Alton raised an eyebrow. “I’m confused, Harley. I thought you wanted them to stay with their parents, magical or otherwise.”
“Yeah, but… now we’re using them as literal bait for the Ryders,” I murmured.
“And? Do you think I’m happy with that decision?” Alton replied. “Far from it. I’m quite annoyed, actually. But you need to learn a lesson here, and we have no better alternative to try and capture two clearly hostile and dangerous rogue magicals. I would’ve loved to have the children back here, under our protection, but I’ve decided your way was… well, not better, but more productive.”
I crossed my arms, not liking the guilt that was gnawing at my stomach. Deep down, I knew Alton was right. I’d had a few hours to think about my intervention. It was like picking the lesser of two evils, and I’d gone with the worst, thinking I was doing the right thing.
“So, you’re doing this to teach me a lesson? You’re leaving these young magicals out there for the Ryders to grab or influence or whatever, just to show me I’m wrong?” I asked, even more annoyed. I knew the answers. I just didn’t like what all this had escalated to.
Alton shook his head. “No. I’m doing this because the Ryders became dangerous in a rather short timeframe. If it had been just the Cranstons, I would’ve been more adamant about bringing little Micah in. But it’s not just them anymore. The fact that I get to teach you a lesson about why coven rules are so important is just an upside to this entire debacle.”
That irritated me, but I couldn’t do much to change it. I could focus on protecting the kids, instead, and finding ways to stop and capture the Ryder twins.
“Based on what we’ve seen so far, the Ryders have an agenda,” I said, changing the subject. “And different approaches, depending on the magicals’ ages and whether their parents are magicals. For example, Micah is only five, and his parents are human, so the Ryders left their card but didn’t interact with any of them. Mina is six, but her parents are magical. The Ryders talked to them, pretending to be from our coven.”
“And the Ledermeyers were human, while their kid, Samson, is a three-year-old magical,” Tatyana said. “They had no recollection of the Ryders, either. Whereas with Kenneth Willow and the Hellers, it was clearly different.”
“That’s right. Kenneth is a young adult, and his foster parents are human,” Alton replied. “They were aware that he was different, but they didn’t send him back. They stuck by him. And when the Ryders came in, they only spoke to Kenneth, leaving the humans out of the conversation. From what I can tell, Kenneth was the first they successfully coerced to their side.”
“They could’ve taken the kids, too, but they didn’t.” Wade sighed, scratching the back of his head. He was confused, and for good reason.
“They tried to get Mina’s parents to send her to the coven,” I said. “I mean, that’s probably why they posed as coven members and why they left their card behind. Maybe the Ryders didn’t want to test the parents’ magical abilities. Maybe it was easier to just get Mina out of her parents’ reach for them to kidnap her. Wouldn’t it then be safe to assume that, had the Travises agreed, the Ryders would’ve intercepted and snatched her?”
Alton shrugged. “I’m not sure. It could be. A magical incident involving adults could’ve drawn too much of our attention, too soon. Without knowing how powerful the parents were, the Ryders could be trying to play it safe. But we don’t have enough information. Nor do we know their intentions, or who they’re working with, if they’re working with anyone.”
“Do you think Katherine Shipton is involved?” Tatyana asked.
My blood ran cold just from hearing her name. “If she is, we’re in for a doozy,” I muttered.
“The most important thing for us to do right now is to speak to the other families on that list,” Wade replied. “Once we’re there, we’ll most likely find out more about what the Ryders have been doing or saying. We also need to make sure we’re ready if the Ryders visit any of them again. I’m willing to bet they’ve already been to see the families we’ll be seeing tomorrow.”
“Did you find out anything from your mom back in Houston?” I asked.
Wade shook his head. “She’s had her assistants dig through the files, but there’s nothing. Either they were never recorded, or their files were wiped on purpose.”
“The cards bug me, though.” Santana sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Why would they leave them with families they didn’t even speak to? Do you really think they did it for us, Alton? Because that’s the theory we were floating earlier.”
We all looked at Alton, who seemed equally befuddled.
“That would mean they knew you were coming,” he said. “And that makes me feel uneasy, because I gathered the intel from different magical reports from the field. Either the Ryders are following our coven operatives around, or we have a spy in our ranks.”
“So, if they really are sending us a message, what is the message? That they’re spying on us? That they’re looking to drive magicals away from the coven? Both?” I asked.
