Coven of Witches

Bound to demons by blood.

Bound to demons by heart.

It doesn't matter where Emory is, the darkness will find and claim her.

***

"You invited a demon hunter?" Mrs. Marlene's voice is an octave too high than normal. Emory pauses, her hands tight around her grimoire as she holds it to her chest. She was heading to her room until she heard the coven's housetaker screeching from inside Head Priestess Promilias office. The door is cracked open, the light from her desk lamp bleeding out into the hall.

Emory can make out the shadow of Mrs. Marlene from where she stands.

A demon hunter?! Emory's eyes widen and blood rushes to her heart. Demon hunters are the pinnicale of dignity, dedication, and pride for their country. They keep the demons at bay, protecting the people of their dimension with their deadly skills of weaponry. They get bestowed with fame, riches, and anything else imaginable. It's admirable, but an incredibly deadly job.

Emory tiptoes closer to the door, tucks her curtain of long silver hair behind her ear and lean forward to focus on hearing them talk. If anyone happens to catch her, she can just wave her grimoire around and say she wanted Priestess Promilias opinion on something regarding her faemiliar summoning.

"Lower your voice." Priestess Promilia snaps quietly. Emory can just imagine her cold blue stare, the deep narrow of her thin grey eyebrows. "Unless you want the rest of the witches to know?"

Her eyebrows raise, oh? What don't they want us to know? She bites her lip at the thought of knowing something the rest of her selfish coven sisters didn't. Really, she should turn on her heel and walk back to her bedroom and pretend she didn't hear a thing. Emory doesn't do that though. They're talking about a demon hunter!

"My apologies, ma'am."

Emory has never heard Mrs. Marlene sound so resigned, and she has to smother her snicker behind her hand. She's always been a hard lady, with strict rules and even worse punishments. There was one time when Emory ate a single small carrot from the gardens as she brought a large batch in for the dinner Mrs. Marlene was making that night, and when she saw Emory, she whipped her hand with a thin stick fifteen times. Emory had welts for three days and a few lines of bruises along her skin. She made sure to never touch a carrot again. It may be childish of her, but every time she looks at a carrot, she's only reminded of the purple and yellow marks across the back of her hand.

"You've seen our other options." Priestess Promilia sighs with resignation, "It'll take care of the girls."

"But you're also about to sell one out-" Mrs. Marlene almost sounds distressed, as she lowers her voice, and Emory frown as she angles her head, straining to hear more.

"Emory!"

She flinches, her grimoire dropping with a loud smack against the wooden floorboards. She stares wide eyed at her coven sister, Mavis, who also happens to be Priestess Promilias' daughter.

"What are you doing up here?" She narrows her brown eyes. She stops at the top of the stairs and crosses her arms over her chest. The ends of her brown hair curls around her shoulders. There's exactly twelve feet between them, same as every other time they're forced to interact with each other. Now, that is. It wasn't always like this. "The office door is closed, which means mother doesn't wish to be disturbed. Whatever you're scwabbling about now, can wait."

Emory cringes at her choice of words. If she wants to be technical about it, Emory can say 'No, the door is not closed,' and gesture at the crack in the office door, and possibly be punished by the High Priestess herself for being a smartass. Instead, Emory bends down to pick up her grimoire, walks a wide berth around Mavis as a show that she knows what it is Mavis is doing by keeping her distance, and hurries back to her room before both Priestess Promilia and Mrs. Marlene steps out to see her.

As her bedroom door closes behind her, she sets her book down onto the bedside table and begins to pace.

Pushing away the thought of a demon hunter eventually visiting the coven, despite how much she wants to fan-girl and giggle like a fool, Emory focuses on what she's about to do in less than an hour, that will change her meek, cursed witch-self into someone who's. . . Not so lonely? She shakes her head, that's no way to think about a faemiliar. It's all a partnership, a contract if she wants to be literal about it. The fae witches summon may be connected to them by spirit, but it should be regarded as a mutually beneficial, lifelong exchange. Besides, they are fae. Fae can be tricky when they want to be.

Emory's hands grow clammy and she wipes them down her black leggings. She feels like she should be more excited than she is nervous, but -

"Boo!"

Emory jumps and spins around, silver hair whipping over her shoulder, to find her best friend, Walker, leaning in through her bedroom window. His crimson eyes framed with thick black lashes blink up at her and she can't help herself but to admire them. The red scales surrounding his lids crinkle as he grins, flashing her his sharp white teeth. For a moment Emory loses herself, taking a second too long to admire the sharpness of his jaw, the way the rubies lining his ears twinkle, complementing the darkness of his eyes and she has to remind herself to blink. Emory remembers those earrings, he told her a grand story of how he broke into a wealthy widows home and stole a few expensive pieces here and there thinking she wouldn't miss them with everything else she had.

Only she had two large devil dogs as pets and his ass had teeth marks for months.