“They all were,” she spat. “It was Lady Harper who performed the ritual, of course. It was she who bound both of us with our deaths.”
Her words punched me in the chest. I staggered, my legs threatening to give out.
A nasty smile twisted her lips. “Are you really surprised?”
Well, no. Shocked, maybe, but not surprised.
I put the glass down and moved back to the sofa, my mind whirling. Lady Harper performed the ritual that bound us? Guess that explained why Evelyn had chosen to speak at Lady Harper’s funeral when the two had barely known each other when Evelyn was alive.
“She’s not a Hemlock witch.” I addressed the fireplace. “How can she have performed the ritual without our magic?”
“She didn’t need to,” said Evelyn. “My own magic was enough, and with her help, I used my last breath to bind us.”
The small hairs on my arms stood on end. Lady Harper had never talked about the invasion, only alluded to what she’d witnessed that night. Everyone knew she’d killed two Sidhe in person, and her entire family except for her granddaughter Wanda had died in the war. I owed her my life already, since she’d plucked me out of the witch orphanage and helped raise me, but I hadn’t known Evelyn owed her a greater debt.
The last tangible thing my mentor had left in this world was the bond between Evelyn and me. A bond that kept us alive, saved us—and doomed us.
2
I awoke to strong daylight spilling across the living room floor through a gap in the hideous vomit-brown curtains, and a familiar chill telling me the fire had gone out again. I must have fallen asleep on the sofa, which was also a hideous vomit-brown in colour. Comfortable, though. My head felt muzzy with sleep, and by the light’s intensity, it must be at least midday. I should probably eat, but living on instant noodles and dry cereal had got old after the first week of exile. Several weeks on and I was more starved for company than anything else. If only my Hemlock powers could conjure up a cheeseburger from Cassandra’s Café.
“Get up.” Evelyn prodded me in the side, which was downright disturbing coming from a ghost. “You’re not spending another day in the spirit realm. I’m bored out of my mind.”
“That’s why I was in the spirit realm.” I yawned and stretched. “Fugitive, remember?”
“I can’t imagine I’ll forget anytime soon,” she said sourly.
“All right, no need to be rude.” I padded to the bathroom to change into a fresh outfit. My hair had dried in an impressive bedhead, sticking up on one side. I’d stopped wearing my lip piercing, since I kept forgetting to take it out, and the black dye had started to fade from my hair as it grew out.
Slowly, I was starting to look more and more like a Hemlock witch. Next I’d be turning into a tree. Jesus, I hope not. Resembling a spirit realm junkie was bad enough.
Evelyn yelled from outside the bathroom door. “There’s someone here to see you.”
“What, someone living?” I finished dressing and ran to the front door so quickly that my legs forgot how to work again. I staggered against the door frame, catching my balance at the last second. Evelyn snickered, and I flipped her off.
I yanked the door open. “Please tell me you’ve come to exorcise a ghost.”
“You or her?” said Lloyd, my best friend, lowering the hood of his necromancer coat to reveal his windswept dreadlocks.
I held onto the door frame for balance, shuffling aside to let him in. “Don’t mind me, I just spent a bit too long on the other side and my legs forgot how to work.”
Lloyd closed the door behind him and shook his head at me. “I can’t leave you unattended without you getting into trouble, can I?”
“Is Vance not with you?” I’d hoped to warn him of what Lord Sutherland had said, though it wasn’t like he’d made a direct threat against the Council of Twelve. No, it was Lady Montgomery who needed a warning, but she probably already knew Lord Sutherland had his eye on her position as well. Still, I wished I could do something useful in my role as spy, rather than confirming what everyone already knew. If Lord Sutherland was hiding another Ancient behind the mages’ backs, he had yet to let anything slip.
“Nope,” said Lloyd. “The Mage Lord brought me here on his way to meet with someone in Aberdeen, and he said he’ll pick me up in an hour.”
