Page 55 of Familiar of the Witch

I frowned. ‘Everyone gets to go to the party but us,’ I complained to Bastion.

He studied me. ‘You want to gatecrash, Bambi?’

‘Do you know what? I really do.’

He flashed me a grin. ‘Then let’s go.’

Chapter 44

I had visions of piling through the door shouting ‘I object’ at the Council as if I were in some outdated legal drama, but as I approached Benji and David opened it for me. Their bodies were taut with tension and their eyes were glowing white.

‘I guess we’re expected,’ I muttered to Bastion, a frisson of unease shivering down my spine.

‘That’s a bummer. I really wanted to crash the party.’ He sounded disappointed.

‘You can smash something later,’ I promised.

‘Promises, promises,’ he teased with a wink. I felt heat rush in his veins and I belatedly realised that my comments could be misconstrued as some crass innuendo. Whoops. I dragged my mind back to the present before it could get too distracted. Now was not the time tobe flustered.

I had anticipated having to wheedle my way in front of the Coven Council; friendship or not, I hadn’t expected the golems to wave us through. I felt a prickle of unease but I overrode it. Ineededthat list; I needed to know who was a suspect in my Coven. My brain was a feverish whirl of possibilities and it was exhausting. I marched in; I’d deal with any fallout later.

The Coven Council was in session. I was glad to see that nobody was wearing a cowl, though I was surprised to see that only female Council members were there. Where were the men?

When I’d been in this room before, it was poorly lit and ominous; now bright lights were shining almost too brightly. The red carpet had been rolled away to reveal the ancient pentagram. It had been carved painstakingly into the stone flooring. Although its ridges were still clear, it wasn’t those that caught my eye but the plethora of runes painted into it. They were dark against the stone but I recognised the tang of blood in the air. Blood runes. They weren’t necessarily dark magic, not if the blood had been given willingly, but all the same they were powerful magic.

The room hummed with power rather like the auction house had done, but this power didn’t make my teeth hurt. Instead it lifted me up, making me almost giddy andbuoyant. I could be swept along by that power so easily if I let it take me. I struggled against it; I needed my wits about me.

Bastion walked next to me, lightly touching my hand, centring me and protecting me because he could feel that I was beguiled by the pull of the room.

The Mother and the Maiden flanked Willow. The three of them started to chant, calling in unison on the Goddess’s favour. My scalp prickled.

Swaying, Willow slowly stepped forward. Like Benji and David, her eyes were glowing with a soft white light. I felt another wave of power that wasn’t my own and the pull of dizzying magic distracted me again.

Willow turned to me and when she spoke her voice was somehowmore. ‘Come, child. It is your turn to serve.’ Her milky-white eyes drilled into me. I had seen eyes like that before when Abigay had communed with the Goddess, and I knew without a doubt that it was not Willow who was speaking to me in that moment. My heart had been galloping like a racehorse, but now it slowed and my breathing took on an unhurried pace. An unnatural calm took a hold of me. The moment hummed.

I took a step towards her but my knees buckled in the face of the overwhelming power that was radiating beforeme. Bastion was by my side in an instant, catching me before I fell. ‘As it should be, Protector,’ the Goddess said to Bastion, her tone approving. ‘Your life before hers.’

‘Yes,’ Bastion said simply, as if he wasn’t overwhelmed by the presence of a Goddess in our midst. She was the Goddess of the witches, not the griffins, but his tone was deferential; whether she washisdeity or not, he respected her power.

He helped me forward until I stopped before the Goddess. She smiled; it wasn’t Willow’s smile, even though it was Willow’s lips that curved upwards. The Goddess’s smile was like a ray of sunshine beaming on a perfect flower covered in dew.

I frowned. Those florid thoughts couldn’t possibly be mine.

A tinkling laugh sounded inside my head. ‘Won’t you let me have any fun, Amber DeLea?’ the Goddess asked. Her voice in my head was warm, kind and laced with a cheeky humour that made me smile despite myself. I smiled like the moon caressing the dark lands on a winter’s night—

Stop it,I thought at her firmly.

Her laughter sounded in my head again. ‘As you wish, child of mine.’She sobered.‘Come then, Amber, and be blessed.’

Because it seemed right, I curtsied to her. When I rose, she reached out and lifted Abigay’s pendant that I’d worn around my neck since her death. The Goddess held it in her elegant fingers. ‘Such a beautiful pendant,’ she murmured. ‘But it has always been more than a symbol. It is only right that I restore it to its full potential. As it once was, so shall it be.’

Magic pulsed in the room and a bright flash like a solar flare temporarily blinded me. When I opened my eyes, she had laid the pendant against my skin. It was almost unbearably hot. ‘Reach up, clasp it with your fingersand know your sisters,’ she murmured.

I had a moment of fear. I’d only had one sister; her name was Becky and she’d tried to kill me. I didn’t want sisterspluraland, if I had to have them, I definitely didn’t want to know them.

‘Not her,’ the Goddess said softly. ‘You need not fear her any longer. She faces her own judgement.’

I jutted my chin. ‘I don’t fear her,’ I stated boldly. I still had nightmares about the bomb that had killed her, though. My bomb.

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