by Emma Savant
“I have something for you.” Grandma moved to the countertop along one wall and pulled open one of the many drawers underneath.
She rummaged around in the drawer for a moment while I stood, careful not to touch anything. It wasn’t so much out of respect for Grandma’s space, although that was part of it. Mostly, I had too many childhood memories of the times I’d accidentally brushed against a bunch of poison sumac and ended up with blisters, or sniffed a jar of crushed witch’s nettle and ended up in a violent sneezing fit. I was older and wiser since the first time I’d been allowed here—but that didn’t mean any of Grandma’s spell ingredients had lost their sting.
“What do you think of Rowan?” Grandma asked while she dug through what seemed to be a complete mess of random objects and papers in the drawer.
“About the vampire thing?” I said. “I think it changed her physiology, not her soul.”
“Good,” she said. “Me, too. Ah. Got it.”
She stood and held something up triumphantly.
I had to squint.
“A needle?” I said.
“Mm.”
She held it toward me, and I reached out a cupped hand. She dropped the slender silver needle onto my palm. It landed with barely any weight.
“I have some of these,” I said, although of course this couldn’t be an ordinary sewing tool. I pinched it between my index finger and thumb and held it up. The metal reflected the light of the nearest lantern back to me in one thin strip.
“You’ve never had one of these.” Grandma opened another drawer, and this time the thing she was after didn’t require so much searching. She handed me a tiny spool of thread, as silver and glittering as the needle.
“What is it?”
“Magic.” She flashed her manicured eyebrows at me.
“You don’t say.”
“I can’t tell you how to use it,” she said. “Just seems like the kind of thing you might need in a house of vampires.”
“I don’t think this is big enough to stake them.”
“No, but maybe to stitch them?”
I had no idea what she was talking about. But this wasn’t the first time that had happened, and it wouldn’t be the last.
Not all magic could be taught. Saffron had told me that a hundred times, and I knew it for myself now. Sometimes magic was a sentient thing, and it would reveal its secrets when it—or I—was ready.
“Thanks.” I threaded the needle, secured it under a few strands of the silver thread, and tucked the whole thing carefully into the small velvet bag Grandma handed me. I hid it in my jacket pocket next to my wand.
“I didn’t much enjoy my time with Sienna’s crew,” Grandma said, as lightly as if we were talking about a stay at a hotel she hadn’t found up to her standards. “Didn’t think it was that good for the children, either. Her henchmen just kept the little girls in front of movies all the time. I can’t imagine that much screen time is good for developing minds.”
“It was the screen time that got to you?” I said. “Not the imprisonment or the bloodsucking fiends of darkness?”
“Every Dagger has to deal with monsters of the underworld at some point or another,” Grandma said. “But watching The Magical Adventures of Bobbi Bluebell three times a day for weeks on end is bound to challenge the strongest of us.”
She pursed her lips. I got the impression she was only half joking.
“You believe Rowan?” I asked. “About Sienna harvesting children?”
“I have no reason not to.” Grandma pulled a few small jars from a shelf along with a tall vial of golden liquid. “The worst case scenario is that she’s leading us into a trap. So as long as we proceed by assuming everything is a trap, we’ll be prepared.”
“You don’t think we should call in representatives of the Waterfall Palace for this one?” I asked. “It seems like this has gone well beyond an internal feud.”
“We should absolutely call them in,” she said. “The Palace can’t send law enforcement in if we don’t have some pretty convincing evidence, of course.”
“But there’s nothing to stop them from hanging out at the property line to collect children,” I said.
“Now you’re thinking like a Stiletto.”
Grandma looked over at me and smiled. She was back to wearing ruby-red lipstick and stylish earrings, and her smile was so familiar I ached inside. Whatever her experience at Sienna’s wannabe-Dracula’s castle, Grandma wasn’t going to let it slow her down. Neither was Rowan. A sudden rush of admiration and gratitude flooded through me, not just for Grandma but for my whole strange, magical, monster-fighting family.
Sienna was wrong. The difference between the way I’d been raised and the way she was trying to raise her future vampire spawn was simple: I had been born into this, and then I’d been given the opportunity to choose it. Over and over again, when it was easy and when it was so hard I’d felt like quitting, I’d had to fight to prove myself. Every fight had been a choice, and every choice had led me to this moment.
And it would lead me to the next moment.
And the next moment was going to be the hardest.
“I’m going to stop her.” I stared at Grandma, and she stared back at me, and there was something in her eyes that was heavy and solemn and suggested she felt exactly like I did. “Whatever it takes. That’s the choice I have to make next.”
Grandma didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then she let out a long breath.
“I hope it’s me, when it comes down to it,” she said. “I hope no one else has to face it. But if it’s you—if you’re the one who gets the chance—”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll take it.”
“Come help me mix these herbs, sabre.” Grandma held out a hand.
I took it, and she pulled me in close and dropped a kiss on the top of my head.
“We’re going to have to fight our way through a lot of vampires. Garlic smoke bombs might take the edge off,” she said.
