Fifteen city blocks through the Upper East Side and thirty minutes later, she had arrived at her mom’s studio, which had sort of become hers in the past couple days.
Her mom painted. Brie didn’t. She wasn’t anywhere near good enough to paint something worth selling, but her mom had her own attached gallery full of her work. She had always imagined living near the gallery as an adult, possibly becoming an artist herself, or maybe even becoming a gallerist if she could convince her mom to give her a job there so she could gain experience. She had never imagined her perfect life in Manhattan could come crashing down like it had.
She unlocked the back door to the studio and stepped inside. The front gallery had been closed since her mother’s death, though a few paparazzi were always staked out in front, watching it. No one watched the entrance from the other side of the block, though, which made it easy for Brie to sneak in the back whenever she wanted to write.
The studio felt peaceful, like an oasis in the middle of a desert storm determined to dry her out. Outside, the media circus rolled on, dragging her with it; inside, she could hear her own thoughts and write out her own pain without having others tell her how she should feel or act.
For the past week, she had struggled to process all the people, all the cameras, and all the ways in which her life had gotten completely out of control. A week ago, she had just finished her freshman year at Braxton Prep Academy. A week ago, she had been looking forward to a summer full of activities and friends. A week ago, her mom had been alive, real flesh and blood, kissing her children in the mornings and putting dinner on the table in the evenings, as long as she wasn’t traveling for work.
And then the news had come—Milena’s chartered plane had crash-landed in the Upper Bay. No survivors.
Brie had already filled several notebooks about it. She didn’t necessarily write anything important down, but she had filled pages and pages with little notes and lyrics and sketches, with no plans to ever make sense of them or show them to anyone or do anything with them. They were just for her, her way of processing, of feeling the pain when she wasn’t trying to numb it.
She stepped through the double doors to Milena’s meticulous studio and heard a noise that sounded like someone rifling through her mother’s paint brushes. She reached into her handbag and grabbed her pepper spray, determined to fight whomever thought they could break into her family’s store. Her brother Pilot would kill her if he knew what she was doing—he would never let her walk into a dangerous situation like this—but she wasn’t going to let someone steal her mother’s stuff, not today. Not when it was all she had left.
She crept slowly around the corner on the tiptoes of her heels so they didn’t clack against the hard cement floors.
A redhead that she vaguely recognized stood in front of her mom’s shelves of supplies tinkering with a blacklight her mom used. Where did she know him from? She held up her pepper spray, breathing heavily, ready to strike—
He looked up. “Brie?”
“I have pepper spray,” she told him, inching toward him with the tube pointing at him. Her voice echoed against the bare studio’s high ceilings, and she could hear the shakiness in her words. Her chest heaved as she moved closer toward the man.
He didn’t move.
“Who are you?” she asked, wondering if he had an accomplice. She looked around. “What are you doing here?” This was just about the stupidest thing she had ever done—what if someone else was in the building? What if he had a gun? What if her pepper spray malfunctioned? What if he could overpower her? The redheaded man wasn’t particularly tall or bulky, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t strong enough to take out a teenage girl.
“Brie, that won’t work on me,” he told her softly. He still hadn’t moved.
“How do you know my name?” she cried out, feeling completely out of control of the situation.
“I’m a friend of your mother’s,” he said. “I’m just looking for something, and then I’ll be out of here.”
“Looking for what?” Brie asked. She needed to keep him talking while she figured out what to do. He didn’t seem to want to hurt her… but he also didn’t seem afraid of her. And what did he mean, when he said the pepper spray wouldn’t work on him? Or did he only mean that she couldn’t scare him into leaving?
Something whooshed behind her, grabbing her. Her entire body fell still, to her shock, and her mind drifted into a state of peace, though she could still faintly hear the conversation between the redhead and a new man—a man who had his hand on her shoulder.
“It’s about time,” the redhead said. “I thought I was going to have to fight Milena’s daughter.”
“She’s a child,” the other man said behind her. “You could have handled her easily.”
“And I would have felt worse than I already do. She’s been through enough already.” He moved toward the bookshelves again, still rifling through her mother’s stuff. She could barely make out what was happening in front of her; if it weren’t for his red hair, she didn’t know if she could even distinguish him from the other objects in the room.
Focus, she told herself. The eerie calm that had washed over her concerned her. Her body felt safe… but her mind told her she was not, that something or someone else was controlling her.
“Didn’t find it?” the man behind her asked.
“It’s gotta be hidden,” the redhead said. “She said she put it in plain sight for the right person—I thought she meant us. Maybe she meant someone else.”
Brie watched as words flickered in and out across the wall behind the redhead. Her vision was too blurry to decipher anything specific, and she couldn’t tell if she was just imagining it or not.
“Thessa Torres is in town,” the other man said. “Maybe she can help.”
“No,” the redhead said. “Milena didn’t want Thessa to know about us. She didn’t want Thessa to know what she was up to before she died.”
Fight, Brie told herself. In her mind, she pushed back on the man who had his hand on her shoulder and whatever he was doing to her to control her body. As she pushed back, the words on the wall became clearer, though they still didn’t come into focus well enough for her to read them.
