by Sierra Cross
“Look, I know what you’re thinking.” She lowered her voice and stepped closer to me. “I was the same way…before. And I respect your skepticism. But you really don’t know, can’t know, what it feels like on this side of the fence.”
“The dark side?”
“That’s what you call it. To me it’s so much more. Being part of Jennifer’s team is amazing.”
As she blinked, I saw a green glow in her eyes. It pulsed once and was gone. I’d have guessed it was a trick of the light, but I’d seen it once before. I tried not to think about what it might mean that I too had had a green light come out of me.
“No pain, no fear, no loneliness, no worrying about whether or not you belong.” Callie’s head tilted with a fluid animal-like movement. “You know Eric told me about you.” Despite myself I snapped to attention at Eric’s name, though I feigned disinterest in the cold, manipulative voice coming out of Callie’s mouth. “Before he left.” Left was apparently dark witch euphemism for being brutally blasted to another realm. “He told me about your power, about the darkness that sings in your veins—even more so than your aunt’s. Imagine what you could do if you stopped fighting your own nature. Your very DNA.” A chill ran through me. Was she talking about the dominion gene? Rather than giving me more information, Callie stopped. Her face morphed into a saccharine grin. “But here I am yacking away, and your aunt only has like ten minutes. Let’s get you in there. Buzz me after, okay?”
Not a chance, old friend, I thought. And tried to clear the heavy sadness from my mind so that I could face my next enemy.
“Alix.” My aunt regarded me coolly from behind her sprawling desk. Her brown hair was pulled back and there were dark circles under her eyes. Though she looked as impeccable as ever, I recognized the time-saving hairdo and the fatigue on her face. She was working late nights and not getting enough sleep. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“Pavement road rash would be closer to pleasure than being here. Bamboo under my fingernails. Being waterboarded—”
“I’m busy,” she said flatly. “Let’s not play games. Spit it out.”
“Fine. I came to talk to you about a couple of your side projects.” I swore I would keep my anger in check, but I was already struggling to keep from throttling her.
Could this woman who packed my lunches and signed my permission slips really have killed Marley and all her acolytes just to further her own self-interest? Looking back at it, I could see that she was subtly trying to draw me to the dark side my entire life, trying to steer me, get me hooked into her evil world. She had turned the most innocent woman I knew evil. And she tried to have me kidnapped. How hard would it be to take lives after that? “I want to know what twisted you so badly that you were able to justify killing all those women.”
“You’re going have to clue me in. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She stole an impatient glance at her folded laptop, like she couldn’t wait to get back to it.
“Really? You’re going to sit there and tell me you had nothing to do with the attack at Marley’s?”
Aunt Jenn’s expression shifted slightly but remained neutral. “I did hear about that. A shame that all those young women had to die. Lost potential. But it’s nothing to do with me.”
I stared at her, trying to figure out her angle. She was no longer acting like the sweet Aunt Jenn who raised me, but she also wasn’t acting like a cackling, evil monster. “So…” I no longer felt on solid ground. “So you’re telling me it wasn’t you who stole the anaq mazkehret?”
To my surprise, Aunt Jenn did cackle at that. Or at least laugh out loud. “Honey. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but there are no more anaq mazkehret left in the world. The last one was used over a thousand years ago. Trust me.” She waved me off like I was a kid who was babbling about Santa Claus. “If they were still around, Eric would have found a way to get his hands on one.”
The force of her conviction was so strong, that if I hadn’t just seen evidence of one I might be inclined to believe her. But the attack on Marley’s compound had not been amateur hour. For one thing, the cost—to hire a crew, circumvent the Wont security, break the umpteen, high-level wards and steal that amulet—was astronomical. Whatever was on that necklace was invaluable, to somebody. “I can’t think of anyone who would want a power boost more than you,” I said aloud. “And you have the means. And you’re known to be, well, evil.”
