by Gabi Moore
“What, that my father is here in the city? That he’s been looking for me all this time?” Aurora asked, suddenly angry. “My mother has been wasting away waiting for him to come back, and you tell me you all kept him from finding us?”
“We were protecting you,” Lester piped up from the back. “Your father doesn’t want to claim you—”
“He wants to kill you,” Lucian finished, leaning back in the shadows of the rear seat. “Or turn you to his side. Either way, he’s not looking out for your best interests.”
“His side?” Aurora spun in her seat to face him, careful to brace herself against Milo’s mad driving. “What side is that?”
Lucian stared at her intensely, angrily. “The side that only cares about him. He’s looking out for his interests now.”
“Why would he need to kill me?” Aurora asked, half hysterical, half furious. “He’s ignored me long enough—”
“This isn’t about custody or child support,” Lucian interrupted. “It’s about succession. You just saw what succession means in this group. One day, I’ll take Cheng’s place, just like Lester and Moreau. Most of the time, we can choose our own successor, but when you bring a child into the world, you make a successor. Whether he likes it or not, his power is going to you, whenever you can claim it.”
“Power?” Aurora squeaked as Milo took a turn at thirty miles an hour. The car wheels skidded on some ice before righting. “What power? What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Protect the city,” Lucian answered patiently. “We told you already. That’s what we do. It’s why we’re grouped together like this. And your father is screwing things up by looking out for himself only.”
“So he thinks I want to kill him?” Aurora was dumbfounded.
“You will kill him,” Lucian insisted. “Either all at once or over time, the longer you live, the more of his strength you take. As your star rises, his is falling. If he kills you, he can stop it forever.”
To this, Aurora had nothing to say. What could she possibly say? She flopped back down in her seat, facing forward. This was unreal. She’d always thought her father must be a Class-A jackass to leave her mother, but this…
No one spoke for the rest of the drive, except the occasional sob from Lester. Aurora wished she knew what to say; someone should say something to the poor kid. Madame Moreau had been Aurora’s employer and nothing more, whether or not she had been some kind of secret guardian. All Aurora had known was that she better show up to work on time, and that if she and Moreau ever passed on the street, the old woman probably wouldn’t even look at her.
Obviously, to Lester, the lady had been much more dear. He was as quiet as could be, but every now and then, a sharp cry that was almost a cough would slip out. Aurora had spent all her adult life comforting her mother, and bizarrely, she found that she didn’t have even one scrap of comfort to give at the moment. Her own life was nothing to be envied, if half of what these people said was true. And after she had seen Mr. Cheng transform into a tiger, right before her eyes, she was inclined to believe more than half of it.
They crossed a bridge, although Aurora wasn’t sure which one, and soon found themselves in a river of slow-moving cars. In the middle of the night, they were stuck in traffic. Milo tapped his foot nervously.
“You should get out and walk from here,” he told Lucian. “The two of you—you can move faster with just two. The sooner we get her warded, the better. We’ll park and be up there as soon as we can.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lucian opened his door and leapt out as Milo was coming to a stop. Aurora’s door opened a moment later, and Lucian’s large hand was offered to help her stand.
It had been one of the longest days of her life, but Aurora took Lucian’s hand and let him lever her up to her feet. They were in the middle of traffic, so the two of them had to fast-walk out of the road, over the snowbank and onto the sidewalk. Aurora had ever been thankful for her heeled boots before, but at least she wasn’t running around February New York in pumps.
It occurred to her as they moved up the street that she should have grabbed sneakers from her apartment. She had only one good pair (the other pair was full of holes) but even the old pair in her closet would have been better than spending all night in heels.
Luckily, Lucian’s building wasn’t far away. He punched in the entry code to a respectable-looking tenement building that stretched upward towards the high moon, and they climbed into an elevator up to the seventeenth floor. Here was a hall with several doors, the last of which Lucian unlocked and ushered Aurora inside.
