by Black, Tasha
God, it seemed a lifetime ago, that talk.
One or two of the mothers in the group smiled knowingly.
“At any rate, this is a human town,” he continued. “We’re surrounded by the other residents and the college students and staff. We need to keep a low profile.”
Jenny rolled her eyes in a most unbecoming way.
Erik snarled at the impertinence and her head snapped up to attention.
“The perks you enjoy here - the easy access to the internet, public transportation, shopping,” he paused there and Jenny colored and looked down again. She had put a hurting on his borrowed credit card her first week here with the quick bus ride to the mall over in Springton. He’d asked her to shop for the groceries and clothes everyone would need. She had come back with half the contents of the Super Target including plenty of unnecessary treasures.
“All of these things,” he continued, “are available to us because we have made our peace with sharing the town with humans.”
He felt the green rays of their submission warm him and he shifted the subject, knowing they understood and he didn’t have to go on.
“Tonight our pack will run,” he told them and enjoyed seeing their faces lighting up. “I’m going to bring you back to the college woods so we can go over the safe areas again. I’d like you each to bring a packet of clothing so we can find good hiding spots for them. You should always have a stash of clothes handy. You don’t want to have to cut through the middle of town naked as a jay bird.”
Mary broke eye contact with him at that to look down at her hands, a slight blush coloring her cheeks. Poor kid, it was an awkward age for talk about nudity, but this was a conversation they needed to have.
“And from now on, no one is to go running without a partner,” he finished.
Jenny’s brow furrowed - a sure sign that Megan Abbott had taken off.
“If you can’t find a partner, let me know,” he said more gently.
He noticed Mary’s blush creep up to her hairline.
“And I will assign you one.”
Chapter 5
Grace Kwan-Cortez tried to relax in the elegant ballroom, but it wasn’t easy.
Her police training gave her a tendency toward being overly alert in big crowds. She thanked her lucky stars again that her grandmother had agreed to come with her so she had someone to focus on.
The room was immense and filled with the scent of gingerbread and the sounds of conversation from what was left of the magical elite. These guests had traveled from all over the globe to waltz around the giant Christmas tree in the ballroom at the Ironwoods’ mansion, in preparation for the ascension of the next leader of their kind.
It was incredible to believe that such an occasion could be happening in the middle of a block of grandiose but decidedly human homes in Tarker’s Hollow, a mile away from the chain stores and shopping centers of suburbia.
Grace and her family practiced an organic magic some called cottage magic. Untrained, but following her instincts and her abuela’s guidance, Grace was probably one of the most powerful witches in the room.
But the magical elite believed in training and study, and many had scoffed at her power because of how she developed it. At the very least, most would consider her a shameful waste of potential. Even Julian had turned his nose up at her in the beginning.
Julian.
The sudden thought of him made her feel joy and pain all at once, and for a moment she was nearly paralyzed.
“Look sharp, girl, he’s coming,” her abuela whispered, elbowing her in the ribcage.
Grace looked up to see a dark-haired man in a long blood-red cloak appear at the door. He carried himself like a youth, though the touch of silver in his hair told her he must be older than she was.
The Ironwoods all dashed over to greet him.
“That’s who you want me to talk to?”
Her abuela nodded sagely.
Gloria Cortez had crowed with delight when her granddaughter came to her for counsel. She’d told Grace right away that the place to go was the Ironwoods’ Christmas party so she could ask someone for advice. But Grace had expected they would pop in early to have a quick word with Mr. Ironwood, not attend a ball to look for a guest.
They watched as the man gave the Ironwoods’ son an enchanted guitar.
“Nice magic,” Grace remarked.
“Oh, no, nieta,” her abuela corrected her. “Dross doesn’t have magic.”
“Then how did he do that? And why is he here?” Grace demanded. “And why do I need to talk to him?”
“Patience, child,” Gloria chuckled. “He used to be magical. He gave it up. Now he’s a toymaker.”
Grace turned that over in her head. She wasn’t aware that you could just ‘give up’ having magic. She suspected there was something more to it.
Dross was waltzing now with the Ironwoods’ daughter, Marie. Though she was a tall, solid girl, she moved like a ballerina in Dross’s embrace. Grace had never seen her like that.
When Marie fainted in his arms, Grace was stunned.
“What in the world?” Abuela wondered, her forehead wrinkling with concern.
Mrs. Ironwood and one of the maids carried Marie swiftly away.
“I’m going to check on her,” Grace told her grandmother as she dashed down the hall.
She passed several doorways as she traversed the wide hallway. But she sensed that each of them was empty.
At last she found the small commotion.
“Hi, Mrs. Ironwood,” she said. “Would you like me to check on her?”
“Oh, Grace, would you?” Addie Ironwood asked. She was as tiny as her daughter was statuesque.
Grace nodded and sat beside the girl’s prone form on the settee.
Marie was breathing, and she did not appear to be bleeding or otherwise injured.
Grace laid her cool hand against the girl’s forehead.
