My hands dropped as a wave of sadness, anger, and everything rushed over me. I sighed heavily, frustratingly sliding my hands over my face. I saw that Lizzie had joined Josie at her side, and Finch had stood up from Josie’s bed, and the four of them watched me and waited for me to say something.

With one last sigh, I collected myself, pushing all the bad feelings aside, and saving them for later. Looking at the other girls, I held my head high, now genuinely ready to solve the mystery of how to kill Malivore.

“Let’s get to work,” I said before turning to walk back to Hope and I’s bedroom.

We found Mark still there, scrolling through something on his phone while awaiting our return. He hasn’t even touched the box with our parents’ journals and things. Stuff we were never aware of and was somewhere safe before our village burned. I appreciated his patience waiting for me, but now I’m just itching to find answers regarding our current mission.

I welcomed the Saltzman twins in, as well as Finch, before closing the door. I didn’t expect her to want to partake in this stuff. After all, it’s not her fight. At least in the sense that she’s new to this stuff, and it’s scary enough to learn truths about magic, let alone dangerous spells against an ancient, sentient mud golem. And though I didn’t want someone I barely knew looking through my dead parents’ things, I’m willing to let it go for the sake of the extra pair of eyes.

Mark swung his legs over the edge of my bed and stood from where he lay. I went over to my nightstand, pulled it closer to the closet, and then moved my bed near it. That created more floor space for us to rummage through this box of books and things together. I grabbed the stuff I had with me in my apartment years ago, Mark held the new package, and we both dragged them to the middle of the space I created. I motioned for the others to join.

“This stuff,” I patted the boxes as I spoke, “belonged to our parents. When we found their murderer– the leader of the massacres, Zane– he basically said that Dad was either working on some way to kill Malivore or he had already finished it.” I shrugged, shaking my head. “I don’t know how he knew about Malivore or even how that wench Alice knew that he knew, but that’s why she sent those vampires to the bayou; to find what he had so she could use it.”

“Who, uh… who’s Alice?” Finch asked.

Hope turned to her. “Malivore’s first creation, aka his firstborn, aka Landon’s big sister.”

“Also a mud freak,” Lizzie added.

“God, there’s another one?” Finch scoffed.

“Unfortunately,” Josie sighed. She turned her attention back to my brother and me. “So you’re saying everything that’s happened to you guys… is her fault? Malivore’s?”

“Everything,” Mark nodded. “Though our parents’ deaths– maybe even mine and our brother’s deaths– was some play against Marcel’s rules for the vampire faction of New Orleans.”

“The raids were her doing,” I said, “to get something in either one of these boxes. A grimoire. But anything in here can be useful against Malivore. Some way to free Landon of Malivore’s control as well as some way to kill him and his evil spawn.”

“How will we know what we’re looking for?” Josie asked.

I shook my head, shrugging helplessly. Mark answered. “I suppose we’ll know when we see it.”

“I don’t plan on stopping until I get answers. It’s already night out. If anyone wants to tap out early, I welcome you to do so now.” Neither of them said anything or got up to leave, so I took that as a sign they’d stay to help uncover the secrets of my family. Without further delay, my brother and I began distributing books from the top of both boxes. For now, we started with two books each, either thoroughly reading them or skimming through them.

Most of what I read so far was Mom’s best and most terrifying memories of my brothers and me beginning our terrible twos. She never showed that she was frightened by motherhood, but reading this one journal now, I know how completely and utterly terrified she was when I swallowed half a shoestring. Or when Mason wandered around and got too close to the lake. At some point, she was so scared– maybe overwhelmed, even– that she almost had Dad cast spells on us so we wouldn’t be too much for them.

That would’ve come in handy by the time we were four and conscious of our nefarious actions.

Reading through some of my mom’s entries, I’d gotten highly sidetracked. Some time passed before I realized it and moved on to the next book. It was that one Mark and I saw last time, the one with weird language written in Mom’s handwriting. Skimming through it was useless. None of it made sense, nor did it resemble any current or old languages. Maybe it’s a dead– but not dead– speech. My best bet for translation would be to ask Freya, the oldest witch alive.