“Let’s get out of here,” the redhead said. “Can you wipe her memory of me? She shouldn’t be here today. Milena can’t have an earthlie funeral without her daughter in the pictures.”
Wipe her memories? Earthlie?
Who were these people and how did they have these magic-like abilities?
“Sure thing,” the other one said.
That was the last thing Brie remembered until she woke up at her house, in the midst of a post-funeral reception.
Sirena
After leaving the funeral and changing clothes to her more comfortable jeans and leather jacket combo, Sirena popped into Harmon’s store and found Luca and Jaelle sitting at the front this time, laughing and whispering to each other. He kissed her jawline softly, and she ducked her head with a smile.
She banged the shop door closed a little harder than necessary, causing a chaos of noise, which startled them out of their cutesy lovey gooeyness.
“You have a lead for me?” she asked Luca with a small smile.
Luca grinned at her. “Harmon has your lead.”
“Where is he?” Sirena asked, looking around. She wondered if she hadn’t made herself clear enough last time. Her purpose in reactivating the Seven Brothers network was to gather information quickly, not to play a game of phone tag with a Romani store owner to get what she needed.
Jaelle smiled wickedly. “Nowhere even close to here. Not what you wanted to hear, I assume?” She giggled and stood up, patting Luca on the shoulder with a knowing look. “I have to run to Beebees before lunch.”
He nodded at her, and Sirena raised an eyebrow.
Jaelle glanced at Sirena. “See you later,” she said with a wink.
“Hopefully not,” Sirena replied. “Your future father-in-law better not mak
e it necessary for me to come back later.”
Jaelle shrugged playfully as she grabbed her bag and moved toward the door. The little chimes hanging from the door rang as she exited the shop.
“That was a somewhat frosty departure from your future bride,” Sirena noted. “Don’t stop the kissy kissy on my account.”
Luca shrugged, still smiling. “She’s upset. I was trying to cheer her up.”
“You two are too young to be upset about things,” Sirena said. “What’s the problem?”
“Our parents are forcing the marriage to stop Jaelle’s Diviner powers from developing further. We’ll be expected to have kids shortly after the wedding. She’ll become an earthlie on the regular schedule, just like Kizzy did.” He gestured to the door. “She says she’s fine with it, but how could anyone be?”
Sirena frowned. “Being a Hallow isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, kid.”
He looked up at her solemnly. “Being an earthlie isn’t all it’s cracked up to be either.”
Sirena considered this with interest. In some ways, she could relate to Jaelle’s predicament and desire to be normal, get married, and have children. Although it meant leaving her Hallow powers behind, it also meant that she could be part of the simpler and, from what Sirena had seen of it, happier earthlie world.
Milena had made the same choice. Unlike Sirena, she had never desired revenge on the people who murdered their entire family and stolen their crown and birthright. Instead, Milena had only desired to have a life that didn’t involve running and hiding. She wanted to hide in plain sight, to neutralize her threat to the New Order, to have a family and protect her children from the same.
Most of Sirena felt too deep a sense of duty and could never allow the daughters of Michael to die out. There was a small part of her though, a selfish part of her, that could see the appeal in falling in love with an earthlie and giving all of it up. She remembered watching Milena’s wedding from a distance, watching her pure happiness over marrying the hot earthlie rockstar James van Rossum. Only a few years later, of course, her sister had two children and divorce papers from him. But Milena still had her children, and never seemed particularly unhappy to raise them on her own.
Sirena had only fallen in love once, and it hadn’t ended well for either of them. And she would never trust him again.
She thought about asking Luca more about the earthlie world, then thought better of it. What was the point of her curiosity, except to talk her out of the life she actually had—the life she was born to live?
“So where is Harmon?” she said instead. “Why did he bother calling me if he wasn’t going to show up?”
Luca shrugged again. “He doesn’t like you much, I don’t think. Likes you treating him like a messenger boy even less.”
Sirena rolled her eyes. “Luckily, I don’t care if he likes me. I only care that he knows what I’m capable of, and what I will do if I don’t get what I want.” She picked up one of the stones on the front table, holding it up to Luca. She squeezed her fist around it, reducing the stone to a pile of dust in her palm. She held it out to him, then blew on it, letting it fill the air and sink to the ground.
“You’ve gotta pay for that,” he said.
She scoffed. “I could destroy one for every minute he makes me wait. And if he’s not careful, I might even reach into his chest and turn his heart to ash too.”
Luca chuckled quietly. “Come on, Sirena. He knows you wouldn’t hurt someone unless you had to.”
Sirena whipped around, glaring at him.
He shrugged. “You act like a badass, but you’re kind. You have a huge heart. Jaelle sees it, and I see it, and so does Harmon. He’s just the father, you know? The head of our family. He doesn’t let women boss him around.”
She frowned, then looked away. Harmon infuriated her; his patriarchal way of life was cramping her style. Overall though, she needed him, and she needed to practice more patience with him.
