Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 85029 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 425(@200wpm)___ 340(@250wpm)___ 283(@300wpm)
I stop. Inhale. Then turn to him again. “She’s here?”
“Not here. But close by.” He pulls out his phone, taps the screen, and then takes a deep breath. I can hear it ring just once. Then Zusi’s voice. “Is she there?”
My heart hurts so bad in this moment, I just want to cry. She betrayed me. They all betrayed me. But it’s Zusi’s deception that hurts, not the Guild’s and not Tristin’s. I trusted her with my life and she sent me to the vampire to be food.
“Can I talk to her?” Zusi says. It’s not on speaker, so this is just a low, tinny sound coming from Tristin’s hand.
He offers me the phone, but I shake my head. “I don’t have anything to say to her.”
“Syrsee!” Zusi is talking louder now. “You have to listen to me. I didn’t know. They didn’t tell us anything. I would’ve never, ever sent you to that town if I had known. That’s why they didn’t tell me.”
“I’m not having this discussion over the phone.” I’m talking to Tristin when I say this. “If Zusi wants to explain herself, she will do it to my face.”
Then I cross the reception room, sit down in a tufted chair made out of leather so soft it feels like butter, and sigh as I fold my arms across my chest in defiance.
Tristin puts the phone back up to his ear. “I’ll call you back.” Then he ends the call without waiting for Zusi’s response.
He looks at the room for a moment, trying to figure out where to sit, I think. There are no chairs, just two couches on opposite sides of the room. It’s not an intimate set-up—the distance between the two couches is ten feet, at least. It’s not meant to encourage conversation between Guild members as they wait for their pamper sessions. It’s meant to separate them. Give them space.
So his choices are to sit next to me or take the couch across the room.
He takes the couch across the room.
Part of me knows that this is just Tristin. He’s… kind of a cold guy. Not in any way touchy-feely. And I could accept that as the reason he doesn’t want to sit next to me, but I don’t. I think he chooses the couch across the room because he doesn’t want to get too close because I’m really not in the mood to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Once seated he leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and propping his chin up with his hands. Then he just stares at me.
“What?” I snap.
“I understand how you feel.”
“Don’t patronize me, Tristin. You have no idea how I feel.”
“You’re wrong. Do you think you’re the only one who was ever betrayed by the Guild?”
I scoff and shrug. “Probably not. But this is about me. Not everyone else.”
“So you don’t want to hear my story?”
“What story? You were a privileged Guild kid, everyone knows that.”
“They do not know that because I was not a privileged Guild kid. I was on scholarship, just like Zusi. Just like you.”
“Just like me? You’re crazy. You’re nothing like me. Being too poor to afford Guild School tuition isn’t even close to being a Black Witch.”
“That’s not how the scholarships work, Syrsee. Scholarships are for outsiders.”
“And I guess you’re gonna tell me you’re one of those now, huh? Save it, Tristin. You’re a Guardian. I was a glorified librarian. I was never allowed into the classes that Zusi took.”
“Zusi, sure. But I’m not Zusi. Zusi’s family is Guild. They were outsiders because she is the first in her family to be a Guardian. They are poor—dirt poor, actually. I’ve met them. I’ve seen how they live. But they do have some Guild blood in them. It’s all very mixed…” He sighs. “Anyway. I don’t come from the Guild. I come from the Obscurati.”
As soon as this word comes out of his mouth I’m back in the purple mist of the wooded clearing with Paul as he tried to explain what would happen to me.
“My promise is that you and Ryet can be together. And the two of you can have a baby, Syrsee. I’ll show you how it can be done. This baby would be the new breed of Black witch. And trust me when I tell you this, the Guild will want her. They will be girls. And there is a good reason to take them to the Guild. Because the Guild will do everything in their power to protect them from the Obscurati.”
The Obscurati, he said, were his bosses.
“You are the new mother of all demons. You are the dark now too, Syrsee. And from here… we rule the world.”
“What does that even mean?” I ask Tristin. “Who are these Obscurati people? Where are they?”
“They’re… everywhere. Well, except for America.”