by Sarah Piper
“What else do you know?” I asked.
It had been a few hours since we’d discovered Sophie's body—since the raven had taken her soul. Even through all of my denial and babbling and pretending, deep down I knew she was gone. But still I hadn't really allowed myself to feel her absence or think about what it might mean tomorrow or the next day and the day after that when I pulled our two mugs out of the dish drainer and realized that from here on out, I'd only ever need one.
I sat there thinking about it now, trying not to think about the fact that I was thinking about it, my fingers wrapped so tightly around the rose stone that the tips had turned white, but still I didn’t cry. Didn’t gasp. Didn’t break down until Detective Alvarez looked at me once again and said, “They took some of her hair. Several of her braids appear to have been crudely cut with a knife.”
It was so gruesome, so horrid, even more so than the death itself because this somehow felt more personal, more intimate. But through the fresh tears that fell, all I could do was laugh. I laughed and laughed and laughed, because in that moment, where all things had stopped making sense, the picture that came to my mind was of an evil man walking around the Bay with the handful of glittering, rainbow light.
Alvarez rose from the table. I was still laughing when he put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll know more after the autopsy and the lab reports, Miss Desario. I’ll keep you posted.”
Forcing myself to pull it together before he decided to call the psych ward, I nodded, forcing out a thank you. “We didn't know who else to call.”
“You did the right thing,” he said, then asked to speak with Ronan privately in the living room.
I counted sixty clicks from the fox clock until Ronan returned. One minute that felt like a day.
He told me that the medical examiner had arrived and they were getting ready to transport Sophie’s body to the morgue. Alvarez wanted to know if I needed a moment to say goodbye.
I shook my head. I didn’t want my last memory of Sophie to be them zipping her up in a body bag. “I… have to clean the floor.”
“You sure?”
I nodded once, and that was the end of it. Ronan went back into the living room to deal with the transport.
It was the kindest thing he'd ever done for me.
I stayed alone in the kitchen, scrubbing the floor while they strapped my best friend to a gurney, and carried her out our front door for the last time. I tried not to dwell on it, remembering instead the sound of her laugh, her all-knowing smirk, the glittery tattoos of the sea that had danced across her chest less than twenty-four hours ago.
By the time Ronan came back into the kitchen, the house was silent. Everyone else had left.
Ronan held out his hand and helped me up off the floor.
When I looked into his eyes, I gasped.
For the first time since I’d known him, my demon—my rock, my shelter in the storm—was terrified.
“Gray,” he said urgently. “You need to pack.”
Fourteen
Gray
I stripped off my yellow rubber gloves and followed Ronan down the hall to the bedrooms, averting my eyes from Sophie's closed door.
Ronan found a duffel bag and a beat-up old backpack in my closet and tossed them both onto the bed.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“A safe house Asher set up.”
“What are you talking about? Who’s Asher?” The only friends Ronan had ever mentioned to me were Darius and Detective Alvarez, and even then, the word friends felt like a stretch.
Ignoring me, he rummaged through my dresser drawers, pulling out clothes and shoving everything into the bags, stuffing them to capacity.
He zipped up the backpack and tossed it at my feet. It hit the floor with a soft thud.
"If there's anything else you want, get it now,” he said, going for the duffel. “We won’t be coming back.”
I picked up the backpack and hitched it over my shoulder, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Ever?”
Ronan was back to ignoring me.
“But… I’m Shadowborn,” I said randomly. Everything was rushing at me so fast, I couldn't keep up. I felt like I was underwater, looking up from the bottom of the pool while everyone else swam around on the surface, oblivious. “What does that even mean?"
“We don't have time.” There was desperation in his eyes, an uneasiness that I’d never seen there before. But he knew me well enough to know that I wouldn’t—couldn’t—let this go.
Exasperated, he said, “Shadowborn are witches who exist in two planes—the world that you see here, and the Shadowrealm.”
“What else?”
“They’re extremely rare.”
“And?”
“Once they fully come into their magic, they can access powers from both realms.”
My stomach tightened. “What powers?”
Ronan stared at me a long time, his lips pressed into a thin white line. It was a look I’d gotten to know well from my stubborn friend. It meant that he had all the answers, but didn't want to share them.
“What powers?" I repeated.
“The strongest among you can manipulate a person’s life force,” a voice said, but it wasn't Ronan.
Death was back, his shadowy form taking up all the space in the doorway. His tone was so matter-of-fact, it was like we were watching this unfold on a National Geographic special. “They can become soul ferriers, like my owls and ravens, but infinitely more powerful. They are necromancers in the truest sense of the word. They have the capacity to give life, to save it, or to destroy it. And they are, all of them, bound to me.”
“Well I’ve never heard of it,” I said, eager to move past words like necromancer and bound. “Shadowborn. Sounds made up.”
Death opened his arms. “Yet here you are. Existing.”
Ronan, who had been silent through this latest exchange, grabbed the duffel off the bed and heaved it over his shoulder. “Gray, I’ll answer your questions later—and so help me, you need to be straight with me about whatever the fuck happened to you last night. But please get your shit together. Beaumont’s meeting us up there—he’s already on his way.”
