by Liz Schulte
“Because if he is after me, then he can use them to get to me. Selene is probably okay in the castle. She’s harder to get to than the other two. Besides, we’re stronger together. Plus, Orion wanted us here for a reason. I have to believe this is where we need to be.”
Leslie stared into the fake room. “What about your other coven?”
“I don’t think they’re doing this.”
“That’s not what I meant. Should we ask them to join us?”
I looked back over my shoulder. “Using them against me would be entirely ineffectual, so I don’t know why he would target them.”
She shook her head and sighed. “No. To make us stronger. The more witches the better, right? It certainly wouldn’t hurt. A fallen angel.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure we can handle that.”
But “we” didn’t have to handle anything. If Orion was right, this was my problem. The coven was only in the crosshairs because I was with them. I couldn’t waste time thinking about this. “Do what you think is best.”
“I already did,” she said. The kettle squealed from the kitchen and she went to prepare the tea. “They’re on their way.”
I tried a couple simple spells to disarm Winter’s spell, but nothing worked. I was out of ideas about how to make it through the room’s protection spell. My thoughts drifted back to the box. Maybe that was the spell we needed. Orion wanted me to find it for a reason.
I ran up the stairs, grabbed the box, and carried it back down to the kitchen table. Leslie sat our tea down and I tapped the pen against the surface of the box. “We might need this spell.”
She nodded. “We might. Can you tell what it is?”
I shook my head. “It’s jumbled. There are arrows giving some direction, and other parts of it are written backwards. I’m going to have to write it down. It could also be a trap.”
“What’s one more trap?” she asked with a wry smile. “At this point, we need to start taking chances or Ornias will find us before we have any idea what to do about him.”
I rubbed my bottom of my lip. I hated that everything I knew came from Orion. It was too easy to be influenced.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Orion wants to hurt you,” Leslie said. “He really doesn’t seem like it.”
“But he trusts my mother. What if he’s wrong? What if she was all dark by the time she died and she misled him. You’ve seen a dark witch at work firsthand. They can be as compelling or sympathetic as they want when it suits them. The result is always the same, though. Everything they do is for their own benefit.”
“I don’t know that we have a choice,” Leslie said. There was a knock at the front door that she rushed to answer. Moments later she led in the other coven, minus Alexis who had apparently refused to come.
Leslie explained the situation to them as I carefully copied the spell out of the box, making sure to leave most of my letters unconnected. Like runes, words themselves in the wrong hands often had their own power. When I finished the spell and looked up, everyone was watching me work.
“None of you have to stay unless you want to,” I said.
They exchanged glances and Aisha spoke first. “We can help. We might not be as strong as you, but we each have our own talents. Can we take a look at the door?”
“Knock yourself out.” I looked back down at the spell in my hand and read over it. It wasn’t to unlock the room. I could feel the scowl on my face immediately. What the hell was this spell for? I read it again. It wasn’t dark magic. It looked like a summoning spell with a couple variations, but nothing too suspicious.
I reached into the box and rapped my knuckles against the wood, hoping for a false bottom or anything that would be more helpful than this. But it appeared to be just as it seemed. A box with a spell written in it that magically produced the night sky in incorrect patterns. Why would my mother leave me a key to this?
I slammed the key down on the table.
“Problems?” Leslie asked, looking up from her phone.
“This spell is completely useless. All of this is completely useless.” I pushed the box away.
She reached over and slid the notebook to the middle of the table so she could read what I had. She pressed her lips together, but her smile was evident. “Did Orion say who the box was from?”
I shook my head. “It was my mom’s.”
“Not likely. It’s obviously enchanted. It wouldn’t continue to work this long after her death. My guess is that it was a gift specifically meant for you.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The spell. It is fairly rudimentary. Even a very young witch could use it to talk to the person on the other end. So the question is who does this lead to”
The knowing gleam in her eye could only mean one thing. “You think you know.”
She nodded. “I’m not telling you though. I learned my lesson with Corbin. Cast the spell. See what happens.” She looked back at her phone as it softly jingled at her.
I tore off the sheets of paper and tossed them into the box then closed it, putting the key back around my neck. I’d worry about it later. “Are Jessica and Katrina coming?”
Leslie nodded. “Sy is bringing them. Selene is staying at the castle to research Ornias because the elves have better records than we do. Once we are all here, we have to figure out how to get into that room, how to bring Ornias to us, and then how to send him back to where he came from.”
“Maybe we can use the door,” I said. If my mother had used the door to bring him here, surely we could use it to send him back. All we needed was the spell. So long as Orion had been right on the timing and she wasn’t already a dark witch when she opened the door to Ornias, then it shouldn’t be a problem.
“That’s as good a plan as any. If we can find the spell.” She looked longingly at the room beyond our reach.
“Can you actually hear what I’m thinking or are you just that good at reading what I’m feeling?” I looked over at her.
A big hearty laugh shook her shoulders. “You aren’t nearly as mysterious as you think you are, Frost. We all think we are so different from other people, but we’re not. I can feel your emotions. I may not always know where they come from but given context, they aren’t hard to decipher.”