“She’s likely just overheated,” she told Addie at last. “When she comes to, be sure she has plenty to drink.”
Marie stirred.
“Oh mercy, she’s waking up,” Addie said. “Thanks so much, Grace.
“You’re welcome, Mrs. Ironwood,” Grace replied, giving Marie a friendly smile and a pat on the leg before standing to leave. The poor kid looked like she’d just been hit by a bus.
Grace wasn’t worried for the younger girl. She knew exactly the cause of her distress. Only one thing had that kind of effect on someone.
Love.
Grace had been gobsmacked by it too, once upon a time.
“Oh, Grace,” Addie called as Grace reached the door. “Do be a dear and let Mr. Dross know that Marie is alright.”
Grace nodded, glad to have an opening to start a conversation with the mysterious toymaker whose advice her abuela felt might save the world.
True to form, Gloria Cortez was waiting in the hallway for her.
“I’m supposed to let him know Marie is okay,” Grace said. “But if he’s not even from here, why would he be such an expert on the Tarker’s Hollow portal?”
“Because he’s the one that put it there,” Abuela said.
“But… how?” Grace began.
Dross appeared suddenly before them. Grace figured he must have come from one of the rooms, but it was still a neat trick.
“That’s a long story,” he said. But the portal is part of what drew me back here. It has been compromised. I can feel fresh magic pouring through it. It is going to change things.”
“How?” Grace asked.
“Have you felt your magic getting stronger?” Dross asked with a serious expression.
“Yes,” Grace agreed. “But I thought it had more to do with how much I’ve been using it lately than anything else.”
“The portals sealed away the moroi, but they also cut off this world’s connection to magic,” he explained. “Grace, a witch of your prowess is quite literally one in a million. But there was a time when magic was more common. That’s what d
rew the moroi here in the first place.”
“Why?” she asked, but she already knew the answer. The darkness was always drawn to the light.
“They fed on the magic,” he told her. “There were powerful forces for good that tried to fight them, but it wasn’t enough. In the end, trapping them was the best we could do without an army of magic users.”
She studied his face - he was telling the truth.
“How did you trap them?” she asked. She knew some of the story from Julian’s old books, but it was another thing altogether to talk with someone who had actually been there. It occurred to her that her initial estimation of his age must have been more than a little off.
“The portals are places where the fabric between worlds is… stretched thin,” he explained. “They’re places where magic flowed into our world from other realms. We were able to lure the moroi to the source of that power, then trap them. But in the process, we also cut off the connection this world had to magic. That’s why there is so little left in the world. Sometimes we see.. hints,” he nodded toward the ballroom and Grace imagined he meant the simple light magic Mr. Ironwood had used to illuminate the Christmas tree. “But true magic users are a dying breed,” he finished.
“So what does the Tarker’s Hollow portal have to do with that?” Grace asked.
“Someone tampered with that portal recently,” he said without judgment. “And that has allowed a moroi to come through.”
Grace nodded, not wanting to explain everything to a man who by all appearances was a friend, but was also essentially a stranger.
“But it is also allowing magic to flow back into this world,” he continued. “Tarker’s Hollow is about to become a very interesting place. Magical creatures from around the world will be drawn here. Most will have no idea why, but they will feel a pull, like the magnetic tug on a compass needle.”
“What about the moroi?” Grace asked.
Dross’s expression had taken on a dreamy quality as he prognosticated about the magical future of the town. But his features turned stern at the mention of the moroi.
“Its first order of business will be to feed,” he said. “Then try to free its brethren.”
She knew it had fed more than once as it escaped, first on Charley Coslaw, the warlock who had been trying to summon it, and then on Ophelia Winter, a powerful alpha wolf. That should have been enough to tide it over for a while.
“Where would it go first?” Grace asked, wishing mightily that he would be able to answer this question - the one that had brought her to him in the first place.
He ran a hand through his dark hair thoughtfully and Grace was struck by the sudden thought that there was less gray in it than there had been an hour ago. But that was impossible.
“Like yours, its power will be stronger near Tarker’s Hollow, so it probably won’t go far,” he mused.
“That narrows it down,” Grace said. “But if we choose wrong, we could let it slip right past us. And we have no clue where it’s headed.”
Panic began to rise in her chest.
“That’s not entirely true,” he said with a crooked smile.
She gazed at him in wordless confusion.
“Your necklace,” he indicated. “It’s a piece of the key, yes?”
She nodded her head. “So?”
“Let me see it,” he said, holding out his hand.
Grace fought the urge to snatch it up and dash out of the room. But her abuela had said she could trust Harry Dross, and that was good enough for her. Slowly, she lifted the chain over her head and handed it to him.
Dross allowed it to dangle on the chain as he studied it intently.
It swung normally at first, but then instead of slowing, it changed direction.
A shiver went up Grace’s spine.
“Remember what I told you about the pull on a compass?” Dross asked her.
She nodded.
“Each key was tied to the location where it would be used, and the moroi it was meant to trap,” he continued. “This fragment is being pulled by both. It will always draw a line between the Tarker’s Hollow portal and the moroi. And that behavior will be stronger the closer you get to your quarry.”