“Tasty. We should bring bread and pesto as housewarming gifts.”
She removed a thick braid of garlic bulbs from their hook on the ceiling. “Crush the cloves and set them in a bowl with a handful of garnet nuggets,” she instructed.
There was no more to say. I got to work.
36
It didn’t take much to convince the rest of the Daggers that we had to go storm Sienna’s castle. It took a lot more energy to convince them that we shouldn’t do it the very night the idea was announced.
The mothers were furious. I’d seen angry Daggers before, but I’d never witnessed this level of rage. Rose clutched Sakura to her throughout our first meeting like she was prepared to fight off anyone in the room who so much as breathed wrong. Sakura was two years old, resilient, and not much in the mood to be clutched, but she knew better than to get into a battle of wills with her mom, and so did the other girls.
It wasn’t just them. Each of the kidnapped girls had sisters, cousins, aunts, godmothers, and playmates, and we had all been affected by their ordeal. Knowing that there were other families out there going through the same hell we’d just emerged from had us on edge. But eventually, after plenty of heated arguments and Grandma putting her foot down more than once, we came to a consensus.
We had a date. We had a plan. All we had left to do was train and wait.
“You have to wonder how many other baddies have been going free while we’ve been prepping for this,” I said to Brendan a week after our first coven meeting.
The days had been creeping and racing by all at once, and each day I was impatient to go after Sienna and equally in dread of the risks that came with our plan. Now, we had only one night to go—one night, and then, when the sun broke over the horizon, we would break into Sienna’s stronghold and attempt to tear her kingdom apart.
Brendan drew the blanket I’d brought out closer around his shoulders. We were on the roof outside my bedroom with an enormous enchanted umbrella hovering over us, shielding us from the
inevitable evening drizzle. There weren’t stars out here, not with the sky as overcast as it was, and there wasn’t much of a sunset, either. But the steely skies and grim forest that stretched out in front of us held their own kind of beauty.
“You’ve all been busy,” he said. “But I figure we’ll get rid of close to a hundred vampires tomorrow, so it should even out your numbers.”
“It’s not about numbers,” I said. “It’s about—”
“Protecting the innocent, I know.”
“But we’ll still protect a lot of innocents by getting these vamps off the streets,” I said.
“We’re going to save a lot of innocents if Rowan is right about Sienna’s little factory farm.”
I shuddered. “It’s a disgusting thought.”
“I’m sure you’ve dealt with worse.”
“I don’t think so,” I leaned back until my spine nudged against the frame around my bedroom’s dormer window, then rested there. “I think, in terms of sheer evil, this one is definitely the worst.”
“What about the werewolf pack that we chased away from that kid’s birthday party?” he said.
I shook my head. “Those werewolves were vile, and I hope they rot in jail, but at least they were hunting. Following their instincts.”
“Those aren’t my instincts,” he said sharply.
“No, I know,” I said. “Sorry. But these vamps are…” I shook my head. “There’s something so cold and premeditated about it.”
Brendan sighed and gazed out to the horizon. “I guess the question is, which is worse? A quick, early death or a lifetime of trauma?”
“They’re both worse,” I said.
There was no question. And there was no point to ranking evil, either. It was all bad. It was all the worst. It was all something we had to fight.
Brendan nodded, and a long silence descended as we watched the rain.
“I’d tell you to be careful tomorrow, but you’ll handle yourself better than me in there,” he finally said.
I looked sidelong at him and raised an eyebrow. “You having a self-esteem crisis over there or are you trying to flatter me?”
He laughed. “No, I mean it. I can go in there and dispose of vamps, but it’s genetic for me. I’m a werewolf. We’re big with teeth. You’re something else.”
“A witch?”
He gave me a crooked smile. “It’s not about that. I’ve been blown away over the past few months at how hard you work. Not just you, but the Daggers, all of you. The hours you put in, the sacrifices you make.”
“It’s what we do.”
“It’s incredible. It makes me feel better about the world, that you’re willing to do all that to protect strangers.”
A soft warmth stirred in the pit of my stomach. It flared into heat a moment later when Brendan reached a hand out and took mine.
“I wish you didn’t have to make some sacrifices, though.”
I didn’t have to ask what he meant. It was there between us all the time, in the walls I put up and in the way he and Alec jostled for my attention without anything ever coming of it.
I was a Dagger. Even if I hadn’t reminded him of my responsibilities at every turn, it couldn’t have escaped his notice that not one of the women in my coven had a boyfriend or husband.
He ran his thumb across the back of my hand, and my skin tingled in the wake of his touch.
“At least you know why,” I said. “The other Daggers can’t even tell people why they can’t commit to relationships. Or regular dates.”
“You’re all married to your mission.”
He ran his hand up my wrist, and his thumb caught under the sleeve of my jacket. My breath caught. I hadn’t realized how sensitive the skin of my wrist could be.
“Do any of you know your dads? Or your biological dads, I mean?”
“Some of us do. It’s not too common.” I shrugged. “Usually only if the dad has worked with us and has a reason to know we exist.”
