Aaron hesitated for a moment. I sensed that he was looking for the right words. I wanted to peer into his aura, but I was doing my best to numb my sixth sense around him. I didn’t mind reading other people’s auras, but doing it to Aaron felt too much like a violation.
“Intimate,” Aaron said.
“I like that word,” I said.
“I do too.” I brushed my hand against his cheek and smiled, but Aaron winced.
“Ow,” he said.
“Woah, are you okay?” I pulled my hand away from him and noted the red mark on his face. “Aaron…”
Aaron touched his cheek. It was warm and red, but I didn’t see any wounds I could have touched by accident.
“What just happened?” I asked.
Aaron took my hands and took a deep whiff. “I smell silver on your hands.”
“But I—” Collette. The locket. But that was hours ago! “You can smell that?”
The red mark on Aaron’s face disappeared. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve gotta be careful with silver.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“You couldn’t have.”
I stood up and breathed deep, then I sailed around the room toward the sofa and sat down. Aaron followed and sat down next to me. He patted his thighs and I raised my feet so that he could take off my shoes and rub them.
“So,” I said, “I want you to tell me everything you couldn’t tell me over the phone.”
“Everything?”
“Everything.”
“Where do I start?”
“Well… what’s your dad like?”
“My dad,” said Aaron, pausing to think, “He’s not like me at all. He served in the war, has all that discipline and hard teaching thing to him.”
“Oh, really? What war?”
“Korea.”
“Korea? Wait, wasn’t that… how old is your dad?”
“He’s never told me,” said Aaron, “But he’s old.”
“That’s… but, hang on. How is that even possible? You showed me a picture of him and he looked—”
“Like he’s my older brother? I know.”
“Holy shit. Why is—I mean, how is—is it because he’s a werewolf?”
“This body comes with perks.”
“Okay, hold on. Let me get this straight. Are you saying that you and your dad are immortal?”
“God no. Nothing like that.”
“Something like that.”
“No. We’re just… our bodies are more durable. I don’t know how to explain it, but it isn’t magic. That much I know.”
“So, you’re not quite immortal, but something like that.”
“Something like that.”
“But, then, that means that you’re going to out-live me.”
A wave of fear washed out Aaron’s face. I saw the light in his eyes fade away when he realized that he hadn’t considered what I had just said until this very moment. If Aaron would out-live me, where did that leave our future? I shook away the thought. It wasn’t important right now. Only that it was, but I was trying to hide the disappointment.
“Amber, I—”
“Hey, let’s not think about that right now okay?” I said, smiling. “Why don’t you go ahead and show me something you can do?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well… that night, up in the mountains, you watched me set a room on fire with my mind.”
Aaron clenched his jaw tight at the memory of what happened that night. He had told me he wasn’t proud about what he did. All that death. “And you watched me—”
“Save my life,” I said, interrupting. “That’s all that matters to me. To anyone. Those men were going to do something terrible to me, and to be fair, they did shoot you first.”
Aaron smiled. “Yeah… so, what do you want me to show you?”
“I don’t know. Anything. Turn into a wolf!”
“Now? Here?”
“Why? Can’t you?”
“No, I can, I just… it’s a little cramped.”
He can turn into a wolf. How awesome is that?
“Later, then,” I said. “We can go outside later. For now, tell me more. How is Jackal?”
“Jackal?”
“Your cousin, right? You told me about him on the phone.”
Aaron had met a bunch of family he didn’t even know about on his trip to Washington State. Turned out his dad wasn’t the only lycanthrope in the family. His great-great grandfather was a werewolf, and he had many—many—kids. Aaron’s dad was a werewolf, but so were a number of Aaron’s distant family.
“Jackal is a girl.”
“A girl?” I asked.
“Yeah… I thought you knew that.”
“No,” I said, folding my arms. “I always thought Jackal was a guy. You kept on telling me how you guys would beat each other up for hours to get tougher. I didn’t think that was the kind of thing a girl would do.”
Oh Gods. Beating each other up for hours. Sweaty, barely clothed, intimate. I felt like such an idiot!
“I’m sorry,” Aaron said, “I should have cleared it up.”
“No, it’s okay, I just… I didn’t ask.”
“Does it bother you?”
“No.”
“Good. It shouldn’t. You’re the only person I want, Amber. You need to believe me. Nothing happened between me and Jackal. I wasn’t lying when I said there had been nobody else since you.”
Meanwhile, I had been sleeping with Damien. Didn’t I just feel like a jackass?
“You’re right,” I said, “I’m really sorry.” I sat up and scooched over to him. “Let me make it up to you.”
Aaron smiled. “There’s nothing to make up,” he said.
I went in for his neck and kissed the space beneath his earlobe, drinking in his scent. He didn’t wear cologne, but something about the way he smelt was just… it drew me in. “Did you pass?” I asked.
“What?” Aaron said.
I continued to kiss him, hands now slipping under his shirt and into his chest—over the rigid surface of his abdomen. “Did you pass your father’s tests?”
“I did,” he said, “My father is proud of me.”
“Good,” I said. “Because I have a test for you too.”