At first it was almost completely dark, and Aurora put her hands out to avoid bumping into a table or a couch or some such incident; when Lucian closed the door, the darkness was like pitch, endless and thick.
Thankfully, he hit the lights a moment later. When he did, Aurora stared around, uncertain all over again.
It was a nice apartment, sure enough. And in a decent part of town, too, which didn’t come cheap in New York. But in the soft light of several lamps were thousands of charms. The lined the walls. They rustled from the ceiling. Strings and ribbons and lengths of twine, binding together beads and feathers and notes and bits of metal, hung in ropes. Under the charms, the walls were papered in handwritten wards, one taped over the other, like the scales of a fish, almost fully obscuring the paint behind them.
“You’ll be safe here,” Lucian said, taking off his jacket. In the living room, as if unaware of the mad-looking oddments strung around his house, Lucian had a very modern leather couch set around a simple entertainment center. He tossed his jacket across the back of the couch and headed into a back room.
“I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.”
Home. As Lucian disappeared into his bedroom, Aurora felt the word echo into her chest like a shout down a cave. Home. She felt sharply that she had lost hers tonight, that her old life was fully gone. Her mother was missing, her apartment destroyed, her jobs as good as lost. What was going to become of her now?
And what about her father? Was that the real reason that he had left her and Ramona—because the others made him? Because they were afraid he might try to hurt Aurora in the attempt to keep his power? She didn’t feel powerful; nothing strange or unusual had ever happened to Aurora, nor had she ever done anything remarkable. Maybe they had it wrong. Surely, they did. She sat down on the couch, determined to tell Lucian exactly this when he returned.
But when Lucian can back into his living room, it was to find that Aurora was asleep on his couch, laying sideways with her feet on the floor as if she’d simply tipped over.
Chapter 8
The dream was different.
That had never happened before in her life, so Aurora didn’t recognize it begin. It felt more like a memory than a dream, a very old memory from when she was small. She was coloring, drawing something in huge, clumsy strokes. It felt like summer, with bright white sun glowing in through the windows. Her mother was humming somewhere nearby. The world was small and safe.
And then it started changing. The sun was setting, and the dusk outside moved into the apartment. Ramona’s humming quieted and vanished as night drew on, but no lights were turned on, and outside the world was black. By the time Aurora realized how dark it had become, it was complete, no moon, no stars. Not even street lights. She looked down at the picture she’d been drawing.
It had been a picture of her father’s face, but of course, she couldn’t see it, now. Lost again.
The table disappeared. The chair disappeared. And though she tried to hold on to it, the picture, too, vanished straight from her hand as if it had turned to smoke. Aurora was floating in the dark, and recognized at last the dream she’d known so well for far too long.
She twisted and thrashed in the dark; it felt more alive than ever. It felt like a real palpable thing, and it terrified her. Like the coils of a great snake that could constrict around her, suffocate her, any moment. She had to get out.
And then, there it was. The hand, as always. More felt than seen, it filled Aurora with dread. So much dread, in fact, that normally she shocked herself awake at this point. But this time, the dream persisted, and Aurora was carried along with it, towards the hand, and she had a choice before her. Should she take it?
Meanwhile, in the dream, Aurora put out her hands hesitantly. If she took the offered help, she would be pulled out of the darkness, that much was clear to her. But to where? To somewhere better? Or somewhere much worse?
She wasn’t able to make the choice. Long before a decision was reached, Aurora found herself being shaken by the shoulders, shaken back into the world of the living.
“Aurora. Hey! Wake up!”
She blinked awake, surprised to find herself not in her bed, and in fact, not even on furniture. She was on someone’s floor, someone leaning over her now, worried.
It was Lucien. She was in his apartment. Her own apartment was destroyed, besieged by the shadow creatures. Mr. Cheng. Madame Moreau. Her mother. Her father.
Aurora’s breathing grew shallow.
