then her face just… crumpled.
She buried her head in her palms as she let out a small sob—an admission, he thought, that she had been at Hollywood and Highland selling drugs that night. That it was because of her that the altum had landed with whatever poor, ignorant soul had wrought that destruction.
“God, I didn’t mean for that to happen,” Sylvia said, lifting her gaze and shaking her head, dispelling the single tear in her eye before it fell.“Life just spirals out of your control sometimes. You get on a path and before you know it, you’re stuck and you don’t know how to get off.”
Silas blinked, unsure how Sylvia had managed to so succinctly sum up the problem that haunted him every day. He wanted to take a road different than the one that had been set out for him. Wanted it so badly it might tear him apart.
Maybe he could redirect them both.
“I know you didn’t. It was a mistake. An awful mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.”
Sylvia nodded. “I needed this. I needed someone to tell me to stop. Someone to snap me out of it, to make me get my priorities in order.”
Didn’t they all. His own priorities were fucked, his parents’ wants and needs coming before his own, day in and day out. Was that any way to live?
He wouldn’t delude himself into thinking he could find a permanent way off the relentless climb of Khatri upward mobility. But he could push the minor rebellion that had grown from a seed to a tree since his arrival in LA even further. Find a way to delay this for a year or two so he could go back to his students in New York. Revise the curriculum, do the research to make sure what they were learning was actually true, not the biased history he’d been fed.
He could steal just a little more time living the life he wanted to live. A few more months of happy memories that he could cling to as the weight of his responsibilities slowly crushed him to dust.
The thought of leaving LA twinged, a brief ping through his head about missing Katherine and her wry wit, but he pushed it aside. Katherine, he knew, would not miss him one bit. He should ensure that he felt the same.
“We both want the same thing here, Sylvia,” he said. “We want you to keep your job.”
“Yes.” She fixed her eye makeup with a manicured nail. “I want that very much. I promise I’ll stop.”
He wanted to believe her, but he also needed to be sure. Altum was an addictive high, and Sylvia’s problems with managing her power and keeping a hold on the coven would only get worse. He couldn’tbe called back here a week or a month from now because she had been caught. And he couldn’t handle the guilt of leaving the drugs on the street and then hearing that another disaster had happened.
“I need you to bring me your cauldron,” he said. “As proof that you’ll stop.”
Sylvia nodded. “Of course. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow.”
Silas breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Sylvia. Truly. I am so happy we’re able to work together to find a solution on this.”
“Me too.”
Silas gave her one last tentative smile, then left.
God, he was a dick.
Sylvia waited until her office door had swung shut behind Silas, then slammed her fists on the desk in frustration. Like just about everything she did nowadays, it had an unintended consequence: The papers that littered the surface went up in flames. She cursed as she grabbed them, throwing them in the trash can and then stomping on them with her booted foot.
She wasn’t any closer to controlling her power, and it was driving her up the wall. She couldn’t clear her head. It felt like her skull was filled with gnats, the buzzing drowning out all of her thoughts—except that ever-present anxiety, which whispered constant threats in her ear.
