Into the Mystic, Volume One

by Tay LaRoi

  That day, wonder turned into fascination.

  All the days that followed knotted that fascination into something deeper and stranger and far more brutal than they’d ever imagined.

  As if on cue, Thalia felt her. Jordan’s long strides and musky, cinnamon perfume. Her achingly dark energy and warped, inside-out magic. “Hey, white witch,” she said, falling into pace next to Thalia. Her lips were dusty rose against her olive skin, curving into a heartfelt smile.

  Thalia looked at the fan of Jordan’s lashes against her cheek, the curl of fresh wounds peeking above her collar where she’d drawn a new sigil. Thalia remembered carving those spells into Jordan’s flesh, the taste of her blood, wet and warm on her lips, the glow of Jordan’s dark eyes and the whispers from other planes, from ghosts and demons and deities. Look at these two, they said. Their magic is deadly.

  “Hey, necromancer,” Thalia dared. The words felt heavy in her mouth, but once she said them, elation bloomed where guilt used to be.

  Jordan grinned. War itself would tremble in the wake of that smile.

  “I’m guessing you’ve already had dinner,” Jordan tested.

  Thalia nodded. “This isn’t a date.”

  “’Course it isn’t. My car’s around the corner next to the gelato place. I’ll drive us out if you wanna go.” Jordan looked straight ahead. Her long coat swung behind her, thumbs pushed through the belt loops of her ripped blue jeans.

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Thalia said. She swallowed hard. Her mother’s warnings and Luther’s Be careful played again and again in the back of her mind. Celene’s string of duties and rules, her grating voice from hours ago, so much like Cher’s. Your mother is gone. You have a responsibility now, and it’s not to some Wolfe woman. You have to take this seriously.

  But Jordan wasn’t just some Wolfe woman.

  Thalia tried to steel her nerves.

  Three years was a long time to go without having what they’d had.

  Jordan nudged Thalia with her elbow and shrugged toward the parking lot. They walked silently to the silver truck, the same one Jordan had been driving since she was sixteen. River perched on the side of the truck bed. He waved a foot at them as they approached, cawing softly and ruffling his wings.

  “Meet us there,” Jordan said. River took off into the night.

  Thalia slid into the passenger’s seat. A strand of crystal beads hung from the rearview mirror. A bundle of half-burnt sage was crammed in one of the cup holders next to an old Starbucks cup, and a few clusters of amethyst were strewn across the dashboard. She tried to keep her eyes on the road, but her gaze kept drifting to Jordan’s long fingers tapping idly against the steering wheel. Her mouth parted around lyrics to a song playing on the radio, shirt half-untucked and slouching over one shoulder.

  “Why’d you leave?” Jordan said suddenly. She kept looking at the road, illuminated by two bright headlights. Soon, the town was behind them, and trees stretched in every direction.

  Now that Jordan’s jacket was gone, Thalia saw the intricate design of the sigil low on her neck. It extended over her shoulder, angry red cuts in varying shapes where a knife had sliced her open. Several runes decorated the piece. She recognized some—power, manifestation, clarity.

  “You know why,” Thalia said slowly.

  Jordan huffed a laugh. “Because Cher said you had to choose?”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  Thalia chewed on her lip. “And it would’ve been you, so I left instead of choosing.”

  “Is martyrdom a Darbonne trait, or is it just you?” Jordan’s tone edged on playful, but bitterness hung heavy over each word.

  “It’s not like you came looking for me, Jordan.”

  “Didn’t know you wanted me to.” The road grew bumpy and dark. Trees darted by close to the windows. “Answering my calls or texts might have helped. Or leaving a note. Fuck, giving King something to bring me to let me know where you were, I don’t know. Something to tell me you hadn’t just—” Her hands floundered on the steering wheel. “—left me here.”

  “I didn’t come out here to do this with you,” Thalia snapped.

  Jordan shoved the truck in park. She glared across the center console and clicked her tongue. “What exactly did you come out here for then?” Her voice was even and heated, anger building between her teeth.

  Something large knocked against Thalia’s window. A deep, wet breath fogged the glass, and a wide, brown nose pressed against it.

  Thalia jumped. Jordan’s sour expression faded. It hadn’t been long since Thalia had seen her familiar. They’d met in San Francisco and Portland from time to time, and she’d caught him pacing the tree line behind the greenhouse that morning.

