Page 6 of The Witch They Fear

And then the voice comes.

Not from inside the building. Not from Corvin or Zeva standing behind me on the steps. Not from the wards humming through the stone or the students whispering across the courtyard or the birds that won't come back.

From inside me.

It slides into my mind like a hand through a cracked door—warm, unhurried, settling into the space between my thoughts as though it belongs there. As though it's always been there and I just wasn't listening.

Oh.

A pause. A breath that isn't a breath.

You ARE strong, aren't you?

The words press against the inside of my skull. Intimate and impossible. My hand falls from the door. My knees lock—not from fear, from the sheer wrongness of someone being in there, in the only space I have left, the one place the dampeners and the fail-safe never touched.

My magic surges in response—a hot, blind flare behind my sternum, slamming against the dampeners so hard my breath surges out. The fail-safe hums at the base of my skull, cold and alert, like a guard dog lifting its head.

I can't move. I can't speak. I can't even flinch.

And the worst part—the part that makes my pulse hammer and my throat close and something deep in my chest crack open like a door I didn't know was shut—is that it doesn't feel like an attack.

It feels like being found.

Chapter 2

The doors are heavier than they look.

I have to lean my shoulder into the wood to get them open, and even then they move slow—reluctant, like the building itself is deciding whether to let me in. The hinges don't creak. Nothing about this place is that undignified. The doors simply part, and the foyer swallows me whole.

Cool air. Stone floors. A vaulted ceiling high enough that my footsteps echo twice before they fade. The walls are lined with portraits—oil paintings in heavy frames, men and women with pale skin and sharp cheekbones and the particular stillness of people who stopped aging centuries ago.

Vampires.

Every single one.

Their names are engraved on brass plaques beneath each frame, and I don't recognize any of them, but I don't need to. These are the founders. The benefactors. The people whose money built these walls and whose bloodlines still run the institution inside them.

No witches on the wall. No shifters. No fae. Just vampires, watching me cross their foyer with oil-painted eyes that manage to feel less dead than Corvin's.

The voice is still echoing in my skull.

Not speaking—it's gone quiet, pulled back as suddenly as it arrived. But the afterimage of it lingers the way a bright light lingers behind your eyelids. The warmth. The presence. The Oh that sounded like something cracking open. I keep reaching for the space where it was, some stupid instinct, like pressing your tongue against the gap where a tooth used to be.

Stop it. Focus.

I climb. Marble staircase, second floor, end of the corridor—that's what Corvin said. The wards get denser with every step, the air thickening until it feels like walking uphill. Whatever's behind the door at the end of this hall, they want it protected. Or they want whatever's inside it contained.

I can hear voices on the other side. Low, professional. Discussing me, probably.

I knock.

"Come in." A woman's voice. Warm. Musical. The kind of warmth that makes you lean in before you remember that warmth is a strategy.

I push open the door.

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. A fireplace lit despite the heat. Tall windows looking out over the courtyard I just walked through, and a desk massive enough to land a helicopter on, positioned so whoever sits behind it is backlit by the afternoon sun.

Power move. Noted.