War of the Rose Covens

Chapter 2

Chapter 2I stood inside a small cabin by myself. Entering a metaphysical space, something I’d done a few times before, meant Mom’s power had forced us into a sort of duel. That alone made me cheer. Before I linked with Drew, I couldn’t have caused this. His power fed into mine like a battery, giving me enough to resist Mom.

She’d be furious when this ended, no matter what happened.

The cabin had a wide bed, big enough for three people, with green sheets. Living trees sculpted by magic formed the walls, though all the wood looked gray and brittle. Hundreds of dead leaves hung in curtains and covered the bed like sheets. The cabin had no windows and only one door. A single flimsy latch held the door shut.

Two sky blue tokens lay on the bed. One represented the aura link between Drew and me. I could tell without touching it. The other marked my coven allegiance. Since I’d never been in a metaphysical battle for my own mind, I’d never seen the old token, the one that had bound me to the Petal Society. This new one had a silver outline of a dragon burned into it.

My surroundings surprised me. Somehow, the place I’d stayed for the past week felt more like a home to me than the house where my family lived. Because I wouldn’t have conjured any other space than the one where my heart belonged.

Everyone there, a big family of people who cared about each other, accepted me as another daughter and sister. Except Drew, because he and I had a…complicated relationship due to the aura meshing. His girlfriend, Claire, and I got along well, which made things less weird.

The front door rattled. I threw my back against it to hold it shut. At some point, I needed to work on the lock. That pathetic piece of metal represented my passive defenses.

“Sophie?” The wood muffled Mom’s voice enough to let me know she wouldn’t hear me unless I wanted it or shouted. “Are you in there?”

Like an obedient little girl, I opened my mouth to answer. But I stopped before I said anything. She had no right to attack my link with Drew or to dissolve our coven. I’d made those choices for good reasons.

The door rattled again.

In this space, every action we took relied on two things—power and force of will. Whoever wanted something harder and had the magical reservoir to back it up would win. I had to want my links and privacy more than Mom wanted to enforce her will over me.

“Sophie, sweetie, this is for your own good. You don’t understand what you’ve done. These things have repercussions. You’ve made ripples that you can’t unmake. Without the coven, you’re unprotected.”

I wanted to listen to her. I wanted to believe she knew better. How many times had she told me as much? I needed supervision. I couldn’t do anything except the bare minimum. I’d turned out pathetic and useless, but no one else had, ever, in the entire history of the bloodline.

“Open the door, Sophie.”

So long as I kept my mouth shut, she might believe I had no control over this.

The door rattled again, this time harder. I braced my feet on the foot of the bed. If she broke in, not only would she break the links I’d forged on purpose, she’d see where I’d been staying for the past week. The explanation would take too much from me.

“Sophie, I’m giving you one last chance. Open this door right now or I’ll break it down.” Her stern voice goaded me to give up. Roll over and lie down, be a good girl, and let Mom do what she wants. “You know you can’t hold it against me. You don’t have enough power. You never have, and you never will. I don’t want to hurt you. If you make me, I will.”

I covered my face with both hands. Eventually, Mom would break through, and I couldn’t do anything about that.

“I take it the reunion is going poorly,” Drew said.

Opening my eyes, I snapped my head to the side and saw him standing beside me. Curly red hair framed a freckled face with black-rimmed glasses, like always. A black tattoo of roses covered the right side of his face. He grinned like he found the situation funny.

“Keep your voice down,” I said in a harsh whisper. “She can hear us.”

“Sorry.” He scanned the room. “Why are we here?”

“Mom wants to break the links between us. She thinks you’re a bad influence or something.”

Drew stared at me.

The door thumped hard enough to shove me. I rebounded and pressed my back against it again.

“Wait.” Drew leaned against the door with me. “This is your inner psyche? I’m inside your private mental sanctum thingy?”

