Page 76 of The Rebel Witch

I turned and sure enough, the door had vanished, and I was now alone in a sacred witch’s space with a house. “What do you want from me? Companionship?”

“Is that so much to ask?”

“I don’t think I’m good company these days.” It was time to figure out what was happening here and how I got my ass out of it. “Besides, he might not be able to find the door, but I assure you he’ll start chopping the walls apart if he doesn’t find me soon.”

She frowned my way. “Well, that would be rude of him. Fine. I did want to do you a favor. I know what you’re looking for, and you can skip the night market. They wouldn’t tell you anything anyway. They’re far too scared of her to give away her secrets.”

Now I was interested. “Who?”

“The demoness who’s trying to kill Lady Sloane before she can give birth to her son,” the woman said gravely.

“I thought the murder cat was a mistake.”

“No, you didn’t.” She seemed to study me for a moment. “You knew it was about her because she brings chaos wherever she goes.”

I didn’t really like the sound of that. There were reasons Kelsey got caught in trouble. “She’s a Hunter. It’s her nature. She was put on the Earth plane to protect it. That means putting herself in shitty positions over and over again.”

Kelsey didn’t get to say “nah, I’ll sit this one out,” when trouble happened. She couldn’t skip an apocalypse.

“That isn’t how you’ve thought about her before. At night when you dream, you send them out,” she explained. “What you see when you dream, well, I can sense the echoes of your screams.”

A chill she hadn’t created went through me. Well, her words created it, but we weren’t playing her game anymore. “You can sense my dreams?”

She gestured to the collar. “Normally, no. Normally you would have some well-placed mental walls, I suspect, but she took those down, too. Well, that’s what demonic ladies do. They ensure their survival and the survival of their house above all others. I rather thought she might be different. Are you her servant?”

The question had my spine straightening. “Of course not. I serve Myrddin Emrys. I am the Hunter’s captive.”

Who was pretty much allowed full run of the place and who she was trusting to work with Evan. She’d pretty happily sold me off to Casey, though. I could blame her for that. And for not letting me go when I lost a fight with her where I was trying to haul her back to my house and then reprogram her so we could be a happy fucking family.

I wasn’t sure where my newfound sense of logic and fairness was coming from. Maybe it was my old sense overriding the conditioning I’d received.

Conditioning. Why would that word pop into my head? It wasn’t conditioning. It was an education. I had been raised with humans. What did I know about being a witch? What did I know about witches since I spent all my time with hunters and vampires and the Fae?

That was the conditioning.

Sure, years and years of friendship was conditioning, and two years of beatings and pain and misery was the education part of my existence.

“Her servant. Her prisoner. It’s kind of all the same down here. We’re forced to work for those considered above us. We’re nothing to them. I’ve sheltered the Sloanes for millennia, but the lord of the house cannot even sense me. Tix refuses to acknowledge me. If you wish to get in their bad graces, tell them you’ve met me. They will do whatever it takes to keep us apart.”

I could feel the gentle whisper of persuasion. She wanted to be my friend, to be my helper. Wouldn’t I like that, too?

It oddly moved me not at all. My brain was full of logic and reason, all of which told me this woman…thing…whatever, wanted something from me, and she was going to try to use persuasion to get it. But she’d also told me she would help me. “You said you might be able to get this collar off me. But I don’t see how, so I should probably go.”

“Oh, I can do it.” Her eyes had gone dark, that gentle persuasion fleeing in an instant. Now I could feel her will on my skin. “If I want you out of that collar, you’ll be out of it.”

“And what do I have to do to make that happen?”

She stepped back, her arms crossing over her chest. “Nothing yet, though I doubt you’ll have a problem with what I’ll request of you. You see, I’m tired of being trapped in this house. When I’m not in this room, I’m noncorporeal. But I have a plan. I’ve worked on a spell that will allow me to travel with another being.”

I knew exactly what she meant, and fuck that. “I’m not letting you possess me.”

“If not you, then someone else,” the woman insisted. “Come on, Olivia. I can get you out of that collar in a day or two.”

“You said it would be difficult.”

“But not impossible. You’ll leave if the collar comes off, right? You can teleport.”

She was starting to make sense. “Of course, and I can take someone with me. Maybe even two. If you can find a ride that’s not a member of my party, I’ll take you. But you can’t keep the body. Should we have a contract?”

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