by Lish McBride
A stitch sliced into my side as I tried to catch the ice elemental. Now, he was hardly innocent. The file told me that. Ice men like ice, which makes sense. They create it wherever they go, and they don’t differentiate between a tree and a human being when it comes to building materials. Then they build nests, like birds. In their enthusiasm to create ideal conditions for themselves, they often freeze people to death. Venus couldn’t give a shaved yeti about the most recent victim being human, though. She only cared that this particular ice elemental had been poaching on her turf. I was the only one in this equation who cared about the humans. All creatures have a right to survive. I know that. But Ice Man could have built his nest somewhere else.
Kinda sucks, doesn’t it? Most girls my age worry about prom dresses and SATs. I have to weigh the ethical nature of being an assassin against the value of human life and basic freedoms. Makes detention seem like cake.
“He saw me, and he’s doubled back. I think he’s headed for the park,” I heard. Ezra’s voice was so clear, it sounded like he was right next to me, whispering. My earpiece looked like it was part of a high-tech walkie-talkie. The idea was similar, only ours ran on a spell. Safer that way. Actual walkie-talkies run on radio waves, and those can be intercepted. Not a great idea when you’re working for the Coterie. But ours? I could speak safely into the microphone attached to my watch and know that only Lock and Ezra heard me.
“As your eye in the sky, I feel I should inform you that there’s a pond in the park.” Ez and Lock had flipped a coin for roof duty. Lock won.
Cursing to myself—though the boys probably heard it—I doubled my speed and shot out of the alley I’d been running down and across a street into a play park. The night was so cold, my breath crystallized in front of me, so the park was understandably empty. The ice creature was closer to me now. He was getting tired and had been slowing down, but as soon as he saw the playground, he put on more speed, heading toward a small frozen duck pond ahead of him. The ice might be thinning, but it was still ice. It was still his element, and I had to keep him away from there. He stopped tossing ice missiles and focused on running. Which was his mistake. The only things keeping me at bay so far had been the distraction of dodging and attempting to close to a better distance.
“From the sound of your panting, I can tell we need to start jogging as a team again. Clearly you’re not training on your own. Ezra, stop groaning. It will be good for you. By the way, Ava, Ez is in position and I don’t see any cannon fodder about, so we’re a go.”
Owen would have started on the outside—enveloping the creature in a low flame until he melted slowly away, fully aware the whole time. The Coterie and Owen: a match made in heaven. Or, more realistically, a match made in much warmer and brimstone-y climates.
I am not Owen.
I concentrated on something small—the creature’s frozen heart. Ice elementals are made of snow and frost and other wintertime things. But deep in their chest lies a heart that looks like a Swarovski crystal about the size of an apple. It’s hard and dense, and if I tried to do something pedestrian like hit it with a bullet, nothing much would happen. I mean, yeah, it would shatter, but after about three seconds the elemental would just fuse it back together. Magic.
But I wasn’t going to shatter it—I was going to melt it. If this were a movie and I the action hero, this is where we’d have a dramatic standoff. The creature would ask me why, and I’d either apologize or give my tortured reasoning. But this wasn’t a movie. The creature didn’t care why I had to do it. And I’m not much of a hero. So before he could reach the ice, and without a single word, I concentrated until a white-hot flame erupted in the elemental’s chest.
I stopped running, my hand glued to my side as I stood gasping, hoping the stitch there would go away soon. His heart gone in the smallest of seconds, the elemental probably didn’t know what hit him. Or, at least, he hadn’t had time to care. That was the most I could hope for.
Yanking my phone out of my pocket with half-frozen fingers, I took a picture of the melting elemental—the proof that would get the boss-monkey off my back for a little while.
We waited until he was a puddle. Lock tossed a handful of seeds from his pocket into the water. Green sprouts shot up, opening out into large, heart-shaped leaves. A sea of tiny blue flowers erupted between the leaves.
“Pretty,” Ezra said.
“Brunnera macrophylla—a perennial forget-me-not.” Lock looked up at the cold, clear night sky. Though we were an hour from home, we were still far enough from Boston that there wasn’t much light pollution. “It’s an early riser, well suited for the season.” He slipped an arm around me. “Ready to head out, Aves?”
I nodded.
“Wanna make Lock whip us up some late-night hot chocolate?” Ezra asked.
I nodded to that, too.
