by Jenn Stark
“Nice place,” I observed as she gestured us to the chairs. We both took seats carefully, perching on the edge.
“This tent is heavily warded,” the woman preened, smiling at the crystals. “No one who means me harm can enter, nor any who would do our order harm. You would have been turned away at the door had you wished us ill.”
“Ah—well, that’s outstanding,” I said as diplomatically as possible. I casually flicked my third eye open, and my sixth sense only confirmed what the rest of my senses were telling me. There was no magic here. The young woman might possess some modicum of reading talent, but she was not profoundly Connected. The energy vibrations from the tents surrounding her were remarkably strong, but her own location seemed almost eerily devoid of Connected energy. I frowned, tightening my hands into reflexive fists. Was there some sort of energy suck going on here? Or was this woman legitimately that deluded? I didn’t know which answer would be worse, but the latter would certainly be less dangerous.
“So, do you read with cards?” Nikki asked. “Or are you a pendulum kind of girl?”
“Neither.” The young woman dimpled. “I channel the dead.”
“The dead,” I repeated flatly. “I’m not real big on séances, and I pretty much think the dead do a good job staying where they are. So I appreciate your time, and I’m happy to pay you some small gratuity for it, but I don’t think this is a reading that I’m going to be taking—”
“Sara, sweetie. Stay. For just a minute.”
Even more so than the name she uttered, the sound that came out of the woman’s mouth was so alarming, so disturbing, that I sat back in my metal folding chair, my skin breaking into an immediate cold sweat. I knew that voice, the scratch-gravel tones of a woman who sounded far older then the forty-odd years she’d lived. The coy, insinuating pout that had allowed her to get whatever she wanted in life except for, arguably, that which she most craved.
The young woman with the fairy wings sat before me in the perfect blush of health, while the woman whose voice she spoke with had been dead in the ground for more than a decade now.
“Sara,” my foster mother said again. “There is danger here. You have to be careful. You have to listen.”
I felt the eerie chill crawl up my arms, but I sat rooted in place. “What do you mean I have to listen? To you?”
The young redhead’s plump mouth curved into a bitter smile, and Sheila Rose Pelter kept speaking. “Not me. I know better than to ask you to listen to me. When did you ever?”
Well, that wasn’t really fair. During the years the woman I’d believed to be my mother, Sheila Rose Pelter, had cared for me, she’d spent most of her time passing me off to other babysitters while she partied with her friends. When I was a child, I’d never understood how we always had enough money to survive despite the fact that she never seemed to work and that she’d always seemed right on the edge of being drunk. As I got older, I began to truly fear what the answer to that question would be. It was only years after her death that I learned the truth, that my father had left me with this woman to care for me, hiding me away as best as he could from my birth mother who’d been far more frightening to him than the prospect of leaving me with a stranger. It didn’t help that my father was a member of the Arcana Council himself, and that my birth mother was, well, a goddess known for encouraging bloody human sacrifices.
Needless to say, I wasn’t going to be buying a 23andMe DNA kit anytime soon.
“I’m listening now,” I said, while Nikki remained silent beside me. The urge to leave grew even stronger, but I also felt a weird compulsion to stay, not one that was magically cast, but born of my own insatiable need to know more. More about this woman I’d thought was my mother, more about what had happened the day I’d fled Memphis, Tennessee, the day my mother had been killed. I’d never gotten to say goodbye that morning. I wondered if I would here.
“Don’t let anyone feed you lies about the conflict that is coming,” the young reader spoke in my foster mother’s voice. “It cannot be stopped, and in truth, it has been brought about in great part by your own hand.”
I leaned forward. It’d been a long time since I’d had a mother-daughter conversation, but this was definitely not right. Sheila had never spoken so formally in her entire life. What was going on here?
“Okaaay…” I said, as beside me, Nikki finally shifted slightly in her chair. Either she was picking up on my energy, or something felt strange to her too. “So what's the truth that I should know?”
“That you should leave the path clear for those who would take greater care of the planet. That you should help them, not stop them in your pride and foolishness.”
I glanced around again, employing my third eye. No doubt about it, while the energy in this tent felt like it was being smothered with a lead blanket, the energy in the surrounding tents was flaring brightly, like beacons in the gathering evening. I made no move to flare my own energy into life, but was that these people’s plan? Did they think they had dropped me into some sort of dead zone? Did they not know who I was?
“Who is ‘them’?” I asked. “Who should I be looking out for as the face of this new beginning?”
“The Green Knight, of course,” the young woman continued in the same gravelly tone. “He will tell you all you need to know soon. So soon. The doors are even now opening, but what you most need to do now…is rest.”
The spell dropped on me with such impressive speed that it took me a second to realize what was happening. Nikki collapsed beside me in a boneless heap, and as I glanced her way, the blanket of lead I’d felt depressing the magic in this space now felt like it had been dumped directly on top of me. My entire body lit up with alarm and urgency, but I had no immediate fear for myself. Nikki, on the other hand…
I turned toward her, my third eye narrowing, and saw the truth. I wasn’t the target here. She was.
