The Thing About Timing (The Becoming of Elliott Goode)

Chapter 1:

A few months after the finale:

After the coven went public, the months following were a whirlwind. After weeding out the true witches from those who simply wanted to be, Delia finally got time to settle down into her new role as supreme and while the role turned out to be much more difficult than her mother made it appear to be, Delia found herself enjoying it. She still did everything she did before, she ran the coven, taught the girls, and searched high and low for new witches who may have been overlooked or too scared to come to the school when the news story broke. But today she seemed to hit a dead end. Delia knew there was more witches out there, she felt it, but all of her seemingly promising leads had lead nowhere.

She knew there was a witch in New Orleans, and a powerful one at that, she had visions of the girl almost daily. She knew she had killed a man in an alley who tried to rape a woman on her way home from a bar, turning his brain to mush. Visions of drug dealers with broken necks and blood coming out of every orifice. She never saw the girls face, only features, but she still was able to figure out a few things about the girl. She knew she was young, at most sixteen. She saw flashes of burnt out houses and dirty jeans. She knew the girl was troubled, much like Queenie, and that she had a knack for making herself disappear. She saw her bright blue eyes every night in her dreams, her shadow disappearing behind brick walls and her footsteps on broken glass. She had followed every "unexplainable" incident in the area, visiting places she knew the girl had been, hoping to get something, some minute detail that would solve the puzzle. She worked closely with the police, something she swore shed never do, just in case she managed to get herself caught, but so far she hadn't.

So there Delia sat, pouring over foster kid's case files and mug shots of runaways, hoping to see those eyes once again, and finally put a name to them. But once again, there was nothing, the girl seemed to not exist. Normally, Delia would have moved on, knowing eventually something would turn up, but for some reason, Delia couldn't get the girl out of her head. She blamed her laser focus and stubbornness on the girl being too powerful to be left alone, and made herself believe that if she didn't find her, the girl would do even more damage, hurt more people, and even if those people deserved to be hurt, Delia couldn't have that. Not with the public looking for a reason to condemn the witches already. After all, the school for warlocks had been burned to the ground just last month. What was worse, if the girl did know just how powerful she was, and wasn't under the right guidance, she could easily misuse her magical abilities for her own gain, and Delia couldn't have another Fiona running around.

Delia sat at her desk for hours, until Zoe broke her from her own thoughts. "You coming down for dinner? The girls learned a new spell and they're dying to show you."

"I'll be down in a minute; I just have a few things to finish here." Delia hadn't realized just how long she had been working, she had started before the girls had even woken up, her now cold coffee and grumbling stomach giving her a blaring reminder of the day she had appeared to have wasted away. She knew she had other responsibilities, more girls she could be looking for, more she should be trying to save, but something about this girl being so close bothered Delia. She was the supreme after all; she should be able to locate the girl easily. Wasn't locating lost objects part of her test to be supreme? Apparently that didn't apply to humans, or at least ones that didn't want to be found. She had found other girls that exact way, but for some reason this one was different, and Delia couldn't figure out why.

After getting frustrated for the thousandth time that day, Delia finally made her way to dinner. The girls gushed about boys (and a few girls) they had met while on a fieldtrip earlier and were itching to show Delia the new incantation they had learned. As soon as Kyle had poured water into their glasses for dinner, the girls quickly said the new spell and the water quickly evaporated. Delia, along with Queenie and Zoe, pretended to be impressed and even forced a laugh as Kyle came back around to fill their glasses for the 10th time, still oblivious to the tricks being played on him. Her head was still somewhere else however, and after dinner Delia quickly returned to her study to disappear in her work for another few hours, before finally giving up and getting ready for bed, knowing she again would dream about the girl.