by Sarah Piper
Straddling my chest, he cocked back an arm and offered a bloody, near-toothless smile. “Time to say goodnight, witch.”
“Leave her alone!” No more than a flash in my peripheral vision, the kid leapt out from behind the Dumpster, flinging herself at our attacker.
She scratched and punched for all she was worth, eyes blazing and wild. I’d never seen anyone so fierce.
But he batted her away like she was nothing—a fly. A gnat. A piece of lint.
I gasped, heart hammering in my chest, shock radiating through my limbs. She wasn’t any of those things. She was a fucking child in a unicorn hoodie, lost and scared and totally alone.
And he’d just thrown her to the ground. Just like that.
She didn’t stand a chance.
Still pinned in place, I couldn’t see where she’d landed.
But I’d never forget that sound.
Head hitting the pavement. The eerie silence that followed. Another ambulance screaming into the night, nowhere close enough to help.
“What did you do?” I screamed. I clawed at the man’s chest, but he was already checking out.
“No. No way. Fuck this bullshit.” He jumped up to his feet, staggered back a few steps, then bolted.
Still trying to catch my breath, I crawled over next to the girl, adrenaline chasing away my pain. Blood spread out beneath her head like a dark halo. “Hey. I’m right here. Hang in there, baby.”
She was thin as a rail, her wet jeans and threadbare hoodie hanging off her shivering frame.
“Jesus, you’re freezing.” I shucked off my leather jacket and covered her body, careful not to move her. “It’s okay. He’s gone.”
I swept the matted hair from her forehead. Her skin was clammy, her eyes glassy and unfocused, but she was still conscious. Still here, blinking up at me and the dark, cloudy sky above. “What’s your name, sweet pea?”
Blink. Blink.
“Hon, can you tell me your name?”
She sucked in a breath. Fresh tears leaked from her eyes. That had to be a good sign, right?
“Um. Yeah,” she whispered. “It’s… Breanne?”
“Breanne?”
“Sometimes Bean.”
“Bean. That’s a great nickname.” I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear, my fingers coming away sticky with blood. “Hang in there, Bean. I’m going for help.”
“No! Don’t leave me here. I—” She reached for me, arms trembling, skin white as the moon. “Grape jelly. Grape—”
Grape jelly grape, she’d said. And then her eyes went wide, and I watched the spark in her go out.
Just like that.
“Bean!” I pressed my fingers beneath her jaw, then checked her wrist, desperate to find a pulse.
But it was too late.
Here in the middle of vamp central, the sweet kid in the unicorn hoodie—the one who’d ultimately saved my life—was dead.
Three
Gray
Murderer.
Guilt flooded my gut, hot and prickly.
She was just a kid. I was supposed to save her.
Instead, I’d gotten her killed.
I puked all over the front of my shirt.
This can’t be happening.
Think, Gray. Think.
Wiping my mouth on my arm, I returned my attention to her glassy eyes. Empty eyes.
Right now, more than anything, I wanted her alive. I wanted to take her to Luna’s Café for a cup of coffee and a hot meal, to teach her how to defend herself against vampires and rogue shifters and bad man hiding out in alleys. I wanted it with a deep and endless yearning, a soul-sucking regret that felt like it was turning me inside out.
“Please, Bean.” I stared into her vacant eyes. “Come back.”
Silence.
I reached forward again, grabbing her limp hand, but something felt… off. Like I was being watched. Trapped. I whipped my head around and scanned the end of the alley, peering into the misty darkness of the street beyond. An old car backfired nearby, making me flinch. But I saw nothing. Smelled nothing.
I turned back to Bean, my arms erupting in goose bumps. Instantly the temperature plummeted. My breath turned icy with frost.
The alley tilted sideways. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Somewhere deep inside, I felt an old, familiar rush, a pulsing heat gathering deep in my core.
No. Not again…
I fought to resist, but it called to me, warm and inviting where seconds ago I’d been shivering. I opened my eyes, the world spinning and blurring, then stopping suddenly.
The alley was gone.
I was on my knees in the middle of a lush, moonlit forest, my hands full of rich earth.
There were no buildings here, no brick walls or vampires or greasy men. I was alone in the middle of nowhere, the only sound a gentle breeze whispering through a canopy of leaves. The soothing scents of lilac and lavender washed over me.
I know this place.
Rising slowly, I wiped my dirty hands on my jeans. Several paces ahead, indigo light pulsed, urging me forward along a path clogged with tangled vines and flowers so big and full they’d bent their stems.
Picking my way through the growth, I followed the light until I reached a small clearing surrounded on by dense, dark forest. Nestled in among the blackest of trees, a hundred pair of silver eyes glittered in the night.
Watching.
Not so alone after all…
At the center of the clearing, a chest-high pedestal made of smooth white stones rose out of the earth, vines twining through the gaps between the rocks. Here was the source of my seductive light—a pentacle etched into the stone slab balanced on top, glowing as if it had been carved from living, indigo fire.
Instinctively I reached forward, my fingers slipping into the promise of warmth offered by the light. My skin tingled, but it wasn’t creepy or unpleasant; more like getting into a bath that’s just a little too hot—a surprise at first, then bliss.
