by Lizzy Ford
“Red, you’re up!” called a smiling brunette from behind the counter.
Red was her nickname, and she’d made up a name for her employment forms. Irked, Morgan stood and tucked her phone away before approaching. The barista just leaving her shift handed over an apron, and Morgan tied it around her waist before placing her fiery red hair into a ponytail.
Not patient enough for customer service, she took up her position at the espresso machine and breathed in the stimulating, rich mix of coffee and milk. It had quickly become her favorite scent and clung to her when she left her shift every day. Her hair smelled of espresso no matter how many times she washed it.
“Hey, Red.” The guy at the drive thru window called to her. “Someone came by earlier looking for you.”
“One of my customers?” she asked, wiping down the machine. There were at least fourteen people who came in periodically and requested her, which was five times as many as any other barista who worked at the cafe. She suspected her fire magick added a little more warmth or kick to their drinks, because she followed the drinks’ preparation instructions exactly.
“No.” He rolled his eyes as he joined her.
She glanced up, then away quickly. Before Beck, she never would’ve thought she’d meet another man’s gaze let alone take a chance on anyone, given her history of abuse at the hands of her uncle. After Beck, all she could think about was never letting down her guard again, that the emotional pain caused by losing him was much worse than the physical pain inflicted by her uncle.
“Real pretty blonde lady. Looked like a model. Pregnant.”
Dawn.
Morgan’s hands paused in her cleanup duty. It’s not possible. As far as she knew, no witchling could track her. She was neither Light nor Dark but stuck between, which meant neither Beck nor Decker was able to trace her. Add to that the fact she had successfully faked her own death, was in a different state and never wore the cloudy amulet marking her as a witchling, it seemed impossible for anyone to have discovered where she was hiding out.
Reminding herself of this, she began working again.
“Said she’d be back later,” Stu added. “You, uh …” he lowered his voice and looked around. “… you know. Think about maybe going out with me this weekend?”
“Nope,” she replied firmly. “As usual.”
“Puh-lease? Even to help me win the pool? I know I’m your favorite.”
She pinned him with a cold look.
“Okay, so your least un-favorite,” he added hopefully.
“Nope. Your light’s on.” She motioned to the flickering red light at the window indicating someone was waiting.
“I’ll ask again next week,” he said with a grin.
Stu was a nice guy, attractive and nowhere near as interesting to her as she was to him. Morgan checked out the gaggle of three guys near the drive thru. Stu was apparently reporting back his failure, and the others were laughing.
“I don’t think their pool is funny,” said Rosy, another coworker. “Very misogynistic to bet on a girl going out with them.”
“They’re idiots,” Morgan agreed. “I’m here for the paycheck and nothing else.”
“Out of curiosity, do you swing the other way?”
Startled, Morgan met Rosy’s gaze. “Um, no.”
“Just not interested in guys? Or friends? Or hanging out?”
What is wrong with these people? She almost spoke the words out loud before recalling how different she was from a typical teenager. Stu, Rosy and the rest of them weren’t worrying about protecting the world from a piece of pure evil that could easily destroy them.
They were concerned about … dating. Clothes. Sports. College.
It was a mentality Morgan didn’t really understand, but she also knew she was the odd one out, not them. She hadn’t fit in among the witchlings and she didn’t fit in here, either.
I hate my life, she thought bitterly.
“Not right now,” she said in as pleasant of a voice as she could manage. If she’d learned anything working around humans, it was to be nicer, because they had no freaking clue. “Did they ask you to ask me?”
“No. Just curious. You’ve worked here for over two months, and no one knows anything about you.” Rosy shrugged. “Except that every customer on the planet loves you.” She rolled her eyes.
“I share my tips,” Morgan said, aware of how awkward it was sometimes when another barista was on the machine when one of her regular customers came in.
“We love you for it.” Rosy grinned, her eyes falling to someone entering the café. “I’m up!” She went to the cash register.
Morgan’s gaze swept out over the clientele currently in the café. Even if she didn’t think it likely someone had found her, she wasn’t able to shake the unease agitating her fire magick. A spark smacked into the metal machine and fizzled out, and she blinked, reigning in her magick.
Whoever it was that came looking for her, she didn’t return during Morgan’s shift. She left at nine o’clock in the evening, an hour after closing, as she did every day. Decker had texted twice more, and she walked down the well-lit street towards the apartment she’d rented and read through his responses.
Beck is hurting.
She sucked in a breath, her magick sparking around her while sorrow tore a hole in her.
There has to be another way. Lamented the second text.
“I want that, too,” she whispered, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. She tucked the phone away and spent a long moment staring into the night sky over Las Vegas. The trees lining her walk were budding, and the scent of winter was gone.
Warmed by her fire magick, she didn’t notice the chill of early spring and instead began reviewing every option she’d ever dreamt up about how to make it back to Beck.
In the end, it all boiled down to the stark reality that there was no way. She couldn’t simultaneously protect him and fulfill her familial obligation of protecting the soul stone.
