Fire and Bone

by Rachel A. Marks

And we’re back to them all frowning at me. Wow.

  “Look,” I say, “while this brilliant debate over my mutant face is super entertaining, I’m feeling a little dehydrated.” I take a small step back from the group. “And claustrophobic.”

  Aelia pinches my sleeve and pulls me to a table. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I have to pee,” I say, jerking my arm out of her grip. My anger sparks, and I grit my teeth as heat begins to coil in my chest. The smell of smoke stings my nostrils. I clench my hands into fists, hoping I’m not about to accidentally set anything on fire. If I don’t get away from her and these other bitches, something very bad is going to happen. I can feel it. I need air. Now.

  Breathe, Sage, just breathe.

  “She’s sure spicy,” the zit critic says. She flips her curly brown hair. “But I’m tired of her already. Enough about the ugly girl. I think we should talk Diamond Ball. Which designer are we going with for the tiaras?”

  “I can take the human to pee,” the hair groper says. “I’ll swat away the shades.”

  Aelia rolls her eyes. “She’s not human, Freya. But whatever. Just bring her right back. She’s not supposed to be wandering around.”

  They all nod like they’re agreeing, even though they don’t seem to get what Aelia’s talking about. I think my IQ just dropped a hundred points breathing the same air as these girls.

  The hair groper, Freya, slips her arm through mine and grins at me before wrinkling her nose. “You sure do smell funny,” she says. “I had a human grandma who loved garlic—she smelled better than you.” She smiles like she just paid me a compliment.

  Lovely.

  I consider pushing her away and leaving unattended, but I’m thinking Aelia will just use some weird spell to keep me here. It’ll be easier to get away from this Freya girl. So I let her tug me along, out of the loft and down the steps.

  FIFTEEN

  FAELAN

  After Marius leaves, I stay in the rose garden for a minute, trying to figure out how to go about getting Sage to trust us. There’s more at stake here than I realized, and I started on the wrong note with the demi. I should have considered that she’d be volatile and treated her more carefully. I knew she was a daughter of Brighid, and I should have known she’d have weaknesses from being left so long among the humans without her magic, without her own kind.

  But it’s like I haven’t seen sense since I met the girl.

  I’ll pull her aside tonight. Maybe I can go over some of the lore with her, cover some basics so she feels more grounded, more familiar with her new reality before the Introduction.

  As I cross the yard, heading for the French doors at the back of the main house, I consider what needs to happen. I’ll have to get her to open up to me somehow. I’ll need to get her to feel a connection with me in some way that can dispel this tension between us and soften her to our kind. Maybe then she’ll feel less vulnerable. Settling into this new life is the only way she’ll be able to learn to control her gifts.

  I step into the house and look around, searching the air for the sugary spice of her fire energy. The living room is empty, and I feel only simple souls. I do smell something baking, though—a fresh herbal scent. I move deeper into the house and see one of the human maids wiping down the kitchen counter. She glances up at me and her body tenses, the hand on the dishcloth turning into a fist.

  “I’m looking for the redhead,” I say gently. It’s obvious my presence is spooking her. “Her name is Sage. Is she around?”

  The maid shakes her head. I can’t tell if it’s a No, she’s not around or a I have no idea who or what you’re talking about. Marius’s service crew appears to be all human, so they may have had their memories wiped a few times, which would allow them to be more easily manipulated to keep secrets, but would also leave them a bit on the dim side. Over time, it can make them more skittish too. I nod at the woman. Something behind me catches her eye and she averts her gaze, moving quickly to leave the room.

  “Oh, there you are,” says a sultry voice behind me. The wife. Gods’ bones.

  I don’t want to turn around.

  The scent of pungent licorice seeps off her skin, reaching for me—the smell of human excitement. I feel her hand press into my back and I try not to cringe visibly as it slides up, cupping my nape.

  My muscles tense, and I step away before I turn to face her. “I need to speak with Sage. Where is she?”

  The wife—I can’t remember her name—is tall and slender, her hair long and blond, and her features tight with artificial youth. Her breasts appear to be fake, as does her nose, and the pink tracksuit she’s wearing is tight enough to stop blood flow to her brain.

