This Coven Won't Break - Isabel Sterling Page 0,90
me borrow his phone to call Mom. She didn’t answer the unknown number, but I left a message and she called back in less than a minute. Hearing her voice, hearing her alive and simultaneously furious and relieved, was enough to soothe the last of the tension from my heart. I doze off and on the entire hour back to Salem.
“Are we taking him to the police station or the jail?” I ask as we near the town line.
Though he doesn’t say anything, Benton tenses.
“Neither,” Archer says, surprising me. “Without the three Hunters we lost, he’s our last connection to the Order.” He doesn’t say it’s my fault that Riley and the others got away, but he doesn’t have to. It was. “He could be useful.”
I glance at Benton in the rearview. He looks just as uneasy with the plan as I feel, but I imagine for opposite reasons.
When we finally pull into the driveway at my house, the lights are all on inside. The curtains rustle as Archer cuts the engine, and then Mom comes tearing out the front door. She squeezes the breath from my lungs. “I will never, ever let you go.” She tightens the hug. “You are never leaving this house again.”
Archer clears his throat. “We should go inside.”
Mom releases me, but when she spots Benton, the air around us crackles with cold. “What is he doing here?”
“Inside,” Archer says again, more command than question now. He steers Benton toward the house without waiting for an answer. When Mom notices the injuries on Archer’s face and hands, she sucks in a worried breath and ushers me after them.
In the bright, artificial light of the house, Benton looks even worse than I feel. It’s hard to imagine he was ever the smiling boy I knew in school. Harder still to picture his currently bruised and swollen face contorted with disgust like the night he tried to burn me alive. I can’t believe he protected us. I can’t believe he shot Riley to help us get away.
He looks like he can’t believe it, either.
I try to squash any softness I feel toward him, but my stupid heart constricts as he moves gingerly through the house. His ribs are likely bruised from where Riley hit him, and his hands haven’t stopped shaking.
Mom reluctantly, and after several thinly veiled threats against Benton, leaves us in the kitchen to talk to Archer in the hall. I pull two cups from the cupboard, fill them with water, and pass one to Benton.
“Thanks.” We drink our water, and the air grows heavy with unsaid things. I wonder if he remembers all the times we laughed and joked in art class. If he remembers how much we cared for each other before we learned that we stood on opposite sides of a deadly feud.
I drain my cup and reach for the faucet to fill it again. While my back is turned, his voice catches me around the chest.
“I’m sorry about my parents. They’re . . . I don’t know. They’ve changed so much since this summer.” He runs his free hand through his hair and finishes the water.
Anger hardens around my heart. “But you said you’d still drug us if you could, right? You’d still strip away our magic if you had the choice.”
“That doesn’t mean I want you dead.”
“It doesn’t make it right, either.”
My raised tone draws Mom and Archer back into the kitchen. The room crackles with cold, but it’s Mom manipulating the air, not me. Every time she looks at Benton, the temperature dips another degree.
“The Elders will be here soon,” Archer announces, looking between the pair of us. “Cal, the New York Casters, and Alice, too. We’ll figure out how the Hunters made it through the barrier, and then we’ll plan our next move.”
“You should clean up,” Mom says to me. “Archer and I will secure him downstairs.” She still won’t say Benton’s name, and I don’t blame her. It’s a miracle she’s even letting him breathe right now, so I don’t say anything as they escort him to the basement.
When they’re gone, I grab fresh clothes from my bedroom and take the hottest shower I can stand. The water pelts against my skin, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I swear the water bleeds energy back into my body. After I dress, I slip back into my room to handle my hair and steal a few minutes to myself before I’m forced to relive everything that happened for the