Page 37 of Blood Witch

For one split second, I gave into my panic and wondered if that wouldn’t be a good name for a coven, eh?

The Circulatory Coven.

But I pushed the ridiculous thought outside my head.

“You’ve led quite a life, haven’t you Mabel Grace Marlow?” Headmistress Armstrong murmured.

She smiled sadly and looked down. That was when I saw she had something in her hand. A photograph.

“How do you know my middle name?”

“It’s probably on your paperwork,” Rio mumbled.

“It’s not,” I hissed, shaking my head.

“I know a lot about you. You were born on a Friday at the stroke of midnight on October 30th. It was raining, a downpour, actually. Your poor mother didn’t make it. How that crushed me. She’d been so thrilled when she learned you were a girl. Oh, how Madeleine cried when she found out. She was always so beautiful, you know? Even when she cried,” Headmistress Armstrong said, and I could tell she was lost in the memory.

“You knew my mother?” I asked, taking a step closer to the woman I did not know at all.

“You favored her at birth, but my goodness, Mabel, you look like your father now,” she whispered, her finger brushing across the faded photo.

“My mother? Please, what do you know?” I pressed.

“Well, a lot. You see, Madeleine was my sister.”

The entire room seemed to close in on me as Headmistress Armstrong revealed a truth I had never expected.

How could I?

Something built inside me then, something raw and primal. I batted it back down. Needing to finish this before I explored whatever made meme.Whatever circumstances had brought me to Westwood, I was there now. What I did with that was up to me.

“Your sister?” I shook my head, wiping at the tears streaking my face, knowing they were blood.

“Yes, just like your father now, aren’t you,” she murmured and shook her head sadly.

“Who is he? Who is my father?”

“Gabriel Marlow was the most dashing man I had ever laid eyes on. But that was the thing, you see, he was not a man—”

“He was a wizard?” I asked and felt Fin move closer, his hand capturing mine.

I held on, stemming my tears and wiping the remnants of others off my hot cheeks. Thank the Goddess for Fin. I needed his strength because this was hard. No, trust did not come easy for me, but Fin gave his and asked for nothing. The warmth, the glow, that sense of rightness I felt with him happened with no other person.

“You got me,” he whispered, and I felt it down to my marrow. I had him, and he had me. I returned the steady pressure of his hold on my hand and faced the truth of my past head on.

“Tell me more,” I demanded of the headmistress.

“Haven’t you asked yourself why you crave blood, Mabel Grace?” Armstrong asked.

“Because I am a b-blood witch,” I stuttered, ashamed of what I was.

“No, no, sweet girl,” Armstrong said and came around the desk. “You aren’t a blood witch! Not the way modern witches have used that term. You are something else, Mabel Grace. A true wonder, indeed.Youare the fruit of a love forbidden by both your mother’s kind and your father’s.Youare the impossible,” she whispered.

“But what do you mean? Forbidden love? Impossible? What am I, damn it?”

“Headmistress, is it true?” Fin interrupted, those eyes that I adored blazing silver as he begged the question.

“It is. I know that now,” she said, handing me the photo she’d been staring at.

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