Grace watched the shard swing back and forth and was oddly reminded of lazy afternoons at the Tarker’s Hollow Elementary School park, sitting beside Ainsley, each of them on a swing, watching their sneakers go from the school to the playground and back again, endlessly.
But this swing was going from the familiar woods of Tarker’s Hollow to the soul-eating monster of her nightmares. And as desperately as she wanted to hunt down the moroi, Grace was shocked to discover there was a part of her that was terrified at the idea of knowing where it was.
Now there were no excuses. Just a straight line.
It tugged at her mind. Already, she didn’t want to spend another instant at this party or anywhere else - she wanted only to move forward in the direction of the shard.
“That’s amazing,” she breathed.
“It’s not exactly a GPS, but it will get you moving in the right direction,” he said.
Dross studied her for a moment, holding her gaze.
“I won’t bother telling you not to go after it,” he said at last. “But be wary. The moroi will need to harvest a great deal of energy before it has the strength to open another portal. It will have to feed on many innocents to accomplish a feat of that magnitude.”
“Or?” Grace prompted, sensing there was more to it than that.
“Or,” he said wistfully, “the power in you would be more than enough.”
Chapter 6
Cressida wandered the streets of Tarker’s Hollow aimlessly.
It was Christmas Eve, so she and her grandfather had cooked a big meal then he’d put more wood on the fire and told her all the gossip she’d missed around town.
Well it wasn’t all the gossip, exactly. But it was everything that pertained to an older man like Joseph Crow.
The price of a can of coffee at the Co-op had gone up again, coinciding with the can being made smaller - proof positive, in the words of the check-out girl he had a crush on, that the outside world was becoming a greedy place.
Four of the grown-up Harkness kids had come home in a hurry, making Joe think something was up at Kate’s place.
“It’s the holidays,” Cressida remarked.
“No, baby,” Joe said. “Something else is going on. I sure hope she’s okay. I have nothing but respect for that woman.”
It was too bad, in Cressida’s opinion, that he had nothing but respect for Kate Harkness. Though Cressida loved having her grandfather all to herself in the quiet life they shared, Cressida wondered if he was getting too lonely with her on the road.
But she knew better than to ask him, as he would never admit to missing her too much for fear of making her beholden. Not to mention that the suggestion might hurt his pride.
She’d thought about it while they cleaned up dinner. When she went downstairs after to start a load of wash, she spotted a leak coming from somewhere in the kitchen above.
She yelled up to let her grandfather know.
“I’ll call someone,” he yelled down to her.
Cressida thought immediately of how handy Javier had been around Ainsley’s old house. He could probably fix a leaky pipe.
But the thought of calling him left her feeling off balance again.
He liked her, really liked her. He looked at her with those dark eyes of his and seemed to see right into her soul. And for some reason, he liked what he saw.
Meanwhile, Cressida couldn’t even see into her own soul. She had no idea who she was, no idea who she would become. She suspected there was more to her life than…this. But damned if she had any clue what.
She went to her room and undressed. It was late afternoon, but she wasn’t going anywhere. It was snowing outside.
A commotion at the door got her attention a few minutes later.
Which meant Joe had called
the firehouse for help with his plumbing emergency.
Her wolf scented Ethan Chambers out there, one of the Harkness kids’ friends. At least he wouldn’t judge Joe for not calling in a plumber.
She came out to say hi. She’d fooled around with Ethan here and there over the years. Tarker’s Hollow wasn’t that big a town, and Ethan was a nice guy.
She found him in the kitchen, lying on the floor, fixing the pipe under the sink.
She half-heartedly flirted with him, but when he explained he had to go back on duty for the night she found herself more relieved than anything.
She went back to her room, dressed quickly and headed out into the snowy night.
As a shifter, she ran hot, always had, so she enjoyed the beauty of the snowcapped trees and the swirling patterns of her own fog of breath without much concern for the freezing temperature.
Her mind kept going back to the moroi, and the first night she and Grace had fought it. It had cowered from her at first, and called her naagloshii.
She’d looked it up online. It meant “skin walker” which was a type of Native American shapeshifter. Grace told her the Native Americans were the first guardians of the portals. And then there was the incident with Bonnie Summers and Tokala.
Cressida wandered a bit more, and found herself headed in the direction of the college amphitheater.
It made sense, since her experience in the amphitheater was exactly what was on her mind.
She stepped up her pace through the woods, eager to revisit the scene.
It seemed like a lifetime ago, though it had only been a few short weeks. And she hadn’t turned it over in her mind as much as she would have if she and Grace hadn’t left town practically the next day and begun the hunt for the escaped moroi.
She’d been home when Bonnie and Mac had shown up at her doorstep with a box of old wooden Lenape animal figurines looking desperate, searching for her grandfather’s wooden crow to complete the set.
Always up for some action, she’d gone along with Bonnie and Mac. But she had never expected what she was getting into.