Vance had the ability to teleport to my physical location, but since Lady Harper’s house lay on the edge of a cliff on Scotland’s coast, my other allies were beyond reach. Ivy Lane had gone to deal with an urgent situation in Faerie, while the other members of the Council of Twelve had gone back to their respective territories to form a plan on how to continue without the aid of Edinburgh’s council. It didn’t sound like they were making much progress.
“Good enough.” I walked to the kitchen. “I was going to make something to eat. Cold cereal or soup out of a tin?”
He pulled a face. “Call it intuition, but I bought food with me. No wonder you look like you’re channelling the Grim Reaper. You were skinny enough already.”
I screwed up my forehead. “I don’t need a lecture from you. I already had to listen to Evelyn bitch at me last night.”
“Oh, I wasn’t bitching at you,” she said. “That was nothing. I’m just getting started.”
Lloyd jumped. “She’s just… visible all the time now? And she’s the only company you have here?”
“I also have Lady Harper’s priceless junk.” I walked to the fireplace to move some of the boxes out of the way. “She owned enough antique crockery to host a medieval feast.”
Lloyd sat down on the soft carpet in front of the fireplace and spread out a picnic of pastries and other snacks. “Cassandra’s Café is almost going out of business without you there,” he said, selecting a bacon sandwich. “Find anything useful in your mentor’s junk?”
“Not so far.” I grabbed a pastry. “Just the same shit we found before. The journal and the map.”
“The journal nobody can read and the map that leads nowhere.”
“That’s Lady Harper for you.” I took a huge bite of pastry, trying not to think of Evelyn’s latest bombshell. She’d vanished when we’d sat down, perhaps due to our leaving her out of the conversation. “Turns out she’s the one who did the soul binding spell.”
His jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me.”
I swallowed another mouthful. “Evelyn was the one whose magic fuelled the ritual, but it was Lady Harper who made the final decision. I should have known. The other Hemlocks were already stuck in that cave.”
“That is messed up.” His gaze fell on the leather-bound book beside the fire. “Is that what her journal’s about, d’you think?”
“No, she wrote in it nine years before the invasion,” I said. “Thirty-one years ago, so before I was even born. Not that I can read it. Whatever code it is, there’s no translation here.”
He pulled the nearest box closer. “Gotta start somewhere. Have you finished checking this one yet?”
“Not before I lost the will to live,” I said. “There are a lot of things we could be doing rather than this. Like dusting. This place is ninety per cent dust.”
“Hey, it’ll be worth it if we find something.” He picked up a letter. “Man, she had a lot of correspondents.”
That was true. Lady Harper’s letters were short, crisp, and written in her infamous sprawling handwriting. Whenever I read them, I could hear her strident voice over my shoulder, telling me I just wasn’t trying hard enough.
“I’m more interested in these cookies,” I said, opening a bag.
“Isabel made them,” he said. “Ivy said they’re better than her handmade spells, if possible.”
“Wow, really?” I bit into a cookie, and the taste of cinnamon flooded my mouth. “You’ve all been hanging out together while I’m stuck in no man’s land, then?”
“I think Isabel’s more interested in hanging out with her new witchy friend.” He winked. “I know for a fact she’s been sneaking up to Scotland for vis
its. She said she can’t get through to you on the phone, but she managed to get through the forest without any trouble.”
“So the Hemlocks have been pretending Evelyn and I don’t exist?” I put the bag down and wiped my mouth. “Bloody cheek.”
Since the last time I’d seen Isabel, she’d narrowly escaped being turned into a puppet by a deranged god, I’d have thought she’d want to avoid the city for a while. Then again, it sounded like she and Asher the witch had become close friends—or more than friends.
“Well, you are Edinburgh’s most wanted,” he said. “I always knew you’d make headlines.”
I flicked a cookie crumb at him. “So you haven’t run into any trouble since I left, then? No wayward zombies or annoying poltergeists?”
“So many zombies.” He groaned. “Have you any idea what it’s like trying to work with novices who can barely operate a summoning circle? I want my partner back.”
“I’m right here,” I said indistinctly through a mouthful of cookie. “I’ll be back at your side when the guy who runs the mage guild forgets he wants me dead.”
