by Gabi Moore
“Let’s say I do,” she said. “If what you say is true, then you’ve kept my father from being with me and my mother all this time.”
“No, not from being with you, we wanted him to be with you,” Milo spoke up. “Look, I’d only just gotten started with all this when it happened, but I swear, these two and old Mathers wanted to see you all happy together. But your dad wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“So what, it was like, an intervention? What, was he abusive?”
“In a way, yes,” Moreau wheezed. “There’s more… still to tell you. Cheng—he’s a shapeshifter, and your father—I guess he’s… what you would call a… a vampire.”
For the first time, Aurora wondered if she was not the victim of a prank.
“You’re not,” Milo said at once.
“Stop doing that,” Aurora snapped. She turned to Moreau and Cheng sharply. “A vampire? Really?”
“Not like in movies,” Cheng answered, still holding Moreau’s hand carefully. “Not like Dracula, not like Twilight. Your father feeds off blood, yes, but mostly energy. In the city, there is plenty.”
“So I’m, like, a half-vampire?” Aurora had to roll her eyes at that.
“No, you will be… a full one,” Moreau replied. “That’s the problem. Your father… Ian… he sired you… thoughtlessly. He didn’t think… of the consequences…”
“Before you go on about unexpected pregnancy, just listen,” Milo warned Aurora, before she could say just that. He was leaning against the wall opposite the hospital bed, seeming to listen to Moreau. Aurora glared at him.
“I mean it, stop that,” she hissed.
Milo nodded apologetically.
“We are five,” Moreau breathed. She paused and took a deep, staggering inhale. “Cheng and I, Milo… Ian… and… one other, Ylessa. She is… a fairy, I suppose… you’d call her. We form a pentacle, Aurora, a complete… set.”
Now, ‘pentacle’ is a buzzword for anyone who’s ever watched the news in America around Halloween, and Aurora cringed a little to hear it. “What does that mean? A complete set for what?”
“To protect the city,” Moreau replied. “To protect… people. There are dark forces… in this world… and when he couldn’t… have you… your father joined them.”
“Why?” This was all too much information, but Aurora couldn’t budge that one thought. Why?
There was a knock at the door just then, and Lucian crossed to it warily. Everyone seemed to hold their breath; Aurora did too. Through a crack in the door, they could hear someone speaking, and Lucian opened it wide to admit a sixth guest, a teenager who rushed and picked up Moreau’s other hand at once.
He was probably a senior in high school, middling height and Hispanic. He was dressed in jeans and two sweaters, but didn’t seem to care about overheating at present. He had a blocky face, but it was kind, and at the moment, it was scrunched up in grief.
“Miss Estelle,” he sniffed. “I came as fast as I could. How are you feeling?”
Estelle? Aurora wondered. She’d never heard Moreau’s first name.
Moreau herself looked more maternal, more calm than Aurora had ever seen. “Lester. The time has… come, I think. I’m getting… weaker every minute…”
Lester shook his head, face reddening. “Not yet.”
Moreau nodded her head sadly. “I’m… so tired… Let me rest.”
The poor boy sobbed horribly, and Aurora felt it right down in her spine. Why wasn’t that her? Why couldn’t she be upset like that? Moreau was fading, and her mother was gone. Why wasn’t she dissolving?
Lester nodded, biting his lips together, and clutched both of Madame Moreau’s hands. Above the bed, the room lights flickered.
“What was that?” Aurora asked in a whisper. She wasn’t sure why she was whispering; it seemed appropriate.
“Shh,” Milo nodded his head toward the bed.
Madame Estelle Moreau was lying flat against the raised back of her bed, breathing deeply. Her white, white skin had turned almost pearly, translucent. Her face turned to Lucian and Milo.
“Stay… out of trouble… you two…”
“We’ll try, Ma’am.”
She made an unconvinced sound in her throat, and for a moment seemed like her old self. Then she turned to Aurora, who stiffened.
