Fighting My Demons

Another secret

Chapter 9

The Practitioners

I was still replaying the bathroom incident in my head when my father called.

He never calls during school hours. Not once in all the years since he left. So when his name appeared on my screen I stepped away from the corridor and answered immediately, my heart already doing something uncomfortable in my chest.

"Dad?"

"Becky." His voice was low and careful, the way it gets when he is saying something he has rehearsed. "Where are you right now?"

"School. What is wrong?"

"Are you alone?"

I looked around and moved further down the empty corridor. "Yes. Dad, you are scaring me. What is going on?"

"What I am about to tell you is important and I need you to listen without interrupting me."

I pressed the phone harder against my ear.

He told me to meet him. Not at home, not anywhere familiar. A specific bench by the river two streets from the school, the one near the old stone bridge where nobody really goes during school hours. He said to come alone and to tell no one.

I bunked my last two classes without a second thought.

He was already there when I arrived, standing with his back to me, facing the water. His hands were clasped behind him and his legs were slightly apart, the posture of a man bracing himself for something. He looked older than the last time I had seen him. Thinner too.

"Dad."

He turned. The relief on his face when he saw me was so raw it almost undid me.

We hugged briefly, then he stepped back and looked at me with an expression I had never seen on him before. Not quite fear. Something older and heavier than fear.

"Sit down, Becky."

"Just tell me."

He nodded slowly.

"You know I have been keeping an eye on things since I left. I told you it was for work. That was partially true." He paused. "What I did not tell you is what the work is."

"Dad—"

"There is a group," he said. "They have been operating for a very long time, longer than either of us has been alive. They call themselves the Practitioners."

The word landed strangely. I had never heard it before and yet something about it made my skin prickle.

"They began as a movement," he continued, "built around a particular way of living, a particular set of beliefs. In the beginning it was a choice. People joined willingly and lived by their own rules, separate from the rest of society. But somewhere along the way the leadership changed and the movement changed with it. It stopped being about choice. It became about control."

He turned back to the river briefly, then faced me again.

"They started bringing people in without consent. Targeting vulnerable women mostly. Drawing them in slowly, isolating them from their families, making them dependent. And once a person was in deep enough, getting out became almost impossible."

I thought about my mother. The revolving door of women. The way she had changed so gradually over the years that I had almost not noticed until the person I remembered was barely recognisable.

"Mum," I said quietly.

My father's expression confirmed it before he even opened his mouth.

"Keep an eye on your mother for me, Becky."

My mouth went dry. "What do you mean? What has she got to do with this?"

He moved slightly, repositioning himself to face the river again, his jaw set.

"Your mother is a Practitioner. One of the last descendants of the original inner circle." He let that settle for a moment before continuing. "During what they call the Great Purge, decades ago, the group went to war internally. Factions broke off. There was violence. Many members were killed, some to punish them, some to protect the outside world from what they were planning. The survivors were given a choice. Submit to a binding arrangement or be eliminated."

"What kind of arrangement?"

"Marriage. To a man. Bear children. Live quietly. Renounce all outward activity." He looked at me. "That is how your mother and I ended up together. That is how you were born."

The world tilted slightly beneath my feet.

Everything I thought I had understood about my parents, their relationship, why he left, why she was the way she was, rearranged itself into a pattern I had never seen coming.

"So you married her to protect her," I said slowly.

"And to watch her," he said. "I was placed by people who have been monitoring the Practitioners for years. When I left, it was because my cover was at risk. Not because I stopped caring about you. Never that."

I was quiet for a long moment.

"What are they planning now?" I asked. "You would not be telling me any of this unless something was happening."

He looked at me with something close to pride, which under the circumstances felt deeply strange.

"The group has been growing again quietly for years. New leadership. Younger recruits. They are no longer content to live in the shadows." He paused. "They are preparing for what they call the Restoration. A return to full power. And part of that ritual—" He stopped.

"Dad. What is part of it?"

"Sacrifice," he said simply. "The women who were bound by arrangement during the Purge. The ones who were spared through marriage. The new leadership considers them traitors. Their lives are being called in."

I could not speak.

"Your mother may not even know it yet," he said. "Or she may know and be trying to prevent it. I cannot tell you which. That is why I need you to watch her. Pay attention to who comes to the house. Who she speaks to. Any change in her behaviour."

"Dad, this cannot be real."

"Becky." His voice was very quiet. "The girl you met at school today. Vivian. What do you know about her?"

I stared at him.

"How do you know about Vivian?"

"What happened in that bathroom was not random," he said. "She was not acting on impulse. She was testing you. Assessing whether you were a candidate."

The video on my phone suddenly felt like it was burning through my pocket.

"She tried to—"

"I know." He nodded once. "You handled it well. But Becky, listen to me carefully. Do not confront her. Do not let her know what you know. Not yet."

"I recorded it," I said before I could stop myself. "My phone was recording the whole time. I have everything on video."

For the first time since I had arrived, something shifted in his expression. Not quite a smile. More like the look of a man who has just been handed an unexpected advantage.

"Keep that video safe," he said. "Do not show it to anyone yet. Not even your friend Boma."

"Boma." I looked at him. "Does she have anything to do with this?"

He was quiet for just a fraction too long.

"Keep an eye on her too," he said carefully. "Not because she is in danger from us. Because she may already be closer to the truth than any of us realised."

I wanted to ask more. I had a hundred questions lined up, each one pressing against the next, but he was already stepping back, glancing over his shoulder with the practiced wariness of someone who had been looking over his shoulder for years.

"Dad, wait—"

"Through the communication channel. You know how to reach me." He squeezed my shoulder once. "Be careful, Becky. Trust your instincts. And protect yourself first."

I turned for just a second to look at the river.

When I turned back, he was gone.

I stood by the water for a long time after that, the phone heavy in my pocket, my father's words settling over me like sediment.

My mother. A Practitioner. Bound by arrangement. Possibly marked for sacrifice by people who considered her a traitor to their cause.

Vivian. Not just a spoiled, entitled girl with too much power and too little restraint. A recruiter. A scout. Someone operating with intention inside those school walls.

And Boma, my almost-friend with the beautiful soul and the secrets she carried so carefully, somehow already threading closer to the centre of all of this without even knowing what she was walking toward.

I looked at the video one more time, locked my phone and put it back in my pocket.

Then I walked back toward the school to collect my things and go home.

I had a mother to watch.