by Rene Sears
The following excerpt has not been edited.
Morgan
It was hard to feel like a properly gracious host when a fae lady was visiting overhill. Not that Lady Hawthorn was a difficult guest—perish the thought. It was just that she was every stereotypical image of a fae: tall, slender, delicate, with pale hair and eyes the color of wisteria. She looked out of place at my kitchen table, but somehow she seemed at home.
I cleared my throat. "Girls, why don't you clear the table while I get Hawthorn some coffee?"
Igraine shot me a black look, but Iliesa rose and started clearing the table. It wasn't the dishes Igraine minded, I knew, but my transparent attempt to talk to Hawthorn by myself. "Hawthorn," Igraine said, "has there been any word?"
"My dear, I should never have sat with you and eaten a meal and said nothing if I had news." Hawthorn folded her hands together, and leaned forward, trying to catch Igraine's eyes.
Igraine stood up abruptly, chair scraping against the floor. I managed to keep from sighing out loud. It wasn't fair to expect my niece to not be frustrated with how little information we'd turned up about her missing mother.
I poured a coffee with sugar and a splash of cream—Hawthorn—and another black—me—and led her out into the night. Against my will, my ears strained for the call of a falcon, but only a barred owl called somewhere off in the trees. Only two months ago, I'd have laughed at the idea of having a fae lady as a guest in my house, but I hadn't expected my nieces would be living with me either. I wouldn't have been sorry about any of it if only I knew my sister Gwen was safe.
"Are the girls..." Hawthorn trailed off, curling her fingers around her cup.
"They miss their parents, of course. And they don't think I'm doing enough to find them." An opinion I sometimes shared. I'd done everything I could think of but none of it was enough. Nothing had worked.
"I know you are doing all that you can. Rose has continued to look, but she finds nothing about your sister." Hawthorn laid a hand on my arm, and I let myself take comfort from it. In the distance a dog barked. "Have you heard anything from Rowan?"
I shut my eyes against her gaze, then opened them and looked at the distant stars. "No. Not yet." I worried about that, too. Had something happened to him? Or...did he not want to come back? It was stupid to miss someone so much when I barely knew him, no matter what we'd been through together. Hawthorn murmured something sympathetic.
I wanted so badly not to be the adult all the time, but it wasn't for Hawthorn or Rowan, wherever he was, to take my responsibilities for me. Hawthorn had already helped so much, opening her home to me and the girls, letting them stay there while I had travelled to my spellcaster acquaintances to help rebuild after the Savannah flu and ask for help finding Gwen. No one had been able to help me, and the girls had come back from Strangehold older than they had left. It was another thing to worry about. I couldn't let myself hope too much that Rowan was still looking for Gwen, that that was why he'd been gone so long.
I touched Hawthorn's hand, and she squeezed it back. She might not have any answers for me today, but it meant a lot that she came to see us, to listen. I turned back to the house.
"The girls are probably done in there," I said. "Let's go home."
Javier
I'd been evading the monster for three days now, and I wasn't even out of Atlanta. Towering metal-and-concrete canyons had given way to a sprawling expanse of strip malls and highways. This particular strip mall housed a glass-fronted shop with a faded display of black cloth and cards bracketed by iron bars between a vape shop and a payday advance place. A tattered sign above the cards read THE MAGIC SHOPPE in a curly font. I had no real hope there would be any actual casters here, but...I don't know why I stopped, except I was desperate for someone to see me and know what I was.
I surreptitiously touched the lump of incense in my pocket. I had yet to get a hit off the spell I'd cast at least once a day since I left my aunt's apartment, but this place might—might—hold a clue. If I could find someone else like me, maybe they could explain why the monster had come after me.
Bells jangled as I pushed through the door. It was musty inside, dark and close, and when I called my spellsight, nothing glowed silver. Except...I went deeper into the shop, following the faintest smudge of light. I followed it to a metal chest in the back of the shop. I tipped back the lid. The silver light inside was pale and gray, but brighter than what I'd been following, just barely. I touched the tiny silver frog on a cord around my neck for luck and reached into the chest.
