Crimson Daggers- The Complete Trilogy

by Emma Savant

  “Not to mention Grandma would kill them for taking that money out of Carnelian,” I muttered.

  Rowan’s eyebrows drew together a little.

  Mom cleared her throat and looked across the room. “Those of you who are willing to participate in a rescue, please meet me in Nelly’s office after this. The operation is open only to full Daggers who have concluded their novitiate, with the exception of Sienna. Novices and younger, remain on your guard. Protect one another. If these dogs know Nelly’s identity, chances are good they know some of you, too. We can’t be too careful.”

  She waved at a few older Daggers, and they all followed her out the door. The rest of the novices and teens huddled together, stunned and anxious.

  I listened with one ear to their frightened chatter, but my mind wasn’t on it.

  I wasn’t just another novice who needed to keep her guard up. I was Nelly’s granddaughter. I might be on my way out of the coven, but I had some training. I wasn’t totally useless. The least I could do was be there for Grandma when she needed me.

  I scurried out of the room and followed the rest of the Daggers up the stairs.

  13

  I couldn’t hear anything outside Grandma’s office door. Whatever was going on in there, Mom had locked it tight with a protection spell. I put my ear to the keyhole, then the gap at the bottom of the door, and then gave up and went to wait in Mom’s room.

  One of the kittens followed me, happily chasing my boots and nipping at my ankles. She had no idea what was going on in this house, and I was glad of it. At least someone had the kind of life that didn’t have to fall apart every thirty seconds.

  In the quiet of Mom’s sitting room, with its soft lavender scent and tree rustling outside the window, I finally had a chance to let my thoughts, heart, and mind catch up to one another. I didn’t like what I found. All three were devastated in a way that left my hands shaking.

  Grandma wasn’t dead, I reminded myself. She was alive, out there, somewhere.

  It was a cold comfort. If she was being held to ransom by werewolves, who knew what kind of terrifying conditions she was being held in? Were they torturing her? Had they lied and murdered her already? The possibilities chased themselves around my head until I was ready to scream.

  My phone buzzed.

  Brendan: I’m thinking the 6:45 showing. Too soon?

  I stared at the words on the screen. They didn’t make sense, and it took a moment to remember that we’d been having a conversation.

  Scarlett: Can’t make it. Something came up.

  Brendan: Everything okay?

  Scarlett: It will be.

  That had to be true. I had to believe that everything would turn out all right, because I couldn’t handle anything else.

  I went to the little sideboard by the window, which held an electric kettle and wooden box full of tea bags. I started a kettle boiling, then paced the room while I waited, the hardwood floor and braided rug alternating beneath my feet. I didn’t need to use electricity to get water to boil, but I liked the ritual of it, the ordinariness. Finally, Mom’s footsteps sounded outside. She came in. Her dark hair was beginning to fall out of its braid, and she looked exhausted, then surprised to see me.

  “I started tea,” I said.

  She blinked, then nodded.

  “Ceylon, please.”

  I got the tea steeping while Mom sat on the couch and massaged her temples. I handed her a steaming mug and settled on the opposite end of the sofa.

  She was still angry at me, she had to be, but the chaos of the day had softened her.

  “Did you and the Daggers figure out what you’re going to do?”

  She took a deep breath and pulled at the string on the tea bag. The darkening liquid rippled across the surface. I should have brewed a pot of loose-leaf, I realized, and tried to read the leaves. Not that I had the focus for divination right now.

  “We have a plan,” she said. “Whether it’s a good one remains to be seen.”

  “It’ll work,” I said. “You can handle anything.”

  We sat in silence for a moment, then I cleared my throat.

  “Um, Mom?”

  She glanced up.

  “I was going to talk to Grandma when I burst in on you all earlier. I think we all know I’m not cut out to be a Dagger, so I’m going to resign and focus on my work at Carnelian.”

  Mom’s black eyebrows went up. I spoke faster.

  “I still want to help with this if I can, though. I’m not a real Dagger, but this is Grandma we’re talking about. I want to be there for her. For all of you.”

  I clutched my mug. It was too hot, and something about that was soothing. It felt real in a way this situation didn’t.

  “I can go with you, whatever you’re doing. I know I messed up when I was on my own job. I tend to mess up a lot when I’m alone. But if I’m in a group, with the other Daggers, I think I can be useful.”

  Mom tapped her short fingernails on the edge of her mug.

  “You’re not ready to join us,” she said.

  I bit back an exasperated sigh. “I know. I know I ruin things. But I can help.”

  “You’re not ready to help,” she said. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Especially not if you were considering abandoning your sacred responsibilities, which is something we’ll talk about later.”

  I cringed, and she sighed and leaned back in the couch while I tried to swallow back my objections.

  “It’s not about you,” she said. “I wouldn’t let any novice near the Wildwoods no matter how gifted she was.”

  “Sienna is going,” I said before I could stop the words.

  Mom looked at me severely over the top of her mug. “Sienna is not a novice, she is a future Stiletto,” she said. “She has to take bigger risks than the rest of you.”

  A dozen angry responses rose to my lips. I took a quick sip of my tea. It scalded my tongue and forced the words back. I breathed in and out, slowly, then lowered my mug.

