Chapter Twelve : Accession
Corinne
A desolate dressing table sat in Dimitri’s bedroom, the clean blank surface calling me to claim it. Did I think it was strange that there wasn’t a bottle on it in sight? Yes. But that was about to change.
I sat at the dressing table, using it as my personal desk as I began writing out all the Magick hacks that Zoey and Marie had sent me, determining what was actually applicable to the Bratva, and what wasn’t.
Nausea rose up within me each time I thought about my unanswered text from Dimitri. I couldn’t eliminate the taste of bile in my mouth - the notion that something was wrong. But I couldn’t be this person - the girl that was somehow unable to function every time her man wasn’t around. Dimitri was the Pakhan, chances are, he wouldn’t be around a lot.
My concentration jangled around in my brain, knocking memories and thoughts loose that had no business presenting themselves in that moment.
Did Dimitri want to get married? What would a wedding to Dimitri look like? Did I even want to marry him?
A Summer Camp memory crept in, spiralling me down into the possibility of it all.
Brenna stood in our room, her red hair shining beneath the fluorescent bulbs. She was always so confident when she walked in here - pushy as well, but I supposed that came with the territory of being part of the lineage that survived the Salem Witch trials. There was something to be said about boasting such a heritage - of knowing where your Magick came from - that it wasn’t some foreign thing that made little sense - that you belonged somehow.
How different her household would be growing up. I imagined her mother preparing them breakfast using all the Hearth Witch Magick Charl touched on regularly. Magick was supposed to be an extension of self - a living, breathing part of our lives. A lifestyle rather than something we had to ‘do’.
I hid all of that - all of me, because there was no possible world that Emily Rand would understand that I dribbled sigils on top of my toast with the organic honey pour the housekeeper painstakingly sourced. She wouldn’t approve of the sigils I scratched beneath my shoes, or the crystals I laid out on my balcony each time a full moon lit up the night sky.
But Brenna didn’t have to hide any of those things, not like I did.
“Are you still dating that biker?” Marie laid across one of the lower bunks, a vogue magazine spread before her as she deftly flicked between the glossy pages. Her voice was soft and wispy as she directed her question towards Maxine. They shouldn’t have been friends - in a different life perhaps they wouldn’t have been, but here the two of them were two sides of the same coin. Although I knew that Maxine would argue that point.
She leant back against the wooden walls of our cabin, pressing a cigarette to her glossed lips, and when she finally spoke, it was through the cloud of smoke she generated. She was destruction incarnate, embodying her Club name fully.
“Nah,” she answered as she shook her head, the cherry of her cigarette bright orange despite the lighting. “I’m dating his President.”
Her grin was wicked and wild, and I wondered how many men she had already slept with. We were seventeen, and it wasn’t as if any of us were prudes, but Max seemed to go through men as if she had something to prove, or perhaps she simply wished to destroy them. I wasn’t certain, and I could never work up the nerve to ask.
“President?” Marie arched a brow in Maxine’s direction. Where Maxine was all darkness, Marie was light. Her hair was ice blonde, her skin almost luminescent, and she always seemed to wear the softest shades of pink on her lips. She was ethereal, and of course her French accent only added to her appeal.
“It’s basically his boss.” Maxine winked, her dark bangs lifted marginally in the slight breeze that blew through our cabin.
“So he’s old.” Brenna’s statement was filled with all the condensation and disdain I had come to expect from her, still I remained silent, having no experiences of my own to offer up in lieu of conversation.
Maxine grinned, and she was magnificent in her broken glory.
“He’s experienced.” She countered, as if that explanation was all that was needed.
“It’s still gross.” Brenna lifted her nose in distaste. The bronzed powder she used to highlight her already sharp cheekbones shimmered beneath the lights.
Maxine didn’t let Brenna’s disdain deter her, flicking the butt of her cigarette out the cabin door, allowing it to land on the ground before us.
“Max!” Zoey shrieked, shoving her lithe body out the door as she snatched up the cigarette stub with a Kleenex.
“Despite your red locks, I’m not sure the color green suits you.” Maxine completely ignored Zoey’s outburst, volleying her own insults at Brenna instead.
“I’m far from jealous.” Brenna huffed as if she found the very notion comical. “If anything, I feel pity for you, because while I’m no prude, I’m not about to throw my goods around as if they’re not valuable - as if I’m not valuable.”
“No.” Max laughed, “You’re just going to lie dead still there and think of the goddess while you let your new husband control every one of your sexual experiences.” And although Maxine grinned while she spoke, there was a brittleness to each word she spoke.
“Mon Dieu!” Marie exclaimed. “Do you have to be so crude?”
“I’m only stating facts.” Max shrugged. “And let me give you a piece of advice, as soon as you let a man control your experiences, you are doomed. You should never give a man that kind of power over you.”
“You talk about power as if it’s something to leverage.” Brenna spat her response back to Maxine, moving closer towards her, and for a minute I feared the hurricane that would erupt. Neither of them were the calm or quiet type. “I look at that as a partnership - something where both of us win - something that requires trust.”