The Neon Coven

The Neon Coven smelled of stale beer, burned sage, and the sharp, metallic tang of ozone. It was a subterranean speakeasy tucked beneath the rotting concrete of the city's east side, a sanctuary for rogue practitioners, banished hex-casters, and witches who didn't fit into the pristine hierarchies of the high covens. Neon signs buzzed with erratic, failing electricity, casting long, bruised shadows of violet and sickly green across the sticky floorboards.

Sabrina "Brie" Thorne sat in the darkest corner booth, nursing a glass of cheap bourbon. She wore a scuffed leather jacket covered in silver zippers and heavy combat boots that had kicked their fair share of wards to splinters. Her dark hair was chopped short, a jagged, messy halo around a face that held far too much cynicism for a twenty-four-year-old.

She held a silver needle over the flame of a melting black candle. When the metal glowed cherry-red, she pressed it briefly to the pad of her thumb. A single drop of blood welled up. Brie smeared it across a folded cocktail napkin, muttering a guttural, chaotic incantation that made the shadows around her booth twitch and recoil. The napkin dissolved into a wisp of dark smoke, sending a minor tracking hex after a client who had stiffed her on a tarot reading.

Blood-magic. It was messy, painful, and entirely forbidden by the elite suburban covens. That was exactly why Brie loved it. It was the antithesis of everything her mother stood for.

"Brie."

The gruff voice belonged to Jax, the scarred werewolf who ran the bar. He tossed a thick, cream-colored envelope onto the scarred wood of her table.

Brie stared at the envelope. It was made of heavy, expensive cardstock. Pressed into the wax seal was the emblem of a blooming rose wrapped in thorns—the crest of the Thorne Estate. Just looking at it made the bourbon turn to acid in her stomach.

"Courier dropped it off," Jax grunted, wiping a glass with a dirty rag. "Smells like expensive perfume and dead things."

"My mother," Brie muttered, her throat tight.

She hadn't spoken to Miranda Thorne in six years. She had run away the moment she turned eighteen, desperate to escape the suffocating, pastel-colored prison of her childhood and the cold, unyielding perfectionism of her mother’s rule.

With a trembling, blood-stained thumb, Brie broke the wax seal.

The letter was written in Miranda’s flawless, looping calligraphy. It contained no pleasantries, no apologies, no motherly warmth. It was a summons, cold and absolute.

* Sabrina,*  
* Your father is dead. The magical rites of passage commence in three days at the Estate. It would be socially unacceptable for you to be absent. Return home.*

*— Miranda Thorne, High Priestess.*

Brie stopped breathing. The ambient noise of the speakeasy—the clinking glasses, the low murmur of spell-bartering, the buzzing neon—faded into a high-pitched ringing in her ears.

Her father. Thomas.

The internal wound she had carried for fifteen years ripped wide open, bleeding fresh agony. Thomas Thorne had been a mundane, a normal human man who smiled too brightly and smelled of sawdust and peppermints. He was the only warmth in that freezing suburban house. But when Brie was nine, the screaming matches had started. She remembered sitting at the top of the stairs, listening to her father accuse Miranda of cheating. She remembered the strange, sulfurous smell that leaked from her mother's bedroom.

And then, he was gone. No note, no goodbye. He had simply packed his bags and abandoned them, unable to handle his wife's infidelity and the overwhelming, terrifying reality of a magical daughter.

Brie had hated him for leaving her behind with the monster. She had hated him for being weak. But she had also spent every single day missing him.

Now, he was dead.

Brie crushed the heavy parchment in her fist. A volatile spark of chaotic magic shattered her bourbon glass, sending amber liquor and shards of crystal raining across the table. She closed her eyes, fighting the hot sting of tears. She didn't want to go back. She would rather walk barefoot through purgatory than set foot in the Thorne Estate.

But it was her father. Whatever cowardice had driven him away, he was still the man who had taught her how to ride a bike while her mother was busy conjuring storms. She owed him a goodbye.

Brie stood up, tossing a crumpled twenty-dollar bill into the spilled bourbon.

"Keep the change, Jax," she rasped, her voice thick with a venomous grief. "I have to go back to the suburbs."