“What is this place?” I whispered.
A soft breeze danced across my hair, bringing with it the lilac and lavender scent I knew so well. The answer was in my head, all around me, everywhere at once.
I knew. Remembered.
This was my place. My magic. My source.
The place of calm serenity I’d retreat to, deep inside myself, when my adopted mother Calla was first teaching me how to use my magic.
Some witches drew magical energy by visualizing their bodies extending into the earth, like the roots of a tree—Sophie was like that. Others got energy from the moon, or raised a cone of power with other witches, or performed rituals to call on the grace of their deities.
There were as many ways to access energy for magic as there were witches.
Me? I came here.
I hadn’t though—not for more than nine years.
But now I felt the magic humming through my veins again, waking up after its long nap.
“How is this possible?”
Behind me, the leaves rustled,
It felt so good, so right. Such a part of me, I wondered how I’d managed to go so long without it. Calla had always told me it was a rare and powerful witch who could generate her own magic energy, but once we figured out that that was my method, she’d done her best to teach me how to care for it, access it, and replenish it.
I’d always loved coming here. Always. And for the first sixteen years of my life, I knew it as well as I knew my own face in the mirror.
But I was twenty-five now, and this place… it wasn’t exactly as I’d remembered.
Beneath the scent of lilac and lavender I’d always associated with my magic, something else lurked—a cloying, rotten scent I couldn’t quite place. Where once the path was clear and well-defined, edged in knee-high colorful blooms and ferns as soft as feathers, now it was wild and untamed. Uncontrolled. Before, there had been no eyes watching, glittering and unblinking in the pale moonlight. And out beyond the stone pedestal, the gentle rolling mea
dow so bright in my memory was now a gnarled, leafless forest. The trees were enshrouded in mist, their branches barren and broken.
It looked like a great black skeleton army on the march.
Nothing is static, a voice inside me said. All things must change.
As I peered into the dark wood, the bare trees began to shift, slowly revealing a new path. Something compelled me forward, though this path was narrower, the trees so close the branches scraped my arms.
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched—not just by the glittering eyes of the forest, but something else. Something sinister.
I will find you…
Rubbing the goosebumps from my arms, I hurried down the path toward another clearing, stopping before a stone archway choked with gnarled black vines and carved with glowing silver-blue runes.
Enter, the trees seemed to whisper.
An iron gate appeared beneath the arch, and I wrenched it open and stepped through. Stars glittered in the night sky, but soon the shifting clouds obscured the view. The clearing before me darkened.
The trees were closing in.
Dense mist crept out from the trees and swirled around my ankles, and once again I was shivering. The black skeleton army stepped forward, and for the first time I noticed the black-and-silver threads draped over their branches, swaying gently in the breeze like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
It was breathtaking.
As I watched, mesmerized, the bare black branches stretched forward, closing in around me. With the same instinctual movement that had guided me into the warm indigo light on the pedestal, I reached for the closest branch, twining my fingers with the cool, shimmering threads. They wound around my hands, instantly tightening, icy cold and wrong, wrong, wrong.
“No!” I jerked backward out of the mist and back through the gate, falling hard on my ass. The forest vanished on impact, the alley reappearing just as quickly. But this time, I was surrounded by a dome—some kind of iridescent shield. It glimmered in the air like a soap bubble, blocking out the mist and the sounds of the warehouse district.
The silver threads had vanished from my hands, but my skin was streaked an oily black where they’d touched. When I turned my hands over, they ignited in dark indigo flames that licked the night air and cast the alley in a blue glow. The flames didn’t burn.
I gasped, turning to look at Bean. Silver mist poured from her mouth, shimmering in the night like the sheerest gossamer scarf.
Her soul.
On the pavement next to her, a raven appeared. It was more beast than bird, with opalescent black feathers and great golden eyes that held the wisdom of a creature a thousand times his age. I stared openmouthed, my body frozen in shock. I knew the raven wasn't a real bird—not one that I could feel with my hands—but a shadow creature that by all accounts I shouldn't be able to see.
He was a messenger. A ferrier of souls.
He was the most magnificent, terrifying creature I have ever seen.
But I couldn’t let him take her. She wasn’t ready. Wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t be helped.
Possessed by some ancient, unnamed knowledge, I raised my flaming hands, horrified as they caught the edge of Bean’s soul. But instead of igniting, the misty fabric of her essence recoiled, slithering back into his mouth.
The raven disappeared.
The flames in my hands died out.
The shield dropped away.
“Bean!” I knelt beside her, pressing a hand to her forehead. She was even colder now. Her eyes were still open, covered now with a sick, milky white, shot through with tiny blue veins.
The sound of new breath sucking into her lungs nearly stopped my heart.
Bean gasped and sputtered, her legs twitching. Then she sat bolt upright.
I shot to my feet and stumbled backward, slamming into the wall behind me. Didn’t matter. For once I was grateful for the pain. The bricks were reassuring against my shoulders, a piece of solid reality in a night that had just gone utterly sideways.
Bean moaned, her curdled-milk eyes staring right through me.
