Page 27 of Soul of a Witch

“You say your mother let that first sacrifice go,” she said, speaking slowly. “But yesterday, I felt a great ripple of energy in the air. Something changed. The God stirred.”

Nodding, I had to take a moment to compose myself before I said, “Juniper had a brother, Marcus. They killed him yesterday. The first sacrifice is done.”

Grief for Marcus, for my mother, my grandmother, even for myself, all hit me at once. My chest ached and all I could do was cover my face with my hands, hiding the hot tears pouring down my cheeks.

“I’m so sorry, my dear.” Her voice was gentle and a soft breeze whispered over my back. It took me back suddenly, to being eight years old again, running along the lakeshore to Grandma’s waiting arms. One of the few times I was allowed to see her. “You’ve already seen too much of this wicked world, but it will get far more wicked than this.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I said, using my sleeve to wipe the tears away. I was a mess, but what did it matter? “I want to stop them. I must stop my father but I don’t know how. If I just hide here, in this place…”

“This house cannot protect you forever,” she said. “There will be nowhere to hide if the Deep One is freed, particularly for you. Its eyes have been on you since the day you were born. It wants you, Everly. It wants your power, your physical form. I warned your mother of this, but she refused to see it until…well, until you had been born and she realized your father was only interested in having another tool, not another daughter. He used your mother to make himself appear more powerful, wielding her strength like it was his own. You cannot allow him to do the same to you.”

“What can I do?” I said desperately, sitting forward in my chair and gripping the radio. “I barely have any power in me. I don’t know how to fight this.”

A long silence passed.

“Barely any power?” she repeated, her tone incredulous. “Barely any…My girl, you could not possibly be more wrong. The power in you is by far greater than any witch I’ve known.”

“That’s not possible. I can barely summon a spark.” I swallowed hard, sitting back in shame. Perhaps she had expected me to be strong, maybe she’d thought my mother had imparted more of her knowledge to me. “I’m weak.”

“Bullshit!”

I jumped in surprise at the volume of her curse.

“You are untrained, not weak! And you’ve been kept this way intentionally because Kent fears you. He fears what you can become. He lives in terror of the threat you pose to everything he has built, and he will stop at nothing to keep you silent and subservient.” Her voice was viciously proud as she said, “But no more. He does not hold the power here, you do. And you have the tools to prove it.”

“What tools?” I said. Any moment, surely, she would realize she was mistaken. I wasn’t strong, I wasn’t someone my father feared. I was a cowardly girl whose greatest power was to run away rather than help a man being murdered.

“This house,” she said. “And everything in it. Callum, first and foremost, will be your greatest ally.”

“A demon,” I said. “But demons are —”

“Selfish, conniving, cruel, wicked, self-indulgent creatures,” she said. “Exactly like we humans are. Yet you still find great goodness among humans, don’t you? I called Callum many years ago and he answered. He has waited for you ever since.”

“He’s never met me. He’s never known me, so why would he wait for me? Why would he help me?”

“Some questions, I fear, are not mine to answer,” she said. “But I will explain what I can, as much as I understand. Callum’s sigil was among a collection of demonic names gathered throughout the years by the founding witch of our coven, Sybil Laverne.”

With a gasp, I nearly shot straight out of my seat. My knee banged the table, the radio tipped backward, and I scrambled to right everything as I rushed out, “Sybil! Yes! Mama told me her name. She said Sybil knows the way.”

“Sybil held many secrets indeed,” Grandma said. “She passed away when I was still a young witch myself, so your mother never met her. But Sybil was a prolific demonologist, a talented diviner, and extremely skilled in the ways of spell craft.” She paused for a long moment, before saying, “When you were born, I had visions of the many paths of life you could choose to take. I witnessed horrors to end all horrors. I saw glimpses of our world remade, overtaken by a God whose evil we cannot even begin to fathom.” Her voice shook, and for the first time, I realized my grandmother was afraid. “I saw you, but your mind and soul were gone. Forced to dance like a puppet on a string, your magic warped and stolen. I knew I did not have many years left, but I had to do something. I had to take drastic measures to change the course of fate.”

She drew in a deep breath, and I leaned closer to the radio, eager to hear more.

“In Sybil’s writing, I found an archdemon’s sigil. She wrote that it belonged to the oldest demon she had ever encountered, and she had met him purely by chance, here on Earth. She claimed he had come to Earth in pursuit of fallen gods, slaughtering them wherever he found them. He made no attempt to hide his sigil from her, and instead, laughed at the threat of ever being forcibly summoned. She wrote that he was far too powerful to be commanded. Summoning him should never be attempted.”

“But you attempted it,” I said. “Why?”

“I didn’t summon him,” she said. “I called to him, he answered, and I was fortunately able to persuade him not to kill me. He admitted that I was not alone in attempting to change fate. In fact, he had been chasing a thread of fate he glimpsed many hundreds of years ago: a vision he once had.”

“A vision? Can demons be diviners, like witches can?”

She paused for a moment. “I have never heard of it. Nor had Callum. What he saw…even now, I struggle to believe it.”

“What was it?” I blurted. Excitement filled me as I hung on to her every word.

“He had a vision of a witch. A witch who knew his name and called herself Everly Laverne.”

Of all the things she could have said, that was not what I expected. “Callum had a vision…of me?”

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