“I’m not messing with your head, Tatyana, I swear!” Oberon continued, having read my mind.
I gasped. “Crap.”
He smirked. “I can hear your thoughts, sweetheart. Sorry.”
I took a deep breath, trying to regain my composure and find a solution to this problem. With Oberon still in my body, I wasn’t really myself anymore. It was only a matter of time before he’d try to take over completely. They all tried that. I should’ve paid more attention to my mother’s teachings as a kid. She’d warned me about this, but I was too absorbed in talking to dead people at the time. The Kolduny were a rare and strict magical typology. There weren’t that many books about us.
And why the hell couldn’t I remember any of the expulsion spells? Oberon was definitely messing around in my noggin. I didn’t like it. I had to figure out a way to get him out without him knowing it—challenge of the century.
“What do you want?” I asked. “Why are you still here?”
“I swear I have zero intentions of taking over your body. It’s not why I’m here, I promise,” Oberon replied. “If it were, you’d be gone by now, trust me.”
“Okay. That still doesn’t answer my question.”
I gripped the edge of the sink with both hands, trying to analyze my situation and surroundings as best as I could, knowing that Oberon was tuned in to my thoughts. I had to be careful.
“Listen, Tatyana, you touched me in ways I didn’t think possible,” he said, wearing a pained expression. “I’ve been drifting around this place for so long, I was becoming cynical and jaded. But you brought me back to life. The lengths you were willing to go to in order to save your friend… That’s hardcore, girl. I like that.” He chuckled, then turned serious all of a sudden. “You’ve got trouble in this coven, and I want to help you.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“There’s darkness lurking around here. I can’t quite put my finger on it, and the other spirits whisper to each other,” he replied. “It’s hard to get something concrete out of them, but they all say the same thing, on a very annoying loop. A storm is coming. A storm is coming. A storm is coming. I’ve been hearing that line since Harley Merlin first set foot inside the San Diego Coven.”
My stomach churned. “And you think you can help me?” I murmured, frowning.
It agitated me to no longer see my own reflection in the mirror, because it reminded me of how easy it was to lose control.
“I’ve been quiet in here,” Oberon said. “I’m being gentle and not interfering in anything you do. I’ll keep doing that, I promise. But I need you to let me ride along, until the trouble—the so-called storm—passes. You’ll need me, Tatyana. You’ll need my strength, my Herculean abilities, especially now that Dylan is indisposed.”
“Wait, so you want to stay in me for a little while longer? Have you lost your damn mind?” I hissed.
“I can help you!”
I glared at him. “You’ve gone nuts. I guess that’s what happens when you wander through the veil for so long, without moving on, huh?”
“It’s not that!” Oberon snapped, then inhaled deeply in order to keep himself leveled. Ironically, I could feel his frustration as if it were mine. I wondered if that was how Empathy felt for Harley. “Tatyana, I like you. You’re a good girl with a strong connection to Darkness. You’re a Kolduny, for heaven’s sake! You’re a rare gem among the magicals, but you don’t have my strength, and you don’t know the people I know… in the spirit world, that is.”
That captured my interest, and I paused for a moment before muttering, “Go on.”
“Let me stay with you for a little while longer, at least until you catch the Ryder twins. I think they have something to do with this impending storm. I can feel it in my gut,” he said.
“You don’t have a gut anymore. You’re piggybacking on mine,” I fired back.
He grinned. “You know what I mean. Tatyana, you may be able to contact the spirit world and call out to them, but you know they don’t always cooperate. I can help you with that. I know everyone in this coven, darling. And I can put you in touch with some dead folk who knew the Ryder twins.”
I thought about it for a while, well aware that Oberon could hear my thought process. He could separate himself from that and give me some privacy, but, at that moment, it was in his best interests to listen. He was trying to convince me to let him stay.
“Can you reach out to them soon?” I asked.
He smiled. “Yes. It will take some time, though. Maybe a day or two. They’re holed up somewhere in the veil. I’ll have to put the word out for their wispy butts to find me. But I guarantee you they will come, and they will cooperate with you, because of me. I swear. All you have to do is let me stay here for a little while longer. That’s all.”
A minute passed in grueling silence as I measured the pros and cons. I had to maintain control of the situation. I’d never had a spirit stay with me for so long, but I had enough confidence in my mental strength. I couldn’t expel him on my own, but Santana had been trained for situations like this. She could take me down, tie me up, and use an ancient Roman exorcism to drive Oberon out, if needed. Until then, I could take this ride and maybe get to the Ryder twins sooner rather than later.
