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“Wow,” Merle said as Hazel steered her car up the meandering driveway toward the stately Laroche manor.
Hazel shot her a look. “Have you never been here?”
Merle shook her head. “No, not really. Like, maybe as a child, but I don’t really remember. I guess I haven’t been an Elder long enough that one of the meetings would take place here. But damn, this is like a castle. I mean, they even have turrets!”
Hazel brought the car to a stop between the bubbling fountain and the steps to the main entrance. Shutting off the engine, she sat still for a moment, gathering herself. Merle seemed to do the same next to her.
“It’s just a routine thing,” Hazel said after a few heartbeats. “You’re not releasing her from the Shadows; you’re just calling her forth so you can talk to her.”
“Yep.”
“You’ve done it before, with Rhun.”
“Yep.”
“There’s really no need to be nervous.”
Merle exhaled heavily. “It’s not that I’m nervous per se.” She made a grimace. “It’s just…I can’t be sure I won’t snap and release her just to drive a stake through that bitch’s heart.” She turned her sky-blue eyes to Hazel. “Which is where you come in. You’re not just here for company. You need to keep me from outright murdering that traitorous twat.”
Hazel laughed softly. “I’ll do my very best.”
They got out of the car and made their way up the stairs to the front door. A minute after they pressed the bell button, the door swung open to reveal a witch in her early twenties, her long blond hair falling down in waves around her shoulders.
“Merle,” she said coolly, then her green eyes tracked to Hazel, and even more frost crept into her voice. “Hazel.”
“Selene.” Hazel nodded at Sophie’s surviving daughter, the other one having been killed by demons at the age of five.
Selene had been the one to attack Alek on that fateful night when the witch community had split in two over how to deal with Lily’s transformation into a demon. When Selene had attacked Alek, Lily had jumped to his aid and charged Selene in turn, almost killing her. It was only because Alek had pulled Lily off her that the young witch had survived. Selene had run home and ratted Lily out to her grandmother Juneau, who’d called an emergency meeting of the Elders and basically proposed to hunt Lily down like a rabid dog.
The rest was history. Of the bloody-civil-war kind.
To say there was some tension between Selene and Hazel was putting it mildly.
“Your mother called us,” Merle said, breaking the stare-off between the two witches.
Selene blinked, her dark blond brows pinching together. Without a word, she turned and walked inside, leaving the door open.
“Is that, like, an invitation to come in?” Merle whispered. “Are we supposed to follow her?”
Hazel shrugged. “I know I’m not waiting around on the Laroche doorstep.”
And with that, she walked inside and followed Selene’s retreating shadow. Merle caught up to her after shutting the door behind them.
Selene led them through the majestic lobby with two staircases running up either side, down a hallway with marble floors and old Persian rugs, the walls adorned with portraits of witches from bygone eras, through a set of rooms whose only purpose seemed to be showing off antique collectibles and old-world furniture, and on and on.
Here and there, they crossed paths with other witches. They passed Pauline, Estelle’s daughter, who was around Lily’s age, reading a book on a settee in a sitting room, Danielle and Louise, the thirtysomething daughters of Juneau’s youngest sister, Celeste, who were playing cards in yet another sitting room, and at one point, a horde of young girls stampeded across right in front of them, earning a stern “No jumping on the furniture!” from Selene.
“Just how big is this house?” Merle asked Hazel in a hushed voice. “We’ve been walking for ten minutes.”
“It was modeled after our French ancestors’ château in the Loire Valley,” came Selene’s chilled reply from a few feet ahead. “Of course, they had to scale it down to fit the smaller amount of land over here.”
“Scaled down, my ass,” Merle muttered.
Selene stopped at a door, knocked, and opened it to reveal a room similar to the one at the Espinoza residence. Bare of any rugs, its floor was of dark concrete, the surface smooth and perfect for chalk drawings. Shelves lined the walls, filled with herbs and candles and other tools for rituals and spells. Sophie knelt in the middle of the floor, drawing the finishing line of a pentagram big enough to allow a person to sit in the center.
She lifted her head as the door opened, her gaze first landing on Selene, a haunted glint in her eyes. The next second, her expression smoothed over as she looked at Hazel and Merle.
“Please, come in.” She waved them inside and got to her feet. “I’m just finishing the setup.”