“I think you might be better at understanding them than I am,” I grumbled.
“Now that I have no doubt is true. You’re utterly hopeless.”
I shook my head. “I’m going to check the other coven’s progress with the door.”
They were all huddled around the doorway, quietly arguing with each other.
“You’re not doing it right, Dom,” Angel said, hitting him. “Look how sloppy that is. You want to kill us all?”
“Then do it yourself.” He threw the chalk at her. “You’re the one who told me to do it.”
“Stop it, you two,” Aisha said with a sigh. “Angel, you make the circle. You have the best handwriting of any of us. We can’t afford to mess up here. This is Winter Darkmore’s spell. Dom, get some black candles.”
He stood up and gave me a long-suffering look as he went past to the front door. “Want to close this behind me?” he said.
I didn’t move. Why couldn’t he close it himself? But as soon as he opened the door, he turned into a raven with a puff and flew through the wind and the snow with his big black wings like it was nothing.
“You get used to it,” said the other guy. He reached around me and pushed the door shut. “Dom is a show off.”
I looked at him. “Which one are you?”
He flashed me a crooked smile. “Terrick,” he gave a half bow, “at your service.”
“What spell are you guys casting on the entry?”
His smiled morphed into a shark-like grin. “One of my more creative spells. It may work, it may singe off our eyebrows. Only one way to find out.”
I shook my head. “If anyone is looking for me, I’ve stepped outside.”
“Sure, sure. Going for an
evening stroll…in a blizzard. That’s normal. No reason for us to be concerned.”
I closed the door behind me. Too many people.
14
JESSICA
“Well, go get them,” Katrina said as soon as I finished explaining what Leslie told me over the phone.
“Give her a moment to speak with Frost,” Sy said. “The fact that she went home is a big deal. This isn’t an emergency at this moment.”
“Why did Frost go home?” Katrina asked, flopping down on the couch. “I thought she wanted nothing to do with her mom.”
“She’s looking for a way to heal herself,” Selene said. “Her mother’s letter said that if she resurrected her, she could heal her curse. Frost has no intention of bringing her back—or so she says—but she thinks her mother left the answer somewhere, so she’s looking for it—or that’s my best guess, anyway.”
I nodded. Selene’s suggestion made sense and I had sympathy for our conflicted friend. Sure, Frost was standoffish and sometimes mean, but she had also lived a life none of us could fathom—and I often got the feeling she hadn’t even told us a quarter of it. But at the same time, she was the only one I felt comfortable with talking about the people I killed. She never gave me any sympathy. She never looked at me like I was a victim or a monster. She just listened or, when pressed, told me the truth. Like when I asked her if it would get better with time, she said no. While that may not have been what I wanted to hear, I appreciated that she didn’t try to give me false hope. I could learn to live with what I did. I was already making strides, but if I deluded myself I would stall.
Katrina interrupted my thoughts. “What do you think about this other coven? Weird, right? Frost’s home for one day and they pop up, ‘Hey lady we never met. Come join us and be our sacrifice.’”
I laughed. “Leslie must have left off the sacrifice part. She thinks they take care of the house.”
“You can mark me down as suspicious,” Katrina said.
My phone rang again. “Hello?” I answered without looking.
“Hey, it’s me,” Leslie said. “And here’s the deal. This thing that’s killing people is a fallen angel named Ornias and Frost is pretty sure it’s looking for her. All the murders occurred in places she lived over the course of her life and around the times she lived there. It apparently killed her father too.”
“Holy shit,” I whispered. “Is she for real?”
“Yeah, so change of plans. You guys come here.”
“Okay. We’ll get there as soon as we can.” I caught the rest of them up as soon as I hung up the phone. No one smiled or cracked any more jokes. We had work to do.
“What do we know about Ornias? Sy?” Selene asked, smoothing her light gold colored sweater.
He shook his head. “Never heard of him.”
“Me either and that’s a problem. We can’t fight someone we know nothing about,” she said. “He has lived and stayed hidden this long so obviously he is smart enough to stay off the radar. We need to know exactly what we’re getting ourselves into. I will go back to the castle and research. You guys should see what you can find out here. We need to arrive armed with as much information as we can dig up. I’ll meet you there.” She vanished.
“Why does it stop looking for her?” I said, thinking out loud. “I mean it only comes out at this time of year, so what happens the rest of the year? Does it go somewhere else?” I flipped through the Book of Shadows looking for fallen angels but there was nothing. Probably because the only witches who ever went against them died. Sy had said that if we got into Olivia and Holden’s realm, we should bow out, but here we were about to dive in head first. “Should we pass this to Olivia and Holden?” I asked.
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye, cheek twitching. “Probably, but it isn’t up to you. This will be personal to Frost and she has to make that decision. Selene is right. The best thing you can do is arm yourself with information and present it to her.”
“But like on a scale from one to ten, how likely is it that we can take on an angel? One being instant death and ten being our crushing victory.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe a two or three. It might not kill you instantly, but winning isn’t going to come without a price.” Sy legitimately looked worried for us, which made me more worried. “But Frost is a good bounty hunter and she will have weighed her options. She will come up with a plan or call for the help she needs. She knows she has friends. You can trust that. I would let her control how this goes down. It’s important for her.” He stood up. “Look, there are a few people I can talk to unofficially, but the two of you can’t come with me. Will you be okay here by yourself?”
