by Tay LaRoi
Three years ago, Thalia would’ve been fumbling with the button on Jordan’s jeans. But tonight, she took her time. The magic pulsed and ached, riding their breathing, the brush of their hands and fit of their legs. It was kissing like drowning—all encompassing.
A rasped moan rumbled deep in Jordan’s throat. Her hands gripped Thalia’s thighs harder.
Somewhere lurking under the adrenaline and the car crash of energies, Thalia wondered how long this would last, if it would last at all.
River cawed at them again.
Jordan’s lips slid away. Thalia chased them.
“Hush,” Jordan said to the crow. Her gaze fixed on Thalia as she heaved in breath after breath. “Do you smell that?”
Thalia’s nostrils flared. She relaxed against the tree, one hand settled on the nape of Jordan’s neck, the other on her shoulder. “Rain.”
Jordan’s cheek brushed against Thalia’s. She mouthed along her jaw, down her throat. “It’s only a matter of time,” she said.
The first raindrop hit Thalia’s brow, cool and sudden. Raindrops the size of quarters came after. Water soaked through their clothes and battered the forest floor, chimed off the roof of the truck, and distorted the black, bleeding sky above.
King bounded off into the woods, and River flew after him.
“I can take you home,” Jordan said.
Thalia turned until her nose bumped against Jordan’s. Until she could see water gather in her brows and on her lashes, watch it drip steadily off the swell of her bottom lip.
The Grim Reaper would look at Jordan Wolfe and see his undoing.
Thalia looked at Jordan and saw something more. Something akin to future, but broader, wider, longer.
“You still live in the loft?” Thalia untangled herself from Jordan and stepped away, adjusting her jacket as she went.
“Yes,” Jordan said. A sly smile twitched on her mouth. “At St. Maria’s.”
Thalia nodded. She looked at the sky as she walked. Rain splattered on her cheeks and forehead. The trees whispered. The closer she got to the truck, the louder their hushed voices became.
Heart render. Fire starter. Earth worshipper. Stained.
Thalia remembered the smell of St. Maria’s. Wax and ash, dusty ceiling beams, and polished wood. She remembered the rows of pews and Jordan’s knees on the soft green pads as she knelt for prayer. The way her lips moved quickly over every memorized passage, how solid the priest’s wrinkled, white hand looked on the back of Jordan’s head during a blessing.
Tonight, the candles burned low in their candelabras. The cross on the wall was blackened by shadows. Faces of saints and martyrs looked down at them from the stained-glass windows, obscured by flickering flames and midnight silence.
A nun dipped her fingers in the marble bowl of holy water across the room from them. She caught Thalia’s eye as she set her wet fingers against her forehead. Her delicate features hardened. Blasphemy, the nun said with her stare. But there was nothing the nuns could do about it.
Not after Jordan had brought the priest’s sister back from the dead five years ago.
“C’mon,” Jordan said. “You’re getting water on the floor.”
They crept up the creaky wooden staircase to a simple door. Jordan unlocked it and walked inside. Thalia followed, pausing to take off her jacket as she looked around the room. Baskets of plants hung from the exposed beams, their tendrils curling and swaying. Candles littered the desk against the wall, across from an unmade bed. Books stood in stacks beside the nightstand. Under a window on the far end, looking out into the night, a circle was drawn on the floor in chalk, riddled with runes.
Jordan’s magic kept the plants alive, turning their vibrant green to muted blue and violet. Three candles sparked to life as the door closed.
Thalia draped her jacket over the open closet door and kicked off her shoes. Jordan’s lingering gaze brought pinpricks to the top of Thalia’s arms. She turned toward the door, giving Jordan her back to stare at, while she played with the hem of her shirt.
They weren’t in the woods. The magic between them had settled, buzzing contentedly under their skin. The trees weren’t there to whisper or encourage.
Jordan’s bare feet padded on the floorboards. Her breath warmed the back of Thalia’s neck, hands slid under the bottom of her shirt to rest on the sigils carved over her hipbones. She thumbed at a scarred rune. Her index finger dragged along the point of a star.
