The Coven (Coven of Bones, #1)(33)

I couldn’t push past my father’s teachings, his reminders that men preferred women to be seen and not heard. To seduce the headmaster, I’d need to be quiet and demure instead of brazen. I felt fairly certain I’d fucked that seven ways to Hell and there would be no backtracking now.

Besides, I’d seen the way the other witches watched him during class. My attraction to him, as much as I wanted to deny it existed, wasn’t unusual. Even those who had grown up in the Coven and learned to hate his kind still felt the pull to him.

His Vessel was unusually handsome, even in comparison to the others. The Vessels were all unnaturally beautiful, but his was just somehow… more.

That was how I’d found myself in the library after class under the guise of studying. The curved windows in front of me were covered with the fine mist of rain, making the woods outside the school appear hazy and distant. The room was too dark to be practical for reading, but I preferred the calm, muted atmosphere of this library to the fluorescent lights at the public school I’d attended as a child. The library walls were covered in wooden shelves. Books far older than I lined them and were organized in a fashion that probably only made sense to the woman in charge of the space. It had embarrassed me to need to ask her for books on what I was looking for, with no digital search function to enable me to seek out a topic.

But she’d helped, giving me a small stack of books and telling me to just leave them on the desk when I was finished.

Iban had offered to join me, to keep me company as I tried to “catch up” on material that I already knew objectively. Nothing could replace the fact that I hadn’t grown up in the culture of this place in the same way the others had, but I knew my facts.

The male witch had only sighed at me sadly, his expression holding no traces of anger I’d come to expect from the men I’d turned down. Somehow, the disappointed set to his features was worse, reminding me of the impossibility of what I had set out to do. I hadn’t felt a single twinge from the bones since arriving at Hollow’s Grove, and I wondered if they were even here.

They existed. I knew that from the magic that pulsed within me occasionally, hovering just out of reach. I couldn’t grasp it and knew I wouldn’t be able to until I fulfilled the destiny I’d been chosen for and held the bones in my hand.

I flipped through the book in front of me, determined to find any trace of answers. It should have been the location of the bones that I searched for, a registry of any type that had followed the massacre. Instead, I buried my face in the lore of the Vessels, trying to determine why Gray had so much clout within his kind.

The words on the page were an echo of what my mother had taught me, that the Vessels had adopted new names upon entering the Vessels created for them. Nobody knew their true identities, whether the demons the Hecate line had given flesh were lesser demons or even if one of the seven demon lords walked amongst us. There were rumors that the first of the Vessels had been one of them, perhaps sent by the devil himself to supervise his new colony of worshipers on earth.

But in all the centuries since the witches and Vessels had come together to form Crystal Hollow, I could find very little record of actual worship. Whatever the purpose of the experiment with witches and Vessels, it hadn’t made itself known yet, at least not to me.

I wanted to know, but I knew it didn’t matter to me. It couldn’t, not when finding those bones had to be my priority. But Gray’s thinly veiled words rang in my head as I stared at the next page, not seeing the words written in front of me any longer. His kind knew how to be patient.

But patient for what?

“Miss Madizza,” a stern voice said.

I spun, slamming the book shut and draping my forearm over the cover so he couldn’t see the title. The last thing I needed was for the arrogant fuck to know I was spending my free time researching him.

“I’d like a word.”

I picked up the book, shoving it into the pack that hung over the back of my chair. The strap went across my chest as I hoisted it up onto my shoulder, creating that line through my cleavage that I detested more than anything.

Seat belt boobs were hardly attractive.

Gray’s eyes dropped to it for the briefest moment, his stare remaining entirely impassive before it returned to mine. There wasn’t a single flicker of even remote interest, and I squashed the irritation that made me feel. The way it made me feel less somehow, when what men thought of me rarely mattered.

I didn’t need them, not when I could achieve anything I wanted on my own. They were nothing but a distraction from my purpose, except he was that purpose. He was the only one I couldn’t allow to distance himself from me.

Fuck.

“So speak,” I said, pursing my lips as I shrugged.

I hadn’t meant for the irritation to slip through, wanting to retreat back to the more reserved version of myself I’d been taught to be. But the other witches were all cooperative. They did as they were told and paid attention in class, hanging on his every word as if it was a lifeline.

Maybe the key to standing out against that backdrop was to be the mouthy thing who pissed him off. He was standing in the library seeking me out, after all. Not them.

Even if he seemed entirely uninterested, I could work with having his attention on me for whatever reason. I couldn’t work with being ignored.

The librarian tutted from her corner, her glare settling on me as she didn’t dare to give it to the headmaster. He smiled slightly, turning and holding out an arm to gesture me forward.