Witch Possessed, page 16
Valery huffed. “Sure. Whatever. So now he’s been kidnapped by the coven of soul witches who snatched up Gramps, and you need help getting him out, is that the basic summary?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Mom rested her hand on my back from where she stood behind the couch and rubbed in a circular pattern between my shoulder blades. It was the same place she had whenever I got sick or wound up in a panic attack. The gesture was soothing, but I worried if she kept it up, I’d fall asleep. We didn’t have time for me to sleep, never mind that I was wrung out and exhausted.
“Great,” my sister said. “We’ll add that to my budget of therapy I’ll need to deal with all this shit.”
Mom frowned at the screen. “Val, perhaps a little less sarcasm?”
“Who’s being sarcastic? I’m being one hundred per cent genuine. I’m still over here trying to deal with the fact that my sister was accused of murder and never even bothered to call me.”
I flinched under her accusation. She had a point, but this was hardly the time to talk about it. “I’m sorry, okay? Next time I get dragged before a fae duchess, I’ll be sure to let you know so you can bail me out. Can we get back to the key point here?”
Dad pinched the bridge of his nose, too used to dealing with the nonsense between me and Val.
Mom looked at Gramps. “You sure you’re all right, Dad?”
He waved a hand to dismiss her worries. “Never better. Pip and Wyatt had everything under control. I never doubted it for a second.” He slung his arm around my shoulders, and my throat tightened. Fear for Trace, retroactive terror for Gramps, and uncertainty of how to move forward nearly brought me to my knees.
The only relief I had was that I’d received no judgement or shock or alarm or anger from anyone in my family when I’d filled them in on the details I’d left out about the fight with Corrick. Even after learning how Trace had worked some massively illegal magic to save my life, none of them had seemed ready to turn their back on him and let him face the consequences alone.
As always, my family was here to support me, and I couldn’t be more grateful that I wasn’t by myself.
“I don’t know what to do.” I hated how my lips wobbled, making it difficult to speak clearly. “Trace was already in rough shape because of those souls. The spirits keep trying to take him over every time they’re exposed to someone else’s spirit magic. I don’t know how—” I couldn’t bring myself to finish my thought—that I didn’t know if he would be able to hold himself together.
“What do you think they want with him?” Val asked.
Dylan snorted as he propped his socked feet on my coffee table. “Isn’t it obvious? They want the souls.”
From his chair behind the couch, Brody agreed. “Seems likely. They wanted the amulet and couldn’t get it, so Wyatt’s the next best thing.”
Val rolled her eyes. “Well, obviously. What I meant was what do you think they want the souls for? Just to have them? To show off that their collection of spirits is bigger than some other coven’s? Is this a pissing contest or are they after something bigger?”
“Definitely something bigger,” Gramps said. “Again, I don’t know what, but they’ve got something in the works.”
“A takeover?” Aunt Courtney asked. She was rubbing Avery’s back much like Mom was rubbing mine. It seemed parental instincts were on full alert tonight.
Gramps shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. They didn’t talk like they were preparing for war. More… gaining access to something? I really don’t know.” He grimaced. “I wish I’d been able to learn more.”
“Does it matter what they want?” I asked, chafing my arms to chase away the deepening psychological chill. “Trace won’t hand them over.”
Dylan’s expression turned sympathetic. “I doubt they plan to ask nicely, Aly.”
My throat tightened. I didn’t want to think about what he was enduring while we sat here casually discussing his fate. “Okay, so, how do we get him out?”
“Do you know where they took him?” Dad asked, ever the practical one.
“Chip is looking into it.” I picked up my phone and checked it for the hundredth time this past hour. “Still nothing. If I don’t hear back in another twenty, I’ll call and—” My phone rang. “Speak of the devil. Hey, Chip, what’d you find?”
“Who else is with you?” he demanded.
“No one, why?”
“Because I’m not on speaker phone. If it was just you and Gramps and your family, you’d have me on speaker. Who else is around who might hear what I have to say?”
