Page 103 of Potions & Prejudice


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“The contract is binding,” Auggie said. “Helena told me she can’t reveal the secret unless we are in breach of contract.”

“How are you in breach of contract?” I asked. “You just told her the secret.”

“The secret is the breach.” Auggie’s voice shook. “After I revealed the truth, Helena told me that unfortunately not having my magic means I can’t be a model, not when I’m living here illegally.”

My mouth dropped open. “That sounds like a scam.”

“It is,” Georgie said from the doorway, Edgar perched on her shoulder. “I know because Helena did the same thing to me.”

“Georgie.” Draven stepped forward. “You don’t have to do this.”

“It’s okay,” Georgie said. “They can know.”

“Know what? What did Helena do to you?” I asked.

Georgie brushed past me and sat on the couch, taking a deep breath. “After my parents died, I went to live with my grandmother for a short amount of time. Helena was frequently at Grandmother’s house, spending time with me, making me believe I had a friend. I didn’t always get along with Grandmother, and I frustrated her a lot.”

“Why?” I asked, not understanding.

“Because she wants me to be her heir, the next Witch Superior. But that’s not what I want for myself. I don’t want to be the leader of the Witchlands. All that responsibility, the work, it’s not for me. Grandmother wanted me to start training for the Witch Trials.”

The trials where the most powerful witches in the land came together and competed to decide who would be Witch Superior after our current leader stepped down. Those who wanted to participate often spent decades training for the trials, not even knowing when the trials would be invoked.

“It got to the point where Grandmother and I were barely speaking because I wasn’t ready to train, to take on this big responsibility, especially not after I’d just lost my parents.”

I nodded. Poor Georgie. That had to be so hard.

“Helena understood. I could talk to her, and she’d listen. She was so warm, so friendly. She stepped into a role that had been missing since my mother died.” Georgie’s eyes filled with tears. “She made me believe she cared about me. That she loved me. It happened slowly, over the course of a few months. Helena would mention the Witch Trials, would talk to me about being Witch Superior, about the good I could do. She preyed on what she knew about me, on what I waspassionate about: saving creatures. She’d almost convinced me to do it.”

Georgie sniffled.

“Then I overheard her and my grandmother talking. The entire thing had been a ruse, my grandmother bringing Helena in to do what she couldn’t.” Tears ran down Georgie’s cheeks. “It felt like I was losing my parents all over again.”

Draven’s jaw locked, his eyes squeezed shut.

“But why would your grandmother bring in a talent manager?” Prue took her spectacles off and cleaned them with the skirt of her dress, then perched them back on her nose.

“Because she’s not a talent manager,” Draven said. “That’s her cover.”

“She’s a magistrate,” Georgie said, and my entire body went cold.

“But she’s a vampire.” My brain couldn’t make sense of this.

“It’s something Grandmother is doing to help with peace talks with the other realms,” Draven said. “She’s bringing in other species, giving them positions of power as a show of good faith. Helena is very good at knowing when others are keeping secrets. As a vampire, she can sense heart rate, breathing rate, pulse. So if she thinks you have a secret, she’ll latch onto you. That’s why she makes an excellent magistrate.”

I swallowed, remembering our first meeting at the market, how anxious I’d been when I thought she noticed we didn’t have our wands. She must have picked up on that, then chosen Auggie as her target to find out what was making me so nervous. I gasped. That was why she’d lied to me about Draven, told me to stay away from him. She didn’t want me learning her true identity before she discovered our secret and fed it to Witch Superior.

This couldn’t be happening.

“If I’d known,” Draven said, “I would’ve warned you.”

“Nobody knew,” Auggie said, looking so small, no longer my larger-than-life sister. “I wanted to surprise everyone with my contract. But Helena never actually thought I was talented. She never actually believed in me. She was working me the whole time, hoping I’d reveal a secret that she could take back to Witch Superior.”

Tears dripped down her cheeks, and my heart broke for her.

“Well, we have no choice.” Mama’s voice wobbled. “We leaveimmediately. We’ll leave the Witchlands. It won’t be easy, but it’ll be better than staying here and waiting for Witch Superior to arrest all of us for breaking the law.”

Draven’s head dropped.