“I can’t believe they still let you live here,” Thalia said. She closed her eyes, enjoying the familiar press of Jordan’s chest against her back, the barely there dust of her hand across the top of her jeans.
“St. Maria is the patron saint of purity, remember?” Jordan’s lips hovered over the throbbing cut on Thalia’s neck.
“I remember,” Thalia said. “That’s exactly my point.”
“I’m pure,” Jordan purred. She tugged on Thalia’s hips. “Ask the priest’s sister.”
Thalia rolled her eyes. “Is that who’s been keeping you company up here?”
“Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.” The tip of Jordan’s nose touched her jaw. She opened her mouth over the cut on Thalia’s neck, the wet press of her tongue slow and heavy. “She said something to me once, though. It made me think of you.”
Thalia tilted her head, listening.
“She asked me if it was possible for a necromancer to die. I said, yes, of course. I died to become one.”
Thalia’s eyes cracked open.
Jordan continued. “She asked, ‘and if someone loves a necromancer, what then?’”
Thalia had heard this before, whispered against her neck, low on her belly, between her legs.
“What then?” Jordan hissed against her ear.
“Then they never die,” Thalia said softly.
Jordan’s grin widened against Thalia’s shoulder. Another candle sparked to life. The plants hummed gently from their baskets, and at the snap of Jordan’s fingers, music thrummed from the small speaker attached to her phone on the nightstand.
“Mood music, really?” Thalia laughed over the words, but her stomach flipped and tightened.
Jordan’s breath turned to steam again. She felt along the grooves and fissures of Thalia’s scarred hips, up her soft stomach to the curve of her bottom two ribs. “I want to kill you, just so I can bring you back.” She turned Thalia around, gusting hot, haunting words against her mouth. “I want to rip the life from your body and stitch it back together inside you.”
Thalia grabbed Jordan’s face and pulled until their lips met. Her heart thundered in her chest. She nudged Jordan with her foot, sending them stumbling backward toward the disheveled bed.
Jordan stopped to pull her shirt over her head. Thalia watched, catching the flex of Jordan’s slim waist, the concave of her collarbones as her shoulders rolled back. Thalia swallowed hard and tugged her own shirt away, tossing it to the floor. They’d done this before—stripped, crawled into bed, cast spells with their bodies, but this waded above the others, hovering in the surreal place where past met present.
Thalia watched Jordan watching her. The quick flick of Jordan’s dark eyes, steam steadily leaking over her bottom lip. They’d grown in the last three years. Jordan’s powers floated around her like lightening bugs, flickering on and off as the night went on. Thalia’s leaked from her as if she’d collided with Jordan and been cracked open.
Jordan’s eyes darted over Thalia’s scars. They were deep, ruddy pink against her dark skin.
The sigil of Saturn was carved on Thalia’s sternum, filled with the intricacies of their past. Runes decorated her ribcage, magical sigils were etched over her hipbones—the Sigil of Sol, the invocation of Leviathan, the call of Anubis.
One other person had seen Thalia’s body since she left Port Lewis three years ago—a man she’d met at a coffee shop. He took her to a show, they went to a little diner, and after, she was brave enough to take him home. When he ran his hands along he
r body, he said, Who did this to you? Thalia turned on the lights, got dressed, and made him a drink spiked with belladonna. A glamour spell later, the man left after pressing a sweet kiss against her cheek, and Thalia kept away from strangers, their touches and questions.
“I remember doing this to you.” Jordan sat on the edge of the bed. Her palm smoothed up Thalia’s sternum, over the sigil of Saturn.
Thalia looked at the petal-pink scars on Jordan’s abdomen. The fresh sigil on her neck. Every mark from Thalia’s athame, or Jordan’s boline.
“What else do you remember?” Thalia touched the top of Jordan’s hand.
Jordan’s fingers curled under the bottom of Thalia’s bra. “I’ll show you.”
Going to bed with a stranger was one thing. There was an ease to it, an unknown that made touches less, and time speed up. But this wasn’t any bed, and Jordan Wolfe wasn’t a stranger.