She trudged onward to the well-kept, aging apartment complex not far from her workplace. Morgan tugged the scrunchie out of her hair, unleashing a puff of espresso, and climbed the metal stairs to the second floor and her small, but cozy apartment.
The moment she entered, she froze. It was all of five hundred square feet – too small for her not to notice if something was off, even in the dark. She’d taken a large withdrawal of cash from Decker’s credit card before leaving Idaho and used it to buy a couch, bed, and small dining table. The rest was stashed. She had enough for a car, but walking was cheaper. She had no way of knowing how long she’d be on the lam, so the money had to last.
Morgan didn’t bother to warn whoever was trespassing, hunkered down in the corner behind the couch. She pulled off her fire magick. Her hands burst into orange flames bright enough to light up the entire apartment and blind whoever was there – without affecting her. Purple and white flickers in her fire distracted her briefly.
She peered through the flames at the guy crouched in the corner.
“Noah?” she asked, surprised. “What’re you doing here?” She dimmed the flames without releasing them entirely. Noah was Dawn’s brother and the person she least wanted to run into. He had helped her before, but she hesitated to welcome him with open arms, not when she knew he’d once been a lackey of Dawn. “How did you find me?”
“Doesn’t matter. Dawn’s in town.” He shielded his eyes against the light.
Her fire flared, and she looked around.
“She’s not in here.”
“And you’re what? Here to take me to her?”
“No, Morgan. Can you please turn that off?” he complained.
“Tell me why you’re here!”
“To warn you!” he snapped. “Look, I figured out where you were months ago. I’ve been watching, making sure she doesn’t get close again.”
Morgan listened. Noah may have once been his sister’s obedient lackey, but he had also saved her life. She extinguished her flames an
d flipped the light on. Noah emerged from the corner cautiously. The brooding teen resembled his supermodel mother with his medium length blond hair and blue-grey eyes set in chiseled features. He wore jeans and a leather jacket.
“You followed me,” Morgan crossed her arms. “Explain that.”
“It wasn’t hard. There was a lot of snow around the lake. It showed me where you went. I destroyed the path so no one else could follow,” he replied with a shrug. As a water element, he was able to communicate with, and create, all sorts of weather.
She frowned and tossed her keys and purse on the couch. She had fled Priest Lake, where the witchlings’ boarding school was located, south to Priest River on foot before hiring a taxi to take her farther south. In hindsight, she probably should’ve made sure no one was following her, but she panicked after the events at the lake.
Besides, when she made it to the border of Idaho and Nevada, she’d grown cautious and ensured no one followed her south. At least, she thought she’d been careful.
“Did anyone else follow you?” she asked.
“Not that I saw.”
“Did you get an apartment next door or something?” she asked, a little unnerved someone had been watching her for three months.
“Here?” he snorted. “No.”
She rolled her eyes. Like pretty much everyone else at the exclusive boarding school, including the Turner twins, Noah was wealthy, or had been. There were rumors she’d heard before leaving that his family’s business was headed for bankruptcy.
“I’ve been close, though.”
“Anyway, your sister found you first and then me?” she asked.
“No. I didn’t tell my family where I was going.” A troubled look crossed his features. “Just left. Like you did to your brother.”
The other reason Morgan hurt: her own brother thought she was dead. She didn’t want to know the kind of suffering Connor had gone through. “Okay. So you came to warn me,” she said. “She’s close? She knows where I am?”
“She’s in town, and I’m pretty sure she knows where you work. You might not want to go back.”
Morgan crossed to the tiny kitchen and grabbed a chilled bottle of water out of the fridge. Deep in thought, she considered where to go next. “How did she find me?”
“I don’t know.”
One of her hands instinctively checked the pocket with the soul stone. It was still present, as cold and energy sapping as ever. Was it capable of calling out to someone like Dawn? Someone possessed by a powerful, Dark soul?
Or had Morgan not been careful enough?
“Have you thought about going back?” Noah asked quietly.
“Every day.”
“Why don’t you?”
“Because I can’t, Noah. It’s too dangerous.”
By the look of desolation that crossed his features, he was feeling the loneliness she did. He, too, had walked away from his friends and family, though his reasons were very different. He was guilty for all his sister had done to hurt people. Morgan suspected watching over her was one way he was trying to make up for all the wrong he’d ignored.
“Go home,” she said. “Ask Biji out. Live your life.”
“Biji …” he trailed off and shook his head. “She’s too good for me. I didn’t question what Dawn did, and it nearly got you all killed. I owe you to help. Somehow.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Noah,” she told him. “If you want to do me a favor, go live the life I can’t.”
“We can both go back,” he pressed. “Beck will protect you from Dawn.”
“No, he can’t,” she replied firmly. “Me being near him puts him in danger more than anyone.”
“How can the Master of Light – and Decker – not help you?” he demanded with some frustration.
Because of this. She squeezed the stone in her hand without answering him. “Go, Noah. I don’t need help, and I don’t need you destroying your life for me.”
He met her gaze, his stormy. “I have to make amends.”