With her powers, she formed two twenty dollar bills in her fist. She slowly set them on the counter. “I might not hurt him. But the longer I have to wait, the more he’ll hear about it. Any man would agree that that’s just as bad.”
She sulked over to one of the displays, staring out the window of the shop and into the streets.
“Let me do a reading for you,” Luca said. “To pass the time.” He walked over to a disorganized bookcase with mismatched shelves and pulled a tarot deck from the top shelf.
She shook her head. “I don’t do earthlie decks.”
“Why not?” he asked.
She shrugged. “They’re inefficient. Incorrect.”
“Inefficient?” He laughed. “Since when is the point of a reading to be efficient?”
His comment made her feel even more sulky than before. “I like efficiency.” She didn’t have much of a defense, she just knew what she liked and valued.
“You need to lighten up.” He sat down at the a small front circular table with two chairs and gestured for her to sit down across from him. “Let go of your expectations for a moment. Have a little fun to pass the time with.”
She rolled her eyes again, but sat down just to humor him. “To be clear, nothing you say to me is going to matter. The earthlie tarot deck holds no divine truth.”
He shook his head, still laughing. “There are clues to what you seek everywhere, if only you’ll pay attention.”
He shuffled the deck and fanned it out across the table in a single arc. “Now, we start with your question.”
“You already know my question,” Sirena said. “I want to know who killed my sister. What was she doing before she died?”
Luca grinned again, his dimples creasing in his cheek. “That’s technically two questions.”
“Fine,” Sirena said. “Who killed my sister?”
“Perfect. Now, choose three cards.”
She frowned, not sure why she was even entertaining this. But she liked Luca. He seemed like a laid-back, fun, charming kid. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings or get more lectures from him about how she needed to lighten up. She didn’t want to be unkind to him. And he was right, anyway… they did need something to pass the time until Harmon bothered to show up to deliver her information to her.
She tapped three different cards. “There,” she huffed. “Now tell me my earthlie fortune. I’m guessing my sister’s killer is secretly the baker in the bake shop with a—I don’t know. A rolling pin.”
He laughed. “You’ve clearly never played that game before, have you?”
He flipped the three cards over in the order in which she’d chosen them and placed them in a line between them. She didn’t recognize any of the three, but then why would she? The tarot was derived from the Archworld readings that true Diviners could use to determine things about the world. But the earthlie tarot deck was only gauche, vulgar abomination of something true. It was a plaything of unsuspecting earthlies, and a tool of the swindlers who could trick them into handing over their money.
Luca smiled at her, pointing to the first card. “This card is the Five of Wands. It means chaos, competition, disagreement. A lack of harmony with people who are potential teammates. Most likely, you’re asking the wrong questions and starting from the wrong point.”
“Okay,” Sirena said. “So how do I start asking the right questions?”
“It’s most likely that others around you have the right questions to ask, or the answers you need. You may have to come at the problem from an angle that is not natural to you.” Luca grinned. “Like in your situation with Harmon. Or, like this earthlie tarot reading.”
“Nice,” Sirena said. “First card out, and you’re using it to back up and reinforce what you’ve already told me.” She pointed to the next card. “What’s this one?”
“This is the Four of Cups, but it’s upside down, reversed.” Luca frowned like he was contemplating the card meaning. “Here’s my take on this. Your judgment is clouding your emotions, which desire to be expressed
freely. You need to follow your heart and intuition, not your mind and what it’s telling you is the smart thing to do. There is something right in front of you, but your stubbornness is holding you back from seeing it.”
She frowned. “This reading isn’t going so well for me so far.”
“Let’s try the third card,” he said, smirking. He placed the card in front of her. “Your third card is the Wheel of Fortune. For you, it means that life is turning in ways you can’t predict, and your desire to control the situation will be your downfall.”
She looked at the three cards again. “What does any of this have to do with my sister?” she asked.
“It all applies to your sister,” Luca said. “You’re in town to figure out what really happened to her, right? Perhaps the case is not as straightforward as you might think. Perhaps there are other forces at work behind-the-scenes. Perhaps you’ll have to take a surprising path to get to the answers you seek, or perhaps it doesn’t matter how she Milena died.”
Sirena took a deep breath, the pushed the cards aside. “Great,” she said. “This has been about as entertaining as I had hoped.”
He smiled at her, collecting the three cards from her and separating them from the deck.
The bells on the door chimed and Harmon walked in. He gave her a dirty and disgusted look, then handed her a small, ripped paper with an address on it.
She snatched it from him, returning his dirty look. “This is the lead I’ve been waiting on for half an hour?”
She stood up, then glanced at Luca. “Thanks, kid. Best of luck with your marriage.” Luca nodded once to her, though he didn’t smile.
She brushed past Harmon, who was still glaring at her.
“Ri, don’t come back here, you hear me? You’re not welcome around my son and daughter-in-law.”
She frowned, but left the shop with her lead in hand.
She couldn’t promise him that… when it came to her sister, she would do whatever it took to find out what happened to her and prevent it from happening to her children, or Sirena herself.
Magic After Dark: A Collection of Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels Page 99