“I think you’ll have a clearer picture tomorrow, if there’s a repeat of today’s pattern,” Alton replied. “What’s crucial here is that you are all prepared. Kenneth Willow might not be the only kid they’ve subverted. Be on your guard at all times.”
That made sense. From what I remembered reading in the file, there were at least two other potential teenage magicals that the Ryders might’ve gotten to. The last thing we wanted was a repeat of the Dylan debacle. The poor guy was looking at days in the infirmary under Krieger’s care.
I worried about little Micah now. I’d been so eager to make sure he stayed with his family, only to later realize that maybe that wasn’t such a good idea. It haunted me, but I had to keep pushing.
Santana gave me a gentle shoulder squeeze, prompting me to look at her. I found her smiling at me. “Don’t worry, Harley, the charms are on point,” she said, as if having read my mind. “We’ll know the moment there’s a threat.”
“Thank you,” I mumbled.
Looking back, I didn’t miss the old days. I liked having people like Santana, Raffe, Tatyana, Astrid, Dylan, and even Wade around. They were reliable and protected one another. There was a bond among us that was hard to describe, and possibly just as hard to break, now.
They weren’t just fellow magicals. They were my friends.
And I knew that I would need them by my side for what came next. Whether it was confirmed or not, it didn’t matter to me—this whole thing reeked of Katherine Shipton. My instincts rarely failed me.
Thirteen
Harley
Dinner was rather gloomy. We didn’t talk much, each of us worried about Dylan, the Ryder twins, and the fact that Kenneth Willow was at large. The coven had put out its equivalent of an APB on Kenneth and the twins, notifying all magicals in the California area of their presence. Alton was liaising with the California Mage Council on this as well. We were bound to get an earful from Leonidas Levi. He didn’t like our coven much, mostly because of how we’d emerged from the gargoyle incident.
After dinner, I went back to my room to read my parents’ file. Alton had been kind enough to prepare it for me, and it was time for me to delve a little deeper into my family history.
From what the timeline suggested, my parents got together shortly after Dad hooked up with Katherine Shipton. That mustn’t have sat well with her, but love had this nasty way about it. Hester and Hiram Merlin tied the knot one year after they became an item, while Katherine stayed mostly out of the public eye.
Because of the legacy of both the Merlin and Shipton names in the magical community, my parents’ wedding was a big deal, with coverage in all the coven newspapers across the States. Heck, I even found a clipping from the British papers mentioning their union. There were, of course, gossip columns dedicated to rumors about Katherine being quite upset about their relationship, but no one suspected that, years later, it would all go sideways so badly.
Based on what I’d learned from Finch, he’d already been born when my parents married. Katherine had sent him off to be raised by Agnes Anker, who gave him her last name. Apparently, there was still some stigma regarding magical children out of wedlock at the time.
My parents made an amazing magical team, it seemed. Both were powerful Telekinetics. My mom was an Empath, like me. My dad was a full Elemental. I’d gotten the best of both worlds, much like salted caramel. The Merlins were the pride and joy of the New York Coven, and my dad became the youngest magical to become a director. He was only twenty-five at the time.
“Wow,” I murmured as I flipped through the file pages. “So, Alton isn’t the youngest, per se. My dad was. Way to go, Merlin…”
During that time, my parents began working on a Grimoire together. That was extremely rare, from what I’d learned during Lasher Ickes’s Magic History classes. The Grimoire was a book of spells, which not all magicals endeavored to create. It acted as a part journal, part instruction manual for new or modified spells. It was loaded with the magical’s memories and energies. Alton had appended a note regarding the Grimoire.
A Grimoire is the most honest manifestation of a magical’s connection to Chaos. Because we, as witches and warlocks, adhere to either Light or Darkness, so will the Grimoire be influenced by our Chaotic inclination. It is a book that can influence and even change minds, and it’s a wonderful tool to have if one is on the side of Light. Where Darkness is involved, however, the Grimoire can become more like poison, rather than a cure, killing its reader slowly, but surely.
The fascinating part about Hester and Hiram’s Grimoire was that it involved both Light and Darkness. After all, Hiram was Light, and Hester, as wonderful and kind and noble as she was, belonged to the Darkness. Therefore, their Grimoire attained an incredible and never-before-seen balance of both.