Then my aunt tilted her head, pursed her lips and looked at me the way she used to look at me across the table at our Sunday brunches. “You and your ideas of good and bad. You don’t know what evil is. Did you know the magicborn ‘leaders’ whose laws you’re following are torturing children?”
I couldn't help but scoff.
“You’re so closed minded you assume I’m lying. Or you think it’s hyperbole.”
Of course she was lying, her mouth was moving. “There’s no way the Council Suprema condones torture.” Even as I said it, I remembered Matt’s prediction that Bonaventura would make the amulet thief beg for death.
“Your precious Council Suprema…” Aunt Jenn threw back her head and huffed. “I have a friend, a scientist actually, working for the Fidei. She’s spent a career amassing information on how they’re torturing mals and other deviants, experimenting on them. All the while telling the world they’re evil. It’s abominable. A scam perpetuated by your ‘lawful government.’ Amalgams aren't evil. She has proof.”
Mal kids, tortured by the Fidei? I had a sudden moment of horror at what could have happened to Matt if an agent had seen him heal his wounded dog when he was a child. Then I remembered: this was my aunt speaking. She was always trying new tactics to get me to turn away from the light. There was no way Fidei agents would perpetrate such vile acts. Even though they wanted to arrest the Omni, surely no one would torture him. Larch was as buttoned up and rule-following as they came. My aunt was full of it.
“Yeah, right.” I wasn’t going to dignify this hoax with a reply. It was bad enough that certain magicborn were considered deviants just because of their birth. She was just embellishing the unfairness, to play on my sympathies.
My aunt looked me in the eye, her soul bared. It was the look she’d give when I was the pouting teen, thinking I knew more than she did. “Oh, my sweet Alix.” The way she said my name, as a plea, sent a ton of emotions flooding up to the surface.
“Did you ever even love me at all?” Damn. I told myself I wasn’t going to go here, but she was, for all practical purposes, the closest thing I still had to a mother. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, the dichotomy of my memories was tearing me up.
“I gave you a good life.” She flipped off her glasses and let the frustration come through in her tone. “I gave you everything I had to give. When your grief and anger threatened to destroy you, I pulled you back from the ledge. All the grey hair I pay good money to hide, I got from worrying about you.” She moved her arm Vanna White style to show off her top-shelf corner office. “Look at my life, look at what I’ve accomplished. The only thing I’m guilty of is trying to give you an unbelievable life, more power than you could imagine.” She paused, and I wondered, how far would she go to give me that life? “…and to spare you the pain and humiliation I had to suffer because of archaic coven doctrines. It would never matter how much I knew, how extraordinary my talent was, I was born in the wrong order. I would never have had a position of authority. Never been able to lead. Do you know what it’s like to know you have greatness inside you and understand you’ll be forever relegated as a footnote, an ‘also-ran’?” For a minute, I thought she was going to reach across the desk and take my hand, but she didn’t. “Yes, I loved you. I still do.”
An exasperated sigh escaped me. It would have hurt less if she told me she had never loved me. What was I supposed to do with her dark twisted version of love? “Well, trying to have me kidnapped isn’t the best way to show it.”
“Don’t be ridiculous…” She stopped,
like it just sank in. “Someone tried to kidnap you? My God, Alix are you—”
“And you know nothing about the breach of the Demongate wards, the dozen Neqs and the Caedis that came through the—”
“A new Caedis cleared the wards?” Her eyes widened, a wave of fear spreading across her face. “Did you recognize him?”
Zero to terror in one second flat. What would cause my aunt that much fear? My God, she was afraid of Eric coming back. She betrayed him and sent him back to the Demon Realm, of course she had a reason to fear him. Which meant…it couldn’t have been her that weakened the wards. And she’d inherited a mixed lot of Nequam, a good number brought through by Eric. It struck me suddenly that she must be spending every waking minute securing the loyalty of the demons in her charge. That would explain why she looked so tired. I wanted to torture her a moment longer, let her think the worst. But I couldn’t do it. “It wasn’t him.”