“There’s… much more to tell…” Moreau sighed. “Cheng will have to do it. We’re… both getting too old. You… young people… have to take over…” She smiled slightly. “You’re an excellent… employee… I’ll give… you that.”
Lastly, she turned to Cheng. They didn’t exchange words. Mr. Cheng just took both her hands in his, and kissed each. On his face was a profound sadness, deep as the sky in winter, but he didn’t make a sound. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. Moreau murmured something in French, and he smiled and nodded.
And then, with the lights flickering again, Moreau returned her hands to Lester’s grasp, and closed her eyes.
“You’ll have… to try your best… to set a new ward…” Moreau murmured, eyes still closed.
Lester nodded, too fast. “I’ll do my best, Miss Estelle.”
“Good, good. Now, let’s go…”
Now Lester was turning a glimmery off-shade, as if his reddish skin were beginning to glow. Aurora blinked; were they glowing? The lights in the room flickered yet again, and the answer was yes, they were. Faintly, the strongest light shining up their arms, at their conjoined hands.
“What’s happening?” she asked, standing. The lights blinked out finally, and did not return.
“Madame Moreau is passing her office on to Lester,” Lucian replied quietly. He hadn’t moved at all since Lester had arrived, leaning against the wall in the far corner without a word.
Aurora glanced at him, then back at the glowing spectacle. “Her office? What does that mean?”
“She was the witch in our circle. Now, Lester will be.”
Aurora watched with wide eyes as Moreau’s glow dimmed, dimmed, and Lester’s grew stronger. It was over in less than a minute, and the lights in the room snapped back on as if someone had flipped the switch. And in the large hospital bed, gray and cold, lay the body of Estelle Moreau.
“Oh my God,” Aurora breathed.
“So passes the Witch, Estelle Moreau,” Milo murmured, bowing his head.
“We should go,” Lester coughed. He looked up at them all. “Her ward is totally gone now; I’ll have to build a new one, but I can’t do it here. I’ll need time—we need to all get somewhere safe.”
“Safe from what?” Aurora asked, her hazel eyes still locked on Madame Moreau’s still face.
Out in the hall, someone shrieked.
Chapter 7
Mr. Cheng turned to Lucian. He’d never looked so grim, never, and at that moment Aurora wouldn’t have wanted to be in his way.
“Take them to your home,” Cheng instructed. “Get them to safety. I’ll buy you time.”
Lucian nodded and stepped away from the wall. “I’m on it.”
Mr. Cheng opened the door of the hospital room; outside, there was chaos. It sounded like a high wind had begun ripping through the hall, and the lights were flashing like a series of electrical surges.
As she watched his back, Mr. Cheng began to change. It began as a rippled through his thin shoulders. At first, Aurora thought it was the flashing lights, but then he began to grow, madly, like an accelerated film. His spine lengthened and fur sprouted from his skin. In a matter of seconds, a Bengal tiger stood in the door where Mr. Cheng had been, its shoulders only a little shorter than he’d been upright.
Aurora’s legs folded under her and she was suddenly sitting on the couch again.
“He’ll can only give us a few minutes head start,” Milo told her, holding out a hand. “We gotta go!”
Go? Oh, boy. That was a lot to ask. But Aurora’s hand took Milo’s without her telling it to, and he pulled her to her feet. The tiger was gone, and the chaos in the hall was reaching a f
evered pitch. Lucian helped Lester to his feet and herded them all out.
In the hall, a series of sharp growls and hisses welcomed them from the right, where the elevators were. Aurora looked, and felt quite crazy to see what she did; the tiger, surely bigger than a real one, was locked in combat with a pair of creatures that defied description. They seemed part shadow, not fully physical, and with the lights going mad it was impossible to get a look at them.
A second later, she was being rushed to the left. “The emergency stairs,” Milo told her. “I think this counts as an emergency.”