“Um, more of my family?” Again with his tendency to make me question statements I knew to be true. I cleared my throat. “The rest of my siblings, a few more cousins. Some of them are on video call.”
“Nice that you actually called your sister,” he said.
I blinked. I didn’t remember mentioning Valery to him. “Have you been spying on my call history?”
“Of course. I need to know who I’m dealing with. Which is how I know I don’t care if your family is there. They can hear this. The more help we get, the better.”
With his permission, I put the phone on speaker and turned up the volume so hopefully everyone on my laptop screen would hear him as well.
“The van went east,” he said. “Rockland.”
Dad’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s not a cheap area.”
“It’s not,” Chip said. “Especially not a ranch-style McMansion right on the water. Whoever these witches are, they’ve got money as well as power. I don’t want to know what they plan to do with more.”
Neither did I.
“Were you able to pull up anything else on the house? Some of those handy underground blueprints?” I asked.
Brody’s jaw fell open, and I could tell he was impressed with the paranoid genius on the phone. Fair. I would have been too if I hadn’t met him in person.
“Not yet,” Chip grumbled, clearly unhappy with his lack of progress. “Everything about the house has been blocked or blanked out. I can’t find any information on the deed, there’s no mortgage I can track down, no internet or phone bills connected to the property. It’s like the place doesn’t exist, but I’m looking right fucking at it. Apologies, Mrs. Mooney.”
Now it was Mom’s turn to look surprised. “No trouble, Chip. I’ve heard worse.”
She’d said worse. My mother had quite the mouth on her.
“I’m not giving up,” he said. “In fact, I’m even more determined to tear through their protections. Whatever they’re trying to hide, they won’t for long. Let me keep working on it.”
“Give me the address anyway,” I said. “Maybe there’s something we can do while we wait.”
“Don’t do anything stupid, Cheers. Trace will be royally PO’d if you get killed trying to rescue him.”
A low moan escaped Mom as she bent her head into her hand, and Dad crossed the room to put his arms around her. I wished Chip hadn’t mentioned the possibility of me dying quite so breezily. My parents didn’t need that thought in their heads when they went to bed tonight, no matter how likely it might be.
Chip gave me the address, then hung up. As soon as he was off the phone, I plugged the address into my internet browser and brought up some photos of the exterior. It was a clean bungalow, with beige siding, a big porch, and a double garage. Although there were neighbours, the houses were spaced out enough that it would have been easy to sneak someone inside with no one noticing.
“I wonder why they didn’t bring you there,” I said to Gramps. “Why did you get the urban treatment, while Trace gets the rural experience?”
Gramps shrugged. “Ease of transfer. They planned to give me back.” The expression on my face must have made him realize what he’d said because he reached for my hand as Mom slipped her arm around my shoulders. “Just because they don’t plan on returning him doesn’t mean we won’t take him, Pip. Stay strong here. He’ll need it.”
“Yeah, Aly,” Dylan said, nudging me on my other side. “Don’t give up before we get started.”
Grayson leaned forward across the table, resting his elbows on the surface. He’d arrived a little over an hour ago after Chip had let us know he had eyes on the house. The dark circles under my cousin’s half-lidded eyes revealed the depth of his fatigue. “These people don’t know who they’ve crossed. They can’t know Wyatt’s connection to our family. If you’re with him, he’s one of us now, and we don’t let anything happen to family.”
Kyle nodded. “They might not have planned for war, but they’ve got one.”
My family’s encouragement did more for me than any kind of self-directed pep talk I might have mustered. I wasn’t sure how long my confidence would last, but for Trace’s sake, I was determined to work on it.
“Right,” Mom said, clapping her hands together. “Here’s what I think. We all need some sleep. It’s almost the middle of the night, some of us have… a lot of information to process, and we’ll all be useless if we’re not rested. Tomorrow morning, everyone should meet here at Aly’s for an early breakfast. I’ll have waffles and lattes ready for seven a.m. We can make our plan then.”
