Adelaide stared at the tray as Pelopia set it in front of her. “You think you will win me over with food?”
“I don’t have to win you over. You are a prisoner, remember,” Atarah said gently, offering her a kind smile. “Adelaide, you don’t have to trust or like us. We won’t pretend to trust you, either. However, we aren’t going to treat you like the witches did. You help us, and we will figure out how to help you without causing a war.”
I looked between Arsiein and Atarah. I now clearly saw the good vampire–bad vampire act they were putting on.
Adelaide wouldn’t fall for that, either.
“What’s your question?” Adelaide asked as she reached for the bread.
What? Really? Were mortals so stupid? She gave in over soft words and bread?
Atarah smiled at her before getting up and turning back around. The glance she gave Arsiein, signaling that she’d done her job, was lost on no one but the witch.
“When did your coven turn on you?” Arsiein asked her.
“The night Druella left Washington,” she said as she now grabbed the glass of milk, drinking a large gulp before adding. “Thanks to Druella’s vampire boyfriend exposing Jason in the museum. Apparently, they forgot or didn’t care that Simone works there. When she went to scrub the cameras, she caught the video of him exposing Jason.”
“What did they do that night?” Arsiein pressed, not at all caring.
“Brought me before the coven and…tried to cleanse me,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Cleanse you?” I asked, not understanding.
Her gaze snapped to me in anger. “They call it a cleansing, but it was torture. Whips of fire to the back. Forced to drink enchanting waters and listen to…well, lectures. They wanted to make me forgot him, and then they wanted to make me hate him and all vampires again.”
“Why didn’t they just kill you?” Arsiein frowned in confusion. “Witches who get involved with vampires are often killed as traitors.”
She smacked her lips and stuffed another bite in before answering. “Didn’t you hear? The Omeron Coven was attacked. Almost all of us are bound. Killing any witch, especially powerful witches who can still manage to use magic in the coven right now, would leave us—them weaker.”
“So, you escaped?” I asked.
“Yeah.” Again she drank and nodded. “Thanks to you.”
“Me?” I didn’t know what I had done.
“Yes, you, using higher magics with not a single clue!” she scoffed at me. “You did something in Montréal. I don’t know what. It wasn’t as major as what you did here. But it was big enough that some in the coven felt it. It was like static shock in the air. And you leave bread crumbs with that type of magic. They left me to figure out who did it and where.”
“And while they were searching, you escaped the coven by yourself?” They didn’t leave one person to guard her?
“Don’t give me that look,” she sneered. “I may seem pitiful now, but I am—was—part of Simone Ward’s circle, the ninth circle.”
I shrugged. “And that means?”
She sighed deeply as she chewed. “God, you really know nothing!”
“As if I haven’t been trying to tell you that all along!” I snapped back at her.
“Depending on the size of a coven, the circles are numbered,” Arsiein said to me. “The honor of ninth circle is given to the nine strongest witches in the coven. They are nine of nine. As you know, that number is important to witches. They believe eight is the symbol of vampires as it is the sign of the never-ending, while ten is the sign of perfection, which none can reach.”
I did not know that, but I didn’t want to expose my ignorance any further.
“See, even the vampires know,” Adelaide scoffed at me.
“You do realize I am a vampire, too, right?” Why was I getting an attitude?
She ignored me and looked back at Arsiein. “Exactly. I am part of the nine of nine. The witches they left to guard me couldn’t stop me, even bound. I escaped. I hid and tried to heal as much as I could.”
“Were you healing in the tree?” I asked, remembering.