Page 44 of Heart of a Witch
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Yes.”
Cas rolled his eyes. “Sounds convincing.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” I snapped. “Are you feeling overjoyed at seeing our sister’s murderer again?”
Alex pulled a silver hairbrush through my strands, pulling them up into a silky bun. “None of us are,” she answered for him. “We’re just focusing on the plan. He will suffer more.”
“I know.” I tried to keep the anger lacing my words at bay, but it was hard. It was my plan after all, and I was being treated as the loose cannon. “I’ll focus on seeing Elijah. He turned me away today, and I want to know why. I doubt he’ll even notice me in this curtain.”
Alex finished my hair, leaving a couple of strands on either side to frame my face. “It’s not that bad. You’ll blend in, which is a good thing, with the hunter watching.”
Cas grinned. “Besides, we’re not entirely certain you can even walk into the church without bursting into flames yet, so you may not even have to worry about the dress.”
“Says you.” I laughed. “Aren’t you seducing a priest’s wife?”
He picked a piece of lint from his gray vest and straightened his tailcoat. “I see it as I’m doing a service to their god and goddess. She is ever so bored with her life; I don’t think her husband services her in the bedroom at all.”
“You’re disgusting,” Alex said.
He rustled her hair, and she batted his hand away. “Sometimes you have to do what you got to do. At least I’ve made more progress than our dear sister.”
My mouth set into a hard line. “I’ll make it right.”
Cas sat on the end of my bed, shrugging away from the snakes’ cage. “You need to charm him, sister.”
I stood. “I can charm him fine.”
He stood too. “Fine, fine. Let’s go before we miss the start of the sermon. I for one am riveted to hear what the bastard has to say.”
I balled my fists at my sides. “Me too.”
Silence befell the room. Alex looked up, tears glossing her eyes. “I know we haven’t spoken much about her, and it’s easier to pretend sometimes that things are normal, but…”
I squeezed her shoulder. “We will avenge Ember. I promise. Everything we are doing is for her, and for our cousin.”
“And for every witch who’s been killed by him,” she said. “She would be proud of that.”
Cas shook his head. “We all know Ember wouldn’t like any of this. She’d want us to move on and forgive or whatever. She always was far better than us.”
I looked at Alex. “Not all of us.”
Alex shrugged. “No, he’s right, but it’s okay. She was the nicer of us, to Damian’s detriment. She may have forgiven them all, but I won’t. None of us will, and in a way, I’m glad she’s not here to see this—to see what our family has turned into.”
Cas placed his hand on hers. “We’re still a family.”
She looked from him to me, tight-lipped. “Barely. We don’t eat together anymore, unless it’s a plotting breakfast. We don’t do anything together, and I get it. I know why we’re here, but I miss it sometimes. Without her and Mama, it feels like we’re just three strangers trying to live together.”
Her words hit me like an arrow to the heart, but I didn’t dare show a flicker of pain, not when it could hurt her to see it. Instead, I looked at Cas, who only sighed. We’d let Alex down. “We’ll have dinner tonight, after church.”
Cas nodded. “I’ll even cook.”
She smiled. “I can make cookies for dessert.”
My stomach dipped. Ember was the one who made cookies. “Sounds good.”
Cas cleared this throat before opening the front door. “Once he’s dead, we can go back to normal. We’ll go back to Mother and build a new shop there. I can sell the one here.”
Alex nodded and I forced a small smile, but I didn’t agree. I couldn’t imagine anafter, not without our sister. Besides, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to get out of this alive. If it came to it and our plan turned on its head, I would be the one to put myself in the line of danger, to protect them, and there were a thousand things that could go wrong.