I wanted to slap him for acting dumb, except he knew even less about how magic worked than I did. At least his presence gave me a backbone. Resisting Mom seemed easier with him by my side. “Yes. Mom is trying to get in so she can see everything and break the links. She thinks my connections to you are because I’m a stupid, lovesick teenager.”

“Someone breaking into your private mental sanctum thingy sounds bad.”

Thank you, Captain Obvious. “Yeah. It’s bad. It’ll hurt. And among other things, she’ll find out where I’ve been for the past week.” That ranked low on my list of priorities for things I didn’t want Mom to know, but I knew he’d latch onto it.

The door banged hard enough to shove us both an inch.

“Your defenses kind of suck.” Drew leaned past me to examine the latch. “I stand corrected. They really suck a lot. So, repel her for now, then we’re going to work on shoring up this space. Since I think repelling her will toss me out, my suggestion is that you leave the house as soon as possible afterward.”

“I can’t just leave my family. I came back for a reason.”

“If you stay, she’ll probably try to catch you off guard at some later point. Like in your sleep. This attack proves you can’t trust her until she respects you.”

His words hit home. Trust and respect—two things I’d never gotten from my family or coven. Drew gave me both, freely and without hesitation. So did Claire and the rest of the family I’d fallen into.

“Okay, but I’m not giving up on them.”

“That’s fine. Let’s focus on getting through this now and deal with the rest later.” He held up his hand.

I took his hand and squeezed it. “Do you know how to repel an attack on a sanctum? Because I don’t.”

“Not really.” He scanned the room again. “Is the door definitely the only way she can get in?”

“Yes. The door is a metaphor for gaining entry. Everything else is a metaphor for the anchor connecting my aura to me.”

“Because metaphysical stuff is always a metaphor. Right.” Drew pointed to the two stones. “And she wants to get those and destroy them, right?” When I nodded, he let go of me and the door to scoop up both stones and tuck them into his pocket. “That should make them harder to get if she somehow breaks through.”

I wanted to object because that didn’t make any sense. He couldn’t take the manifestation of my connection to him and hide it in his own psyche. Unless he could. Drew did seem to operate as an exception to every rule I knew about magic.

Whatever. “The next step is probably doing something to the door.”

Drew patted his pocket and rejoined me in blocking the door. “You told me that magic is about nurturing and life. Growing. That kind of thing. How do we use that here?”

The whole cabin shook. All the leaves fluttered and bounced with a dry, raspy crackle.

“Sophie!” Mom screamed. “You open this door right now or you’ll be sorry!”

“Every time I meet your mom, she’s just so nice and welcoming.”

I scowled. He smiled. Boys.

The door rattled so hard it made my teeth chatter. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the latch jiggle. I turned and gulped. Both screws holding the hook on the wall hung halfway out of the latch plate.

Resigned to failure, I sighed. “If she gets the door open, you should leave. I don’t want her to get those two tokens. I don’t even want her to see you here.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

It would. I knew in my heart it would.

The door bounced us again. One screw popped out of the latch plate. The other would only take one more solid blow.

Drew turned and shoved his shoulder against the door. “I’m trying to pour power into the door, to make it grow enough to wedge itself into the frame, but nothing is happening.”

“The warding on the house. It has to be constraining us.” I hung my head and rubbed my eyes.

“She’s going to get through.”

“Yeah.” And it would suck.

“I’ll get you out.”

“No.” I shook my head and wished I could let him rescue me. “She’ll be so much worse if you come and assault her wards. Just let me deal with this, okay?”

He laid a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “I don’t want to abandon you.”

“I know.” I couldn’t look him in the eye. “But you can’t rescue me from my family. I have to fix this, and you’ll hinder more than help.”

We held the door against another rattling assault.

Drew looked past me to the latch. “I’m sorry. When you need me, call.”

“You don’t have a phone.”

We gave each other weak smiles. He leaned close and kissed my cheek, then he disappeared.

The door slammed open. It threw me aside. My head cracked against the wall.