They burst into the stairwell, to find the lights flashing here, too. The going was treacherous in her heels, but Aurora had been wearing heels a long time and managed to keep up with the boys in their flat-soled shoes. Their steps clattered and echoed around them, and when they were turning the bend between the second and first floor, the door upstairs slammed open.
“Go!” Lucian bellowed, and they blasted through the door on the first floor.
“The parking garage! We can all fit in my car!”
“What about Mr. Cheng?” Aurora asked, her voice much higher than she’d meant it to be.
“Believe me, he can take care of himself,” Lucian replied as they rushed through the ground floor of the hospital. “He’ll be trying to hold them back and keep them from following. They haven’t hurt him, and he knows where to meet us.”
Aurora had to take his word for it, because they were already in the parking garage and booking it towards Milo’s car.
“Where are we going?” she panted, swinging into the front seat without asking.
“My apartment,” Lucian answered from the backseat. “It’s well-hidden. Lester will have time to build a new ward once we get there.”
Milo started the car and screeched out of the parking spot the second Lester—the last one in the car—had his door shut. He wheeled on out of the parking structure like a bat out of hell, still wearing his gun and police badge under his jacket, which Aurora found oddly amusing.
“What if you get pulled over?” she asked, smiling like a lunatic. “What’ll we tell them, we’re running from shadow monsters?”
Milo glanced at her. “Keep with us, Aurora. I know this is a lot all at once, but we were hoping… well we were hoping we’d be able to wait as long as possible before having this conversation.”
“What, that my father is here in the city? That he’s been looking for me all this time?” Aurora asked, suddenly angry. “My mother has been wasting away waiting for him to come back, and you tell me you all kept him from finding us?”
“We were protecting you,” Lester piped up from the back. “Your father doesn’t want to claim you—”
“He wants to kill you,” Lucian finished, leaning back in the shadows of the rear seat. “Or turn you to his side. Either way, he’s not looking out for your best interests.”
“His side?” Aurora spun in her seat to face him, careful to brace herself against Milo’s mad driving. “What side is that?”
Lucian stared at her intensely, angrily. “The side that only cares about him. He’s looking out for his interests now.”
“Why would he need to kill me?” Aurora asked, half hysterical, half furious. “He’s ignored me long enough—”
“This isn’t about custody or child support,” Lucian interrupted. “It’s about succession. You just saw what succession means in this group. One day, I’ll take Cheng’s place, just like Lester and Moreau. Most of the time, we can choose our own successor, but when you bring a child into the world, you make a successor. Whether he likes it or not, his power is going to you, whenever you can claim it.”
“Power?” Aurora squeaked as Milo took a turn at thirty miles an hour. The car wheels skidded on some ice before righting. “What power? What am I supposed to do with it?”
“Protect the city,” Lucian answered patiently. “We told you already. That’s what we do. It’s why we’re grouped together like this. And your father is screwing things up by looking out for himself only.”
“So he thinks I want to kill him?” Aurora was dumbfounded.
“You will kill him,” Lucian insisted. “Either all at once or over time, the longer you live, the more of his strength you take. As your star rises, his is falling. If he kills you, he can stop it forever.”
To this, Aurora had nothing to say. What could she possibly say? She flopped back down in her seat, facing forward. This was unreal. She’d always thought her father must be a Class-A jackass to leave her mother, but this…
No one spoke for the rest of the drive, except the occasional sob from Lester. Aurora wished she knew what to say; someone should say something to the poor kid. Madame Moreau had been Aurora’s employer and nothing more, whether or not she had been some kind of secret guardian. All Aurora had known was that she better show up to work on time, and that if she and Moreau ever passed on the street, the old woman probably wouldn’t even look at her.
Obviously, to Lester, the lady had been much more dear. He was as quiet as could be, but every now and then, a sharp cry that was almost a cough would slip out. Aurora had spent all her adult life comforting her mother, and bizarrely, she found that she didn’t have even one scrap of comfort to give at the moment. Her own life was nothing to be envied, if half of what these people said was true. And after she had seen Mr. Cheng transform into a tiger, right before her eyes, she was inclined to believe more than half of it.