“Oh, no way,” Hope gasped. We all looked up from our books, grimoires, and journals. Hope bit down on her bottom lip to hold back a giggle.

“What’s so funny over there?” Lizzie asked. “We’re supposed to be finding murder spells, yet you’re having fun? Nothing here is fun.”

“No, I seriously doubt that. Cause I just hit the jackpot.” Hope turned a page and giggled. “Your dad was such a grandma when it came to pictures, I mean he must’ve documented everything. Baby pictures are cute enough but when it’s multiplied by three?”

“Hope? Let’s put that down now…..” I chuckled. “Like, now, now.”

“I took you as a shameless woman, sister. Why are you scared of some harmless infant pictures?”

“Excuse me. I don’t want my goodies exposed to the whole damn world! Infant or not.”

“Let me see,” Josie said, inching closer to Hope. I gave both of them the meanest death stare I could muster up. While Josie retreated, smiling like the rest, Hope remained unfazed while still looking at whatever pictures my parents had saved.

“Oh, this one is even better. Three peas in a pod… and nude! Mel, you have a beauty mark on your–”

I rushed over as fast as I vampirically could to snatch the photo album from her hands. I inhaled as I looked at the exact picture she was referencing. A photo of my brothers and me– couldn’t be more than a few months old– lying face up, asleep, and very much naked. Our privates were covered by our legs, luckily. However, Markus’s left testicle was slightly exposed. Even so, a good few embarrassing details still showed.

I closed the book and smiled at Hope. “You’re never gonna say a word about any beauty marks, understood?”

“Sure, sure. I do wish I didn’t see whoever’s ballsack that was, though. I mean, it’s hard to tell which brother that is. Identicality and all.”

“Woah, wait a minute–”

“Can we…focus, please? And not be perverted, looking at babies’ privates.”

“Alright, fine…” Hope said with an eye roll. “But it’s impossible to know what to look for when we have zero clues to go on.”

“And I feel useless here. I mean, I’m new to all this… witch stuff and… other stuff….” Finch sighed, closing one of the books she had. “Your dad never mentioned anything about whatever this is?”

“Unless he disguised stories of Malivore in our bedtime stories, no,” my brother sighed.

“We still have a lot of stuff to go through, though. Let’s separate personal journals from anything that looks even remotely magical. That does include everything in any language that’s not English.”

“Speaking of that non-English stuff, where can we find a translator?”

“Dad’s pretty good at researching that stuff, maybe he can get in touch with Dorian, and they can figure it out?” Josie shrugged.

“First thing in the morning,” I nodded. “Okay, let’s do this.”

Daybreak came about an hour before Melori noticed it. She’d read through a good stack of grimoires, none of which made sense to her, and found nothing on Malivore. She did learn some ways her father accelerated in magic and how he’d created spells of his own from the ones his ancestors had made. From the Bennet bloodline as well as the other witch family he was born into.

She learned very little about them. What she gathered from Blake’s notes only told her how secretive the coven was. They didn’t keep family trees or many photographs. The only way to know about the Galigaro coven is by being born into it.

It helped that Blake was also a Bennet witch. Learning of his Bennet lineage made people focus more on that side of the family as they were more than well-known in the supernatural world. It helped him and his father before him keep the secrets of the Galigaros much easier. No one would question them about the nature of their magic. Or its importance, its origin. It allowed Mark and Melori’s grandfather to hide several magical artifacts, home to many different types of magic. They didn’t specify their location.

It did give Melori an idea. Maybe her grandfather’s coven was secretive about their origins because they were involved with the most dangerous evil she knew; Malivore himself. It could be that these spells she didn’t understand were pieces of a giant Malivore puzzle.