  But for some reason, this meeting seemed more exciting than the others. Maybe it was because these woods had given birth to King the same day, hour, minute that Thalia had been born. Maybe it was because this was the place where Thalia had practiced her magic on her own, where she’d sat with King in open meadows and doodled in her grimoire. Maybe it was as simple as being back in the place that defined so much of her youth. Here she was again in this old truck, looking out the window at King, with Jordan sitting beside her.

  Something about it felt surreal, like time had fractured where memories overlapped with potential.

  “You scared me!” Thalia slapped her palm over her chest. A wide grin pulled her lips upright. “Well, back up so I can get out,” Thalia said through a laugh. King’s antlers scraped the door as he stepped back, dark hooves sinking into soft grass, his oak hide a stark contrast to the pale, cream-colored horns jutting from behind his ears.

  She slid out of the car and paid close attention to Jordan’s footsteps around the front of the truck. King’s wide brown eyes blinked down at her, his height a testament to how large elk truly were.

  “You don’t like LA much, do you?” Thalia teased. He blew a puff of air at her and leaned forward. His face pressed along her forehead and nose. She scratched under his chin and felt along the ridges of his white horns, the sharp points and curved edges. Moss draped over the hollows were bone twisted with bone, making King appear mystical and unreal. “No, I don’t blame you. Too many people, huh?”

  “That’s where you’ve been?” Jordan’s voice came from behind her. “Southern California?”

  “You never did a locator spell?”

  Thalia listened to Jordan sigh, heard the shift of her hips against the side of the truck.

  “I didn’t know if it was right or not,” Jordan said softly.

  “Yes, you did.” Thalia threw the words over her shoulder. “You just didn’t follow it.”

  Jordan’s energy thickened, her concealed nervousness made itself known in shifting breezes and rustling leaves. Around them, the forest came alive. Moonlight lit a thin layer of fog. Branches craned over them, covered in copper leaves. Maroon leaves shaded the canopy, twined with green vines and gold-stemmed flowers. Moss climbed tree trunks. Ferns hid mice and salamanders who watched them from their burrows.

  The night sky darkened from navy to dense black, bleeding red where Mars twinkled and white where the moon hung high.

  “I was scared,” Jordan admitted. She stepped next to Thalia. One hand came to rest on King’s antlers. “I didn’t know what would happen if I found you. I was nineteen. I thought you leaving meant we were done.”

  Thalia wanted to believe they’d been done, too.

  River swooped down and landed on King’s back. The elk huffed again and whipped around to look at the crow, almost gouging Jordan with his horns in the process.

  “Easy!” Thalia scolded. King made a dismissive noise and ignored her, paying attention to River instead and then to the juicy grass at his feet. She swallowed and glanced at Jordan, catching vulnerability cross her face before her expression hardened. “Don’t do that,” Thalia said. “I’m not a stranger. You don’t need to act like I’m out to get you.”

  “You come back after three years an
d ask me not to be guarded?” Jordan’s nostrils flared. Her brows flicked, followed by a snarl that shouldn’t have been pretty, but was. “What do you want, Thalia? What are we doing here?”

  “You asked me to come out here with you.” Thalia stepped over a cluster of mushrooms and headed farther into the woods. The trees whispered in a language she couldn’t understand. She imagined they were spreading rumors. They’re back. The white witch is back. The bone bender is back. “I’m here. You’re here. The end.”

  Jordan’s hand snatched her wrist. Thalia’s head spun. She exhaled a pained breath, enduring the fast, cruel stitching of energy over energy. There you are, it said. Thalia’s magic leapt out of her. The indistinguishable whispering grew frantic. Jordan’s breathing turned labored and winded. Magic knew magic, and after so much time apart, their magic didn’t hesitate to reacquaint themselves.

  Power wracked Thalia’s nervous system. Her blood rushed against itself, speeding in the wrong direction. Her fingertips went numb. Everything she’d been raised to avoid gathered in her elbows and kneecaps, seductive, dark, blistering magic. It purred at her, wrapped around her, soft like snake scales, hot like sun-warmed metal.