The tone of her voice left no room for arguments, though I wanted to scream at her that seven a.m. was seven hours away. Anything could happen to Trace in seven hours.
But she was right. I was exhausted, my muscles ached, my heart bled, and I really wanted to close my eyes and pretend my world wasn’t falling apart for just a little while.
“Fine,” I said. “But I want everyone to come to the table with an idea we can use. I don’t care how stupid you think it is. And whatever plan we agree on, we carry it out tomorrow. I’m not letting those witches play with Trace a minute longer than necessary.”
My family agreed with gentle murmurs, and I shut down the meeting. Dad and my brothers, my aunts, and the cousins all left, but Mom and Gramps stuck around.
“Gramps, you take the bed,” I said. “After all you’ve been through, you deserve a night on a good mattress.”
He leaned back into his hands until his spine cracked. “I hate to steal it from you, but you’re right. I can’t handle couches anymore.”
“The couch is yours, Mom. There’s an air mattress in the storage room I can sleep on.”
She kissed my forehead. “Don’t be silly. After the day you’ve had, you take the couch. I’ll give you a shot of healing energy to help you sleep, and then I’ll set up camp on the air mattress.”
Gramps headed for my bedroom but paused on the threshold. “I meant what I said, Pip. Keep heart. Wyatt wouldn’t have been able to carry those souls around as long as he has if he didn’t have the strength to do it. He can withstand whatever they throw at him.”
I chewed on my lip, not wanting to ask the question that had been burning inside me since the events outside the museum, but needing to know. “What happens if he can’t? I don’t mean if these witches get the souls out of him, but what if the souls manage to take him over?”
Mom and Gramps exchanged a look that dropped my stomach into my toes. Then Gramps heaved a breath and met my eye. “I won’t lie, kiddo, it’s not pretty. If the intentions of the witch don’t match those of the souls or, more likely, if the host’s mind and body aren’t strong enough, the host may as well no longer exist. Sanity gone, self gone. They become nothing more than a vessel, and they burn up. Trace is a good man or the souls would never have accepted him. He’s strong or the souls would have eaten through his barriers. He’ll be okay.”
He closed himself in my room and left me to collapse on the couch. I dragged the blanket over myself, inhaling deeply when I caught Trace’s scent in the fibres, and sank into its warmth as my thoughts travelled to our last night here, snuggled up together. Of the way he’d kissed me in the Labyrinth. How I wished I’d kissed him when I’d wanted to last night.
While Mom brushed a hand over my head, sending a gentle burst of healing energy through me, Gramps’s words drifted through my mind. Although I knew he’d wanted to reassure me, all I could think about was the way Trace’s eyes glowed yellow whenever the souls grew angry enough. If this coven pushed his limits too far, how much could he take before his body gave out? How much longer before his mind snapped and the man I’d come to care about was gone?
Chapter 25
Alyssa
Dylan was the last person to arrive for breakfast, but he brought doughnuts with him, so I couldn’t be too angry. My waffles were already heaped with strawberries, yogurt, and syrup, but right now a sour cream glazed sounded like the perfect side dish.
“I think we should storm the place,” he said as he sat down on my couch next to Aunt Hilary.
Over a dozen other Mooneys were spread throughout my kitchen and living room, with Val, Brody, Dad, Gramps, and me around the kitchen table, Grayson, Kyle, Aunts Courtney and Jennifer on the floor around the coffee table, and Avery and Uncle Tony on the couch with Dylan. Only half of them appeared awake enough to be having this conversation, while the others stuffed their faces with food in an effort to catch up.
I worried we’d be zombies with indigestion when we attempted our rescue mission, but it would still be better than doing nothing.
Mom groaned and turned her back to the room to pour herself a coffee and hide her reaction to Dylan’s suggestion.
“That’s a terrible idea,” Val said.
He shrugged. “Alyssa said she didn’t care how stupid the idea was. That’s mine.”
“It’s terrible because I already suggested it when I walked in,” Brody said as he drizzled more syrup on his waffles.
“It was a terrible idea when Val said it first,” Mom said on a sigh.