Feeling tension in the back of her neck, she rolled it with a sigh before setting the book down on the bed. She looked at the sleeping girls on the floor, feeling guilty for their tiredness due to the relentless searching they had done for her. The twins had fallen asleep, one spooning the other, lying on a pillow they’d pulled off Hope’s bed. Finch fell asleep against Hope’s bed’s foot, sitting upward with her head resting against the frame. Mark took residence on Mel’s bed, and Hope was leaning against her nightstand.

Mel pursed her lips and moved as quietly as she could to the closet. She retrieved some spare blankets from the top shelf and distributed them to the others, starting with Finch being the furthest from the books. Melori laid a blanket over Finch’s shoulders, effectively covering the rest of her body. She then did the same for the twins, then Hope. Mark had already taken care of himself. Melori then grabbed a pillow for Hope as her head was the only thing supporting her against the nightstand, which was indeed causing problems for her neck.

Once she ensured everyone’s comfort, Melori returned to the stack of magic-related books on the floor. She reached down to grab the topmost book, but when she came back up, she almost crashed as the room began to spin. She closed her eyes and slowly lowered herself to the floor, then started counting her breaths until she no longer felt dizzy. Mel waited a few seconds after taking one final, deep breath before opening her eyes.

She caught Hope silently watching her with tired eyes. Melori smiled guiltily, knowing Hope knew her near-fainting spell was because she hadn’t fed in some time. And it was terrible because Melori’s been up all night and had plenty of chances to take care of herself. But Mel didn’t acknowledge that fact and sat upright. “Did I wake you?”

Hope shook her head, blinking slowly. “I’ve been in and out for a while. Are you okay?” The question was rhetorical. Hope still wanted to ensure Mel’s health.

“I’m fine.”

“But you don’t look fine.”

“Just accept my answer, Princess, so that we can skip the bickering. I’m tired and frustrated and– really, just pissed that none of these damn books appear useful,” Melori huffed. One of the twins stirred in her sleep as Mel’s voice grew louder. She frowned at the thought of waking someone up. Melori returned to speaking in a lower tone as she looked at Hope. “I’ll get some bunny blood later, okay? After. I promise.”

Hope nodded to avoid arguments. She looked out the shaded window to check the sun's height but couldn’t see it. She decided it was time to get back to work.

Mel looked down at the book in her hand as if she had forgotten it was there. She shrugged and quickly flipped through the pages. She'd recognized some symbols from Freya taught her some things and recently tutored by Davina.

“Chances of being helpful?”

“There’s hope, but still, I’m unsure.” Mel sat up on her knees and slid the rest of the grimoire stack over to Hope as quietly as she could. Though books with metal linings sliding against hardwood floors are bound to make noise, at least the others were so out of it they didn’t even flinch. Mel crawled to Hope’s side and sat with her. “You’re pretty well-versed in magic. Know what these mean?”

Hope removed her arms under the blanket Mel gave her and took the grimoire from the girl’s hands. She looked at the spells and symbols where some chants were symbols, and the characters were a bunch of words written into a strange shape. Hope nodded at only a few of the easily recognizable incantations and occasionally paused to try to comprehend the ones she didn’t know.

“I think these are parts of one big spell,” she thought aloud, noticing that some of the patterns on one page either matched the ones on another page or went hand-in-hand with them. “It looks like a big one, too.”

“‘Big’ as in ‘killing an ancient, all-consuming mud golem,’ big, or…?”

“I can’t tell. I don’t know some of the languages. Like here, look.”

Melori leaned over Hope’s shoulder to look at what Hope was pointing. “Some of it looks similar to what’s written in my mom’s journal….” She reached over to the pile of personal journals for the book, then sat back down to show it to Hope. “This is what I was hoping to get Ric to translate if he could. I was thinking; maybe this was more of a personal thing, like where my mom’s family originated. But if this same language is in this grimoire that’s probably one big spell. I don’t know. This shit’s confusing me.”

