“It wasn’t a conscious choice,” she continued. “We didn’t set out to cut ties with friends. It just ... happened. I talked to my friend Kelsey occasionally on the phone but it was like we believed trouble couldn’t find us if we stayed hidden. Paris’ return proved how very wrong we were.”
It was rare to see her so serious but I wanted the insight on her friendships. “Paris mentioned that when she came back she made some mistakes. She seemed upset about whatever happened. That’s about the time you met Cernunnos, right?”
“Yeah, that all happened within a few weeks,” she confirmed. “Paris showed up with a book, trouble wasn’t far behind, then we thought my parents died ... it was a whole big thing.”
The statement niggled something in the back of my brain. “Was it The Archimage?”
Her smile was rueful. “I figured you weren’t going to let that go. It was The Archimage, though. If you ask her, she was angry at the time because she believed I shut her out of my life. Like I said, it wasn’t intentional. It did happen, and in hindsight we all made mistakes.
“Paris got involved with a magical cult because she was feeling lost, looking for a place to settle,” she continued. “When she realized the cult was up to no good, she sought us out. I was so happy to see her at the start I didn’t grasp she might have ulterior motives. Aric did. He was watching her ... and then there was a shifter attack.
“In the aftermath, I had to heal Aric because he rushed in as we were fighting. Paris disappeared and we found her trying to flee the house with the book. It all spilled out then.”
I tried to imagine the Paris she was describing and came up empty. “That doesn’t sound like her. She’s always been stalwart since I met her.”
“She’s a good person,” Zoe reassured me. “She was never a bad person. She just makes the occasional stupid decision.”
“We all do that.”
“We do, but her bad decisions are almost always wrapped around a man. Mark was the first. He was working with the Academy and gathering information. Then he took our vampire captive. We didn’t see him for months because he was being starved.
“That’s the thing you have to worry about with zealots,” she continued. “Mark wanted to belong and he allowed his belief system to be twisted. I think — at least at the very start — he was a normal guy trying to figure stuff out. They turned him into what he became, though.”
“And what was that?”
“Evil.” The answer was simple, succinct, but her dark gaze sent chills up my spine. “Mark was taken into custody during the big fight right before I graduated. I made the decision to have him locked away because I wasn’t comfortable ordering the death of a man I once considered a friend. That turned out to be a mistake.
“He showed back up at my engagement party.” She took on a far-off expression, as if remembering something that distressed her. “He set off a bomb and people were killed, including a guy I went to college with who ultimately made the right decisions and helped us. I was furious.
“That was the first time we went back to Covenant College. When we arrived, we found Mark was engaged to our roommate from freshman year,” she explained. “Brittany was one of those people who just wanted to belong. She was insecure and acted out because of it. I’m the reason she turned bad.”
I was surprised by the admission. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t think people are born inherently bad or good. Well, some are, I guess, but others turn, whether out of necessity or experience. Brittany was the latter. She wanted to fit in with our group, but I didn’t like her because she was uppity and emotionally needy. I didn’t have a lot of time for that.
“Over the years, her desire to fit in turned into bitterness,” she continued. “She hated me, and in hindsight, she had reason. I was not a good person where she was concerned. The more our antagonism dragged out, the more her hatred grew.
“The first time we returned to Covenant College, she was engaged to Mark and he’d messed with her mind. Before graduation, we cast a spell to relieve her of some of the pain she was feeling. We thought it was what was best for her. She’d been dating my ex-boyfriend at the time and we sacrificed him to Rafael’s hunger when we got him back. It wasn’t a great loss for me — he wasn’t the man I believed him to be — but she took it hard.”
It was all so fascinating and I found I had a million questions. “Did you cast the spell?”
She shook her head. “Paris did, along with a little help from her mother.” She turned to face me. “You have to understand, in this instance, we honestly weren’t trying to hurt her ... or even mess with her. We wanted to give her peace, maybe a chance to move forward. By casting the spell, Mark had the opportunity to move in and take advantage of her.
“When we returned to Covenant College and found them together, we were understandably confused,” she continued. “They’d grown up in the same town but had never been close. We had to remove the spell from Brittany’s mind, and when everything came back, she was … well … ‘not happy’ would be an understatement.”
“Do you blame her?” I countered. “No matter your intentions, you still stripped part of who she was from her.”
“We did, and I believe that’s why she came back in the end.” Zoe held out her hands and shrugged. “She’d willingly aligned herself with the bad guys that final go-round. She wanted to make us pay, especially me. In the very
