Page 93 of Seas the Reckoning

Exos reaches out to Brody and Keegan at the bar to warn them to be on their guard. They’ll make sure Ginny and Shanell get the message as well.

Starla and I get the arguably trickier task of a conversation with Grammy Pearl. My feelings toward the matronly seer are complicated at the moment. I know that her key is maligned at times for reasons beyond her control. There’s every possibility that she couldn’t tell us about Starla’s father, for fear that doing so would risk a change in the outcome. But it’s hard to focus on that logic when the outcome has been so hurtful.

Starla holds up the phone on a video call with her grandmother.

“Coven Leader,” she says when Grammy Pearl picks up the phone.

The elder witch has her rabbit, Opal, on her shoulder and appears to be sitting next to her plants at the coven house. She’s calm, so at the very least Councilman Taylor isn’t attacking the witches. Yet.

“Starla, Leena. Let me start by issuing you both an apology. I’m sure you’re cross with me, and I don’t blame you. There are things that the magic will not allow me to reveal, lest it change the course of the future. A future that in this case I could not afford to change.”

Not only is she a seer, she’s practically a mind reader.

“I’m not cross at you, Grammy. I am furious at the situation. How could you not even give us a hint? Why not just tell us where to go and who to hunt down? We would have done it!” Starla says, her voice drowning out a couple of the other conversations taking place on the plane.

“You wouldn’t have. If I had told you what your father was involved in before you left, it would have affected your ability to act even remotely nonchalant around him. I know you, and I’m certain you had a hard enough time as it was. Can you honestly tell me you wouldn’t have tried to shock him off his feet the moment you saw him if I’d warned you that he was the supernatural who initially helped Leon?”

I wince, taking over as Starla takes several deep breaths.

“That’s the most recent thing we found out. Even then, the councilman didn’t exactly take responsibility.”

Grammy Pearl scoffs.

“Of course he didn’t. Many people don’t want to take a good hard look in the mirror when they’ll find that kind of evil looking back at them. He is greedy and unscrupulous, and he doesn’t want to admit that he can’t see the future nearly as well as some of us. He had no idea his little stooge would end up in Carolina Beach. He’d call it bad luck, but I call it an inevitability. He can’t admit to himself that he’s not in control.”

“Is that why no one showed up to try to help Leon after we captured him? Why his network seemed to dissolve? I figured anyone working for him was scared but just moved to a new payroll.”

“Maybe. I don’t think Councilman Taylor likes working with humans unless they have very deep pockets, like Leon’s, but that’s neither here nor there. What I can tell you is this. Leon saw those experiments as a game-changing bit of science that would level the playing field between supernaturals and humans. Your father probably would have chosen a different underling if he’d known that Leon would try to undercut the potential profits of the plan.”

“That man is not my father. I don’t need that sort of family,” Starla snaps, rejoining the conversation.

Grammy nods to acknowledge the statement, but when she speaks, she addresses our concerns instead.

“I have noticed some interesting individuals lingering around the coven’s perimeter. May I assume they are here courtesy of Councilman Taylor?”

“That is correct. I, uh,”—Starla blushes, stumbling over her words now— “may have gotten myself engaged. Leena may have also gotten engaged. I’m supposed to be marrying a warlock named Piers, and Leena promised she would wed my cousin, Claude Soloman.”

Grammy lets out a curse, and I’m so shocked to hear a four-letter word leave her mouth that I slap a hand over my own mouth.

“This, I did not see. Tell me you did not sign a magically binding contract?”

“No. We scarpered before the ceremony, wedding dresses and all. That’s why the councilman is so hopping mad. He’s determined to get those signatures and force our hands.”

Grammy breathes what I take to be a sigh of relief.

“That’s something, then. Ask anyone who’s worked around them. Those contracts can be iron-clad when they’re done well.”

I know Hugh specializes in them.

Starla explains that we’re set to meet the councilman behind her bar, and that he’s instructed we come alone.

“We need to get to that water without being stopped. That’s the only way to return Leena’s song,” Starla says.

My song. Once I have it, I can sing the councilman and anyone else he brings along straight into the sea if Starla wills it. I’ll have the power to solve our problems before anyone gets hurt.

But not if he’s waiting for us. If he figures out what we’re trying to do, there’s no way he won’t put up a fight.

Grammy pets Opal, and the bunny nuzzles against her.