16
“When you told me that would happen…” I began, while Vanessa wailed, “…I didn’t believe it.”
Blood pumping from her stump of a wrist, she wobbled back to Melissa, who cauterized it with a spell.
“Father takes infractions quite seriously.” He rubbed his thumb across my cheek. “Never doubt that.”
“You weren’t lying.” Melissa glanced between us then to Clay. “They’re in fascination with each other.”
“Did ignoring clear and present danger to stare into one another’s eyes clue you in?”
“Kill them.” Vanessa wept in RJ’s arms. “Kill them all.”
“I told you to collect the book,” Melissa said archly, “not grope the daemon.”
“Give us the book.” Timothy stepped forward, hands out in front of him. “Then we’ll go.”
“You’re going to kill us and then burn this place to the ground to cover your tracks. Try to, anyway. It’s what I would do. Good luck with that.” I chuckled at Melissa’s pinched expression. “The director doesn’t know you’re here, or why you’re here, or who you’re threatening, and—make no mistake—he will gut you when he finds out if we don’t do it for him.”
Rumors of my death had been greatly exaggerated, with good reason. Black Hats didn’t retire. We died, or we killed ourselves. That was the only escape. I was an exception, and she would have been smart to wonder why. The director wouldn’t kill me, until he determined I was a lost cause. He had indulged me, up to a point, before shepherding me back under his purview. Until I proved to him I was a white witch, he would treat my dietary changes as teenage rebellion he could stamp out given enough time.
“The director has leashed us for too long.” Melissa thinned her lips. “You might be happy to wear a collar, but I’m done letting him choke me.”
If there was ever an opening for Clay’s I don’t want to know about your kinks line, it was this one.
“Seriously.” I stared at Clay. “You’re not going to say it?” I huffed. “She left the door wide open.”
“We had sex.” He shrugged. “I know her kinks. I can’t unknow them for the sake of a punchline.”
A memory of the time I dropped an oversized wig box that exploded in nipple clamps, dildos, and flavored lube had me agreeing with him. Some things, you can’t forget. No matter how hard you try.
The absence of genitalia did not equate a deficit of imagination.
“There’s a reason the director has successfully chained us for so long,” Asa said quietly. “He’s a power.”
“And a politician,” I added. “The other factions are thrilled to let him handle their problems for them.”
The director leveraged their goodwill to expand his powerbase, lengthening his precious Bureau’s reach.
“Do you have any idea how many failed coups the director has crushed?” Clay puffed out his cheeks. “As a creature destined for eternal servitude, I get it. The control chafes. You want to strike out at the establishment, kill your master. You’ll risk anything—everything—to be free.”
Grief welled in me to hear his impassioned speech, the truth in it, and to know my grandfather was to blame.
“Yes,” she hissed. “We all deserve our freedom.”
“Black Hat exists,” I countered, “because people like us ruin freedom for everyone else.”
We lied, cheated, stole, killed, and worse. We were monsters by any metric. Irredeemable, some would claim. But we had a healthy sense of self-preservation. That was why the director recruited some problems but killed others.
“We have a weapon unlike any who have come before us.” Melissa smiled. “We have the book.”
The book, among other things, was a how-to manual for tapping into Colby’s power.
These witches couldn’t be allowed to learn that knowledge, or it would spread, as secrets did in the end.
When her speech earned firm nods from her team, I no longer had any doubt they were full participants.
That would make what came next that much easier for my conscience to bear.