  Why would Marius choose her for his new human breeder? Maybe the original version, before the knives and plastics were applied, was more enticing? Aelia is naturally beautiful, and she’s retained a class that her mother appears to lack. This modern woman doesn’t fit with the house’s décor at all—the mosaics that Roman leaders once walked on hanging on Marius’s walls, and the ancient vases that held the sacrificial blood of human kings set on pillars along the hallway. It all makes her seem small and insignificant. Marius hasn’t let go of much since his emigration to the American colonies, but it seems he’s lowered his standards in the department of procreation.

  It’s a constant subject of debate why the great goddess Danu created her children and their descendants to be incapable of procreating with one another. A deity or a demi can only have offspring with humans. This was Danu’s fail-safe: all new births are less powerful than those that came before. No soul will ever be more powerful than our great mother goddess.

  However, this means Otherborn have to mingle in the human world if they want their lineage to survive. That creates complications, such as human lovers who age when the demis don’t. This usually means the Otherborn parent won’t stick around, and most children are left to figure out their bloodline when a hunter like me comes to fetch them. Some Otherborn, like Marius, keep their breeder close for a time, but that’s rare.

  Especially when the breeder is as tiresome as this human is.

  “We missed you at dinner, you know,” the wife says, ignoring my question about Sage. Her stiff lips pucker like she’s taking a selfie. “Are you hungry? I could find you something to nibble on.” Her fingers slide suggestively along her clavicle, like she thinks I’m a shade and she’s offering herself up for a taste. I notice several shiny dotted scars on her neck. She tilts her hips and steps toward me. “Whatever you want, I’m happy to help.”

  I tell myself she’s Marius’s wife and I should be polite. I should not back away in disgust. “No. No, thank you.” I’m not thankful. I feel a little ill. “I need to speak with the demi, with Sage.”

  “The girls went out somewhere,” she says absently. “But I’m here.” She makes that weird pinched-lip face again.

  “Wait, what do you mean? Where did they go?” She can’t be serious. Wasn’t Marius just with them before he spoke to me?

  “Who knows,” she says with a sigh. “Aelia is exhausting. I can’t keep track of that girl.” She frowns a little. “You’re not feeding off her, are you? That’s against the rules, isn’t it? I’m human, so it’s fine.”

  Danu save me. “When did they leave? Did the driver take them?” They couldn’t be too far ahead of me. I was only in the rose garden for a minute or two after Marius left.

  “How am I supposed to know?”

  I turn and head into the kitchen, making a mental list of items I’ll need for the location spell. Salt, ash, rose oil, and crushed cloves—no, not cloves, it’s cinnamon for a fire-based Otherborn. Cloves are for finding an earth-based Other. I start opening cupboards, looking for salt. I can get rose oil from crushing some of the buds outside in a little olive oil. And cinnamon must be around here somewhere . . .

  The wife comes up behind me, peering over my shoulder as I pull a bowl from a shelf. “What in heaven are you doing?”

&n
bsp; “Do you know where the cinnamon is?” I ask. It’ll mimic the scent of Sage’s energy.

  The woman laughs. “Of course not. This is a kitchen.” She says it like I didn’t know.

  I find the spice rack in one of the cupboards and collect what I need. I grab the virgin olive oil beside it, then I go to the sink and run a little water into my bowl before tucking everything under my arm and heading for the back doors.

  Unfortunately, the wife follows me. I walk through the yard, along the winding stone pathway, back to the rose garden, where I nestle the bowl in the moss. I set the rest of the ingredients next to it. I rip two handfuls of petals off a bush and place them into the bowl. Once I drizzle olive oil over them, I grab a rock and crush the concoction into the water, and the scent of roses spills out around me.

  “What are you doing?” the wife asks, sounding fascinated. I wonder if I should be hiding the spellwork from her. Marius never warned me to be cautious with her, but I should probably be doing this in private. Bloody hell. Too late now.