I whipped my head back toward the woman, whose mouth still moved, dropping her poison in the voice of a woman whose love I’d wanted more than anything in the world, and whose love I’d never fully received. Because in the end, I’d been merely a transaction to Sheila Rose Pelter, even competition in a weird way when she had striven to convince the world that she was as Connected as I was. But that didn’t matter now.
What mattered was that she would never have called me Sara. When I’d been a child back in Memphis, a child who’d run so desperately from the burning conflagration of her home that it was like my very feet were on fire, my name hadn’t been Sara Wilde. When I’d endured trauma so intense that my young Connected mind couldn’t break me cleanly from the terror of my past or the fear of my future such that two children were born—one that fled forward and one that dived back into the flames—it wasn’t Sara Wilde who’d made that split. Sheila Rose Pelter wouldn’t know that name.
I leaned forward. “You’ve got exactly thirty seconds to stop whatever spell you’ve dropped on my friend, or I will kill you so dead, no one will ever be able to channel you back to this plane.”
The young woman’s eyes widened and her voice faltered as behind me, another voice spoke. “I wondered when you’d figure it out.”
The woman squeaked and wheeled back, but Sariah was too fast for her. My fiercer half, who looked almost exactly like me, lunged forward as I turned to Nikki, dropping my hands to her neck, straining toward her pulse, which fluttered as wildly as a bird in a cage. Instantly, my third eye fixed on Nikki, and I reached deep into her psyche, intending to heal, but I felt a veil between us, my own abilities oddly blocked. I had to focus so deeply on breaking through that veil that I only came out of my fugue when I heard the unmistakable sound of bones cracking. I looked up in shock to see Sariah standing over the still form of the woman with butterfly wings—wings she’d ripped clean off.
“Sariah,” I gasped as Nikki coughed woozily beside me. “What did you just do?”
“What needed doing.” She jabbed a finger at the crumpled figure
on the floor. “Look familiar?”
“What are you—?”
Then I saw it. Sure enough, the woman on the floor was no longer the angelic redhead with the butterfly wings, but the shattered, faceless crone who’d wailed the banshee cry. “What is going on here?”
“A fantastic question, but one I have no clue how to answer,” Sariah snarled. “I’ve been getting attacked by every manner of crazy since I set up shop this morning and I only now realized you’re to blame.”
“Yeah, I got your card.” I scowled from her to Nikki as Sariah squinted at me. “How’d you get in here without anyone noticing you?”
“They did notice me. So right now, it might be a good idea for us to poof the hell out of here. You know how to do that?”
Nikki moaned beneath me, still way too weak. My right hand ached, and I suddenly realized that the shard of Nul Magis I’d gotten stuck in my palm on a recent job was thrumming hard enough to make the bones quiver. The sorcerer who’d flung the Nul Magis had intended to drain a sorcerer of all his magic, but I’d intercepted it. And as it turned out, I had a little more power in my well than the average wizard. So instead of incapacitating me, the Nul Magis had stuck in my palm and set up house, serving as both an early warning system that magic was being cast around me…and a tool to quell that magic with a really solid handshake. But for it to be gyrating so intensely now…probably wasn’t good. “I sure as hell can get us out of here,” I said.
One of my newest and least-developed skills was a form of teleportation that involved me and anyone I touched becoming thinner than air. In that form of pure energy, we could move anywhere—as long as I’d been there before. Sadly, I hadn’t been to the tent of Mistress Malificorem, and I had no particular desire to go there right now. Not yet. Not with Nikki still not fully conscious. I needed to get her somewhere she could recover in peace.
“Give me your hand,” I said to Sariah as I reached for Nikki with my other hand. Even in her depleted state, Nikki had enough sense of self-preservation to groan.
“What?” Sariah demanded, narrowing her eyes. “Why’d she make that noise?”
“Relax.” I smiled. “This will only hurt a little.”
I poofed us out of the tent. A moment later, we flickered back into existence in my office at Justice Hall, with one small problem.
No Sariah.
Chapter Five
“Crap,” I bit out, as I helped Nikki to the couch. “You good?”
She waved me off, sinking against the cushions. “Go,” she managed. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
Again, the trouble with my ability to destabilize and reappear in a new place was that I needed to know the place I was looking for—ideally, I needed to have been there before. Nikki and I had toyed with the possibility that I could find someone by knowing the person but not the place, but we hadn’t had the opportunity to test that theory. We suspected it would take a pretty thorough knowledge of the target in any event, but in this case, Sariah was the perfect test subject.
Some people spent their whole lives trying to find themselves, but I didn’t think I’d need that kind of time.
Focusing really hard on my sister/alter-ego/crazier half, I poofed back into existence at the edge of a space that was already looking way too familiar—same enormous thugs sporting desert camo gear, same huddle of tents nearly overrun by enthusiastic tourists. Same Spectral Opposition Warrior Services signs, with Buy One, Get One Half Off warding amulets.
I started forward but was almost immediately hauled back, a hand clapped over my mouth. My fingers instantly burst into blue flame, when my own voice—or close enough—hissed in my ear. “You want to give me your magic fireballs of power, go ahead, do it. But I’m trying not to draw attention to ourselves here. Something is seriously screwed up here.”