“Fine. But leave me alone.”
She said nothing more. As if realizing she was serious, Noah left.
Morgan locked the door behind him, feeling sorry for the conflicted teen. She leaned her forehead against the cool door.
Beck will protect you.
“No one can do that,” she murmured. She didn’t know what it’d take to keep the stone out of Dawn’s hands forever or even if it was possible, but it meant she was on the run, potentially for the rest of her life.
Morgan gazed regretfully at the furniture in the apartment. A life of poverty and abuse had made her feel excessively proud when she purchased the secondhand pieces. She’d never had anything that was really hers, and the apartment was a first in many areas. She could take only what she could carry, which meant the pretty sweaters she’d bought for winter had to stay along with the couch and dining table.
She didn’t try to restrain her fire magick. Her distress stoked it to life, and her skin glowed with tiny flames that warmed the air around her. Morgan went to the bedroom and opened the bottom drawer of a lopsided dresser, where she kept the cash and an emergency pack for an occasion such as this, when she’d been found. She double checked everything and set it out at the bottom of her bed. Tucking her favorite jeans and two sweaters into the backpack, she made her dinner and prepared to sleep in her bed for one of her last nights there. She’d take a couple of days to plan then bolt over the weekend.
The tears didn’t come this night. She’d been crying less lately, though she felt worse today than usual. Seeing Noah, a physical reminder of her time in the boarding school, of Beck and the others, left her raw and her magick spinning off into sizzling sparks.
What hurt most: wondering if there was a way to be with Beck again, but she couldn’t risk returning to Priest Lake to figure it out.
Chapter Three
Dawn tossed and turned in bed, unable to find a comfortable position. Eight months pregnant, she was a little less miserable lying down, but it wasn’t much of a difference. Frustrated, she sat up and flipped on the light on her nightstand.
“I can’t stand this!” she muttered and got up to go to the bathroom for the umpteenth time this night.
When she returned, she went to the window overlooking The Strip. The lights of Las Vegas were bright and cheerful, and people still walked the sidewalks. Her luxurious suite had been paid for by her latest victim, a wealthy businessman Bartholomew helped her track and exploit before killing. His credit card paid for her room for another three months, and she lived well at the casino. The amount of people moving in and out of the casino also helped hide her Dark witchlings and the humans she’d conscripted into finding one single fire witchling.
Three months after being forced into hiding, she’d found the person she loathed more than she did Beck: his counterbalance, Morgan. Or at least, the city where Morgan was hiding out and the café where she worked.
We’ll have it soon, Bartholomew assured her.
“I know.” She no longer cared who heard her speak to the Dark soul sharing her body. “I want this baby out.” She rubbed her stomach, her lower back aching whenever she stood. She was pale and sickly looking, which made her even angrier with the child growing inside her. She had hoped to land a modeling gig before she started showing, but had no luck. Not a day went by that she didn’t think about how it was Beck’s baby, how he had done this to her – stripped away her life when he knocked her up then walked away. Not a day passed that she didn’t consider how amazing it was going to feel when she finally got her revenge.
I can make the pain stop, Bartholomew said.
Dawn didn’t acknowledge him for a long moment. The more miserable her third trimester became, the more she considered the offer. But it meant potentially putting her baby at risk if she did what he wanted, and the baby was the key to making Beck suffer for the rest of his life.
There were moments she was too angry to care and others when she recalled that the
best revenge against Beck and the rest of the Light witchlings was to have the baby and hide, to raise the child of the Master of Light in Darkness.
She started away from the window and smacked her shin into a coffee table she couldn’t see over the bump of her belly. Cursing, Dawn sat with some difficulty.
“Tell me again what that means,” she said and contorted her body to see her shin. It was bleeding and would definitely be bruised in the morning. She wasn’t able to reach it to put a band-aid on though.
It means you go to sleep. I take over. I bear the pain.
“And my baby?” Uneasiness swept through her. No matter how angry she was at Beck or her condition, her child was a different matter.
No harm comes to her.
“But …” She always sensed there was more that Bartholomew didn’t say.
No harm comes to her.
“No. Again.” She settled back. “The first plan is best. We grab the soul stone. You get what you want, and I get to make Beck’s life miserable forever.”
Except you’re defenseless without me. Decker will find you once I’m gone.
She’d thought of this endlessly. It didn’t seem bearable to spend her life with Bartholomew in her head and a child to take care of. She also didn’t want to be killed in the hospital by the Master of Dark after she gave birth. Decker had promised as much, and she didn’t think Beck was going to stop him when it came down to it.
I swear. No harm comes to your baby.
The offer was starting to sound good, especially since she hadn’t slept a full night through in over a month.
“Dawn.” Someone tapped on her door.
She struggled to her feet and grabbed a robe, irritated when it didn’t close around her belly. Whipping open the door, Dawn met the gaze of one of the witchlings who accompanied her on her hunt for Morgan. Troy was a tall Dark fire witchling, the only other fire witchling she knew aside from Morgan and Decker. “What, Troy?”