  “I’m cooking,” I say, picking up the salt and pouring it into my palm before sprinkling it over the rose petals. I follow with the cinnamon as I whisper a few words to begin the spell, but they’re in Gaelic so she won’t understand them. “Earth forgets, water’s breath,” I begin, still crushing the roses—my representation of the earth element—into the water. Then I reach down to my boot and pull out my small dagger, prick my finger, and let the blood drip three times into the bowl, continuing, “Blood in part, as tongues of fire, lead me to your beating heart.”

  On the last word, the smell of charred air flicks to life in my nostrils and a spark births over the bowl, a flame licking at the air as the contents are quickly consumed. I watch and wait for the embers to fade a little, smoke rising, and then I lean over and inhale deeply, closing my eyes, focusing every molecule I can on Sage.

  Instantly I smell alcohol. I taste the tang of underlings in the air, and a distant beat vibrates in my head. Music.

  I wait, worrying that the visual won’t filter through as clearly as the other senses. But then I see: she’s walking up a metal staircase. Ahead, there’s a small loft, curtained with sheer silver fabric. Aelia is in front of her, high heels clicking on the steps.

  They’re obviously at a club or a bar of some kind. I need to see more, to look around, but that’s not how the spell works. I get clues and sort of see/feel/smell through the torque necklace Sage is wearing. There’s a woman emerging from the gauzy curtain, a pixie with pale pink hair. She scans Sage and my nerves spark with realization. People will feel who and what she is.

  Feckin’ shite, Aelia, what the bloody hell are you on?

  I keep my eyes closed and ask Marius’s wife, “Where does Aelia usually hang out?” I hope this human is nosy enough about her daughter’s life to know the answer. “Like clubs, with dancing, a place to meet friends?”

  “Why?” she asks.

  I feel her kneel beside me. She better not touch me or I’ll lose the connection. I struggle to hold the spell tight around me. “I need to be sure Aelia’s safe. She might be in danger.” Mostly because of the demi she’s with.

  “My Aelia is in danger?” Her worry blossoms in the space between us. “I don’t know . . . maybe she’d go the Oyster Club? She likes it there—or the Baja Lounge? Oh my, I’m not sure . . .”

  The girls are inside a small room now, more figures are in the background, someone else in the room is a witch, maybe two or three—I can sense their energy slinking over Sage’s skin. Then I realize that this is Aelia’s coven. Why is she bringing Sage to them? They have very little power, and no say among the older druids. Is she really so petty that she thinks the new demi will help her gain standing in the druid ranks?

  The music comes through a little clearer. I ask the human, “Is there a club with a big band theme, maybe?”

  “Oh, that’s The Fitzgerald.”

  I open my eyes and stand, leaving the spell bowl in the moss, and head for the cottage to grab a few things. Sharp things.

  “Where are you going?” the wife calls after me.

  Gods, her memory must’ve been screwed with too. Nice, Marius.

  “I thought we were going to hang out,” she whines. “Don’t go.”

  “I’m getting your daughter. You’ll thank me later.” And I slip into my cottage to find my daggers.

  SIXTEEN

  SAGE

  There’s a line for the bathroom, even though the crowds are still thin. It’s early, and the nightlife in LA doesn’t usually get pulsing seriously until after eleven. I settle into formation behind a girl who’s sucking on a blue lollipop. Her lips and tongue are stained purple. The white-blond ponytails on either side of her head flick at the air when she bobs to the music. She glances at me and gives me a quick grin, then goes back to her lollipop.

  It’s so weird to think that most of these people in here aren’t really people at all. Like, what’s this girl? A pixie? Her eyes seem teal, though, and her skin is sort of sparkly.

  My babysitter, Freya, settles in beside me and leans against the wall. She shoots a sneer at the girl next to me. “Wow, the dregs are out tonight.”

  Lollipop Girl tips her head in an endearing way. “And apparently so are the petri dishes,” she says in a giddy voice. “How is the bottom-feeding Shade Brigade these days?”

  Freya looks like she’s about to scratch off Lollipop Girl’s face.

