Awakening by Cate Tiernan Read Free Book Online

Adler. Bree had originally been part of Cirrus, too, but when she and I split up over Cal, she and Raven Meltzer had formed Kithic, a coven that was now led by Hunter’s cousin Sky.
    “Cirrus?” I repeated, confused. “What about it?”
    “With Cal gone, you need someone else to lead it. An initiated witch.”
    I hadn’t even thought about that. With Cirrus, Cal had opened up the world of Wicca to me, permanently altering my world. His betrayal had left a deep black hole in my life, and my few new support systems were now being sucked away into it.
    I didn’t want to lose the coven. “I could ask Alyce or David if they’ll take over.”
    “Alyce and David are already part of Starlocket. I hear Alyce has been asked to lead it now that Selene is gone,” Hunter said.
    I was silent, thinking, and then Hunter broke in.
    “I want to lead Cirrus,” he said.
    Now I was seriously at sea. “Why?” I asked. “You don’t know any of us. You don’t even live here. Not permanently, anyway.”
    “I’ll probably be here for a while. I’ve asked the council to give me time to come up with new leads on Cal and Selene. I want to see if I can track them down.”
    “But you don’t know how long that will take,” I argued. “Anyway, there are five other people in our coven. They might have something to say about who leads us.”
    “I already discussed it with them,” Hunter said. “I went to your school today. That’s how I know you weren’t there.”
    So he hadn’t gone there out of concern for me. To my surprise, I felt a stab of disappointment. Then my anger rose. How could he be so presumptuous? “So you talked to them and they said yes? You’re it?”
    “We’re going to see how it goes,” he said cautiously. “There’s a circle tomorrow night at my house at seven. I hope you’ll be there. I think it would be good for . . . everyone.”
    “A circle on a Tuesday night?”
    “We can’t wait until Saturday,” Hunter said. “It’s important that Cirrus re-form quickly. When a circle is broken in this way, it can be devastating to the members. Besides, we don’t know what magick Cal might have used on the members. I’ve asked everyone to bring the stones Cal gave them so we can purify them. You should bring yours, too, along with anything else he gave you.”
    “I already purified everything,” I said, and felt a childish triumph when I saw the surprise in his eyes. Now maybe he’d stop being so superior, so remote, making me feel like he was ten years older than me rather than two.
    Even as the thoughts formed, I knew I wasn’t being fair to him. He really was trying to help. But his very competence irked me, made me feel clumsy, naive.
    He must have sensed a change in my attitude and figured the circle issue was a done deal, because he moved on. “Now, the second thing,” he said, “is you. You’ve come into quite a birthright—far more power than most blood witches ever experience, and Belwicket’s tools besides. But you know only the most rudimentary things about how to focus and control your power. And you know even less about how to protect yourself.”
    I took it as an accusation and felt anger flare again. “I’ve only known I was a blood witch for a month. I know I have a long way to go.”
    Hunter sighed. “All I’m saying is that you’ve got a hell of a lot of catching up to do. Most blood witches are initiated at age fourteen, after studying for years. Witches need to know the history of Wicca and the Seven Great Clans; the rituals of the Goddess and the God and the eight great sab bats; herbalism; the basics of numerology; the proper use of talismans and runes; the properties of minerals, metals, and stones and how they interact with the cycles of the celestial bodies. The full correspondences; reading auras; spells of protection, healing, binding, and banishment. And though it’s more advanced, you really ought to learn about the Guardians of the Watchtowers—”
    A sudden