by Liz Schulte
I looked around. It was pretty, but the view would grow old when it was the only thing you had. “This is where you live?”
He nodded.
I sucked in a breath. “They got the spell wrong.” I turned in a quick circle, looking for Ornias.
Orion stopped me. “The spell was perfect,” he said. “They sent him to Aquarius just like they planned. I pulled you out. I was waiting for you.”
“How?” I asked.
His eyes flickered up. “I had permission. Your sacrifice didn’t go unnoticed.” I met his eyes and he smiled. “They let me save you. They have a deal to offer you.”
My brain pulsed inside my skull, making it hard to keep up. “What sort of deal?”
He touched my cheek gently, then pressed his forehead against mine. “Give me a second to enjoy this.”
I pressed a hand to his cheek. He turned his head and kissed my palm then gently kissed my lips. Warmth filled me.
“In a few minutes, your coven will open a door back to your world. When you enter it, you will have a choice. Either you can go through, completely healed of your curse. People will no longer die when they touch you and you will no longer be a necromancer. You’ll be able to live the life you always wanted.” He smiled. “You did what none of the others could do. You found a way to heal yourself. You broke the curse on your own.”
I held my breath and waited. There was always a but. “What’s the catch? There wouldn’t be a choice if there wasn’t a catch.”
“No catch. You will be completely normal.” His hazel eyes glittered down at me. “Take the deal, Frost. It’s what you want. It will give you the best chance at happiness and you deserve to be happy.”
I nodded. I did deserve to be happy, but I wanted to hear the rest. “What’s the other choice?”
“Keep the curse….”
“And?”
“Keep your power.”
He wasn’t saying what that meant. Without being a necromancer was I even still a witch? How normal were we talking? “Completely magicless?”
He nodded. “It’s a good trade.”
“What about you?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I am not a part of this. Nothing will ever change that. If you try to release me, they will punish you and your friends. Take the deal. Get what you have always wanted.”
I pushed my hands through my hair. Somewhere along the way I had lost my hat and my braid had unraveled, so my hair was floating loosely around me in long white waves. I probably looked like Medusa. I closed my eyes and tried to picture my life both ways. One version of life came much easier to me than the other. I knew what I had to do.
I looked at Orion, tears threatening to fall. I had spent my whole life with one singular focus. And I’d thought if I ever obtained it, everything would magically fall into place and be perfect. It had never, not once, occurred to me that the curse wasn’t just a part of who I was, it was a part of everything I was. “I wouldn’t know how to live without my curse.” I shook my head.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Not for me.”
I smiled a little, wiping away a tear. “This has nothing to do with you. What am I supposed to do if I’m not a necromancer? I can’t be a bounty hunter. I technically shouldn’t be in the Abyss at all. Anything could kill me. I wouldn’t be a witch anymore. I longed to get rid of my power, but I never considered what that would mean. Can you really picture me working a day job? Going to neighborhood barbecues? This is who I am.”
“It doesn’t have to be.” He took my hands. “You can be happy. You can find love. You can have friends. Don’t sell yourself short.”
I stood on my tiptoes and pressed my lips to his. The coven had been telling me this from the start, but I hadn’t listened. I assumed they didn’t understand so I blocked them out, but they were right. The curse didn’t hold me back. I held myself back. “I have all of those things now. I have friends, I have a coven, and,” I took a deep breath, “I have you.”
He closed his eyes. “But I am here. I will always be here.”
I tried not to laugh. “I wouldn’t want you around all the time, anyway. You’re kind of annoying.”
He did laugh and pulled me into his arms. “I hope you don’t regret this.”
“Me too,” I whispered into his shirt.
A bright light formed behind me and Orion didn’t have to say the words. I knew what was there. I kissed him one more time, then went through the door. Back to my world, back to my friends.
EPILOGUE
The evening was cold, but no snow forecast. I sat outside the girls’ house anyway, staring up at the sky, waiting for the initiation to start. The Kilkenny coven was here too, and the house was loud and bursting with life, which actually made me smile a little before I snuck out the front door.
“I’m not sure I fully grasp the meaning of your note,” Corbin’s voice came from the darkness.
I giggled, briefly covering my face with my hands. Those damn letters. I wished I had never written them. Everyone now, even Sy, looked at me with gushiness that made me want to bury my head in the sand. At least Corbin’s wasn’t completely heartfelt.
By the time I lowered my hands, he was in front of me with a slight smirk. “You appear to still be alive, which would say to me that I have plenty of time left to kill you if I so choose.” His cold finger tilted my chin up as his eyes focused on my neck, which was still healing, but hurt like hell to move. Faster than I could stop him, he cut his own finger and smeared his blood across the wound. All residual pain vanished as my skin stitched itself back together. “Who did this?” he asked, sitting beside me.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter.”
He was quiet for a while. “I think it does, pet.”
“Why? You’ve made it pretty clear I only matter to you when you can get something from me. So why should you care? Afraid someone might kill me before I give you what you want? You need a favor again?”