2
DREAMS AND OTHER THINGS THAT HURT
I WAS BACK in the hallway, which meant I was asleep and this was a nightmare. That’s the only time I ever walked those particular halls. They were just as I remembered—dark, windowless, cavernous and yet claustrophobic at the same time. The wood was cold and unforgiving under my bare feet, and the air smelled like old smoke and bitter herbs. Two men stood next to me, sized for the hallway—gargantuan and hulking. I doubt they were actually human. They were too big for that, but since the cowls on their robes hid their faces, I couldn’t begin to guess what they were. I wouldn’t see their faces until after the ceremony. Not until I became one of them. And really, it didn’t matter. They were Coterie. They were all monsters.
There are two levels to the Coterie organization. Inside those levels were all kinds of sublevels, but really only the main two are important: the Associates and the Elite—or as Ezra calls them, the Suckers and the Made. Associates work in Coterie nightclubs and businesses—they run around and help out, doing odds and ends, hoping for a little handout, a scrap of power. They thirst to be part of the Coterie machine. Suckers. They’re hangers on, the remora fish to the Coterie’s shark. They’re useful and necessary, but when it comes right down to it, they don’t matter. They aren’t Elite, and therefore they aren’t to be completely trusted. They certainly aren’t special. The Elite are raw potential, sculpted and shaped by Venus’s hands until they become something hideous and twisted. Not born that way but made. Created.
I had another word for it. Damned.
Once you go through the blood-pact ceremony, you’re Elite, and that’s it. You’re Coterie until you die. If you don’t like that idea and you complain, then Venus makes your wish come true the only way your contract allows: her death or yours. Guess which one she’s going to pick?
I was barely thirteen when I stood in that hallway, Venus’s goons flanking me so I didn’t bolt. Cade wasn’t allowed to attend, even though he was my legal guardian. He wasn’t Coterie. He wasn’t even an Associate. The goons latched on to my arms with grips that went beyond iron. Both were warded, and neither had much sympathy for me. There was no small talk, just two thugs holding a quaking firebug in their grips in front of large oak doors.
At some signal I neither saw nor heard, the thugs opened the doors and dragged me in. The room was dark and not as big as I’d thought it would be. Thirty people in robes of dark crimson, their deep cowls putting their faces into shadow, stood in a circle, parting only for me and my escorts. My bare feet left prints, outlines of sweat and heat, as they led me through the crowd. I couldn’t see anyone’s face. I’d known I wouldn’t be able to, but it bothered me all the same. The only light was from a series of candles set on tall wrought-iron candelabras. It was a little over the top for my taste, but the scene did its job. I was terrified out of my wits.
The circle enclosed me; the thugs released my arms and disappeared back into the sea of red. Venus stood in the center with me, the only other person besides me not wearing red. Her robe was snow white and blinding. She stood there, silver dagger in hand, and said nothing. A small smile played on her lips, and
even though I’d never gone further than kissing a boy, I remember thinking, That’s a lover’s smile, and not the nice kind. It was a smile of desire that had nothing to do with sex or love. Venus’s smile was one of possession. The curve of her lips said that no matter what happened after this, first and foremost I was hers. I would always be hers. I swallowed hard, sparks appearing around my hands like tiny stars.
One of the red robes came up and drew on me with oil. The hands were small and delicate, which made me think it was a woman, but that was the only evidence I had. She drew on my forehead, the palms of my hands, and the tops of my feet. I couldn’t quite figure out what she was drawing, and before I could ask, she used an index finger to cover my lips in that same oil. The sharp smell coming off it was so strong that my mouth was filled with the taste. My throat constricted, and I had to choke down the saliva.
Someone handed the woman a brass bowl, and before I could wonder at its contents, she reached her hand in, settling a mound of ash into her open palm. I barely had time to close my eyes before she blew the ash onto the oil. The marks she had drawn sprang to life then, and it felt like fire, like the burn of a blowtorch against my skin. I screamed and fell to my knees. Red robes tried to draw me back up, but I didn’t make it easy on them. I hung like dead weight, my skin burning, a thunderous headache banging between my temples, and in my mouth now only the taste of ash.
With a distinct and unhelpful certainty, I knew those delicate hands belonged to a witch. I’d just been warded, and while it wasn’t permanent, it certainly sucked. The robes finally got me on my feet, and Venus snatched my hand. She clasped it, her icy fingers prying open my balled fist.
