Page 9 of Calling Quarters

They believed that eventually, they'd be saved again.

When I first read about it, I thought the second group of rats was foolish, and that the study hardly represented how far one would go if only they had hope—this elusive concept of waiting for someone else to save you.

Then, I grew up.

I witnessed people drown in their metaphorical buckets because there was nothing left to hold onto. I also witnessed people survive simply because they believed they could. They believed someone would come along and save them, or that they could save themselves.

Now, I sympathize with those rats. No one had ever reached their hands out to keep me from drowning. Yet, I felt this glimmer of hope that one day, someone will come along and pull me out of this hell. All I had to do until then was tread water.

Of course, that was an incredibly stupid mindset to have. No one was coming to save me. They weren't coming for any of us. As the coven’s Quarters,wewere the ones responsible for instilling hope. They trusted us to keep them protected and stop their magic from going too far.

If only they knew how powerless we truly were. How long we'd been treading water; waiting.

There were four of us born every generation. It was a requirement to produce at least one heir and continue the Quarter bloodlines. The gift was always passed on to the firstborn of each Quarter. It didn't matter if they were male or female, though the past four generations have all been male.

Each of us was homeschooled as we didn't need the standard education to fulfill the duties of the roles we were born into. Instead of Math and English being our core curriculum, we were taught how to master our gifts and eliminate the only threat against them: our Counters.

We were considered guardians of the Watchtower coven; each assigned a corner to protect and an elemental gift to use. As the Quarters of the west, my family drew magic from the water element.

It didn't mean much outside of us being able to tap into ancient powers and make sure everything was in order for our coven. We weren't superheroes or anything, saving the world with our imaginary superpowers.

Though, the rest of the town acted that way. In their attempts to offer the respect and honor that our fathers and grandfathers demanded, we've been isolated from the people we shared a home and coven with.

It left us no choice but to lean on each other.

We managed to create a bond between us more akin to brotherhood than anything else. No other generation of Quarters had stuck together the way we have, always too distracted with greed and competition.

We made it clear that we didn't want to be anything like them.

That was our first mistake.

I found that the best time to be in town was when the mayor held their monthly meetings. In the cooler months, they gathered in the community center and spent the hour bickering back and forth about their menial issues. I’d take advantage of the peaceful opportunity to walk the downtown streets without being gawked at or treated like I was diseased.

Unfortunately for me, they held their meetings in the town’s center during the warmer months, so walking through town wasn’t much of an option. Still, I found myself taking the empty back streets just to get out of the house.

This time, an unfamiliar girl sat across from me, outside the hotel run by the Grangers. She was staring down at the phone in her palm with pinched eyebrows and pursed lips, irritated at whatever was on the tiny screen. Her golden locks were pulled to one side of her shoulder and curtained her face.

Beacon Grove attracted a lot of tourists, especially in the fall months. They were easy to spot and ignore, always too engrossed in soaking up the town’s history to bother any of the locals. But something about this one felt off to me. I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I stood on the sidewalk and openly gaped at her for a good sixty seconds before she sensed my gaze and lifted her head. We locked eyes for a moment, and it felt as if the air had been stolen from my lungs. The feeling was so intense, I was the first to break eye contact just to recover my breath.

Whoever this girl was, she was trouble.

I didn't have time to investigate it any further, though. Tabitha and her granddaughter, Blaire came walking down the street then, the rest of the town following closely behind. With one last look in the strange girl's direction, I stepped off the curb and walked in the middle of the street to avoid the oncoming crowd.

---

“There's nothing special about her,” Rhyse muttered when Mystery Girl walked away.

I asked them to meet me downtown and see the anomaly for themselves, though they appeared unaffected. Lux and Enzo nodded their agreement, turning back toward the Alden estates to continue discussing our plans for Mabon in private.

Most of the town would be celebrating at the harvest festival held in the town's center each year, but we were never allowed to join in on the fun. As the Quarters and families of the current and former High Priests and Priestesses, it was our responsibility to guard our four corners and keep the coven safe, especially when so much careless magic would be cast.

The problem was that each year, our gifts dimmed. It took too much effort to do what was once an easy task for our ancestors. Our fathers and grandfathers were able to support the coven with little thought, even joining in on the festivities now and again.

Now, it was us four in charge and we could no longer handle the burden. We'd managed to hobble by the past few years, barely making it work with what little magic we had to offer. This time, our fathers planned to step in and help and we were doing all we could to avoid it.

Help from them always came at a cost.

---