“Oh?” Aaron arched his neck and I ran my tongue along his jugular.
“Mhm. I want you to make me scream tonight. Think you can do that?”
I was losing myself. With every touch, every breath, every taste, I was falling more and more under a strange, lust-inducing spell. He wasn’t even doing anything! My body was going crazy just by my touching him. My skin electrified, my heart thumping so hard I could feel it in my toes.
“I think I can do that,” he said.
I hopped off the couch and ran to the bedroom before he could get up, but I wasn’t waiting long. Aaron followed me in, slipping his shirt over his muscular body and tossing it on the ground before sliding onto the bed and arching over me. I couldn’t believe how big he had gotten, but I wasn’t about to question it.
No need to spoil a good thing with talk.
CHAPTER 9
Aaron didn’t hear me get up the next morning. I had prepared my bags the night before, so all I had to do was slip out of bed, get changed, tie my hair up and head on outside—a feat I managed in ten minutes flat. Then, after collecting the duffel bag and my backpack and setting them on the floor by the front door to the house, I approached Aaron’s sleeping body and sat down next to him on the bed.
“Aaron,” I said, kissing him lightly on the forehead.
His eyes sprang open, awake. I saw his pupils expand and shrink as he rid himself of lethargy in an instant. “Hey,” he said, “What time is it? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m heading out.”
“Work?”
I shook my head. “No, witchy stuff. I don’t want you to worry, though, so that’s why I’m telling you.”
“I
always worry.”
“I know you do.” I kissed him again, caressed his jaw, and smiled. “You sleep in. I’ll be back soon.”
Aaron snatched my neck before I could leave and pulled me down to his lips. We kissed, and warm tingles shot through me. I wanted to stay, but I had a job to do and someone was counting on me. She may have been a stranger, but she needed my help.
By 07:00 I had picked Frank and Damien up from their houses and was driving them up into the woods. The drive gave us all a chance to wake up and prepare ourselves mentally for what lay ahead. None of us knew what we were getting into.
Except, of course, Frank.
“Cenotes,” Frank said.
I glanced at Frank’s image in the rearview. Damien cocked his head.
“Whatnotes?” I asked.
“That’s what the Aztecs called portals into the Underworld. According to what I’ve read, they were little pools of black water said to connect the realm of the living to the realm of the dead.”
“Link? How?”
“That depends. If the pool was big enough for you to get into, supposedly you could enter the Underworld itself. I’m thinking the witches of the time used the pools to siphon the power of the realm instead of actually going into it.”
“Some people did, though,” said Damien. “What about the story of Orpheus?”
“Maybe it was true, in whole or in part.” Frank said. “I have a feeling we could learn a lot about the underworld just by studying what the different cultures of the world have said about it.”
“You aren’t saying that all of it is true, are you?” I asked.
“Not all of it,” Frank said, “But even a broken clock is right twice a day. There’s gotta be plenty of truth in here for us to dig up.”
“If we’re interested in the Underworld. Which we aren’t,” I said.
“Speak for yourself. I’m going to devour every morsel I can find like I was blindfolded at a sausage eating contest.”
“Graphic. I thought you said you couldn’t trust necromancers?”
“You can’t. They’re shifty. They’ve had to do all sorts of messed up things to get their powers.”
“Can you give me an example?” Damien asked.
“I can’t,” Frank said, grinning at his own reflection in the rearview. “But we’re about to meet someone who knows firsthand. Maybe we should ask her?”
We pulled up to a dirt path that led us deeper into the woods, and when I started to recognize the landscape I stopped the car and we stepped out. The air was cold and damp in the woods. Grey clouds had descended and a thin layer of mist was creeping a foot or so above the ground. I found the gloomy weather to be a little odd given the sunny streak we had had. But I didn’t think much of it.
“I hate the woods,” said Frank. “I keep stepping on jagged rocks. The woods were better when they were covered in snow. At least that was smooth.”
“Schh,” I said, “There it is.”
Vertical streaks of the decrepit old cottage poked through the mess of trees in the distance. Black smoke was puffing out of the chimney, and from here the house seemed smaller and more run down. Maybe it was the angle, or the gloom—or the mist.
“That’s where she lives?” Damien asked. “That cottage doesn’t look like its seen use in years.”
“Decades, I think,” I said. “C’mon.”
I approached, and with each step I took my heart began to skip in my chest. The reality of the situation was starting to dawn on me, and for a moment I had forgotten about the dead birds and Collette’s shadow. It was like I was finding out about everything all over again, relearning the fate this poor woman was facing.
“Collette?” I said, once I was at the door. “Are you in there?”
“Yes,” she said from the other side of the door, “Come in, please.”
I turned to Frank and Damien, nodded, and stepped through the croaky old door. The first thing that struck me was just how clean the interior was. The broken old tables and chairs had been moved aside to make room for a large ritual circle made with… salt? Five black candles had been placed at each point of the five point star, around the circle—outside of it—and each was already lit. The second thing that struck me was the cold. I could see my breath in front of my face, leaving my mouth in steamy clouds.
And then there was the fireplace.