“Hey, calm down,” Lucien told her, helping her stand. She was still in her clothes from yesterday. She might have been out partying all night, complete with the outfit; Aurora had never been out partying all night, but she guessed this was what it felt like. Long before she managed to get back on her feet, she realized the boots were still on.
“Ahrrgh,” she moaned, sitting back on the couch. Time to take off these boots, since she’d already made herself comfortable. What had she been thinking? She was acting like someone who was dying to get raped and murdered. Since when did she fall asleep alone in a total stranger’s house? Her mother had taught her better than that.
Of course, Ramona Potier was gone. Aurora pulled off her boots as tears crept into her eyes. Gone, without a trace.
“Hey, do you have a bathroom?” Aurora asked.
Lucien was kind enough not to point out the redundancy of that question, and instead directed her down the hall at the other end of the living room. Aurora shut herself in the, and looked in the mirror.
Her hair was bent like a deflated basketball. Her S&M clothes were creased and dull and had left red lines on her skin where they’d folded together. Her make-up from yesterday night was a disaster. She looked like a coked-up hooker, and she only felt a little better.
Aurora thought about asking to take a shower, but she didn’t have anything for her hair, or any clean clothes, so she contented herself with scrubbing her face and neck the best she could. For a guy, Lucien kept his bathroom pretty clean, with fresh towels and a laundry basket. Impressive.
She had her make-up in her purse, if she wanted to apply more, but by the time she scoured last night’s mask off, Aurora wasn’t in the mood to slather more on. She was barely able to tame her hair into an agreeable plait. Barely. Not much to look at, and less to smell, but at least she didn’t look like someone’s drunken mistake.
By the time she left the bathroom, Lucien was in the kitchen. Smelled like coffee, which was fine with Aurora. She walked over to the window, which was covered in blinds, drapes, and yet more charms, and started to push them aside to look out.
“Don’t do that,” Lucien called from the kitchen. “It’s about noon. We have to leave the windows covered, though, or else the wards on them won’t work.”
Aurora dropped her hand, suddenly feeling claustrophobic.
“So… you never open the windows?”
“Nope.”
From behind her another voice spoke up casually. “That would defeat the purpose of a ward.”
Aurora jumped and spun around; it was Milo, sitting at the kitchen table with his head back on his shoulders and his eyes closed. She’d walked practically right past him without even noticing in the gloom.
“Turn on some lights! Jesus!” Aurora hissed, her heart pounding. These people were determined to give her a heart attack!
“The switches are over there,” Milo waved at the wall behind her. “Don’t turn them all on. I’m still trying to get just a little more sleep…”
Aurora fiddled around with the light switches and managed to get the light over the table on. Milo groaned and slunk off to the couch instead. “Too bright…”
“If you want some coffee, there’s a pot ready,” he told her. He was carrying his own mug, and sat down in Milo’s vacated seat at the table. Already, snoring from the couch told her that Milo was asleep again. On the loveseat opposite, Lester had his legs folded over the arm and was passed out peacefully.
“Thank you.” Aurora found herself a mug and the sugar. She liked coffee, but it had a bad affect with some of her mom’s medicines, so they never kept it in the apartment. She’d only bought it on the way to work once or twice; no time for it at Witching Hour, and Madame Moreau disapproved of them keeping drinks in the back near the clothes.
At the thought of Moreau, Aurora sighed. She was gone, and Aurora hadn’t even known anything about her. She’d been part of this—whatever this was—for so long, keeping the secret, and then she’d passed away before Aurora could understand who she really was. With all her other losses, it wasn’t top of the list, but it made Aurora sad all the same.
With her coffee, she joined Lucien at the table. He looked a little less intimidating sitting at his kitchen table, surrounded by magic charms, drinking coffee from a mug that had the logo of for the Red Sox on the side. Aurora smiled.
“Red Sox fan?”
Lucien snapped his attention to her; he’d been thinking of something else, obviously, miles away. But he grinned again, that wide white-toothed grin, and looked down at the mug in his hands. “Yeah, since I was a kid.”