They crossed a bridge, although Aurora wasn’t sure which one, and soon found themselves in a river of slow-moving cars. In the middle of the night, they were stuck in traffic. Milo tapped his foot nervously.
“You should get out and walk from here,” he told Lucian. “The two of you—you can move faster with just two. The sooner we get her warded, the better. We’ll park and be up there as soon as we can.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Lucian opened his door and leapt out as Milo was coming to a stop. Aurora’s door opened a moment later, and Lucian’s large hand was offered to help her stand.
It had been one of the longest days of her life, but Aurora took Lucian’s hand and let him lever her up to her feet. They were in the middle of traffic, so the two of them had to fast-walk out of the road, over the snowbank and onto the sidewalk. Aurora had ever been thankful for her heeled boots before, but at least she wasn’t running around February New York in pumps.
It occurred to her as they moved up the street that she should have grabbed sneakers from her apartment. She had only one good pair (the other pair was full of holes) but even the old pair in her closet would have been better than spending all night in heels.
Luckily, Lucian’s building wasn’t far away. He punched in the entry code to a respectable-looking tenement building that stretched upward towards the high moon, and they climbed into an elevator up to the seventeenth floor. Here was a hall with several doors, the last of which Lucian unlocked and ushered Aurora inside.
At first it was almost completely dark, and Aurora put her hands out to avoid bumping into a table or a couch or some such incident; when Lucian closed the door, the darkness was like pitch, endless and thick.
Thankfully, he hit the lights a moment later. When he did, Aurora stared around, uncertain all over again.
It was a nice apartment, sure enough. And in a decent part of town, too, which didn’t come cheap in New York. But in the soft light of several lamps were thousands of charms. The lined the walls. They rustled from the ceiling. Strings and ribbons and lengths of twine, binding together beads and feathers and notes and bits of metal, hung in ropes. Under the charms, the walls were papered in handwritten wards, one taped over the other, like the scales of a fish, almost fully obscuring the paint behind them.
“You’ll be safe here,” Lucian said, taking off his jacket. In the living room, as if unaware of the mad-looking oddments strung around his house, Lucian had a very modern leather couch set around a simple entertainment center. He tossed his jacket across the back of the c
ouch and headed into a back room.
“I’ll be right back. Make yourself at home.”
Home. As Lucian disappeared into his bedroom, Aurora felt the word echo into her chest like a shout down a cave. Home. She felt sharply that she had lost hers tonight, that her old life was fully gone. Her mother was missing, her apartment destroyed, her jobs as good as lost. What was going to become of her now?
And what about her father? Was that the real reason that he had left her and Ramona—because the others made him? Because they were afraid he might try to hurt Aurora in the attempt to keep his power? She didn’t feel powerful; nothing strange or unusual had ever happened to Aurora, nor had she ever done anything remarkable. Maybe they had it wrong. Surely, they did. She sat down on the couch, determined to tell Lucian exactly this when he returned.
But when Lucian can back into his living room, it was to find that Aurora was asleep on his couch, laying sideways with her feet on the floor as if she’d simply tipped over.
Chapter 8
The dream was different.
That had never happened before in her life, so Aurora didn’t recognize it begin. It felt more like a memory than a dream, a very old memory from when she was small. She was coloring, drawing something in huge, clumsy strokes. It felt like summer, with bright white sun glowing in through the windows. Her mother was humming somewhere nearby. The world was small and safe.
And then it started changing. The sun was setting, and the dusk outside moved into the apartment. Ramona’s humming quieted and vanished as night drew on, but no lights were turned on, and outside the world was black. By the time Aurora realized how dark it had become, it was complete, no moon, no stars. Not even street lights. She looked down at the picture she’d been drawing.
It had been a picture of her father’s face, but of course, she couldn’t see it, now. Lost again.