  “When will you leave?” I said. “I assume you’re going to get Grandma back by force.”

  “We’re going to track them down first,” she said. “Then we’re going to negotiate.”

  I frowned. That didn’t sound like the Daggers.

  “The Wildwoods are rogues,” Mom said. “We don’t know how many there are or where they’re located, but their reputation precedes them. We could go in guns blazing, but the chances that we’ll walk out with fewer Daggers than we walked in with are too high for me.”

  “You don’t even know where they are?”

  “Some of the others are already doing spells to find them.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “As long as it takes,” Mom said. She closed her eyes and took a long sip of her tea.

  She didn’t know what she was doing, I realized. None of them did. We’d never faced this challenge before. Mom could pretend to be as confident as she wanted, but it seemed pretty clear to me that she was just venturing boldly into the dark and hoping it would all work out in the end.

  The werewolves had given us three days. It might take three days just to figure out where they were holding Grandma. And what if they did manage to find the monsters and negotiate? Would they just end up giving us more time to collect the money? If that happened, Grandma would never finish the pieces for her show in time.

  Casting spells and hoping the Wildwoods would be willing to compromise wasn’t going to be enough.

  Someone had to do something.

  14

  I didn’t make my move until the mansion had settled for the night. There were more Daggers here than usual, all of them holing up together for safety and support.

  Luckily, my room was too small to accommodate guests.

  Even more luckily, I was a witch with a broom, which meant the jump from the attic to the ground wouldn’t kill me.

  Probably.

  I clutched the broom’s handle. My heart raced. We didn’t fly on our brooms, or at least
not often. They were used in ritual and during cultural celebrations but were way too uncomfortable and difficult to control for daily use. I’d only ever learned the basics, and even that had been a while ago.

  “Wish me luck,” I muttered to the two cats who had escaped to my room to avoid the clutches of some of the toddlers who had invaded the mansion. One of them blinked at me, and the other twitched her ear but otherwise pretended I didn’t exist.

  I crawled out of the window and onto the roof. That part, I’d done a million times before. The next step was the one that made me hesitate. The only things to clue me in to how far down I was about to travel were the pools of light that fell on the lawn from the mansion windows, and those were far enough away to make my head spin.

  But I didn’t have time for head spinning or throwing up or even thinking. Grandma was out there, and I had to find her and get back before anyone noticed I was gone.

  I straddled the broom, clenched the wooden handle tightly between my knees, and balanced the rest of my weight forward onto my hands. The broom’s unique energy radiated through my bones, and I took a deep breath.

  Then I let it out, and before I could think, I took a running jump and launched myself off the roof.

  Wind hurtled past my ears, and my mouth opened wide in a silent scream.

  I was dead, I was dead, I was dead-dead-dead-dead-dead—

  And then I landed on the ground as lightly as if I’d jumped from the porch instead of the attic. The soles of my boots pressed against the ground, and I yearned for the earth energy that would steady the swaying in my bones.

  I looked back up at the mansion. A few lights were on in the windows, and a few of the Daggers were washing dishes in the kitchen. Their chatter and the clinking of plates floated out the open window, and I caught a glimpse of someone’s silhouette through the curtains.

  No one had seen me. I’d made it out, and I’d survived the jump.

  I might have just used up my luck for the evening, I thought as I tucked the broom under the porch. Time to go find out for sure.

  I’d brought my wand along for once, tucked safely inside my red leather jacket. Grandma had sewn a narrow pocket into the lining, just long enough to hold my wand and angled so the rigid wood wouldn’t jab my stomach when I sat down. I used it to throw a silencing charm on my motorcycle’s wheels, then pushed the bike to the gate. Only when I was safely down the road did I kick the engine to life.

  The forest was dark. Heavy branches met over my head. Through the trees, lights from houses twinkled here and there from a distance, each one a reminder that we weren’t as isolated as it sometimes felt.

  The werewolves would be isolated. They were wild creatures, and they’d be somewhere far away from paved roads and gated mansions.

  Once I had cleared our neighborhood and entered the city proper, I pulled my bike into an alley between two restaurants and took a folded-up red scarf out of my pocket. I’d stolen it from Grandma’s bedroom when no one had been looking and charmed it with the most powerful locating spell I could find in the grimoire she’d given me for my sixteenth birthday. I hoped the spell had taken. I’d felt the click deep in my bones that usually meant magic had awoken, but that was the tricky thing about the craft: you never knew for sure if your enchantments were working until they did.

  That was true for me, anyway. Some witches with more aptitude for magic—witches like Sienna—claimed to be able to feel the magic like it was their own breathing. But I’d never had that kind of sense for spellwork.

  Grandma’s scarf was lightweight and translucent, elf-woven from cobwebs and split strands of cockatrice feathers, then dyed under the light of a full moon. It was one of her more valuable possessions, and I knew she’d have my head if I damaged it.

  That kind of attachment would help the spell work better, or so I hoped. I held the scarf up by one corner and watched as it blew in a slight breeze that hadn’t been there a moment before.