“So you’ve lived in New York since you were young?”
“All my life,” Lucien agreed.
Aurora paused, trying to imagine how to phrase this next question. “So, uh… when were you… like… when did you get… bit…?” It was a terribly personal (not to mention a terribly odd) question, but Aurora couldn’t help it. He’d said he was going to take over for Cheng, who was a shapeshifter. Unless she’d just imagined all of yesterday in a great fit of psychological shock. Not impossible.
She was sort of expecting anger from him, but Lucien just smiled a small smile and asked, “Bit? Like, howling at the moon, bit?”
Aurora reddened. “I didn’t—I mean, I thought that’s how… Sorry.”
He laughed. “Don’t be. You’re not completely wrong. There are those sorts of shapeshifters out there. Legends and myths always have some seeds of truth. But I was born this way. It’s genetic, for me, although no one in my family’s had it for a long, long time.”
Aurora’s eyes were wide. “Do you turn into a tiger?”
“My most natural shape is a big wolf,” Lucien replied, taking another sip of coffee. “I’m learning to adopt others, though. Cheng can turn into quite a few, but he’s had a long, long time to practice.”
“How old is he? Like, seventy?”
Lucien shook his head. “Try two hundred fifty.”
Aurora stared. “That’s… not possible.”
Lucien snorted into his coffee. “After all you’ve seen, you’re still going to think about what’s possible and not possible?”
Aurora couldn’t argue that. She sat and sipped her coffee for a while instead; everything had happened in a whirlwind. This time yesterday she had been handling the store, thinking with a little nervousness about the future, whether she’d still have a job at Moreau’s, and how she would pay rent if not.
A horrible though occurred. How on earth was she going to afford to fix the apartment? She had never been able to afford renter’s insurance.
Her heart began palpating. Perhaps it seems odd, after all she’d been through, to be so terrified over such a simple thing, but to explain, Aurora had lived all her adult life with the threat of the money running out just over her head. There had been late fees that she had had to crawl out from under. Short term loans that h
ad nearly set them on the streets. It had taken years to reach a level of security in their finances, and that sort of long-lived stress is not forgotten in one night of extraordinary events.
The figures were piling furiously in Aurora’s head, and her grip on the coffee mug had gotten very tight. And this—when she was going to miss work from both her jobs for the foreseeable future!
Meanwhile, her face had gone sickly pale, and Lucien was watching her, worried.
“Hey,” he tried to soothe her. He set a hand on her shoulder gently. Aurora jumped and looked at him with wide eyes. “Hey, don’t be afraid. I know it’s a lot to be dumped on you at once, but we’re here to protect you.”
Aurora, who had forgotten all about the supernatural events of the previous night, looked at him in anxious confusion.
“What?”
He repeated himself, slower. Aurora shook her head. “No, that’s not it. I just… oh God, I don’t know how I’m going to pay for the apartment. I’ll never be able to rent again if I don’t pay for the repairs… and next month’s rent is due in a couple weeks. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
She rubbed her face, and her heart continued to thrum out of time in her ribcage like a discordant song.
Carefully, Lucien took both her hands. “Aurora. Look this way.”
She shook her head, too full of anxiety.
“Aurora.”
She glanced one hazel eye up at his face. Lucien took a deep breath and squeezed her hands. “Aurora, that’s gone, now. Your bills are gone. Your apartment—gone. We’ll get it cleaned and taken care of. You’re not going to be living there anymore. It’s not safe. You’re in this now, and we’re going to take care of everything.”
Aurora hardly dared to breathe. “What?” she whispered.
Lucien let her hands go. “This coven has existed for centuries, ever since humans settled here permanently. Moreau and Cheng have had guardianship for a hundred years—and we have accounts set up for this sort of thing. We had to be hands-off before, to keep secret. But you’re one of us, now. You don’t have to worry about money again.”