Page 45 of Bombshell

“How did you know I was here?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest.

One of his dark brows lifted and he shot me an incredulous look. “You’re my daughter and I felt your magic as you came in through the doors. I see you’ve mastered water magic finally. Good, that’s good.”

Then, as if it were any other day and Ihadn’tjust shown him the new magic I’d been struggling with for weeks, he turned and headed back into the depths of the library. “Come along, Euphemia, there’s lots to do.”

I hurried to catch up with him, pulling my messenger bag higher on my shoulder as I began pelting questions at him. “Why were you two talking about me? What’s a Guardian? What is the Source?”

“You should not have been eavesdropping,” Alexander scolded, ignoring my questions entirely. “Had Arsenio felt your magic the way I could, he would have ejected you from the mansion completely.”

I snorted and crossed my arms over my chest as we came to our usual study area. “Then how would he get me to be whatever this Guardian thing is?”

“You arenotgoing to be the Guardian, Effie, notever,” Alexander said so vehemently that I nearly flinched back away from him. There was more emotion on his face than I’d ever seen before as we stared at each other.

It was also one of the first times he’d ever called me by my nickname. When I’d come to live with him and told him the nickname that the sisters had given me, he’d outright refused to call me anything other than Euphemia, stating that that was the name he and my mother had given me and that was what he would use.

“Arsenio seems to think differently,” I pointed out stubbornly. “So why won’t you at least tell me what it is so thatIcan tell you what I am or am not going to be.”

Alexander sighed with frustration before glancing around the library, and clearly thinking about his earlier mistake of not securing the room before having a private conversation. “But not here.”

Before I could ask him what he meant, he began to chant in long, meandering Latin. The spell was easily recognizable: Alexander was casting a transportation spell on the both of us.

The world around me melted away and we were suddenly standing on a very familiar cliff.

In front of us stood a massive Ponderosa pine tree. The tree stood alone on the edge of the cliff and unlike the surroundingtrees, this tree was pale. The bark of the trunk was bone white, like all of the color had been leached out of it, and what should have been dark green leaves were more of a pale silver.

It also absolutely oozed magic.

This was the conduit of magic for the North Coast coven and was the site of the worst night of my life. Everyone called it the White Ponderosa, but I called it the only tree that had ever disliked me.

‘The tree won’t even give her magic,’the memory of one of the coven members shouting those words filled my mind as I stared balefully up at the tree.

Fifty years ago, a seventeen year old me had been standing in a similar spot waiting for my turn to commune with the magic that was my heritage—or supposed to be any way.

As the leader’s daughter I was supposed to go last and everyone had whispered all week about whether the tree would accept me.

On one hand, why wouldn’t it? It was a tree and I was a tree, or half a tree anyway.

But on the other hand I was also the biggest embarrassment the coven had seen for nearly a century. Untalented and useless.

When I’d touched the tree then, nothing had happened. I was rejected completely. An outsider in my coven, not even being able to access the most basic conduit of magic that we had.

Four weeks later, right after I turned eighteen, I ran away from home and eventually found my way to Dallan and the rest was history.

A sour feeling formed in the pit of my stomach. “Why are we here?” I asked Alexander as he reached out and pressed his palm to the trunk of the tree.

A warm glow flowed around his fingers and up his arm. When I was learning about coven conduits, everyone described it like recharging a magical battery, allowing the witch or wizard to do things that were beyond their usual capability.

“You asked me what the Source was,” Alexander said once the light finally faded.

“And the White Ponderosa is it?” I was completely confused. While the White Ponderosa was certainly powerful—it allowed Alexander’s coven to be one of the most powerful on this side of the United States—the way Arsenio talked about the Source made me think that it was even bigger than the tree in front of us.

“No, but like our conduit, the Source is a reservoir of some of the most potent magic that this world has to offer.”

As he spoke, the wind picked up around us and I could feel that same sizzle of magic that I’d felt last night standing on the patio at the country club. It tugged at my clothes and hair. It almost felt like it was trying to pull me in the direction of the magic, right off of the edge of the cliff.

Alexander’s dark blue eyes were on me as I frowned. “You felt that, right?”

I hesitated before nodding. “I did, but I just figured it’s another magic user reaching out for company.”

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