“You’ll stay out of my mind,” I said.
He nodded, visibly excited. “Absolutely. You’ll have your privacy, at all times. I’ll just be here, in the background, enjoying the senses of touch, smell, hearing, and taste again… Ahhh! I can’t wait to feel coffee on my tongue!” He chuckled, then switched back to his serious mode. He was making it hard for me to be angry at him. Even in death, Oberon Marx could be quite charming. “And I’ll lend you my strength, should you need it.”
“I call the shots, at all times. Do we have an agreement?”
“Yes. Absolutely. You’re in charge, Tatyana.”
“Okay… You can stay. Just don’t make me regret this,” I replied.
I wasn’t comfortable with this decision, but Oberon did have a point. If the Ryder twins were planning something big and bad, I needed to do my part and gather as much intel as possible. By whatever means necessary.
“You won’t regret it. I promise,” Oberon said, beaming like the morning sun. “I’ll reach out to the spirits today. I’ll find your Ryder links and bring them to you.”
I nodded once. “Let’s keep this between us, though. I’ll avoid mirrors, so my crew doesn’t spot you.”
“I get it. I’ll be discreet,” he replied.
Spirits had tried to take over my body before. It never ended well for them—or for me, either. They always drained the energy out of me, knocking me out for hours on end. Oberon felt different, though. He fueled me. It was a fascinating type of symbiosis, one I was interested in studying further, now that I had that chance.
I also knew Santana and Dylan would be the first to object.
But if I could do anything to help catch the Ryder twins and stop them from poisoning the minds of other magicals, I was ready to do it. Even if it meant bending my Kolduny ethics.
Seventeen
Harley
After the Reading, I made my way to the banquet hall. It was breakfast time, and I was dying for a cup of hot coffee. The lack of sleep from the previous night was callously reminding me that I needed a lot of caffeine to get through the day.
However, the knowledge that I wasn’t in fact a Mediocre put a huge grin on my face. Of course, the magicals I passed by along the way didn’t know that and probably thought I’d lost my marbles, but it didn’t matter. I’m not a Mediocre. Suck it, haters!
But something else was on my mind, too—besides the Dempsey Suppressor and the risks of its extraction via surgery. I’d used the dreamcatcher last night, and I’d gotten a better look at Isadora Merlin inside one of my earliest memories. I had a clear picture of her in my head. The long, undulating black hair, the sky-blue eyes that mirrored mine and my father’s, the stern look on her face, and the mild furrow of her slim eyebrows… I wondered whether she was still alive, or whether Katherine Shipton or some other vicious magical had gotten to her.
Alton didn’t know much about Isadora, but the one thing he could tell me with absolute certainty was that she was hated by a lot of criminal witches and warlocks. It turned out, my Merlin auntie had put away a lot of baddies in Purgatory, back in the day.
I couldn’t help but grin as I walked into the banquet hall, eager to share the news of my faux Mediocrity with the rest of my crew. I came to a sudden halt when I found Santana, Tatyana, Astrid, Raffe, and Wade at the same side of a table with Garrett. Poe and the others on his old team were on the opposite end, scowling at my people. That sight was confusing, to say the least, and I doubted that Wade and Garrett had somehow gotten past their differences over the course of one night.
Nevertheless, my head felt heavy, so I loaded up on coffee first, then went to our side of the table, giving both Wade and Garrett a questioning look. No one on the Rag Team seemed particularly happy that Garrett was there. He was sporting a smug grin, complete with his signature dimples.
“What’s up, fellas?” I asked, my voice stuck on a higher pitch than usual.
I glanced around the table. Astrid was confused. Santana was irritated. Raffe, as always, was an absolute mess for me to read, and Tatyana was on edge. There was something slightly different about her, but I couldn’t tell what, exactly, since Garrett was an obvious disruptor for everyone’s emotions. Wade was nearing the boiling point, while Garrett… well, was Garrett. Unreadable but clearly pleased.
“Is that mocha?” he asked, nodding at my mug.
I shook my head. “Nah, latte. I’m having plenty of these babies today, so I’m thinning them out with milk,” I replied. “So, what brings you to our end of the table, Garrett?”