She looked like she was going to try and play it off, but the relief was too blatant on her face for that to work. “Of course it wasn’t.” She waved her hand, like she was shaking off a campfire ghost story. “He won’t be able to cross back over for another hundred years—at least. By then, he’s welcome to Millennium Dynamics. I’ll have moved on to bigger and better things.”
As I was leaving her office relief flooded me, irrationally I told myself. My aunt was evil. She wanted to turn me evil. But she didn’t weaken the wards or steal the anaq. She didn’t send a Caedis to put a knife to my throat. That was something.
It also meant we were no further along with the investigation than we were this morning. If we didn’t come up with answers soon, it could be me that was begging the vampires for death.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“How touching,” Asher sniped, slamming his empty highball on the bar, “that you and your evil aunt had a chummy reunion.” It was a Tuesday night after ten, and Sanctum was a ghost town. Emma and Zoe, the other waitress on duty, were already beginning to clean though we still had another hour until closing and I’d filled what I was assuming was the last round for the night. Our coven had gathered at the end of the polished mahogany bar, brainstorming—and yes, sniping—freely in a Circle of Silence, one that I invoked, thank you very much. “But now we’re hosed,” Asher went on, “and, hello, Fidei are fitting us for a prison wardrobe.”
Liv took another sip of her cosmopolitan and leaned across the bar toward me. “The threat of prolonged confinement doesn’t bring out the best in Asher, does it?” she said in a stage whisper.
Asher ignored her. “Not to mention pissed off vampires will ensue if we’re dead in the water.”
I stage-whispered to Liv, “Yes, who knew that orange clashing with his complexion would be more upsetting to him than being drained of all his blood?”
“And being ripped limb from limb,” Matt finished.
“You three aren’t funny in the slightest.” But Asher’s twitching lips betrayed his amusement. Truth be told, I was relieved to see Liv joking around with Asher. On the morning of Marley’s death, the air between them seemed a bit chillier, at least on her side. I often wondered if she’d been thinking the same thing I was at his devastated reaction: this is what Asher looks like when he cares. Though Liv and I had been best friends in childhood, we were still building up our closeness as adults. I didn’t feel I could barge into her life with such a personal question…yet.
The slight joshing around between us had so far been the high point of the evening’s meeting. Matt, keeping one eye on the front door, had thrown out a half dozen ideas on how to track down the stolen amulet, all of which Asher shot down with alacrity. Liv and I, neither of us raised in magic, were mostly just staring blankly.
“Oh, what about a tracer spell?” Liv was clearly bouncing with excitement that she had something to offer.
Asher rolled his eyes. “Brilliant…if you want to find a lost wedding ring or child’s favorite blankie—”
“No, wait, think about it,” she cut him off, undaunted. “All the spell does is highlight the residual energy between a person and an object. Instead of strong emotion, we’d be tracing magical residue.”
As she explained, I struggled to follow along, feeling like the slowest kid in spellcasting class. Which is how I usually felt around Liv and Asher.
“If the ancient magic on the amulet is as strong as you say, then the magical residue would be way stronger than a kid to her favorite blanket.”
“Point taken,” Asher said, “but the spell is spun from a person to their missing object—”
“But there’s no reason we couldn’t do it in reverse.” Liv’s passion made the words rush out of her mouth at caffeinated pace.
Asher’s eyebrows raised. “Go on.”
“The chain the amulet was on, it was bathed in the magic twenty-four seven. We use that thread to trace it back to the last person who touched it.”
We all waited for Asher to come up with a counterargument. To shoot her down. Tell her it was impossible. Didn’t happen.
She grinned.
“Great,” Matt said. “Now all we have to do is ask the Council Suprema for an item logged into evidence. Pertaining to a crime we’re under suspicion of. To investigate something we’re not supposed to call attention to. Piece of cake.”
“We could go and ask Bonaventura.” I almost hated to suggest it, but the vampire was likely our only hope.
“I’ll go with you.” Liv’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. “I’ve never been to a vampire’s house.”