  “You’re stronger,” Thalia whispered. She tugged her hand away, but the deed was done. She knew it. So did Jordan. Their unavoidable limits had been breached, and now all Thalia could do was stand there, wading between dazed and the clearest she’d ever been. Her pupils dilated. Adrenaline pushed her senses out of comfort and into primordial urgency.

  “Surprise,” Jordan rasped. Her hand hovered in the air, knobby fingers twitching as if they still clutched Thalia’s wrist. “I didn’t think that would happen. Sorry.”

  “It’s just...” Thalia closed her eyes and waved her hand at the surrounding trees and toward the sky. “It’s this place and what we did when we were young and…” She trailed off, unable to explain it in a way that didn’t lead back to them.

  “We’re still young,” Jordan said matter-of-factly. Her chestnut eyes flashed to Thalia.

  “Our magic isn’t,” Thalia shot back.

  “Is that why it’s like this?”

  Thalia’s teeth sank into her bottom lip. They both knew why it was out of control. Magic like theirs—magic that’d once coexisted in closeness and intimacy—didn’t fade. Somewhere under three years of silence and distance, Thalia and Jordan were still linked. But Jordan had been practicing, and Thalia hadn’t. The imbalance between them showed in Thalia’s trembling hands, and Jordan’s steamed breath. Thalia’s body tried to make room for it, to stretch open around years and years of buried invocations. Jordan’s magic was wound tightly enough to snap.

  The scars on Thalia’s hips and ribcage stung. Everything that had fallen asleep, the raw, thick, unrelenting magic she’d run from woke up and writhed under her skin.

  Jordan’s wild, sharp gaze flicked restlessly over Thalia’s face, darting from her lips, her full brows, to her round cheeks and rich eyes. Her jaw slackened. Thalia watched her top lip pull away from the bottom, glimpsed the tip of her tongue dart across her bottom lip.

  The woods went silent.

  Thalia’s face flushed.

  “Do you still…” Jordan trailed off. Her confidence splintered.

  “Do you think I’d be out here if I didn’t?” Thalia snapped. Her eagerness was embarrassing. The way the trees seemed to lean toward them, the way the mist had dissipated, and their familiars watched from a few feet away—it felt staged as if Port Lewis had been anticipating this moment for long enough to go quiet in its presence.

  Jordan was graceful in ways people weren’t meant to be graceful. Her hands landed firmly on Thalia’s waist. She pushed Thalia backward, the tip of her nose bumping against Thalia’s cheek in the process. Steam trickled over Jordan’s lips. The black of her pupils fanned over the rest of her eyes, an unveiling of her Wolfe lineage. Her hand was uncomfortably hot on Thalia’s jaw, thumb set hard against her chin.

  This, Jordan pressing Thalia against a mossy tree in the middle of the woods, her black eyes fixed on Thalia’s mouth, was a dangerous reminder of their wickedness.

  The trees chattered again. The wind kicked up.

  “This is not something to play with,” Jordan seethed. A thousand voices spoke under hers, low and haunting, the voice of every life she’d taken and every life she’d brought back. “My heart won’t pay the price for your martyrdom again, Thalia Darbonne.”

  Magic squirmed and thrashed in Thalia, pushing out from her fingertips when she gripped Jordan’s ribs. Strands of blonde hair tickled Thalia’s face. “I’m matriarch now,” Thalia bit. “I decide who I get to have.”

  “I’m not something to be had.” Jordan’s hot breath gusted Thalia’s mouth, wet with steam and tinged by the smell of blood.

  Thalia had missed that smell—blood before it soured, the essence of life contained behind Jordan’s teeth. She remembered the way it tasted years ago, like burnt coffee and pennies. “Are you done yet?” Thalia’s voice split, manifesting into different versions of itself as if she’d whispered and screamed and howled at once. The gold flecked through her eyes sparked like cinders.

  Jordan sucked in a deep breath. Her hold on Thalia’s waist tightened, sending heat through her clothes, into the scars settled there. Thalia glanced at the fresh sigil on Jordan’s shoulder, pronounced and glowing mahogany against her fawn skin. She reached up and pressed her fingertips against it, watching Jordan wince when she dug her nails in and broke it back open.

  Blood coated Thalia’s fingertips. She brought them to her mouth, but Jordan snatched her wrist.