The glow led to a blunt silver dagger set with glass "jewels"—more a letter opener than an actual knife—but it was pretty, and at one point it'd been imbued with magic. Either it was used in a ritual or it was spelled to do something. I couldn't tell what. The traces of magic were faint with age. Disappointment hit me—whatever magic had touched this blade, it had happened long before the Savannah flu and its death toll on all magic users.
"Can I help you?"
I turned. The man behind the counter was paunchy and a graying ponytail hung down his back. I didn't sense any wards or charms on him. He squinted at me through wire-frame bifocals.
"I was just admiring this knife." I knew how I looked after three days sleeping on the streets, and I probably smelled, but the look he turned on me was more thoughtful than like he was about to kick me out of his shop. My spellsight didn't turn up anything, but maybe—
"There was a fella in here a little while ago, kind of looked like you, asking about...where are you from?"
Grim humor turned up the corner of my mouth. I'd been asked this question a few times since leaving the island. "South Carolina."
"No, I mean—where are you from? Where's your family from?" He waved vaguely at his face. I frowned. "No offense."
"What was the guy asking about?"
"He was looking for his brother."
"I don't have a brother." I set the knife down carefully and ran my fingers over the paste jewels, trying not to think about all the family I didn't have. "How much is this?"
His brow crinkled as he looked at the knife. "Twenty bucks."
"I'll give you ten." It couldn't be actual silver, not for twenty bucks.
"Fifteen." I considered the steadily-dwindling stack of cash my aunt had given me before she left. I really shouldn't spend any of it on something like this—I had no way of knowing when she'd be back. Still, the knife drew me—even old and unused, it was the first link I'd seen to other casters.
"I'll take it." I crossed the store to the counter, fishing three crumpled fives out of my wallet. This close, the guy smelled like patchouli and smoke. There was a display of bongs next to the register. The guy wrote a note in an actual ledger—no bar code items here—and popped a button on an antique cash register to put away the money.
"If that guy comes back, what should I tell him?" He raised faded blue eyes to meet mine.
I shrugged. "Whatever you want. He's not looking for me."
"If you say so." He wrapped the knife in newspaper—for fifteen bucks I wasn't getting the chest—and dropped it in a plastic bag with THANK YOU in red letters.
"Safe travels," he said after I thanked him, and retreated though a beaded curtain to in the back of the shop.
The parking lot had been mostly empty when I walked up, but now there was a conspicuous addition next to the old Cadillacs and rusted Hondas: a gleaming black SUV with rental plates. I didn't know a ton about cars, but I'd been learning since I came to the mainland, and this one was obviously expensive.
I pulled my baseball hat down low over my eyes and cut away from the SUV, toward the road that led back to the highway.
"Hey! Hey!" a voice called from the SUV. I tucked my chin and walked faster, pulse speeding. There was no reason for anyone to be looking for me. My aunt was the only person who knew who I was, and she had flown back to Puerto Rico to be with her pregnant daughter. I heard feet pounding on asphalt as he ran to catch up with me. I whirled around a
s he reached for my arm.
He was older than me, but not much, and he looked strangely familiar—but I knew I'd never met him before. The circle of my acquaintances just wasn't that big. His eyes widened as he took me in, and his hand twisted up and to the side. I didn't need spellsight to recognize it as the trigger gesture to a spell. Which one? I wasn't going to wait to find out.
Most spells took time to set up, but there were ways around that. My mother had made me dozens of little charms over the years, ways to track me, protect me as I ran wild through the woods. The frog at my neck had been one of them, a coquí singing a song from the home my mother had renounced and I'd never been to. It fell silent when she died—all her spells did. I hadn't been able to fool myself that she was still living for very long.