Sariah’s hand tightened on my mouth a second further, then she released me and we both stood back. We weren’t smack in the center of the group of tents, but we were hardly hidden. Yet no one seemed to be paying any attention to us.
I glanced at her. “You mind telling me what the hell is going on? How’d you end up back here—without me?”
She shrugged. “Our abilities keep evolving, they’re just not the same abilities. You get flame transpo, whereas I can now absorb whatever I most need from whoever I touch last. Kind of like an opportunistic Rogue, but nobody loses their shit over it, ’cause I only sort of borrow their skills for a minute.”
“I think this conversation would go better if you weren’t comparing yourself to an X-Man.”
She rolled her eyes. “And part of your problem is you don’t have a sense of humor. You’re leveling up so fast, it makes my head spin, but you act like every new skill is some terrible burden you can’t wait to unload, whereas I’m happy for any scraps I can find.”
“Sariah…” I passed a hand over my brow. “The distinction you’re failing to note is that I actually feel a responsibility to use these abilities in a way that doesn’t screw anyone else up.”
“Yet another character flaw. But shut it, we’ve got more important things to figure out here. That bitch witch with the floaty wings did a pretty damned good impression of Mommy Dearest, and I want to know why.”
“You heard her?”
“Oh, yeah. Some things you don’t forget, and that voice is one of them.”
I nodded. I could relate. “Okay, you heard the woman speaking in Sheila’s voice, you came to explore, you found me.”
“Which was not part of their evil plan, I’m thinking,” she said, nodding. “That entire setup was to take out Nikki, unless I miss my guess. Which was a pretty shit move, and stupid too. It takes a lot to piss you off, but hitting her would do it.”
“You got that right,” I muttered. I looked around and realized no one was looking at us. “Um…did you also steal my ability to hide in a crowd? Is that why no one sees us?”
Sariah fired her finger gun at me. “Just because you’re not willing to use it doesn’t mean I’m not.”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. “I haven’t had time to test that ability.”
“Congratulations. It works. But there’s something shifty about the old Irish guy who’s hanging out in the middle of a bunch of anti-magic warriors. And there’s also something shifty about said anti-magic guys signing up to be your bodyguards.”
“They’re not anti-magic,” I corrected. “They’re anti-being-controlled-by-magic. There’s a difference. And just because Seamus is Irish doesn’t automatically make him a Neo-Celt. People change.”
“Not as much as you’d like to think,” Sariah retorted. “No way would a druid hook up with a bunch of anti-magic thugs, full stop. That’s totally not their deal. Which means these guys have probably way more magic in them than they’re letting on.”
“Seamus is a druid. Right.” I’d been so focused on the banshee’s first attack, Seamus’s little riff about druid blood hadn’t fully registered. Now, however, it was starting to make a little more sense. Druids were the wise men of yore, the shamans, the warlocks, the old-school know-it-alls…and that knowledge included arcane magic. I’d always expected druids to wear cloaks embroidered with trees, sporting snappy antler hats on their heads, but it was the twenty-first century. Seamus’s cargo pants and Jesus sandals were probably the go-to uniform.
So why was he leading a gang of spectral opposition warriors? Some of whom were semipowerful Connecteds in their own right? “Maybe he’s scared?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. More likely his order is getting ready to go to war, and he’s some kind of advance scout, rounding up all available troops.”
“You mean he wants me to go to war.”
“If it makes you feel better to think of it that way, sure. But make no mistake, this morning’s little demonstration was most likely a test of your skills. If you ended up as a greasy splatter, he was still moving forward. There’s something off about him that I
recognize from too many people down under. He’s lit from within by a fire that will not be easily put out.”
I shot her a wary glance. “And you care about this why?”
“Because ever since I got out of Hell free, I’ve been working on learning the cards again—not to find shit for other people like you, but just for straight-up reading. I remember being pretty good at it once upon a time. Anyway, for the past week or so, the cards have been creeping me out like it’s their job. We’re talking serious, serious trauma. If you hadn’t showed up on my doorstep today, I was going to seek you out.”
“And you think it’s this green man that Seamus was talking about who’s the problem? You believe him?”
“Not the green man, the Green Knight. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah, I remember the same story you did. Seeing as how that was the last year we spent in school.”
She smirked. “Who would’ve thought Mrs. Rice’s class would have come in handy after all? But this guy doesn’t have anything to do with King Arthur. He serves a far different master. The fae and all their creepy minions.”
“Don’t start with me, Sariah. I’m not real big on blaming brownies and pixie dust for what real people are actually doing.”
Sariah rolled her eyes. “You know, I had an awful lot of time to explore my home away from home while I was cooling my heels for a decade. I found a lot of shit down in Hell that made no sense. That shouldn’t have existed, that arguably didn’t exist except in the minds of a few feverish people who believed in them with all their might. But what I learned too was that there were occasions where said feverish minds willed something into being that had no business existing. It happened more often than I would’ve given it credit for.”
I curled my lip. “And that’s what you think happened here, that fairies were created by us? If you imagine it, they will come?”
She shrugged. “Stranger things have happened. Like you, for example.”