“It could be that these are ingredients to the spell. If that’s the case, all we may need is your blood and mine.” Hope continued to flip through the pages. “Still, it begs the question of how your parents knew about Malivore.”

Hope closed the book and sat it on her lap. “God, this feels like we’re just getting more questions on top of questions rather than answers to our problems,” she sighed while letting her head fall back on the mattress.

“Yeah. You’d probably have an easier time getting rid of him if I wasn’t here all these–” Mel picked up the book in Hope’s lap as if to provide a point. She began to put it down again and continue speaking with Hope until something on the back of it caught her attention. Mel saw it only for a second, just before sunlight hit it. She brought it back out of the light.

Hope sat up when she saw the amount of interest on Mel’s face. Furthermore, Melori was so confused that Hope became convinced the girl felt she was going insane. And Mel did feel that way.

As she pulled the book back into the room’s shadow and back into the light, she still just barely saw something imprinted on the cover. It was as if her human eyes weren’t enough to see it correctly. With that thought, Melori looked through her other half’s eyes, her wolf eyes, and sure enough, the sigil magically inscribed into the cover became clear.

She tilted the book to Hope. “Can you see it, too?”

Hope sat up. “Yeah, barely, but–”

“Use your wolf eyes.” Hope did as told and rechecked the mark using her wolf vision. A spark in her glowing golden-hazed eyes told Mel she knew what it meant and urged Hope to tell her what it was.

“This is Triad.”

“Triad? Have I heard that name before?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? But–” she tapped the logo, “this is the brand the Malivore creators used to control him– to create him.”

“So this could be the spell Dad was making to destroy him?”

“Or part of it."

At the shared thought, the two hopped to their feet and began toppling the remaining stacks in search of more Triad-branded grimoires. They tossed books and flipped them round and about, causing so much noise it woke the others. Mark sat up with a sour look, watching his sister and the tribrid as if they were crazy. Finch and the twins sat up to avoid Hope and Melori’s path.

“What are you doing?” Mark said with a groan.

“Get your ass up.” Mel rushed to him when she saw he had a book next to him. “Gimme that.” Melori snatched up the book and used her beastly eyes to find another mark. “Hope, here’s another one!” She tossed it to Hope.

“What crack did you smoke today?” Lizzie asked as she stifled a yawn.

As Hope confirmed another Triad symbol, Melori turned back to her brother. She held up the first branded book. “Do you see it?”

“Do I see what?”

“The symbol, dude!”

“There’s no– oh wait. Wait, that’s Triad.”

“Get up and look for more, now!”

“They can’t see it,” Hope said, gaining Mel’s attention as her brother sped about the room. “Finch, Lizzie, and Josie can’t see the Triad symbol.”

“That makes a little sense, I suppose,” Mel thought aloud. “Maybe we can see it because… well, we’re our parents' children, and you’re the tribrid.”

“None of you are making any sense right now.” Josie nodded her sleepy head to agree with her sister, who looked at Mark when he stood upright with a book in his hand. “Just what are you doing? What’s happening?”

Looking at the third triad-branded book in her brother’s hand, knowing that it had to be the last piece in the set, she felt the warmth of victory forming in her heart. “I’m pretty sure we have our weapon.”

hello all. I've come to drop another chapter inconsistently :) I hope you're excited that we're getting to the good stuff. and I can promise we're reaching the arc of Hope and Mel's relationship. but here's a thing about that:

I've written this so far in two perspectives: Melori's perspective and third person pov. but it's the limited version of third person pov, meaning we don't see many other character's inner thoughts and emotions as we do Mel's, as the main character. and she's the most oblivious homosexual on the planet, I know.

because of that, I'm sure we're probably gonna neer the hundreds in chapters, or surpass it, by the time the story ends. if I decide to put all my ideas for those two in this one book. if not, expect a sequel cause I have plans for their adventures even after Malivore is killed in my very special way. and I think it's gonna be interesting.

anyway, toodles. gonna go donate plasma now :D