I'd made my own charms, braided threads wrapped around beads set with spells. I was guessing he had something similar on him somewhere. When he started to cast, I grabbed the ratty collection of cords around my wrist. My father and I had had worked out a simple spell of misdirection. The strands of the spell snapped into a complex web that would take him precious seconds to unpick—and while he was doing that he wouldn’t be able to see me or get a fix on a spell.
His face contorted; confusion or frustration, I wasn't sticking around to find out. I took off running, ducking behind the row of shops, ignoring the rot-sweet reek of the dumpsters as I sucked in breath. I jumped over a concrete retaining wall into the woods behind the shops, shoving through a tree break for perhaps twenty feet until it opened onto a residential street.
I stopped for a moment, heart hummingbird-fast and hands trembling with adrenaline. A scratch on my face from a branch I hadn't noticed burned. I tightened the straps of my backpack and set off at a fast walk. As much as I wanted to book it, a dirty kid running through a neighborhood was going to attract the wrong kind of attention. I went right at the next intersection, then right again, then left. A mom and two kids were throwing a ball in front of a yellow house. The mom frowned at me; I waved a hello and kept walking.
Who the hell was that guy? What did he want from me? Maybe he'd been friendly, and maybe I shouldn't have run—I was looking for other casters—but then why had he opened with a spell? It was hard to interpret that as anything other than aggressive.
It was weird too, because who would even know about me? Unless...maybe he was like me, just looking for another caster...any caster. I shook my head, despair a flat flavor over my tongue. I'd finally found a caster—or he'd found me—and I'd had to run away. But I'd known I'd have to be careful. My father had warned me that there were groups of casters—"My enemies," he'd said, with a sour twist to his lips—that hated him.
My pulse slowed as I walked and there was no screech of wheels behind me. I'd cut right through into a neighborhood, but if he didn't want to abandon his slick car, he'd have to drive around and around to get from the strip mall to here, and the confusion spell should have kept him distracted long enough that he wouldn’t be sure exactly which way I'd gone.
I followed the residential street a few more blocks. When I came to a secluded stand of trees at a crossroad, I pulled a lump of incense out of my backpack. I'd been using my little coquí to store power since mom died, and I pulled a thread of power from it rather than look for a leyline here. I broke off a chunk of incense the size of the tip of my thumb and cupped it in my hands. I thought of fire, of the spark that jumped when I thumbed the wheel of a lighter.
I hadn't needed a lighter in years.
The incense began to smolder dully, sweet smoke dribbling out between my fingers. It burned against my skin but the pain was only a distraction from the need for a direction.
This was the slow way to cast, not nearly as efficient as what my father taught me, but not nearly as distinctive either, and if the guy—or the monster from my aunt's apartment—were following me, this tiny blip of magical energy shouldn't register.
I had a thousand memories of my father showing me how to cast. I swallowed as a sudden pang of loss surged out of the ever-present ache of grief. I couldn't let it interfere with the spell. He wouldn't have wanted that, no matter how basic the casting. I waited until the smoke was thicker, then focused my need and pulled a trickle of magic from the air. I need to find someone like me. Someone who will help me. A lump of sadness or panic threatened to choke me, but I swallowed it down. They can't all be dead but me and that guy. I need other casters. Show me where they live.
The smoke wavered, sweet and thick-smelling, then spilled out in a line, ahead and to the west, as if a strong but very pinpointed wind blew it flat. It was a thin line, and not as decisive as I would have liked, but for the first time since I left my aunt's place, it was there.
Relief weakened my knees and I stumbled even though I was standing still. I wasn't alone. The Savannah flu hadn't killed them all. There are others like me, out there somewhere.
I pinched out the incense. The smoke dissipated until all that was left was the memory of the smell.
Now I just had to keep walking.
One step after another. I headed west.
*
I stopped walking at an intersection and tilted my head up to the heavy clouds. In the days since I had left the magic shop, I hadn't felt watched, either by magical means or mundane. I licked rainwater from my lips and shifted my backpack, trying to make it more comfortable. It was a lost cause.
