Page 60 of Unbound

A few weeks after Claire’s sixteenth birthday, the therapist documents what she calls several “unexplained incidents.” I know exactly what that means. Claire was using magic. Accidentally. Magic she didn’t even know she possessed. Around her seventeenth birthday, she tried to run away twice. She had an after-school job and was caught trying to buy a bus ticket to Connecticut.

“What’s in Ohio?” I ask, looking at my brothers wondering how Claire ended up there.

“I don’t know,” Antonio says. “Maybe a lab. A safe house. Or maybe they just picked somewhere random enough that no one would look too closely.”

“Yeah. That would make sense.”

I keep going through the notes. Nothing else stands out until the night Claire disappeared three weeks ago. She slipped out after dark. And just like the police report said, there was an issue with both the power and the backup generator for almost ten minutes. The note says Claire used the blackout to conceal her escape.

I stare at the words.

“What if she didn’t cause the blackout?”

Everyone looks at me.

“What if someone else did?” The thought settles heavily in my stomach. “Did Claire actually run away?” I swallow. “Or was she taken?” My phone rings.

The sound startles me enough that I jerk my head up.

“It’s Marie.” I answer and immediately put her on speaker. “Hey. Please tell me you found something.”

“Oh, honey,” Marie says. There’s something in her voice that makes my stomach drop. “I found some things. You might want to sit down for this.”

Chapter

Twenty-Two

“Is it that bad?” I rush out, my heart pounding in my chest.

“Not that good,” Marie replies. “And if I’m not on speakerphone now, you might want to put me on.”

“Oh, you are,” I say. “We’re all over here dying.”

“After you told me the demon’s name,” she begins, “I started digging. And honestly, it surprised me how little I could find on him.” I lean forward. “It bothered me. You know that feeling when something isn’t quite right and you can’t let it go?”

“Yeah. I’ve had that feeling many times.”

“Sometimes I don’t know what’s intuition and what’s just an OCD obsession,” she says. I understand that better than probably anyone else in this room. Trying to figure out the difference between anxiety and intuition has always been a challenge for me. “But I couldn’t let it go,” Marie continues. “I knew I was missing something.” She pauses. “Well, I found something.”

I suck in a breath and scoot toward the edge of the couch, lacing my fingers together as I wait for her to keep going.

“I was digging through the archives, looking through records of notable witches and warlocks throughout history. We used to teach a defensive magic course years ago, so I had to go through thousands of professors’ journals.”

She chuckles.

“Thank God for finder spells.”

“Seriously.”

“I found an old textbook printed almost seventy-five years ago. There’s an entire chapter about the Blackwood and Bellamy families.” My pulse jumps. “And yes, I’m bringing it to you,” she adds before I can ask. “I already know you’re going to want to read it.”

“Obviously.”

“It highlights some of the more noteworthy demons your families have imprisoned.” Her tone changes. “Your man Vaelric is in there.” I swallow. “Along with his conduit.”

“Conduit?” I echo.

“A demon can possess enormous power but still be limited in how that power can be used in the physical world,” Marie explains. “That’s why so many of them rely on human puppets or followers to carry out their work. That’s exactly what Vaelric did. Except his conduit wasn’t human.”