I caught Collette, wrapped in a black knitted cardigan, kneeling before the hearth and throwing a log into the fire. But the fire wasn’t warm and yellow; it was cold and blue. Pale. Instead of giving off heat, it stole heat. A leech. There was the source of the cold.
Frank and Damien felt the cold too, but they didn’t mention it.
“Collette?” I said, “Are you okay?”
“Yes, thank you. Excuse the fire, I know it is cold, but it is necessary. And please don’t break the ring of salt.”
I checked my footing and stepped away from the salt, just in case. “Here,” I said, dropping the duffel bag on the side of the room “I brought you some stuff I thought you might need. This is Damien and Frank—my brothers in magick.”
Collette stood, glided over with her long black dress, and shook each of their hands. “Enchante,” she said.
“Likewise,” said Frank. Damien remained silent.
“I trust Amber has spoken highly of me?”
“She did, and I have questions.”
“Of course?”
“So, you’re a necromancer.”
“Oui.”
“How is it you got your powers?”
Collette smiled. “I see you have heard ze stories?”
“I may have.”
“I can assure you that no one had to die for me to gain the power of the Underworld. I am a witch, just like you, only I was forced to spend several days in the Underworld alone. I needed to use the magick within the dead realm in order to get out.” Collette looked at me. “I believe zis is the reason why my shadow escaped. I was never meant to be a necromancer.”
“Well… that sucks,” said Frank.
“Here,” I said. I brought a bottle of water and a bag of grapes to Collette. Red grapes. “I thought you’d be hungry. And there’s more where that came from, too.”
“Merci,” she said, “You did not have to do that for me, but it iz nice to be able to eat real food again. As soon as ze ritual is complete, I will eat.”
I nodded. “Please, you would have done the same. Now… this ritual.”
“Yes,” she said, standing again, “I have prepared a ritual that will tease my shadow out of the Underworld long enough for me to capture it, but I am too weak to summon the shadow alone. Its power is too great. This is why I need you and your coven to ‘elp me.”
“Alright,” I said, sitting down with my legs crossed at the edge of the ring of salt. “Let’s pull that sucker out and catch it. I feel like a ghost buster.”
“This should be interesting,” said Frank, who also sat down.
Damien sat too, but he still hadn’t said a word. I caught him staring at Collette at times, eyes tracing the shape of her neck and jaw. I frowned. Why wasn’t he speaking? Was he taken by her? I guess I couldn’t blame him. Collette was an absolute beauty. And I shouldn’t be jealous, but what about Natalie? Weren’t they still together?
“I will begin the incantation,” said Collette. “Amber, you will follow me, then Damien, then Frank. We will repeat the phrase three times, then three times again, and a Cenote will open.”
“A Cenote will open… here?” I asked, pointing at the ring of salt. The circle was easily as big as a hot tub, but there wasn’t any water beneath it—only cracked stone and dirt.
Still, Collette nodded, sure of herself, and we began.
Collette recited her incantation in the language of the True Witch; an old language completely different to any other language on the planet, but also familiar to every last one of them.
We spoke in rhyme, the four of us, and as we reached the third repetition of the
incantation, I noticed the ambient light streaking through the damaged and broken windows starting to dim. It was as if a thick cloud had sailed over the sun and blocked its light.
We spoke the verse a fourth time and I noted the stone in the ring of salt starting to darken. My heart started to race again as the temperature around me plummeted. My eyes darted about the room as shadows became more prominent and seemed to dance against the pale blue light coming off the fireplace.
Then a bubble of water broke through the stone in the ground, and another, and another. Soon, black water was spilling out into the stone around it, slipping through every nook crevice spreading outward from the center. It was as if we had been drilling and struck a patch of oil! But when the water reached the ring of salt it stopped, and that’s when a circle started to form.
With every word we spoke, Collette’s pale skin became more vibrant. More alive. The purple bags beneath her eyes disappeared and her cheeks grew red and warm. Was she gaining strength from the Cenote forming on the ground at our feet? It didn’t make sense! Everything I had known about the Underworld so far suggested that it stole life rather than gave it. And here she was, looking healthier by the second.
Before I knew it we had stopped speaking, and before us was a silent, undisturbed pool of inky black water. I leaned toward it to catch my reflection in it, but Collette pulled me back. “No,” she said, “You must be careful. The water is deceiving and hungry. It will try to take you in.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun,” said Frank.
“Quiet. I must draw the shadow out.”
I watched, silent as the grave, for any signs of movement on the surface of the little black pool but there was none. In fact, the water was much like a slate of obsidian; it was shiny and never moved, but it also didn’t reflect; and that was creepy as all hell.
Collette extended her hand over the black circle and with one swift movement drew a blade from behind her back with which to cut her palm. Blood trickled from the wound into the pool and I watched the ripples form, mesmerized by the movement.
“It comes,” said Collette, “It comes.”
Almost in unison, Damien, Frank and I stared into the deep, black puddle, anxious about what was about to happen next. My head started to feel like a lead weight, the pool like a magnet. I fought hard to stop myself from straying too close, but I wanted to know if the pool truly was incapable of reflecting light—like a true black hole. And what would happen if I were to touch it?
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