“Wait… Darius?” I pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to slow the churning madness. “Why? Ronan, what is going on?”
“We’re wasting time, Gray. Let’s go.”
"I'm not leaving. Not without Sophie. I mean, not without—not until we find who killed her."
"Alvarez is on it. There's nothing more we can do.”
“Nothing?” Death made a low, throaty sound that might've passed for a laugh if there was anything even remotely human about him. “How can you be so certain?”
Ronan whipped his head around. “Why are you still here?”
“I am everywhere. Always.”
“Enough with the riddles,” Ronan said. “Explain yourself.”
“I have business with the Shadowborn. It does not concern you.”
“Everything about her concerns me.”
“She needs to know who she is. She must be trained. Protected. I will give her that.” Turning to me, he extended a gloved hand and said, “Come. I’ll take you to the realm and we’ll—”
“Like hell you will.” Ronan's eyes turned as black as night. He dropped the bag and stalked toward Death, but Death held up a hand, stopping Ronan in his tracks.
"Careful, demon.” Death’s tone was so soft, so gentle, he sounded like he was teaching a toddler how to hold a butterfly without crushing it. “Unless you wish to reveal your secrets as well.”
Ronan was shaking with rage, but instead of charging Death, he backed off. When he looked at me again, his eyes had returned to normal.
I had never, ever seen Ronan back down from a challenge like that.
I looked from Ronan to Death and back to Ronan again. Ronan wasn't afraid of him, but there was definitely bad blood between them.
Once again, I wondered about Ronan's origins—about all th
e things he was hiding—but my mind was already spinning with so many other what-ifs and what-nows, there was little room for anything else.
Ronan said, “We don't know who killed Sophie and the other witches. We don't know what they were after, or whether they'll be back for more, but Alvarez thinks they’re not done. I'm not taking that chance with your life. We have to go, Gray. Come on.”
“You mean run,” I said. “You’re telling me we have to run.”
“I don’t care what you call it as long as you do it. Sooner the better.”
Before Sophie and Ronan, I had only truly loved one other person in my life—the woman who adopted me as a baby after my real mother died.
When Calla was taken from me, I didn't seek vengeance from those responsible, even though I knew who they were. I didn't call the police. I didn't even call the neighbors.
I ran.
I survived. It was Calla’s dying wish—her last word. Survive.
It was the only thing I could give to her, the silent promise I'd made on the day she died.
I’d always told myself that if I ever got into a dangerous situation—I mean, really dangerous—I would run again. Survive, no matter what.
But now that the danger was on me again, I wasn't sure it was the right call. How could I run when my best friend was murdered less than a day after I’d inadvertently used magic and brought a girl back from the dead? How could I run when I had nearly taken Sophie’s soul, nearly condemned her to life as a revenant, just as I’d done to Bean?
I looked from Ronan—one of my best friends, a man I was pretty sure I was falling in love with—back to Death, shrouded in shadow and a deep coldness I couldn't even begin to fathom.
Both were offering me a way out. A way to survive, just like I’d promised Calla I’d do.
But Calla was gone.
I had every intention of keeping my promise to Calla.
But I was done running.
“I'm not going anywhere,” I said, dropping the backpack and standing up straight for the first time all night. “I have work to do.”
Fifteen
Gray
By the time Ronan and I left the house a few hours later, the streets of South Bay were wet and grey and oily, the morning sky bleached of color. Everywhere I looked people huddled under umbrellas, ducking into cars and shops to escape the rain.
Sophie would’ve called it a Five of Cups kind of day, like the tarot card of the same name. On the card, a cloaked woman mourned three cups that had spilled on the road before her, so focused on the loss that she didn’t notice the two full, upright cups behind her.
As to the weather, it was the kind of day that soaks you clear to the bone, makes you wonder if you’ll ever feel the sun on your face again.
I zipped up the sweatshirt I’d taken from the hook on Sophie’s door—a ridiculously hot pink number lined with white fleece that I normally wouldn’t be caught dead in—and soldiered on, trying to imagine two cups still standing upright somewhere on the horizon.
Trying to imagine hope.
Normally I didn’t mind the rain—it was one of the things I loved about the Bay. To me it’d always meant a fresh start, a great washing away of everything shitty that had come the day before.
There wasn’t enough rain in a monsoon to wash away the events of last night, but as I walked the sopping wet streets, it brought with it a kind of clarity.
Sophie was dead. Murdered in her own bed, just like two other witches in the Bay. Detective Alvarez had said these cases were his priority, but like all supernaturals trying to hack it in a human-dominated world, he was limited by human laws. Hell, he’d taken a vow to uphold those laws the day he joined the force. I had no doubts he’d play by the rule book on this one—do things in logical order, get proper warrants, ask appropriate questions.
Me? I had no such hangups.
Wiping a pink sleeve across my eyes, I squinted into the rain, trying to remember which block was Norah’s.
“This way, I think.” I turned down Pierce Avenue, Ronan matching my strides.