I glanced over at Matt, expecting him to balk at the idea of two witches making such a field trip unescorted. He looked me in the eye and nodded. In his stoic guardian way, it was the highest approval he could have given me.
Liv, who’d been brought up by her wealthy aunt and uncle, wasn’t intimidated by the sprawling Bonaventura estate. We rang the bell and a mousy maid opened the door. She wore a white apron over her grey uniform dress. Her brown hair was tied in a tight bun that made her face look pinched.
“I’ll show you to the study.” Her neutral, measured tone sounded a bit forced. “You can wait for the Director there.”
She’d just turned to lead us down the hall when a college-aged girl came bouncing in through the swinging door from the kitchen. “Crystal!” The maid gasped, apoplectic. “No. No. No.” The maid rushed to the girl, grabbed her arm, and led her back to the door she’d come through. “Servants always exit through the back.”
“Fiona, I was almost at the front door,” Crystal said, rolling her eyes.
“Rules are rules.” Why did I get the feeling this was one of Fiona’s core values? She wasn’t going to budge on this. Once the girl acquiesced, the maid turned to us. “New feeder. They’re always the hardest of the staff to break in.”
Right. That sentence was all kinds of wrong. Staff can’t even walk through the foyer? Breaking in a new feeder? I shuddered and stole a glance at Liv, but she gave me a “that’s life” shrug.
Fiona ushered us into Bonaventura’s study. Even the ornate Louis XIV décor didn’t faze Liv, driving home for me how sharply our worlds had diverged after the accident.
“Ladies.” Bonaventura walked in and narrowed his eyes, like he didn’t like what he was seeing. “Where’s your guardian?”
“Why do you care?” Liv said with an edge of hostility in her voice. Misogynistic mansplaining was an instant hot button for my coven sister.
Normally, I’d be right there with her. But without Matt around to be peacekeeper I found myself awkwardly picking up that mantle. I put my hand on Liv’s arm. She shook it off, but stayed silent.
“You gave us a task, Director.” I addressed Bonaventura with all the gravity I could muster. “We’re here because we think we’ve found a way to do what you asked...but we need your help.”
The Director raised an eyebrow. “Go on. You have one minute.”
Speaking quickly to keep Liv from responding to the vampire’s rudeness, I outlined our idea for a reverse
scry. “If we had the necklace, we could find the last person to have touched it.” I held my breath, hoping the plan sounded more solid than it felt.
Bonaventura sat at his desk and scoffed. “I’m not about to okay placing valuable evidence in the hands of two untrained witches.”
Before I could reach over and steady Liv, she had called her magic and formed a small firebolt. The harmless blast left her fingertips and nicked the vampire’s left ear.
Damn. This was not how you asked for favors from vampires. The Director didn’t flinch. He fixed Liv with an icy stare. I braced myself for him to pounce, but he didn’t.
And then it hit me. He’d done this before, first at the crime scene when I asked about the necklace, then when Matt recognized it as the anaq. He put on a show of anger and impatience to distract from the real issue. What was he hiding from us now?
I put my hand back on Liv’s arm, silently requesting she put away her magic. She complied.
“We need you to pull that necklace out of the evidence lockup ,” I said quietly.
“It is evidence in a major crime.” He let out a short laugh as if incredulous. But I sensed he was all bluster now. “What you ask is impossible. But what can I expect from an amateur.”
“You’re a vampire. Nothing is impossible.” I glared at him. “I don’t care whose strings you pull, you need to get us that necklace.”
“Are you deaf as well as untrained?”
“You know, maybe you’re not the only one who can help us. I could always ask Agent Larch for assistance...” I let my voice trail off suggestively.
“I hired you to track down the sale of a black market item. The amulet. That necklace chain is irrelevant.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. “You will leave this house and do what I asked. And only what I asked.”
“You’re letting your ‘tell’ show.” Mirroring him, I crossed my arms, hoping to show my resolve was equal to his. “Why are you balking at getting the necklace out of lockup?”