My sneakers had started squelching miles ago, and I didn't remember the last time my feet hadn't ached. There was no one out but me—no surprise; it was night, and rain had been falling for hours. Reflections of orange streetlights smudged the wet asphalt. There were no cars, no pedestrians.
I shook my head violently, rainwater spattering off the hood of my sweatshirt and into my eyes.
I was hoping to find a place to sleep. The rain came harder, pounding my head and the asphalt with a thousand tiny bombs. My left sneaker had a hole where the canvas was ripping away from the rubber sole, and the wet edges were rubbing new blisters in my ankles. If I could find an awning or overhang—even the door to a store or gas station, closed for the night—I'd be dry. Dryer, at least. I'd slept in worse places since leaving Atlanta.
An image flickered into my head: a small but sturdily built house, chickens pecking in the yard, the smell of shrimp on the boil with onions and corn. Sunshine and warmth. You can never go back. The sense of hope that had sustained me since the incense pointed me toward other casters was hard to find right now.
I shivered. The spring air wasn't cold, exactly, but it was getting colder as the sun went down, and I was tired and hungry. There were a few granola bars in the bottom of my backpack, but I'd find a place to stop first and get out of the rain before I ate.
My shadow flared out along the road: headlights behind me. I hopped over the curb, long grass lashing my jeans, and turned to watch the headlights creeping closer, turning the rain gold in the column of illumination. I fully expected the pickup truck to pass by, like every other vehicle had, but it slowed beside me, and the passenger window rolled down.
A woman leaned across from the driver's seat and called out to me. "Need a ride?"
I hesitated.
"I've got a towel in the cab. Tell me where I can take you." Thunder rumbled in the distance, and the sky opened up even more, pelting me with water. I looked skyward, blinking water out of my eyes. She was headed the way I wanted to go. I pulled open the door and swung up into the cab, bringing a wave of rain in with me.
Water puddled on the leather seats. "Sorry," I said. She pulled a faded blue beach towel from the floorboards and passed it to me. I scrubbed with the towel. She was older than I thought at first—maybe my parents' age. My fists clenched and I made them relax.
"Don't worry about it, it'll dry. Where can I take you?" When I had to think about it too long, she frowned. "Do you have anywhere to go? I can call your folks if you want."
"You can't." I turned my face to the window and watched raindrops hit the glass and t
rickle down like tears. "They're dead."
"Oh hey—I'm so sorry." Her voice had gone soft, gentle. "Listen—I've got a guest room if you want a place to stay. If there's some other family you could call..."
The only other family I knew about was in Puerto Rico, and I couldn't go to them. Of all of them, I only knew my aunt, and I already knew she couldn’t help me right now. I didn't know much about my dad's people, not even where they lived in any sense narrower than North America. I glanced to my left. The woman was watching the road, but her mouth was twisted in a concerned frown. I didn't think she was a serial killer or a weirdo.
"Yeah," I said, and in my mind, my father snapped Manners! "I mean, thank you. That's really nice of you."
She made a noise like ffffftp. "What's your name?"
"Javier."
"Nice to meet you, Javier. I'm Morgan." She put her blinker on and changed lanes. "We're not far from my house. I live with my nieces. We've got a big hot water tank if you want to shower, and I can probably find some dry clothes that kind of fit while we wash these."
Something inside me relaxed. If she was an aunt that took care of her nieces, then I already related to their little family pretty well. She glanced sideways at me and took a right. "If they didn't burn the rice there'll be dinner when we get there, but if they did, we'll get a pizza."
She drove and I dried from soaking to merely very wet. We turned down a few increasingly sparsely populated streets, until we finally turned down a long, graveled drive. The truck dipped and sent muddy water sheeting away as we hit potholes. We pulled up in front of a one-story house with a welcoming yellow porch light shining to greet us. Morgan pulled the truck up close to the front door and turned the engine off. It was suddenly quiet in the cab except for the patter of rain on metal.
"Grab your stuff," she said. "Let's make a break for it."