Night Witch (Weatherstone College, #2)(2)

That had Sara jerking upright and grabbing my arm, and to my surprise, she showed no hesitance or fear in touching me. “You have to come back! How else will you learn to control it unless you’re at the best magic school in the country?”

“I don’t think Weatherstone can help me. If this is the recessive gene, it was wiped out centuries ago.” Though clearly some of us had slipped through the cracks. Like Gran.

“Start at the beginning,” Sara said, still holding me. “Tell me everything.”

Fuck. This was not going to be a short conversation, but with Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” blaring as the perfect background track, I decided I couldn’t keep trying to navigate this alone. My parents had promised to tell me everything they knew, but it turned out, outside of the book they’d given me and the letters from Gran, they didn’t know much. My affinity had taken all of us by surprise.

The two biggest changes were Gran’s letters providing a potion that would suppress the magic and the loss of my crystals. All forms of crystal amplified my powers, which was a big no at the moment.

Oh, and Mom had also made me promise never to talk about my abilities to anyone. Not to my siblings. Not to my friends.

I’d tried to keep my promise, but I was breaking apart in ways that I feared I couldn’t come back from. I had to talk to someone about it, and Sara hadn’t run screaming . . .

“Logan and I got into a fight . . . that night on All Hallows’ Eve . . . right after you left me in the graveyard. It was about Dad, and the suspension from school, and he basically implied that Belle was the one who got Dad into trouble by spilling everything to Elder Monroe.”

Sara didn’t look shocked by this either. “I’ve been thinking this over and drew the same conclusion about Belle’s new relationship with her dad being half of our trouble. In a bid to get him to love her, she revealed everything. She wouldn’t expect he’d use that information to try to hurt her friend.”

“Yep, and considering I’ve barely heard from her . . . She doesn’t answer my calls, and her return texts are so short that they might as well be a fucking thumbs-up emoji.”

“Me and Haley too.” Sara’s face fell. “She’s cut us all off.”

“Or her dad cut her off from us.”

We exchanged a dark stare, but there was nothing we could do to help Belle at the moment. I’d be seeing her father in the city in a few days, when Dad’s trial got underway.

I’d hopefully get some answers then.

“Okay, so you had a fight . . .” Sara prodded me along.

“Right, we had a fight, and I was so pissed off. He riled me up until I wanted to punch him in the fucking junk.”

Sara gave a shrugging nod. “I bet that’s not all you want to do with his junk. It’s impressive junk. You don’t damage the goods unless you’ve used them first.”

It felt weird to laugh, but she wasn’t completely wrong. “Keep it in your pants, witch. Logan is most likely an evil bastard, no matter how sexy he looks.”

Sara didn’t appear convinced.

I continued. “When we fought, the blanket suppressing Weatherstone was gone, and with the All Hallows’ energy beating down on me, my own power was swirling like crazy. Then the monsters started to appear. I was jabbing my finger at Logan, and with each one, another creature showed up.” My voice shook as I recalled the moment I realized it had been me all along. “I couldn’t really deny my involvement after that.”

“We felt the energy,” she told me, her voice softening. “Everyone in the whole school did. When we couldn’t find you in the graveyard, we freaked the fuck out and raced for the headmaster, only to find him on the phone with your dad, who said he’d stopped by to grab you early. Not that we fucking believed him, but we couldn’t do much until we called you the next day.”

When Sara and Haley called, I’d barely managed more than a couple of awkward sentences, since I couldn’t reveal any secrets over the phone. Mom had made me promise—she might not have answers, but she did have new rules. She’d lose her shit if she knew I was spilling all of this to Sara.

“Do you think I’m a monster too?” One of my greatest fears was that by the time the dust settled on everyone learning who I was, I’d be completely alone. “Now that you know the truth?”

Sara’s face crumpled and a tear escaped as she threw herself forward, hugging me as tightly as she could. “Paisley Hallistar,” she rasped against my shoulder. “I should smack you. I would never think you were a monster.” She pulled away and I stared into the depths of her dark eyes. “Magic is volatile, and you’re dealing with a recessive gene of energy that was wiped out years ago. This is not your fault. You’re one of the best witches I’ve ever known, and you risked your life to try to kill that monster.”

The irony of battling a monster that I’d conjured wasn’t lost on me, and my mind drifted to the book. The Reapers of Purgatory was the only book I’d found that contained information about my affinity. Night witch.

Night witches were said to exist in the shadows and consume the darkness. We were vilified as demon-witches by the very council who had wiped every one of us they could find from existence. In the book, we were also referred to as reapers, but it wasn’t clear why.