This Coven Won't Break - Isabel Sterling Page 0,60
don’t emerge from the safety of the bed or ask to go with him. I don’t know what he’s going to do or how he’ll stay safe if the Hunters come back. It’s not that I don’t care—of course I care—but I can’t stomach the stress or the worry. Can’t let myself entertain the thought that he’ll be anything other than okay.
Maybe Veronica had the right idea. Maybe I should run away and let someone else deal with all of this. Let the fate of the Clans rest on someone else’s shoulders. Someone like Cal and Archer and Elder Keating. Someone who knows what the fuck they’re doing.
Someone who isn’t me.
When Cal comes back, there’s a hint of smoke on his clothes that neither of us acknowledges, but he’s not alone. This time, Veronica is with him. She kicks off her shoes and climbs into bed, wrapping me in her embrace. Her touch carries the support of the entire coven, and in that moment of perfect love and perfect trust, I shatter. My defenses shred into a thousand tiny pieces, and I cry until I can’t breathe.
She holds me until every last tear is wrung from my body, leaving me aching and raw and fragile. I must fall asleep, because when I open my eyes, Veronica is kneeling beside the bed.
“We have to leave.” Her voice is soft but demanding, giving me no room to negotiate. “I’m coming with you. Let’s go.”
Veronica drags me out of bed, and I find Cal waiting by the door, all my things already packed in my suitcase. Cal hands his keys to V so we can wait in the car while he checks us out of our rooms.
And then we’re on the road, heading back to Salem.
“How did this happen?” Veronica asks when we’re stuck in traffic near Albany. She’s sitting in the back of the car with me, and though it’s not strictly safe, she’s letting me lie across the seat with my head nestled on the sweater in her lap. She plays with my hair, brushing it back out of my face. The soothing gesture reminds me so much of her mother. Mrs. Matthews does the same thing whenever a coven kid is sick, and it makes me miss my own mom so much it physically hurts.
I can’t believe I said such awful things to her before I left.
“I don’t know.” Cal sounds as exhausted as I am, energy drained from too many feelings and too much horror and just Too Much. “The Hunters shouldn’t have known anything about him or our trip. Unless David said something, I have no idea.”
“What if he did?” Veronica straightens in her seat, forcing me to sit up, too. “Hannah said you were recruiting him because he’s working on the science behind magic. What if he helped the Hunters create the drug?”
“Why would he—”
“The funding,” I say, cutting Cal off. “David was upset with the Council for not funding his research. What if he turned to the Hunters for help?”
Cal has to slam on his brakes when the car in front of us makes a sudden stop. “If that’s true, why kill him now?”
“A loose end?” I guess. “Or maybe my phone call made David change his mind? He might regret creating the drug now that he knows what the Hunters are doing with it.”
My suggestion hangs in the air as cars on either side inch past our window.
“I really don’t want to believe a Caster did this to us . . .” Cal eases into the middle lane, which is moving a fraction faster than ours. “At least when we get back to Salem, we’ll be safe.”
A familiar chill ruins the calm he tried to provide. I run the countdown in my head. “For the next seven days anyway.”
“Seven days?” Veronica asks. “Why only a week?”
“That’s when jury selection starts.” Now that I’m sitting up, I buckle my seat belt and stare out the window. “Elder Keating needs to lower the barrier for the trial. We can’t risk someone seeing Hunters trapped outside the town’s border.”
My covenmate tenses, her knuckles turning white. “But if there’s no barrier . . .”
“We’ll be sitting ducks inside the courthouse. Yeah. I know.” I lean my head against the window. The last bit of fight drains away. It’s too much. Hunters and potential betrayals and all the Council’s hopes tied up in three journals of notes that neither Cal nor Archer can read.