  “Blood magic is powerful,” Jordan said. It was a warning every elder and every witch in Washington had given them, but it wasn’t new. They’d spent years together, setting blades against thighs and chests and throats, followed by teeth and lips. Despite the constant warnings, Thalia and Jordan had never listened.

  Thalia’s gaze traced Jordan’s lashes, the waterline on the inside of her eyelids clashing with opaque, inky black. She pulled until her bloodied fingertips pressed against her lips, opening her mouth to set them against her tongue.

  Jordan made a wounded sound. A punched-out whimper, a gravely hum.

  Magic poured between them. The woods were still, as if the trees held their breath, and the animals had stopped scurrying. Thalia’s magic surged. Her head spun. Every invocation they’d done, every deity they’d contacted, every blood rite, ritual, and spell came back to her like a lightning strike. The sigils under her clothes burned. Her breath shook. She relished the taste of life and death.

  She heard Jordan unsheathe the knife from her belt. Felt the cold edge of it press below her chin.

  “That’s the boline, right?” Thalia asked.

  “Yes,” Jordan said weakly. “Tell me to do it.”

  Thalia tipped her head back against the tree. Jordan’s fingers tugged at her bottom lip, dragged over her chin and down her throat. She opened her eyes. Everything was brighter and sharper. Jordan’s black eyes, her bloody neck, the white of the boline against Thalia’s umber skin.

  “Since when have you needed my permission?” Thalia asked. She licked smeared blood off her lip.

  Jordan leaned forward. Her mouth hovered dangerously close to Thalia’s. “You know why, matriarch.”

  Thalia grinned. Her power whipped and bucked. She craned up, pressing her throat against the blade. “Go on,” she said through a sigh, “take it.”

  The tip of the crescent-shaped knife sank into the flesh below Thalia’s jaw. A half-inch line pooled with blood. Jordan’s fingers twitched in the air. The steam she exhaled dampened Thalia’s skin, hot and winded. Thalia watched Jordan’s index finger bend, her thumb jutting awkwardly from her hand, girlish and flexed. A string of beaded blood floated from the cut on Thalia’s neck. Perfect red spheres spun in the air, wobbling when Jordan’s concentration slipped.

  The world slowed down.

  The trees whispered usurper, usurper, blood queen
, bone bender.

  This part always made Thalia consider the concept of time. Her blood in the air, Jordan’s open mouth, their power mingling.

  The forest whispered thief.

  “I’m no thief,” Jordan said. A thousand haunted voices rippled under her own.

  Necromancers took—it was their gift. They stole what they needed, ripped it from the earth, shredded and syphoned energy to redistribute it. A white witch giving her life force freely to a necromancer was sacrilegious. But Thalia ran her hands along Jordan’s sides. Her hips canted, and she pressed her thigh snugly between Jordan’s legs.

  Magic was ferocious.

  The moment Thalia’s blood touched Jordan’s lips, every break and fissure between them slid into place. Thalia felt Jordan’s past confusion, her heartbreak like a brand on her chest. They swam in and out of each other’s thoughts, memories, emotions. Tears sprang behind Thalia’s lashes. A short, clipped sob built in her throat, but she choked it down.

  King’s hooves pounded the ground. River cawed and screeched.

  As quickly as it came, it went. The lakes of black in Jordan’s eyes pulled to the center, crawling backward like an inverted paint spill. Jordan’s warm palms gripped Thalia’s cheeks.

  “You never should’ve left,” Jordan snapped.

  Thalia didn’t bother talking. She grabbed Jordan’s hand, fingertips playing along the ridge of her knuckles, and breached the short distance between them. They kissed clumsily at first. Their teeth clicked. The steam in Jordan’s mouth was breath-stealing. But after the collision, Jordan tilted her head and Thalia relaxed. It softened into a rush of mouth on mouth, Thalia’s hand in Jordan’s hair, Jordan’s hips pressed hard against Thalia’s pelvis.

  They’d changed and they hadn’t.

  Jordan tasted heady, like nutmeg and blackened sugar. She wasn’t as quick to bite Thalia’s lip or shove her hands up Thalia’s shirt. Instead, she exhaled hotly between their lips, tongue soothing across Thalia’s eye teeth. Her palms drifted from Thalia’s cheeks to her thighs, where she wrapped them around and tugged until the air between their bodies was eaten up.