She knows things, est amage, he adds silently.
Aw man. I can feel a stress headache already brewing.
Fine, disregard my last command. Just be gentle with her.
As soon as I give the order, Memnon’s magic wraps around the witch’s midsection and gently drags her to a nearby couch.
“Stay,” he orders. His magic flows out of him at the command and restrains her against the seat.
Goddess, but I hate that spell of his. I’m also trying not to hyperventilate at the fact that I’m now allowing Memnon to manhandle people on my behalf. Considering we’re somewhere inside the Henbane Coven’s main buildings, this witch is likely an instructor.
My misgivings overwhelm me. I’m about to call the sorcerer off when he speaks again.
“I think you’ll be very interested to hear what Lauren here has to say.”
The woman, who looks to be in her midthirties, glances between each of us, her light brown hair disheveled and her eyes frightened. More of her magic sifts out of her as she fights Memnon’s hold. It’s an exercise in futility.
“Let me go,” she demands.
Memnon folds his arms and tilts his head. “Tell her”—he nods to me—“what you told me, then maybe I will.”
This is so wrong. This isn’t what I meant at all when I asked for Memnon’s help.
Is it not? he responds. I think you needed an excuse to be unleashed, and I’m it.
The witch in front of us interrupts our silent conversation. “I—I was just down in the tunnels restocking it with supplies.”
My brow furrows and I look from Memnon to her. “Why does that room need to be stocked with food?”
The witch, Lauren, shifts her attention to me, and there is a flicker of recognition. Unfortunately, even with my memories back, I don’t recognize her.
“We always keep the tunnels stocked with f-food. In c-case of emergencies.”
Memnon laughs low. “That’s not the reason you gave when I peered in your mind.”
She opens her mouth, but when she tries to speak, nothing comes out. Her shoulders curl inward a little. “I can’t talk about it.”
I frown. That doesn’t exactly scream innocent to me.
“Please,” she says to me, her eyes beseeching, “let me go. You know this is wrong.”
Yeah, this is definitely wrong, I say down my bond.
“Tell her why you cannot talk about it,” Memnon says.
“I c-cannot talk about that either.”
Memnon looks over at me.
Is that supposed to mean something?
Doesn’t that sound like a magical compulsion? he says. Because it is.
My eyebrows rise as Memnon says to Lauren, “Where’s your phone?”
The witch’s eyes dart briefly to a purse sitting nearby. Memnon walks over to it as the witch fights her restraints.
He withdraws her phone and holds it up to her. “Unlock the device.”
Before she can resist, her phone recognizes her face and unlocks on its own. The sorcerer glances down at it, then taps on a few buttons. He takes a picture of something, taps a few more buttons, then I hear the phone in his pocket buzz.
Tears begin to slip down the woman’s cheeks as Memnon returns her phone to her purse. She looks first to my mate, then to me. “You don’t understand,” she says softly. “Thank the Goddess you don’t.”
“But I do understand,” Memnon says dangerously, moving back over to her. “You were there that night Selene was attacked, weren’t you? You helped attack her.”
She shakes her head. “I had no choice.”
The sorcerer looks pityingly at her. “I doubt you did. And you leave me with no choice now either.”
Memnon steps into Lauren’s space and grasps the sides of her head. The woman begins struggling anew.
“Memnon,” I say, a note of alarm in my voice, “you will not hurt her.”
He inclines his head toward me, but that’s the only sign he gives that he’s heard my command.
To Lauren, he says, “You never saw us, and we are not here now. You are going to grab your things and go home.”
He releases the witch and backs up.
Lauren stands, looking somewhat baffled to find herself here. Her eyes sweep across the room, passing over me and Memnon without really seeing us. Her gaze catches on the still-exposed doorway to the persecution tunnels, but only for a moment. She turns, grabs her purse, and heads out the door she tried to escape from minutes ago.
I wait until the sound of her footsteps fade completely.
There’s a bitter taste at the back of my throat. Something about this is off—more off than having my mate pry secrets out of witches.
“I have bad news for you, est amage,” Memnon says, still staring at the door.
I glance his way. “What is it?”
“That woman?” He jerks his head in the direction Lauren departed. “She’s bonded.”
CHAPTER 13
My head snaps to him so quickly. “What?” I must’ve misheard him. The possibility that merely hours after Memnon and I formed a bond, we run into a witch with a bond of her own…
“She answers to a woman who goes by the name of Lia. She has a weekly call with this Lia where she’s forced to divulge information she has about various witches.” Memnon’s eyes grow cold. “Lauren is a recruiter.”
My breath catches in my throat. “What do you mean by that?”
“She uses her position as an instructor here to scout for witches this Lia might like.” After a moment, he adds, “She was there the night of the spell circle. I watched”—his voice breaks off as he spits the word out like a curse—“her chase you in her memories. She tried to kill you several times.”
I can’t breathe. I must’ve misheard him. “She’s—she’s an instructor,” I try to argue. I don’t want to believe that the instructors here could be in on this.
Memnon continues. “When Lauren finds witches who are promising, she passes along their information to Lia, and in some cases, she arranges for them to either participate in a spell circle or be subjected to it.”
I stare at Memnon’s mouth. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he says softly, “those women get bonded.”
I press my lips together.
“There’s another spell circle already planned for the upcoming new moon,” he says. “It didn’t look like they’d decided on a location, but they still mean to hold one.”
Suddenly, Memnon’s aggressive tactics don’t seem so overblown. Not in light of what he discovered.
“Selene,” he says, searching my face, “that’s not the worst part.”
There’s more?
His gaze is steady on mine. “This Lia woman is looking for you.”
The two of us step out of the teacher’s lounge and into the halls of Cauldron Hall. Dazedly, I note the doors of various classrooms and faculty offices on either side of us, but my mind is lingering on what we just learned.
These bindings are systemic things. I figured as much, but to hear it confirmed, and that an instructor here at Henbane Coven is involved in it? Suddenly, all the witches here feel marked. Me, Sybil, the witch speaking with her cardinal familiar down the hall, the group of women lurking in front of the massive bubbling cauldron that dominates the main entryway.