He winced. “Are you sure you’re okay up here? I can fake a family emergency to get out of guild patrolling and come and stay here for a few days, if you want company.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “You’ve become way more maternal since I left.”
“Someone has to look after the psychics.”
“Thought that was Ilsa’s job.” I raised an eyebrow. “Unless you finally made a move on Morgan?”
“He remains oblivious.” He cleared his throat. “Maybe when this blows over.”
“We’re in the Highlands. Nothing blows over. It turns into a storm that lasts for weeks.”
I didn’t mind the rain—I mean, I’d grown up in England then moved to Scotland—but the monotony had grown tedious, to say the least.
Lloyd ducked his head over the box of letters. “Man, it sounds like these Briar people really pissed Lady Harper off.”
I looked up sharply. “Wait, did you say Briar?”
He picked the topmost letter out of the box. “Yeah, why? You know the name?”
“Yeah… the Briar Coven. I lived with them for the first year of my life.” They’d also been the Hemlocks’ allies, and Lady Harper had instructed them to keep an eye on me when I’d moved to Edinburgh. Yet when I’d gone looking for them, their house had been empty, and no trace of their coven had been left behind.
Lloyd handed me the letter and I scanned it. In typical brusque fashion, the letter read, Not good enough. Tell the Briars I’m coming to pay them a visit. A. Harper.
That was it. She hadn’t signed the note, but the tone had my former mentor written all over it.
I put the yellowed piece of paper down. “The address says… Foxwood. Any idea where that is?”
Lloyd shook his head. “Nope, doesn’t ring a bell. But I can look it up when I have a phone signal. The guild has records of most supernatural places, too.”
“You know how secretive she was, though,” I said. “Text Isabel when you have the chance. I’m ready to visit the forest and find out what Cordelia’s hiding.”
“You’re wasting our time,” said Evelyn.
“Can I hear something?” I stood on the hillside, wrapped in a warm coat with four layers underneath to stave off the chill of the Highlands. “It sounded like a whiny voice on the breeze.”
Vance had whisked Lloyd away without sticking around to chat, but it was my idea to go through the forest. It was a testament to the grudge-holding power of the Hemlock witches that they’d let my mentor through and not me, even though I was their supposed saviour.
I didn’t feel like much of a saviour, marooned there in no man’s land. Frost coated the grass like icing sugar, and the sky was slate-grey, merging with the distant mountains. On my other side, the house clung to the cliff’s edge, just high enough to avoid the spray of the waves lashing against the shore. Mist shrouded it from behind, making the whole place look otherworldly.
Rubbing my hands together to warm them, I focused on the thin, transparent line running along the hillside beneath us. While I could usually see the spirit lines better as a ghost, my Hemlock magic was tied to this particular spirit line, which cut through the middle of Scotland and England and linked to the Hemlock witches’ home. Or it was supposed to, anyway. Despite the glow lighting my palms, no answer came from the other side of the line.
“You have some nerve lecturing me about not taking my duties seriously and then throwing a tantrum and shutting me out, Cordelia,” I said aloud. “I thought I was your last hope.”
The air shimmered, and a solid shape appeared, slamming into my padded coat. I grabbed my attacker by the scruff of its neck as its sharp teeth snapped inches from my ear. The small horned creature shrieked and kicked in my hands, its sour face twisted with hate. Some kind of faerie—a goblin.
“Where did you come from?”
Rather than answering, the goblin wriggled free from my grip and thrust upwards with a sharp knife. Stepping out of range, I called on my Hemlock magic and deflected his blade, sending it spinning away down the hillside.
Evelyn let out an impatient noise and lashed out. Magic sparked from her hands, forming a semi-transparent whip that cut off the goblin’s head like a knife slicing through paper.
I gave Evelyn an exasperated look. “You didn’t want to ask how he got into the forest before you decapitated him?”
“You were taking too long.” She threw the last of her magic at the goblin’s headless corpse.