His black eyes stared out into the darkness. “That was not my intention. You are important in more ways than that, Frost.”
I didn’t ask how because I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. I definitely didn’t need to know.
“Who marred you?” he asked quietly, dangerously.
“A fallen angel. But we took care of him.”
Corbin’s eyebrows shot up, but he nodded slowly. “Always full of surprises.” He stood up and faced me for a moment, then tapped the end of my nose. “Don’t be a stranger, Frost.”
He melted into the darkness.
I shook my head. He hadn’t exactly told me to call him if I needed him; Corbin would never give such an open invitation to anyone. But he also didn’t say have a nice life. I understood Corbin. I’d been just like him for most of my life: in pain and wary of the rest of the world.
After several moments of solitude, I was ready to head back into the fray. I stood to go back inside when a movement at the side of the house caught my attention. As far as I could tell, a human man lurked by the trees on the edge of the property, staring at the brightly lit windows. He was flipping something back and forth in his hand.
I went toward him. “Can I help you?”
He looked over at me, startled. “The owners of Enchantment live here, right? In Edith Warren’s old house? Do you know how they got it?”
“They rent it from Selene Warren. Who are you?”
He didn’t answer, just kept turning a button over his fingers as he studied the house. Finally, he popped it up into the air and caught it, putting it back into his pocket. “Have a good night,” he said, heading back out to the street.
I watched him go, contemplating which one of the girls had caught that poor human’s eye.
“Terrick, if you accidentally blow up our cat, I will purposefully turn you to stone,” Katrina called from the kitchen as I walked into the living room to find Terrick down on all fours, trying to coax Stewie out from under the couch.
“Where did you disappear to?” Jessica
asked, coming up beside me.
“I just needed a little quiet.”
She nodded, then her gaze snagged on my neck. “Whaaaaat?” she said pointing, but not touching.
“Ran into Corbin,” I said, rolling my eyes.
But she smiled. “If there was a vote—”
“There isn’t,” I assured her.
She nodded. “He’d have mine.”
“What’s your problem with Orion?”
She shrugged. “Come on. We’re about to start.”
We went to the attic where everything was prepared for the initiation. After much debate, the Kilkenny coven had agreed to join ours. Though their bloodline was older, ours was stronger. And everyone agreed we all had a lot to learn from one another. With them, we would be at nine members, leaving only four more to go.
Everyone took their places around the circle. Selene nodded to me, and I stepped forward and lit a green candle. “I call on the guardian of the north to witness this rite and guard this circle.”
The other corners were called one by one until the circle closed around the old and the new. The future was once again infinite for all of us.
ALSO BY LIZ SCHULTE
URBAN FANTASY/PARANORMAL ROMANCE
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The Easy Bake Coven Series:
Easy Bake Coven
Hungry, Hungry Hoodoo
Pickup Styx
Tiddly Jinx
Ghosts in the Graveyard
Ollie, Ollie Hex ‘n Free
Frost’s Bite (An Easy Bake Coven Short Story)
If the Broom Fits
Stark Raven Mad (Coming Soon)
Moonlight Madness (Coming Soon)
The Sekhmet Bounty Series
Sweet Little Lies (A Sekhmet Short Story)
Catatonic (A Sekhmet Short Story)
Catastrophe
Catacombs (Coming Soon)
Catapult (Coming Soon)
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The Guardian Trilogy:
Secrets
Choices
Consequences
Be Light (Guardian Trilogy Christmas Short Story)
Snow and Mistletoe (Guardian Trilogy Christmas Short Story)
Good Tidings(Guardian Trilogy Christmas Short Story)
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The Jinn Trilogy:
Ember
Inferno
Vestige
Without a Map (A Jinn Trilogy Short Story)
The Knead to Know Series: Knead to Know (A Knead to Know Short Story)
Fairytale Ambrosia (Coming Soon)
Psyche Souffle (Valentine’s Day Knead to Know Short Story)
Ghostsnaps (Coming Soon)
MYSTERY
Dark Corners
Dark Passing
Dark Obsession
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The Ninth Floor
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MANY AUTHORS CLAIM to have known their calling from a young age. Liz Schulte, however, didn’t always want to be an author. In fact, she had no clue. Liz wanted to be a veterinarian, then she wanted to be a lawyer, then she wanted to be a criminal profiler. In a valiant effort to keep from becoming Walter Mitty, Liz put pen to paper and began writing her first novel. It was at that moment she realized this is what she was meant to do. As a scribe she could be all of those things and so much more.
When Liz isn’t writing or on social networks she is inflicting movie quotes and trivia on people, reading, traveling, and hanging out with friends and family. Liz is a Midwest girl through and through, though she would be perfectly happy never having to shovel her driveway again. She has a love for all things spooky, supernatural, and snarky. Her favorite authors range from Edgar Allen Poe to Joseph Heller to Jane Austen to Jim Butcher and everything in between.
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