  My phone buzzed in my pocket. I jumped. Mom must have realized I was gone.

  But it wasn’t Mom’s name on the screen.

  Brendan: What are you up to?

  This was followed by several emojis that suggested he was after more than a casual conversation.

  I didn’t have time to flirt right now no matter how nice his eyes were. I shoved the phone back in my pocket and held out the scarf again. It drifted up, the gossamer material rippling in the night air. It blew straight toward the wall across from me.

  Go west.

  I carefully wound the scarf around my hand to fold it without creasing the delicate fabric. I tucked it back inside my jacket and took off.

  It was several more stops before I was sure of where the scarf was taking me. The sudden breezes got more dramatic every time I held it out for my next direction, which meant I was getting closer. The direction itself, though, had to be wrong.

  The trees of Forest Park rose in front of me. The park was huge—over five thousand acres, making it one of the largest urban forests in the country. It was big enough for an individual to get lost in, sure. But a whole werewolf pack? It made no sense for them to live surrounded on every side by city. They were rogue werewolves, dedicated to living as wild a life as possible. How wild could they get if the nearest Chinese takeout was twenty minutes from their den?

  Then again, I realized, werewolves wouldn’t be after Chinese takeout. They’d be after prey.

  Maybe a forest in the middle of a city was exactly where they wanted to be.

  I nudged my bike onto the beginning of a trailhead. I couldn’t imagine the werewolves’ den would be off any accessible trail, and I was likely to destroy my paint job if I took the bike into the forest, but at least I’d have a shot at finding the wolves before my legs gave out. Anyway, the bike could handle the terrain better than I could. It had a lot more enchantments cast on it.

  I pulled the hood of my jacket over my head, made sure my wand was securely in its pocket, and ventured into the shadows beneath the trees.

  15

  It took less than twenty minutes to realize, not for the first time, that I was the biggest idiot I’d ever met. The shadows pressed in on me from every direction, and it wasn’t long before I’d lost the trail completely.

  My bike didn’t seem to mind. The enchantments I’d layered over it during the past year were stronger than I’d thought, and it flew over the undergrowth and between bushes like it knew its own way around.

  I, however, minded a lot. The scarf was there for guidance, but it did nothing to hide me from watching eyes or protect me from werewolves who’d just as soon eat a witch as a rabbit.

  I stopped the bike and cut the engine, listening for any sound that hinted at predators.

  I might be able to find the werewolves. That didn’t guarantee I’d be able to deal with them. Hell, I couldn’t even capture a stupid counterfeiting faerie, and most faeries were fluff. They didn’t have teeth, or claws, or the kinds of noses that could sniff out prey from miles away.

  My heart pounded as I scanned the darkness around me. There was nothing out here besides trees and insects and fuzzy nocturnal creatures. Maybe I’d learned enough for one night and could come back in the morning, when I’d have the advantage of sunlight and a plan. The Daggers back home would help. They probably had a better sense for Grandma’s exact location already, thanks to their divinations and spells.

  But I couldn’t leave it to them. Before I’d left Mom’s room earlier, she’d let slip one critical piece of information: they weren’t going to stage a rescue mission. Not right off.

  First, they were going to try diplomacy.

  And I knew what that meant. Grandma was about to get stuck in the middle of secretive political negotiations and end up trapped by these werewolves for days, weeks, maybe months. Aside from what that might mean for Grandma’s health and the strength of the coven, there was one inescapable fact: Grandma being gone for weeks or months meant the Fashion Week show would fall apart and her dreams would
be destroyed.

  I wasn’t the only one who wanted to find Grandma and get her home. But I was the only person out of all of them who knew how important getting the Faerie Queen’s commission was to her.

  Important enough to risk both your lives? Mom’s voice said in my head.

  I took a deep breath. Yes, it was. It mattered. I might be a bad Dagger but I had every intention of being a good fashion house assistant, and that meant my boss had to be ready for her show.

  It wasn’t a full moon, which was a tiny consolation. According to Cardinal Saffron’s lessons in magic and creatures, werewolves could shift any time of the month. The full moon was when their powers were the strongest, though, and was the only time they couldn’t control their shifting without the aid of talismans or potions. At least tonight I probably wouldn’t end up riding straight into a den of all werewolves. Some of them would be in human form and easier to take out.

  I should have brought a gun.

  Not that I was going to try to take them down tonight. I wasn’t stupid. I’d find the den tonight and come back tomorrow with a gun and a plan.

  I nodded, kicked the engine back to life, and continued forward, my headlights barely enough to illuminate the black undergrowth in front of me.

  The forest ground was uneven, but my bike handled every hole and rock with ease. It almost seemed to do better in the forest than it did in the city, probably thanks to the all-terrain charm I’d put on it last winter. I couldn’t go too fast, not without branches taking my eyes out, but I sped up as best as I could and leaned forward, letting the front of the bike take the worst of it.

  If I was going to destroy its paint job, I figured, I might as well do it all the way.

  I crested a hill and flew down the other side. The engine’s noise echoed off the walls of the small gully I found myself in. Then I slammed on the brakes and swerved wildly to the side, barely missing a hulking black shape that rose in my headlights.