My heart dropped. Was she a zombie? A revenant? Whatever she was, I’d made her, and I’d done it with something dark. Other. Something festering inside me that I didn’t understand and absolutely did not want to fuck with.
Worse, I’d broken my only unbreakable rule. After nine-plus years of lying low—not even so much as a heat spell on my coffee or a money spell to help with rent—I’d just used my magic.
In a series of jerky, disjointed movements, the girl—creature—hauled herself up. She pinned me with those rheumy eyes, seething with an unspoken accusation.
You did this to me, witch.
I wanted to bolt—every instinct inside me shouted at me to get away—but I couldn’t. I let her approach, shuffling and awkward, my own body paralyzed with a mix of fear and morbid curiosity.
She tilted forward, face close to mine, and inhaled deeply.
But rather than attack, as I’d half-expected—or die again, as I’d half-wished—she simply turned away and shuffled down the alley, disappearing into the misty dark.
Instead of going after her, I did what I do best.
Ran like hell.
Four
Gray
Normally I liked to take the long way home after dropping off Waldrich’s van, strolling along the Bay’s narrow beach as neighboring Seattle blinked awake. It was a three-mile walk from Waldrich’s dock at the Hudson Marina to the house Sophie and I shared in South Bay, and a good way to unwind after a long shift.
But this morning, as sunrise turned the sky the same shade of milky pink as Bean’s eyes, I took the shortest route possible, zipping home to bolt myself inside.
A hot shower washed off the blood and grime, but standing in our cheery red-and-yellow kitchen an hour later, Sophie’s annoyingly loud fox clock ticking away above the stove, guilt and confusion lingered.
What the hell happened out there?
I’d gone over it a hundred times, played it back from every angle… It didn’t make sense. Necromancy wasn’t something that just happened—it took years of dedicated study and a fondness for the darker arts a thousand miles south of my personal comfort zone.
And if I had done it…
No. I couldn’t go down that road. That road meant living in fear. It meant running, starting over in a strange city, abandoning the people I cared about.
Again.
For the fourth time since I got home, I checked all the doors and windows in the house. I was pretty sure no one had seen me use magic, but I wasn’t taking any chances.
On my way back to the kitchen, I heard Sophie’s keys in the front door.
“About time,” I called out as she stepped into the entryway and kicked off her silver platform heels. She usually beat me home from her shift at Illuminae, the fae club where she tended bar. “Late night with the fairies?”
My familiar teasing brought me back to reality, grounding me. Suddenly the alley felt like a bad dream.
“Don’t even ask.” Sophie dropped her bag on the kitchen table and flopped into a chair, her sequined micromini riding up her thighs. Her normally straight red hair was woven into intricate braids, each one pulsing with light that changed colors as I watched. Whorls of silver, blue, and teal danced across her bare shoulders like a living tattoo of the sea.
The fae loved their parlor tricks.
Sophie caught me staring and looked down at the oceanic designs undulating across her freckled skin. “It’ll wear off soon.”
“As if you don’t love to sparkle.”
She shrugged, a cute smile lighting up her face. “Sparkle is my color.”
I returned the smile, my body relaxing further. “All you need is a unicorn, and you’re all set.”
“If Kallayna thought it would bring in more business, she’d make it happen.” Sophie slid her fingers into her hair, trying but failing to unravel the braids. “How was your night?”
I too
k the seat across from her and blew out a breath. Guilt and fear sat heavy on my shoulders, but I didn’t want to get into it with her—not until I was certain what it was.
From a basket at the center of the table, I picked out one of the beach rocks Sophie had painted, a black palm-sized stone decorated with a red-and-purple mandala design. On the other side, she’d painted just breathe in white script.
Rubbing my thumb over the smooth paint, I was so focused on just breathing that I’d forgotten my face looked like I’d gone six rounds with a sledgehammer.
Sophie gasped. “What happened to you?”
“Some guy jacked me on the last delivery.” I set the stone back in the basket and pulled my hair forward, covering the messed up part of my face.
“And?”
“And nothing.” I waved away her concern. “Chased him off.”
Sophie reached across the table and grabbed my hand, scrutinizing me from behind several layers of shimmery blue eyeshadow. Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “Gray Desario, you are completely full of shit.”
“Nah.” I jerked my hand from her grasp and headed to the sink to put the kettle on. “Only half full of shit. The other half is pure liquid sunshine.”
Sophie grunted. “Doesn’t feel like sunshine to me. It feels like magic.”
Sophie could sense energies from touching people or objects—emotions, motivations, intentions, things like that. She said it was like her intuition dusting for psychic fingerprints. The more intense or traumatic the situation, the stronger the vibe. It meant that all of our furniture came from Ikea—thrift store finds had too much history.
It also meant she was a human lie detector.
She pulled a deck of Tarot cards from her purse and began to shuffle. “Start talking.”
I took our mugs out of the dish drainer and righted them on the counter next to the stove, then rummaged through our basket of teas. “Dreaming of Chamomile, Lavender Honey Sweetness, Chocolate Bliss, or Merry Mint?”
“How about a big mug of Stop Dodging the Damn Question?”
“We’re fresh out of that. You’re getting mint.”