The plants hummed in their baskets. The candles flickered, sending shadows across their skin. Thalia hooked her teeth over Jordan’s collarbone. She pawed at her jeans until they were gone, dipped her palm over the lace front of Jordan’s panties, and listened to her breath hitch.
Magic twisted and turned through the space between their limbs. It hid in the place where Jordan’s arm was looped over Thalia’s shoulder. It sparked under rasped moans and quiet gasps, came to life in the arch of Jordan’s back and the cant of Thalia’s hips.
Jordan stopped to slide a silver cuff over her finger, clawed at the tip like a talon. Her thighs hugged Thalia’s bare waist and she loomed above her, wavy hair a mess of gold and bronze. Her lips were slick and red, cheeks flushed and chest littered with half-moon bruises left behind from Thalia’s teeth.
“You’re different,” Jordan whispered.
Thalia blinked. The back of her hand was pressed against her mouth, knuckles worn where she’d gnawed on them. She traced Jordan’s body. Her ribcage and bony sternum, the soft swell of her hips and small breasts. Thalia sat up, running her hands up the keys of Jordan’s spine to the wings of her shoulder blades and nape of her neck. Their torsos pressed, magic stirring excitedly at the slide of their skin.
“So are you,” Thalia said. “Does it bother you?”
Jordan shook her head. She pressed the sharp end of her cuffed finger against Thalia’s pulse. “I’ll hunt you down,” she said against Thalia’s lips. “If you leave again, I’ll find you. I’ll wrap a string around your soul. I’ll dig my hands under your rib cage and rip out your heart. Keep it in a jar, put it on the nightstand, and watch it beat while I’m touching you.” She slithered her hand between Thalia’s legs. “Do you understand?”
“I expect nothing less,” Thalia said. The words made Thalia keen. Her body quivered, a testament to how much she’d missed this—Jordan’s lips and hands, her ruthless devotion and murderous love. She leaned forward and captured Jordan’s mouth with her own, teeth edging along Jordan’s bottom lip.
Jordan’s silver claw dug into her neck.
Thalia’s head spun. She held on to Jordan, one hand latched on the nape of her neck, the other pressed snugly beneath her belly button, between her trembling thighs.
Jordan pulled the claw back, wet with Thalia’s blood, and broke their kiss to drag it obscenely across her tongue.
“How could I ever be with someone else after loving you, Jordan Wolfe?” Thalia threaded her fingers through Jordan’s hair. “You make death look like a cheap trick.”
Jordan grinned. The inside of her lips shone red, red, red.
Luther didn’t ask questions. Neither did her aunt or her father. They fought through silence. Her family sensed Wolfe magic slithering across Thalia, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. For three days, Thalia kept to herself, nodding to her brother when she felt his gaze on her, apologizing to her father with a sad tilt of her head when he refused to look at her.
Jordan: You’re sure you want us there?
Thalia: Yes, I’m sure.
Jordan: This will change everything.
Thalia: Good. We need change.
After three long, lonely days, the ascension ceremony began.
The extended branches of the Darbonne Witches met them in the woods before the sun went down. Thalia’s nervousness buzzed inside her. She still felt Jordan under her velvet gown, beneath the soft cotton of her bra, the invisible imprint of her hand under the thin white choker around her neck. The crimson dress was her mother’s and her grandmother’s. It draped low over her shoulders and was cut close to her tailbone, exposing scarred runes carved over each of her vertebrae.
She wondered if it was fair for her to wear it, when it hid bruises from Jordan’s clever mouth.
Other clans appeared through the trees. The Thistle Clan, the ancient Lewellyns.
The sun sank below the horizon and the night turned over on itself. Stars appeared slowly, blinking to life above them, and dripped into one another. The moon glowed high in the sky, bleeding into black and navy, obscured by starlight, passing comets, and distant planets. Thalia felt her mother’s spirit hovering somewhere beside her.
Celene, whose wild curls reminded Thalia so much of Cher, whose pointed nose and full cheeks were mirrored features of the Darbonne women, brought Thalia the red-handled consecration blade.
