Lauren stands, looking somewhat baffled to find herself here. Her eyes sweep across the room, passing over me and Memnon without really seeing us. Her gaze catches on the still-exposed doorway to the persecution tunnels, but only for a moment. She turns, grabs her purse, and heads out the door she tried to escape from minutes ago.

I wait until the sound of her footsteps fade completely.

There’s a bitter taste at the back of my throat. Something about this is off—more off than having my mate pry secrets out of witches.

“I have bad news for you, est amage,” Memnon says, still staring at the door.

I glance his way. “What is it?”

“That woman?” He jerks his head in the direction Lauren departed. “She’s bonded.”

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER 13

My head snaps to him so quickly. “What?” I must’ve misheard him. The possibility that merely hours after Memnon and I formed a bond, we run into a witch with a bond of her own…

“She answers to a woman who goes by the name of Lia. She has a weekly call with this Lia where she’s forced to divulge information she has about various witches.” Memnon’s eyes grow cold. “Lauren is a recruiter.”

My breath catches in my throat. “What do you mean by that?”

“She uses her position as an instructor here to scout for witches this Lia might like.” After a moment, he adds, “She was there the night of the spell circle. I watched”—his voice breaks off as he spits the word out like a curse—“her chase you in her memories. She tried to kill you several times.”

I can’t breathe. I must’ve misheard him. “She’s—she’s an instructor,” I try to argue. I don’t want to believe that the instructors here could be in on this.

Memnon continues. “When Lauren finds witches who are promising, she passes along their information to Lia, and in some cases, she arranges for them to either participate in a spell circle or be subjected to it.”

I stare at Memnon’s mouth. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” he says softly, “those women get bonded.”

I press my lips together.

“There’s another spell circle already planned for the upcoming new moon,” he says. “It didn’t look like they’d decided on a location, but they still mean to hold one.”

Suddenly, Memnon’s aggressive tactics don’t seem so overblown. Not in light of what he discovered.

“Selene,” he says, searching my face, “that’s not the worst part.”

There’s more?

His gaze is steady on mine. “This Lia woman is looking for you.”

The two of us step out of the teacher’s lounge and into the halls of Cauldron Hall. Dazedly, I note the doors of various classrooms and faculty offices on either side of us, but my mind is lingering on what we just learned.

These bindings are systemic things. I figured as much, but to hear it confirmed, and that an instructor here at Henbane Coven is involved in it? Suddenly, all the witches here feel marked. Me, Sybil, the witch speaking with her cardinal familiar down the hall, the group of women lurking in front of the massive bubbling cauldron that dominates the main entryway.

Memnon pulls out his phone and dials someone. He places the phone to his ear, but I can feel his eyes on me as we make our way out of the building. I can hear an automated voice placidly ask Memnon to leave a message.

The sorcerer curses and hangs up. “No one answered Lia’s number,” he says, tucking his phone in his pocket. “I’ll try to call it again later.”

But why bother? It’s likely no one will answer. Or maybe someone will. Then what? We threaten them over the phone? Tell them what they’re doing is bad and wrong? Continue to call them until they block us? It’s likely a burner phone or a temporary number or … or …

I am halfway down the marble steps outside Cauldron Hall when I decide to sit down there and then.

Memnon pauses ahead of me, then glances back.

“Selene?” he asks, concerned.

I shake my head, trying to catch my breath, though I haven’t been running. I don’t know why I’m so winded.

I hear his heavy, deliberate footfalls back up the steps. When he gets to my side, he pauses. Then he proceeds to step up next to me and sit down heavily. His leg bumps against mine.

“Please don’t.”

Don’t what? He asks down our bond.

Don’t act concerned. I press my palms to my eyes.

Despite the command, Memnon places a hand on my back. When I don’t immediately knock it off, he pulls me into his side.

I guess his concern is genuine. The realization sours my stomach, even as I lean against him, taking shameful comfort in the warm, solid feel of him.

Because of you, I have to clean up this mess. It’s such a blatant lie; Memnon might’ve taken part in moving the bodies of murdered witches, but he had nothing to do with this.

We’re going to clean it up together, he says, not bothering to call me out on the lie.

My annoyance spikes…along with a traitorous warmth that loosens the tightness in my chest.

Memnon glances out across the main lawn and toward the coven’s main entrance and the thick forest beyond.

You told me not to hurt Lauren, he says. If you lift the order, I can⁠—

If I lift the order, I finish for him, you’ll kill her.

He’s quiet. He knows as much.

After a moment, he says, If I don’t stop her, more witches will get bonded against their will.

I pinch my eyes shut. I know.

Killing her would be convenient, but I can’t just order her death. That takes a sort of coldness that I don’t have.

I shake my head. We need to find this Lia and stop her.

She’s the puppet master pulling the strings here. It doesn’t help that she’s apparently taken a keen interest in me.

We’ll find her, Memnon promises, I was able to get her number off Lauren’s phone. I’ll see what I can do with it. Memnon’s gaze flicks down to me. But be warned, whoever Lia is, if she is truly forcing bonds on these witches and making them recruit more victims, she is probably highly evil and very dangerous.

What he means is that eventually, he will likely have to kill her. I’m glad he doesn’t voice it, because I don’t think I would stop him, and I’m not ready to deal with that awful truth on top of everything else.

Instead, I say, There’s no one worse than you.

His eyes twinkle menacingly.

Est amage, I’m counting on that.

Eventually, we make it back to my room.

Nero has also returned and has ditched his cat bed to instead sleep sprawled on my comforter, letting out adorable little huffs that I think are cat snores.

At least one of us is at peace. I’m still turning over the fact that an instructor at Henbane is luring witches to the same spell circles I was lured to. That this instructor fought me as I tried to escape with Cara, the shifter girl.

I feel Memnon’s eyes on me, and I turn to look back at him. He lingers in the doorway, a lock of his black hair hanging over his eye. Gone is the aggressive, angry man I’ve gotten so used to over the last several weeks. I can still sense his violence—that’s as much a part of him as anything else—but it’s tucked away at the moment.

Instead, I sense the sharp ache of his love through our bond. Somewhere during our evening, his eyes lost their haunted look. But now the hollowness is back.

There is a huge part of me that wants to reach out and touch him just to remove that expression from his face.

Do you want to discuss the murders now? my mate asks.

I’m tired to my bones. And hungry.

“Another night.” I’ll pick Memnon’s brain on this when I’m sharp enough to ask the right questions.