Page 8 of Unbound

I see Mabel’s lips twitch into a smile at my reference to this place as home.

“Then you can leave,” Marie says. “It’s not a prison. You can come and go as you please. Well, I suppose you’d need a witch to open the door for you to get back in, but once you’re there, you’re free to leave whenever you want.” She pauses. “It’s against coven rules to give the exact location of our door to anyone outside the coven, but once we’re nearby, you can send a pin with your approximate location if that makes you feel better.”

I sit back, fiddling with the drawstring on my sweatpants. My lips part, but I can’t form a coherent sentence. My whole life, I’ve dreamed of this day. Dreamed of someone coming to rescue me, more or less, and bringing me home to what, in my head, was simply a house full of witches.

Not some magical place I didn’t even know existed.

“Wren,” Antonio says, looking at me like I’ve lost my damn mind. “You can’t seriously be considering this.”

“Why not?” I ask, looking from him to Leo to Mabel. “Things have gotten so messy because I don’t know who I am.”

“Things got messy because bad people did bad things,” Mabel counters softly. She leans back and inhales, holding the breath for a second before slowly letting it out. It’s such a human thing to do, and there’s such a gentleness about her that it’s easy to forget Mabel has been dead for a century. “But I know how painful it is not to know who you are,” she continues. “You could have everything in life, but without a sense of identity, you can still feel quite lost.”

“Yeah,” I say, not really sure how to agree or disagree with that. Because on one hand, I feel like I know who I am. I like the person I’ve become.

I’ve seen some shit. I’ve lived through terrible things, and I’ve had people do terrible things to me, and I haven’t let it make me bitter. I haven’t let it cause me to give up or convince me that the world is full of horrible people. So maybe that part of me could only get stronger if I understood exactly where I came from.

But there’s another side of me I don’t even know how to use or tap into. And wondering what if wondering who I am and who I could be…I think it would haunt me forever unless I tried.

They say you regret the things you don’t do more than the things you did.

And if there’s one thing about me I know for sure, it’s that that’s true.

“I’ll go,” I say, and in that moment, my mind is completely made up.

“Wren,” Antonio says, trying to reason with me. “That’s insane.”

“Maybe it is.” I shake my head. “Or maybe this is exactly what I need. I’m a Blackwood witch. And if I can let this demon out, I can put him away. But we already know I can’t do it alone.”

Mabel’s shoulders hunch forward as she wraps her arms around herself. Her face falls, and I know she’s only sad because I’m right.

“You won’t be gone forever, will you?” she asks.

I look at Marie. “I assumed it would be, like, a couple-hours kind of thing.”

“If that’s what you’d like,” Marie says. “Shall we?”

“Should I change?” I ask, looking down at myself and suddenly feeling underdressed.

“You look fine to me,” she says. “But do whatever makes you comfortable.”

“Okay.”

I get to my feet, ignoring the looks of shock and disappointment on my brothers’ faces. “Wait. What are you supposed to wear to one of these things?”

Marie chuckles. “Anything you like. When we have formal coven gatherings, we tend to dress traditionally, though there are plenty of members in our coven who are challenging that. But the Covenstead itself is simply a safe place to go. Many witches even live there.”

I blink, taken aback all over again. What the hell is this place?

Is this a terrible idea?

It might be.

But it probably isn’t the worst one I’ve had all week.

“Give me five minutes,” I say, then hurry upstairs. I make it as far as my closet before Leo comes into the room.

“Don’t try to talk me out of this,” I tell him as I stare at my rows of clothes. I have absolutely no idea what to wear. To be honest, what I already have on is more my go-to outfit than anything else. Maybe I’ll stay like this and just quickly dry my hair and pull it back into a braid. Should I wear makeup? Definitely mascara. I shake my head. None of that matters.