“Are you ready?” Celene asked.
Thalia glanced at the faces in the darkness. “We’re waiting for one more group.”
Celene’s jaw tightened. “How do you think this will translate, Thalia?”
“It will translate without pause,” Thalia growled. “Without interruptions or uninvited opinions.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
Thalia’s eyes glowed. Her voice deepened into a hundred versions of itself. “You’re speaking to your matriarch. Remember that.”
Celene dipped her head, but Thalia caught the sting of disregard in her eyes. The trees chattered and rustled. Bone benders. Night witches. Necromancers. Darklings. They seemed to stretch away, making room for barely audible footsteps.
The Wolfe Clan brought black smoke with them. It whipped around their feet, dusting the forest floor with their particular brand of upside-down magic. Black cloaks covered them, large hoods pulled over their heads, obscuring their faces. They stopped at the edge of the circle, a meadow surrounded by ferns and trees that curved together, open in the center where moonlight bathed the ground.
Jordan swiped her hood back. Her black eyes fluttered around the tree line, gazing from one clan to the next, daring them to protest. None did. River landed on her shoulder. The rest of the necromancers stood behind her, lurking in their onyx mist.
The night stilled. The trees quieted.
Celene took her place next to Luther, hidden in the shadows where moonlight didn’t touch.
Thalia watched the night sky bleed. She listened for her mother’s spirit, and soon enough, the sound of large paws padded the forest floor. A wolf—Astor, Cher’s familiar—walked into the circle. His white pelt was flecked gray and black, paws muddy, tail swaying gently behind him. King appeared from the other side of the circle, his antlers glowing in the darkness.
When they met Thalia in the middle, the trees whispered again.
White witch, they said. Take it.
Thalia stroked Astor’s head. She memorized the shape of his eyes, the feel of his cold nose against her palm. “Are you ready?”
Astor huffed and sat on his haunches.
Thalia’s throat burned. Her eyes stung. But she lifted the red-handled blade, waited for Astor to close his eyes, and sank it into his chest. The wolf went limp.
The last remaining essence of her mother was gone. It dipped through the trees, lifted into the air, whistled through bushes and flowers. The forest sang and howled. Creatures far and wide climbed onto branches to watch, scurried from their hiding holes to get a glimpse of the ascension.
Thalia refused to cry. Despite Cher being gone. Despite the last of her dancing among the bleeding night sky. She closed her
eyes and readied herself.
Cher’s energy was a cloud of white smoke. It spread out, undulating against copper leaves and maroon petals, until it surged into the circle, into King’s nostrils and Thalia’s mouth.
Thalia, darling.
Thalia sobbed quietly, listening to her mother’s voice fade. Her power threaded through Thalia’s, knotting itself in her joints, squirming beside her bone marrow. Thalia assumed it would be violent. She thought their energy would clash, fight, bite each other inside her body. But, no. This was Cher’s laughter by the greenhouse, her playful spells to attract butterflies, and her voice on every full moon. Look, Thalia, watch time cut it open.
King bellowed and shook his head. He galloped in circles around the tree line, keeping the other witches from encroaching.
Thalia’s knees hit the damp grass.
A moment later, she felt a hand on her shoulder, heard the rustle of someone kneeling in front of her. When she lifted her gaze, Jordan’s black eyes blinked patiently. Steam leaked from her smile.
“You okay, white witch?” Jordan set her palm on Thalia’s cheek.
The trees whispered.
Bone Bender.
Matriarch.
Blood Queen.
High Magician.
“Yeah, necromancer.” Thalia laid her hand over Jordan’s. “I’m fine.”
A voice shouted from the Lewellyn Clan, “The Darbonne Matriarch has ascended!”
Cheers and laughter and whistles followed.
Thalia was filled with light. Her heart stampeded. She felt powerful and visceral and alive. Her mouth remembered Jordan’s, so she leaned forward and kissed her.
Jordan smiled through it. “What now?”
Thalia stood up and pulled Jordan with her. She tilted her head back to look at the moon. River flew across it, cawing excitedly.