And when they did, Yuri found further proof that Aurora Lenox didn’t have a deceitful bone in her delicious body because she was right. The witch, known as Sula, was a recluse, a hoarder, existing in a vile, cramped, putrid pit so far removed from civilization she was unintentionally (or subconsciously) and very effectively hidden.

And she was completely mad in a way that was not natural.

“Brother brother brother brother brother,” Sula chanted, this being all she’d said since they’d arrived and Aurora started her gentle work.

Except her first communication, which was a shotgun blast. This meant Barb had to do her not-gentle work, magically disarming her and doing it cursing under her breath and sticking a finger in her ear and wiggling it, since the blast was loud.

Sula didn’t like visitors. She’d made that plain. And her panic at being confronted with witches was difficult to witness, even if Yuri gave not that first fuck about a witch who had, when she had a minute level of sanity, readily carved into a vampire.

She was tormented and had been for years. Demons in her head that had had enough time to eat away anything that was healthy left nothing but a walking, breathing, but only existing shell behind.

“Brother brother brother brother brother,” Sula chanted again.

“Shh, sweetheart,” Aurora cooed. “Shh. Feel my hand. Feel it, Sula. Look into my eyes. You’ve got dark in there, honey. Look into my eyes. It’s okay. You’re safe. I just want to show you light.”

“Devils,” Barb muttered as Aurora kept trying to coax Sula’s vacant stare to meet her gaze.

Yuri looked at Aurora’s mother. “Pardon?”

She kept her gaze steady on her daughter’s work but answered, “Knew of Sula. Never met her. Reckon you’re as old as Aurora says you are, you know witches. So you know, just like anyone, they can be born good, bad, or crazy. Even before all this, word was Sula was born crazy.”

He had no doubt about that. Strong magic was working behind the insanity of the wild-haired, wild-eyed, unwashed woman Aurora was crouched beside, but that took root and bloomed outrageously because the ground was fertile.

“Pretty thing,” Barb went on, talking like she was speaking to herself. “Never saw it. Heard it. Exceptionally pretty, they said. It was a waste, they said. That’s all gone now.”

Yuri looked to Sula.

She was right. It was all gone. But it had to have been there at one point for her to get close to Abel at a bar in order to drug him.