He’d spent the better part of the morning trying to talk me out of this, but when it was clear I had no intention of skipping town with him, he unpacked my bags, put everything back where he’d found it, and put the kettle on.
He even managed not to burn the toast this time. Progress.
I still couldn't wrap my mind around everything that had happened, and I was doing my best to avoid obsessing about it. Right now, the only thing keeping me going was the idea that I might be able to track down her killer.
That was my life now, my sacred mission, the one thing that would keep my heart from imploding.
“There's the house. I remember it now." I stopped in front of an old Victorian about halfway down the block, three stories high with a huge stained-glass window shaped like a star on the top floor and a sprawling front porch on the bottom that wrapped around the whole place. The house was probably once a vibrant red with bright white trim, but salt and time had left its mark, rendering it the color of overcooked salmon. I had only been there one other time—that potluck Sophie had dragged me to last year.
We can’t just keep ignoring them, she’d said. We should at least say hello…
Ronan and I climbed the porch stairs and stopped in front of the door, both of us soaked to the bone. Rain splattered against the porch roof. Under any other circumstances, it might’ve felt cozy. Romantic.
“You’re shivering,” Ronan said softly, brushing wet hair out of my eyes with his fingertips. “I’d give you my jacket, but I’m pretty sure it’s holding about ten pounds of water."
“It’s the thought that counts. How’s my face? Makeup holding up?”
Ronan scanned my face. “No sign of your vampire cage match, if that’s what you mean.”
“Score one for Sophie’s waterproof foundation.” I took a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scents of the bay: rotting wood, salt, the briny Salish Sea. The air was particularly fishy today, but I was okay with that. It smelled like home.
“You sure about this?" Ronan asked.
At the moment I wasn't sure about anything, but the coven was the only lead I had. I needed to know whether Sophie had come here last night. There was also a chance—much as I hated to admit it—that Norah, Haley, or any of the others knew something about my best friend that I didn't.
She'd been spending time with them for weeks—maybe months—without my knowledge. She’d been practicing her magic again, and I’d been in the dark. I couldn't discount the possibility that Sophie had other secrets, too.
“I’m sure,” I said.
Ronan didn’t look any more convinced than I felt, but when had I ever let that stop me?
I figured Alvarez had already been here to question them, and as I leaned closer to the door, the sounds emanating from the other side of the door confirmed it for me—women talking in subdued voices, the clink of silverware against china, someone blowing her nose. Sounded like the whole crew was in mourning together.
A pang of jealousy pricked my heart.
Before I could talk myself out of it, I pressed the doorbell.
The young witch who answered looked about Bean’s age, with a spray of freckles on her nose and cheeks and a curly mop of dark hair. Her blue eyes lit up when she smiled, but before she could speak, Norah appeared behind her and took over.
“Oh, Gray,” Norah said, pressing a hand to her heart. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Tall and stately, with sharp gray eyes and a tight bun of silver-gray hair, Norah Barnes looked more suited for tea with the Queen of England than leading an underground coven in the Pacific northwest. I was surprised she recognized me; I’d only met her the one time and didn’t think I’d made much of an impression.
Norah offered a slightly delayed smile. “I was hoping you'd stop by."
I wasn’t buying it.
"Reva,” Norah said, and the young witch at her side flinched. “There should be some fresh b
ath towels in the dryer. Why don’t you get one for Gray?”
For Gray. The implication was clear: Ronan would not be admitted.
It wasn't unexpected, just disappointing. In most circles, witches and demons didn't mix. My relationship with Ronan was no secret—just another thing that had, in their eyes, made me other.
Ronan placed a hand on the small of my back and leaned in close, whispering reassurances I didn't realize I needed. “If things go south, text me. I’ll be back here in a flash.”
“Only if they go really south,” I whispered back. “Argentina south.”
“I was thinking Florida.”
“I can handle this.”
“I know, Gray.” Ronan gave me half a smile, then turned his back and headed down the porch stairs, crossing the street toward Bloodstone Park.
“Come in, Gray,” Norah said. “Please.”
I felt the brief resistance of the wards as I stepped into the foyer, the guardian magic like a giant soap bubble that popped on my skin, then reformed behind me, sealing out anyone who intended to do harm.
Or maybe just sealing me in.
As I had last night, I wondered whether she’d done enough to shield her inside magical practices from outside eyes—namely, hunters. Norah was an experienced witch, but no one was perfect.
“You all remember Gray Desario,” Norah said. “Sophie's friend."
Everyone was gathered in the living room at the front of the house, warm and dry, huddled together on sofas and chairs, sipping tea and nibbling on cut fruit and pastries, blotting their lips with floral print napkins. Standing on the gleaming wood floors of the foyer, dripping wet, I felt like a feral cat who’d just washed up onto their pretty little tea party.
“Best friend,” I corrected.
The women stiffened, and I swear the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
To me, Norah said, “Make yourself comfortable. I’ll get you some hot tea. I know Sophie’s allergic to cinnamon, but what about you? Any allergies?”