As he continued repeating the words of the spell, the air in the room began to vibrate with energy. It prickled against the nape of Chandler’s neck and made her tattoos tingle. Lionel wasn’t a witch. He didn’t have any ability to work magic. But the spell Rhianna had worked on him had imprinted itself on the room.
“That’s enough,” Devlin snapped.
Lionel stopped reciting. “I—I am right, aren’t I? You are more than Wiccan or Pagan.”
“What you are is confused,” Gar said flatly.
Chandler nodded in agreement. She slanted a look at Devlin. As high priest, he technically was the one in charge of dealing with things like this along with Chloe.
Devlin folded his arms across his chest. He rocked back on his heels. “What if you are right about us? How could you expect us to be honest with you? It’s no secret that you stole an invitation in order to infiltrate one of our parties. You pretended to be a potential coven initiate. Who did you steal the invitation from? What happened to that person?”
Lionel swiveled away. He paced toward the door to the gardens. Staring out, he rubbed his hands down his arms as if the question had given him the chills. He turned around and paced back to them. “You have to understand. All my life, I’ve sensed magic was real. I need to prove it. I have to.”
Chloe harrumphed. “You stole the invitation and lied to us in order to write an article that would expose our personal lives and whatever you think our coven does to the entire world.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “I was going to do that. But that’s not how it went down. A clairvoyant gave me the invitation. He said my life is as entwined with witches as his was with death.”
Cold dread crept over Chandler. A clairvoyant. She had a suspicion who this person was and where this conversation was about to go, and the darkness of it was something she’d hoped never to revisit.
Chloe hugged herself. “What did this clairvoyant look like?”
“He was a goth. I met him in a bar. He was reciting poetry.” Lionel’s voice became almost too low to hear. “S-someone killed him. The police called it a suicide. They said he cut strips of skin from his own body. But that is not the truth, is it?” His gaze pinned Chloe, as if he were a psychic capable of compelling the truth from her.
She paled. Her mouth opened. Finally, she relented. “No, it isn’t.”
A sick feeling lodged in Chandler’s stomach. She’d never met the clairvoyant goth, like Chloe had. But she knew the fake story the police believed and the more gruesome truth about the missing skin.
Lionel tapped a finger against his temple. “That spell may have screwed with my head. To be honest, I have never been totally normal. But I know I saw other things, too.”
“Like what?” Gar asked.
“I found the clairvoyant’s body in the cemetery. I am the one who called the police.” Lionel’s voice was as solid as bedrock, not the slightest hint of hesitation or confusion. “I wrote the article about him skinning himself that went viral online, but it wasn’t the truth. I saw who really killed the goth and cut the skin from his body. Your high priestess. She made a charm from it in the shape of a bracelet. It looked a lot like the necklace she wore to make herself appear younger. Your high priestess wrote the goth’s suicide note, too. I saw her do it.”
Chandler bit her tongue to keep from correcting him. What he’d seen and confessed to doing answered a lot of questions. But he was wrong about the purpose of the gruesome charms. The necklace he’d seen her wearing wasn’t designed to make her look younger. It was designed to allow Rhianna to impersonate Athena—and was made from Athena’s skin.
Devlin’s tone hardened. “Maybe that’s what you think you saw. But you’re wrong.”
Gar chuckled. “Lionel, you do realize how crazy you sound?”
“Th-that is what I saw.”
“Maybe you should speak to a psychiatrist,” Chloe said quietly.
Lionel punched a fist against his thigh. “I’m telling the truth.”
As Gar and Devlin continued to gang up on Lionel, Chandler’s shoulder muscles pinched so tight that she winced from the tension. She couldn’t stand this. The coven and the witching world’s anonymity had to be protected at all costs. But messing with Lionel’s head like this wasn’t right. It was painful for him. And painful for Chloe, Devlin, and Gar, she was certain of it. She had to stop this, for everyone’s sake.
Chandler rested her hands on her hips. There was only one way out of this stalemate as far as she could see. She needed to give Lionel the full truth and then make him believe it was a lie. It was a technique—used along with sarcasm—that had served her well on many occasions, like when potential customers walked in on her using magic to weld sculptures. Hopefully, everyone else would get what she was up to and play along.
She raised her voice above everyone else’s. “You’re right, Lionel. We are real witches. Heritage witches is the term we prefer. Magic is real. It’s also true that the woman who cast the spell on you was not our high priestess…” She went on, revealing the entire truth about Rhianna, Athena, and the necklace charm, and ended by saying they hadn’t known for sure until now who killed the goth.
Lionel blinked at her, openmouthed like an archeologist struck dumb by unearthing the Holy Grail.
Chandler raised a hand to keep everyone else silent. Then she tilted her head to one side, then the other, as if weighing what she’d said. “The question is: was what I said the truth or a lie?” She fixed her gaze on Lionel. “You believed me, didn’t you? There are people out there who will try to take advantage of trusting people like you. We aren’t that way. The Northern Circle coven is nothing more than a group of people who live together because we share similar spiritual beliefs and an interest in discovering truths that remain unproven—that is the real story. In some respects, we aren’t much different from you. We aren’t the fantastical, magic-wielding witches or bloodthirsty evildoers you believe us to be.”
His gaze remained on hers, unflinching. When he spoke it was with unobstructed clarity. “If that’s so, then explain one thing to me. What makes me so willing to believe things others dismiss as unreal?”
Chandler’s mouth went dry. Word for word, that was the same thing she’d asked herself only a few moments ago. She covered her surprise with a nonchalant smile and shrugged. “That would be a good question to ask the psychiatrist that Chloe recommended.”
Chapter 3
Take me, sweet slumber.
Give my flesh to the Shade. Give my breath to the sky.
I have no use for either. I crave neither thorns nor rose.
—Suicide note found on clairvoyant goth’s body
What makes me so willing to believe things others dismiss as unreal? Chandler couldn’t get the question out of her mind. She also had a sneaking suspicion the Circle wasn’t going to be able to shake Lionel until they knew the answer.
Mostly, she was just glad when
