Page 39 of Her Dreadful Will
The other members of the coven were already busy drawing sigils on each other’s skin, and now Soleil understood the purpose of the black markers Achan had told her to bring. She pulled the pack out of her bag and tossed it to Angelou, who ripped it open immediately and extracted a marker.
“I can do your back for you,” Angelou said. “Which symbols do you want?”
Soleil shimmied out of her jeans, trying not to watch Achan inking the symbol for Vitality on his lower abdomen, right above the waistband of his shorts. He happened to look up before she could tear her gaze away, and his eyes were living green fire in the white stone of his face.
Stone and ink and fire.
Soleil dragged her attention back to Angelou. “Um... Which sigils would you suggest?”
“Achan,” called Angelou. “Which symbols should I use for Soleil?”
Oh god, he was walking over. Soleil fought the urge to curl into herself, to let her hair fall around her face. Instead she stood tall, her hips canted and her shoulders back.
“I’ll do hers,” he said, taking the marker from Angelou.
“M-kay.” With a not-so-subtle wink at Soleil, Angelou spun away, her steps already deviating into a dance rhythm.
“Turn, please,” said Achan, with a slow blink of his dark lashes.
Soleil didn’t move. “If I let you do this, you have to answer one of my questions right now.”
“Not our deal, but fine.”
She turned her back to him. There was a breathless moment of scintillating tension before the tip of the marker pressed against her spine, between her shoulder blades. “We’ll do the symbol for Light first,” he said, and she felt the branching lines drawn cool and wet on her skin. His fingers brushed her back as he wrote, raising a constellation of goosebumps.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
“A little.”
“You’ll warm up once we start dancing. I’ll make this quick, so you’d better ask your question now.”
“Why did you come here? Why this town?”
“How didyouchoose this town?” he countered.
“Not fair. You can’t answer my question with a question. Cheater.”
“No, I’m serious. How’d you pick this place? You had specific parameters, right? Let me guess—small population, plenty of sunlight and good weather, lots of plant life, a nature preserve and a major water source nearby, and most importantly, no witch currently in residence? Plus a liking for the weirdness of the name, yeah?”
Soleil started to shrug, but he pressed a palm to her shoulder. “Stay still. I’m drawing Spirit.” The marker swept in a long line, like an arrow, intersected by another wavy line. “I’m just saying—is it so strange to assume that I might have had the same criteria? That I chose this place the same way you did?”
“But you knew I was here.”
“When I registered my post-graduate location, the Institute informed me of your presence, yes. But you had just moved here—”
“—and you thought you could uproot me, and take this place for yourself.”
“I’m not trying to uproot you. I thought maybe we could be friends.”
Okay, that wasn’t the response she expected. “Oh.”
“Before I met Delaney and Lindsey, I never had any friends who were witches. Not in person, anyway—online at the Institute, sure.”
“So you attended the Institute?”
“As do most witches of our caliber. I assume you did as well.”
“Yes.”