None of my three siblings appeared concerned that they’d all come to the table with the same plan. It wasn’t one we were going to take. Not against a bunch of witches who’d armed themselves with the spirits of the dead. We already knew the elemental witch leading them was strong, and I had no doubt he’d surround himself with competent soldiers.
“We could wait until Chip gets back to us about the layout of the house,” Dad suggested. “There might be another way in besides the front door. We could storm that instead.”
“Henry,” Mom snapped.
“What?” he asked. “I’m looking at our options here, Mary, and I’m not seeing many of them. They’ve got a strong coven working out of that house. They have all the advantages. The only thing we have is the element of surprise.”
“And a coven of our own,” Mom pointed out. “We have the numbers.”
“Will we be enough?” I asked. “Even with how many we took down last night, we don’t know how many they have. Would we be smart to call in another coven as reinforcements?”
“What about Simon?” Dylan asked. “You think he’d be up for the fight?”
I covered my worries on that point with a bite of waffle. During my very long attempt to fall asleep last night, I’d considered calling Simon. In fact, I’d gone back and forth on the matter until I’d seen four a.m. roll around. In the end, I’d decided to wait until a more reasonable hour, then touch base and see what sort of mood he was in.
“It would mean arranging ourselves to give him enough space to do his thing, but I’ll message him,” I said, and sent off a quick text. “He was ready to help save Gramps, so he’ll probably be in. We’ll get someone else to watch the pub.”
“All right, so, there are fourteen of us. Add in Simon, that’s fifteen,” Brody said. “Do we not think that’s enough to go after these people?”
I thought of how many witches we’d fought in the house on MacLaren. We’d taken down a few, but even so, I would have felt better with another dozen behind us.
“I’ll put the rest of the cousins on standby,” Gramps said. “If Chip comes back with information saying we need them—or if we scope out the place and don’t feel comfortable—they’ll be ready.”
My throat tightened, and I set my fork down on the side of my plate. “Thank you, guys. It means so much that you’re taking this risk for me. I know it’s a lot to ask. There’s a lot of danger involved, but not one of you has pushed back.”
Dylan brought his plate into the kitchen and, after dropping it on the counter, punched my shoulder hard enough that I flinched. “What’s a big brother for if not to save my little sister’s boyfriend from a dark coven?”
Mom grimaced, but she reached across the table to take my hand. “Of course we’re helping you, honey, and not only because he’s your friend. This coven kidnapped your grandfather. They’re trying to harvest souls for who knows what reason. We have a responsibility to this city to stop them.”
Dad nodded. “The Mooney family has been a leader of Ottawa’s witch community for over a hundred years. It’s our place to step in where we can when we see something happening. SMOAC exists, and they have their place, but coven law should come first.”
Avery snorted. “If that were true, we’d be handing this over to the council. Let’s not pretend we don’t all want a little revenge.”
No one argued with her, but after a moment’s silence, Gramps said, “Let’s also not pretend we don’t know why we’re not turning this over to the authorities. It was my fuck-up. I know it. It’s not revenge so much as atonement. I need to make up for not trying harder to get rid of the damned amulet.”
Valery checked her nails. “As long as my helping you means we’re square for that time I cut your hair when I was six and we never need to talk about it again, I’m ready to help where I can.”
“I guess I can agree to that,” I said, appreciating her attempt to raise the mood.
“Now that we know who’s playing on our team, let’s dig down on details,” Grayson said as Kyle stacked up the nearby dishes.
Mom pulled a notebook out from somewhere—the woman always had one handy—and we got to work. Without knowing much about the location, the best we could do was prepare a wider strategy, but by the end of breakfast, we had something workable regardless of what information Chip provided. We were a strong family with hefty magic behind us. Working as a team, there was little that could get through our wards. Even if most of our magic leaned towards the defensive, I was certain we would find our way into the house. Once inside, our plan became murkier and the risk increased, but as long as we remained close enough to bolster each others’ power, we stood a chance of keeping the strongest spirit magic away from us.