I looked at Katrina and she shrugged. “Yeah, we’ll be fine, but what are we supposed to do? We can’t just sit here. What sort of research can we do?” I asked, needing a way to be useful.
“I don’t know.” He vanished just like Selene.
“Damn elves,” I said. “Our Book of Shadows has nothing about fallen angels. How do we deal with something like that?”
“We don’t,” Katrina said. “Selene and Sy are looking into it. It would be a waste of our time to do it too.”
I couldn’t believe what she was suggesting. “Doing nothing isn’t an option, Kat.”
She smiled. “I never said nothing was an option. We’re about to head into another fight. It’s great that you were able to unlock a door and all, but it’s not enough. You need your magic back.”
“I can’t have it back,” I blurted out. “The book you gave me this morning, that’s what it says. It says I can never have the same abilities again. The best I can hope for is learning new abilities. So no matter what you do, it isn’t going to work. I have to start over.” Tears prickled in the corners of my eyes.
Katrina didn’t look surprised. “I know. I read that too, but I don’t think it’s true.”
“We have no evidence to suggest otherwise. As you said, opening a lock is great, but it’s hardly reading someone’s lies or guilt or defeating any sort of monster.”
She took a deep breath and leaned forward. “You’ve been doing it so long, you don’t even recognize it. You can still do the truth detection thing. Sure, it isn’t as strong as it used to be, but you are still getting feelings about people and things. You’re still trusting those feelings and acting on them. It’s part of who you are. We couldn’t strip it away from you because it is so engrained in you. It isn’t just a magical ability that you learned and gained. That’s why I’m convinced, yeah, I said it, I’m convinced you will get it back. The biggest problem right now is that you have no faith in yourself. You won’t even try and that scares me. I don’t want you to get yourself killed in a fight because you’re too scared to try.”
I focused on my hands. I didn’t feel anything in them. I couldn’t feel the magic like I used to be able to. I shook my head.
“Why are you so afraid? Magic has never been about knowing the outcome. It’s about trusting in yourself, in the universe.”
“Maybe what you’re saying is right. Maybe the magic is still here and I just can’t see it or feel it or use it. But you’re forgetting one thing. Magic is also about the rule of three. It’s about karma,” I said. “Whatever we send out comes back times three. Or have you forgotten that? I killed people. There’s a debt on my spirit and somehow I have to find a way to pay it. Maybe I’ll never get the magic back. Maybe that is the karmic debt I have to pay. I’m okay with that. The real question is, are you? I may never be as strong as the rest of the coven again. I understand if you don’t want me in it.”
She threw her arms around me. “That’s crazy talk. We don’t care if you have any power at all. We just want you to be happy and safe. If you’re okay with losing your power, I’ll let it go. I won’t keep pushing. I thought you wanted it back. And you did not kill those people. The dark witch possessing you did. I have to believe the law of three knows the difference. The debt isn’t yours to pay.”
I had tried telling myself that same story about a hundred times, maybe a thousand, but it always sounded hollow to my ears. I didn’t believe it. The debt was mine. It would always be mine until I could make amends. I’d taken from the world and the loss was heavy upon my shoulders. I had created an imbalance and somehow I had to make it right. Maybe Ornias would help with that. Certainly working with Femi to defeat the mara did. With each new monster or threat I helped defeat I felt closer to healing. But my road was going to be a long one. “I don’t think the universe cares for excuses,” I said.
Katrina shook her head. “You don’t have to come unless you want to. It will be dangerous.”
I looked up at her. “If the coven is in a fight, I don’t care if I have to crawl through broken glass that has been set on fire and covered in acid, I’ll be there. Magic or no.”
She hugged me again. “I love you, Jess. And I will never give up on you.”
I smiled and hugged her back just as tightly because I knew it was true. Had I ever had a doubt, which I didn’t, knowing what they went through to get me back from the dark witch said it all. These girls were my family. We may not have been related by blood, but we were bonded by something far stronger than that. We were bonded by years of laughter and tears and happiness and heart break. We were strung together by the highs and lows of our lives, tied off with the one certainty that would never change: we loved each other unconditionally. We would forever fight for each other, even when we were afraid to fight for ourselves. They were the best friends I ever had.
“Okay, but seriously, we have a fallen angel to think about. What are we going to do?” I said.
Katrina sat back and curled her lip. “Hope it’s fallen in love with a jinni?”
I rolled my eyes. “What if we’re looking at this wrong? If Ornias has been after Frost this whole time, maybe that’s what we need to consider. Also why hasn’t he been able to find her and why does he stop each year after a small amount of time? Maybe what he needs is a necromancer.”
“Surely there are other necromancers. Why is he so stuck on Frost?”
That was true. There had to be others. “Maybe that’s why he hasn’t found her. He found others instead and tried to use them for his own purposes.” I tapped the books. “Fallen angels might not be in here, but necromancers are.”