Honestly. Evelyn and I understood one another better than ever before, but somehow that meant we argued more often. Almost like siblings, except for the part where Evelyn wanted to take over my body. I’d never had a sibling, so I assumed that wasn’t normal, anyway.
I walked to the spot where the goblin had materialised from and searched for the traces of the forest’s magic where it rippled through the spirit line. Grabbing the threads, I hissed, “If you don’t let me into the forest, Cordelia, I’ll take an axe to you.”
The glow around my hands grew brighter, then the world fell out from underneath us. After the spirit realm, the fall seemed tame by comparison. The landing, not so much. I crashed in an undignified sprawl in a nest of tree roots, grateful for the layers I’d padded myself with for breaking my fall.
Pulling twigs out of my hair, I scrambled to my feet. “Thanks for that, Cordelia.’
“You should not be here,” rumbled a female voice from the tree in front of me.
“Terrifying,” I said. “You should consider a career in voiceover acting.”
The tree warped before my eyes, becoming a stone sculpture with a pair of eyes staring down at me. On either side were the cramped walls of the Hemlocks’ cave, covered in snaking tree roots. I never did figure out how many Hemlocks were trapped in those walls, but the others had stopped talking a long time ago.
A small figure covered in fur sat on a rock, baleful eyes blinking at me.
“I thought the Soul Collector killed you,” I said to the fae creature.
“You thought wrong,” she said in a raspy voice. Even the Hemlocks’ half-faerie servant was angry with me? If anything, Evelyn had been responsible for my current fugitive status. She was the one who’d tried to murder the mage council.
“Why are there Unseelie fae in your forest?” I asked Cordelia. “A goblin just jumped out of the spirit line and attacked me.”
“The fae are restless,” Cordelia responded. “They feel the forces moving in this realm and others, and they grow fearful.”
“Say what now?” I said. “Forces moving… like what?”
Cordelia didn’t answer. It was amazing how a face stuck in a tree could look so much like an angry schoolteacher. Or my former boss and head of Edinburgh’s necromancer guild, Lady Montgomery.
“Have you heard from Ivy Lane lately?” asked Cordelia.
I blinked. “No. Last I heard, she was in Faerie. Why?”<
br />
“No reason.”
Yeah, right. When the Hemlocks tried to avoid my questions, it meant they were sitting on something major. “Please, just give me a straight answer for once. Have you ever heard of a place called Foxwood?”
“No.”
I stood my ground. “I found correspondence between Lady Harper and the Briar Coven, which marked Foxwood as their address. I’m guessing they didn’t always live in Edinburgh?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she growled. “We were not local to you, during our human lives, and I haven’t set eyes on anyone in the Briar Coven since before our imprisonment.”
“Didn’t the Briar witches bring me directly into the forest when I was nearly poisoned to death?”
“The Briar Coven brought you to the forest’s boundary on Lady Harper’s orders. We did not see them.”
That’s convenient. “Look, the leader of the Mage Lords might have made a deal with the monsters you gave up your magic to defeat,” I said. “If I were you, I’d be trying to help me, not thwart me. The Briars might be the allies I need.” I’d be unwise to pin my hopes on anyone, but the Hemlocks were a literal world away from mine. They couldn’t remove the price on my head or make the mages forget they wanted me dead.
“I’m well aware, Jacinda, that the man is in communication with the Ancients,” said Cordelia. “If anyone can thwart him, however, it’s you.”
“Are you feeling all right? Did you just praise me?”
Cordelia’s pit-like eyes blinked. “I’ll thank you to watch your tongue, Jacinda. You know our power runs in your veins and is limitless.”
Evelyn made a small noise, barely audible.
Limitless? Not hardly. Okay, while Lord Sutherland possessed only one type of magic, his earth mage ability, my Hemlock magic could create any regular witch spell and pull apart the fabric of reality to boot. On paper, it sounded reasonable for me to be able to challenge him—except for one slight issue.
“He’s working with witches himself, Cordelia,” I told her. “He had one tied up in his dungeon who he forced to summon an Ancient. I bet if he had one god’s name, he’ll have others. I have no idea what powers they have or what they’re capable of.”
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