“What about you?” he said. “Can I ask that?”
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “My dad was a one-night stand. My mom and her sister have different dads, both people Grandma knew over the years.”
“But she never stayed with any of them.”
“It doesn’t work.” I sat up straighter, and Brendan’s hand fell away from my wrist. “People want to be in relationships with other people. Daggers can’t make those kinds of promises.”
He turned around on the gently sloping rooftop and knelt in front of me. His shoulders were broad enough to block the whole overcast landscape from my view. “I’m not asking for promises, Scarlett. I know you can’t give them. I can’t either, not until I know for sure my pack is safe on our own land, and I don’t know how long that’s going to take.”
The sound of the rain picked up, and delicate water droplets poured from the edges of the umbrella that floated over our heads. “So where does that leave us?” I asked.
He reached out a hand and touched my chin. His fingertips were gentle, the caress an experiment, and I couldn’t stop myself from leaning into it.
“I think it leaves us right here,” he said. “Right now. I think we have tonight, and we’ll figure out tomorrow when we get there.”
“And then, what, we’ll just keep doing that forever?”
“Seems to be how most people live. One day, then another.”
He leaned forward, and my heartbeat quickened. When his face was just an inch away from mine, he stopped, even though my lips were already reaching out toward him.
“I’m going to kiss you now.” His hazel gaze searched my face, and he held still, waiting, until I gave him the tiniest of nods.
Then his lips claimed mine. His heavy, muscled body pushed me back against my bedroom window as heat flared between us. A whimper that surprised me rose in my throat, and I pulled him closer.
I had no idea what was going to happen tomorrow. But tonight was ours. After that, we would take it one heartbeat at a time.
37
Cool morning light filtered through the trees overhead. I peeked around the edge of a tree at the vampires’ gloomy mansion and let out a breath. Everything was quiet. The lights that had flickered in the windows for the past hour had all been doused. If they weren’t asleep yet, they would be soon.
Asleep, that was, except for the single guard Mom had seen patrolling the mansion halls in her scrying mirror last night, and we already had our best archer poised to take him out. Robin could hit two people walking a foot apart from a hundred yards away without thinking twice, and I knew she would have no problem popping the vampire guard the instant she caught his movement around a corner.
“Doesn’t matter how many missions I take, the moment right before we head in always makes me tingle,” I said.
Ginger tightened the leather strap that held several sheathed daggers against her thigh. “That feeling never goes away.”
It had taken Ginger a while to heal from her last encounter with Sienna, even with Clancy’s expert ministrations. Now that she was here, I knew there was nothing I could have done to stop her from coming and I’d have been a fool to try. She was angry—as angry as I was, as angry as every one of our sisters—and ready to fight.
“Waterfall Palace guards are on their way,” Grandma said in an undertone when she came to find me a few minutes later. Her white hair was slicked back out of her way, and her lips were as red as fresh blood. “The queen wanted the palace to handle this one personally. They’ve got a team of healers who can take care of the children’s injuries. Once we get the first child past the boundary line, that’s enough evidence that the guards can dismantle the wards at the edge of the property and come in to help us.”
A phone call or texted photo of a child in a prison cell should have been enough in terms of evidence. But Sienna had tightened the wards that guarded this place since we’d been here last. We had reason to believe individual witches could break through the property line without alerting the wh
ole house, at least with a little support from Saffron and our other most advanced spell casters. But cell phone signals got scrambled around magic at the best of times. With wards like this up, the chances of any message getting through were slim to none.
“They’ll focus on the kids, though, right?” I asked.
Grandma nodded. “No matter how stealthy we are on the way in, we’ll have to fight our way out. By the time anyone from the palace can cross the property line, I think the battle will have been decided one way or the other.”
“I hope you’re more optimistic than you sound.”
“I’m always optimistic and always cautious.”
It seemed like good life advice. I made sure my dagger, wooden stakes, and pistols were all in place and popped the collar of my jacket. Grandma had made this red leather coat for me when I’d first been initiated into the coven, and I’d spent most of last night enchanting it with protection spells. It wasn’t exactly armor but it would be enough to keep vampire teeth from getting too close to my skin.
Rowan came up to me as Grandma moved silently away to check on the rest of her troops. She was even paler than usual in the watery morning light, and her dark eyes were hard.
“You ready for this?” I asked.
“I’ll sleep better once it’s done,” she said. She gave me a sharp look. “Which is something I do intend to do during the day, but only because I’m on overnight missions most of next month.”
I held up a hand, and she bumped my fist with hers.
“I’ll join you in the daytime naps,” I said. “Once Sienna’s gone, I think I’ll sleep for a year.”
A distinct bird call sounded between the trees nearby. The call was repeated farther down, and then again from Daggers and Wildwoods hidden in the trees surrounding the property. The faintest shimmer rippled across the lawn as one of the glamoured witches stole toward the house. There was a long pause, then a window to the side of the building wavered. It melted into water, and within a minute the window was nothing more than a damp stain on the side of the building.