  I clear my throat and try to divert her attention. I consider asking if she knows that the lead actor in that new superhero movie is drinking a cosmo at the bar, but I decide to focus my distraction on her super-red hair instead, since she seemed pretty obsessed with mine. “Hey, so, can you give me some tips on—”

  Freya shoves me aside and gets in the other girl’s face. “You seem to be forgetting last solstice, little thief. We have video. You and your pet male amoeba are so going viral, selkie.” She sneers.

  “Sure, Aelia clone. Whatever.” She tilts her head. “I hear you failed Cast finals, poor baby. Sucks not having a mind of your own.” She rubs her fingers together in front of Freya’s face, then flicks.

  Small drops of water sprinkle Freya’s cheeks and forehead. She doesn’t seem to know what to say. She just blinks and makes weird noises as her mouth moves.

  As much as I’m enjoying watching Lollipop Girl make Freya squirm, I decide to take the opportunity to find some sorely needed space.

  I walk farther down a hall, away from the main room and the dance floor that’s beginning to fill up. Eventually, I pause in a corner. It’s just me and a tangled couple who are sucking face while leaning against the wall. Both have lit cigarettes between their fingers.

  They don’t seem to know or care that I’m here. Which is nice. But the show they’re putting on, groping with their cig-free hands, isn’t super enjoyable. The craving for my own cigarette bubbles up as the trails of smoke slink around me, and I kick my traitorous brain when an ache follows; I miss Ziggy so much my chest hurts. How pathetic. I can’t believe I let my guard down with anyone. I should’ve known better.

  I push the fake friendship out of my mind and head for the “Exit” sign.

  The door swings open, and I take in a lungful of fresh air.

  Scratch that, I take in a lungful of alley air. The rot and smog hit me, and I cough and cover my nose, surprised at how strong the smell is. The pounding music is a low drone in the background now, and the temperature is less smothering without all the bodies. It’s a huge relief to be away from the otherweirdly.

  I step over an oily puddle and pause once I get to a spot where I can see the opening of the alley. I search the street, watching the cars pass. People walk by, laughing and twisted up in each other, totally oblivious to what’s inside the building they’re passing. I wish I was oblivious.

  Maybe I should just walk away from this. I could run from these freaks right now, if I wanted to.

  But I . . . I can’t run from myself. No matter how far away I
get from Aelia or Faelan or any of this, I’ll still have this thing inside me. This thing that starts fires, a thing that can burn with a touch. Or kill. If I left, who knows what it might do. I have no idea how to control it.

  I linger in the shadows, my stomach churning as I move to the wall and lean on a drainpipe. I’m completely stuck.

  Out of the corner of my eye I spot a dark shape at the other end of the alley, and an odd sound, like water moving, slinks through the air.

  The back of my neck prickles, a chill sliding down my spine.

  But when I turn, I can’t see anything.

  I need to calm down. I’m just on edge. My sanity’s been through a paper shredder the last twenty-four hours. I try to let the traffic humming in the background calm me, like the sound of the tide, as I focus on the light from a billboard reflecting in marbled blue and pink on the surface of an oily puddle beside my foot.

  My God, these heels I’m wearing are ridiculous. Sequined, Aelia? Really? They probably cost more than the average person makes in a week.

  A rustle of feathers comes from above, and I look up, spotting a small shadow flying overhead from one building to the other. Then the strange water sounds come again, like a slurp, echoing down the alley.

  My gaze shifts quickly back to the darker shadows, tingles sliding up my legs as I step out and search the shapes around me. It’s probably just a rat—

  It comes again. An odd slush and sloop. Louder. Closer.

  Movement catches my eye again. And I see it, a shadow on the wall across the alley, shifting, sliding upward like a snake slinking from its coil, while the sound of something fighting to emerge from a drain fills the air.

  My pulse jumps as I watch the dark shape glide across the wall.

  I stumble sideways, pressing into the bricks at my back as the ground under me tilts.

  And then I realize. The shadow is from something coming out of the ground.

  Beside me.

  Ice fills my veins as I look down at the puddle.

  But what I see doesn’t make sense: a long tentacle of oily water is sliding up, like gravity is reversing in just that spot. Swirls of light reflect off the surface as it stretches out. But, no—I can’t be seeing it right. Because it’s impossible.