“Ava Jane Sheppard,” she said, raising the knife.
“Halloway,” I said. “It’s Halloway now.” I saw no reason to hold onto my name—no family to attach it to, and plenty of old Coterie baggage my mother’s name might stir up. Taking Cade’s name made sense to me.
“Halloway it is, then,” Venus said, “Ava Jane Halloway,” she said, and then she sliced my hand with that silver knife. Blood welled. I wanted to yank my hand back, instinctively cradle away the pain, but I couldn’t extract it from her grip. She fixated on the wound, and for a split second I thought her vampiric nature would get the best of her. With her free hand, she lifted her ward, keeping the chain around her neck. She placed the ward in my palm, rune side up, the design for fire winking at me before the silver charm disappeared into the blood and ash.
“You belong to us now,” she said. The room narrowed to her and me and my bloody palm. “The Coterie comes first, before all things. It is your family now. Your lifeblood.” She put the hand still holding the blood-smeared knife over my heart. “Your heart beats only to please us.” Her hand moved to my forehead. “Your only thoughts are for our well-being.” Blue eyes dug into mine. “When you speak, you speak for us. What you move, you move for us. Where you walk, you do so at our will.” Her fingers touched lips, palms, feet, and all I could do was stand there. She pressed a folded square of linen onto my wound, and I could feel it pulsing like a second heartbeat.
Venus never looked around. She only had eyes for me. The witch returned with another brass bowl, this one filled with hot coals. Venus used the linen to pick up her ward and dropped both items into the bowl. The linen caught and burned, but the ward remained untouched. Only my blood dried and flaked away from the heat. The witch put the bowl on a stand, and Venus finally let go of my hand. Before I could hold it to me, the witch grabbed it and squeezed. The wound responded with more blood, and the witched tipped it while holding a cold glass vial close underneath. The clear glass became clouded with blood and ash. She set it aside, and my hand was wrapped with fresh linen, then returned to me at last.
I cradled it while Venus used her dagger to remove her ward from the bowl. I knew better than to think that was her only ward, but a reckless part of me whispered that I should turn my powers on her anyway, to see how much of her we could burn. My fingers pressed harder into my bandage, and I knew there would be singe marks where my fingers rested. For now I kept them covered.
Steam rose as the ward was dipped in cool water before Venus returned it to its usual resting place around her neck. The witch handed me an honest-to-goodness feather quill, and a parchment was unrolled before me. I signed my name with ink made of ash and my blood and knew it was mostly a formality. The real pact was in the ritual. That’s where the magic lay. The witch in front of me was a blood witch—blood was her element as much as fire was mine. I was screwed. There was no getting out of my pact. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t try.
Venus leaned forward and put her lips on mine. She leaned back and her smile widened, growing with her feeling of possession. “You are mine, now, little firebug,” she said, and I trembled.
And then the cowls came down. I was allowed to see their faces now. I was elite. I was made, I was damned, and there was no going back.
I BOLTED awake, drenched in sweat and swearing like a sailor. I gulped in warm air and oriented myself. The ritual was over, past and done. I was home. I was safe. My breath came out in a relieved whoosh. Then I sat on the edge of my mattress.
I don’t wake up well, even when I’m not having nightmares. I had almost kicked Lock when I sat up. Lock had started out curled up next to me but ended up on the floor, probably when he became tired of me elbowing him for snoring. Ezra was sleeping on the couch because he was too good for the floor, and too handsy in general for bed sharing. Not that he wanted to get handsy with me, specifically. His was more of a hands-on-anybody sort of thing.
I heard Cade whistling in the kitchen, accompanied by the occasional clink of dishes. Damn it, he was doing my chores again. I dug around the floor until I found my slippers. The idea of flopping back into bed was very tempting. After hearing the clink of another dish, though, I started searching around on my nightstand for a ponytail holder to pull my hair back and get it under control. Finding the elastic was harder than it sounds. My room is small but messy, and I’m always losing things. It was even smaller with Lock sprawled out on my floor like a human rug.
I finally found a band behind a small picture frame on my desk—me, Lock, and Ezra at Palace Playland last summer. In the photo, Lock and I are mugging for the camera, my dark hair wild from the sea spray, wind, and rides, Lock grinning like a mad person and squeezing me to him despite my rat’s nest. Ezra looks like Ezra—pretty and too cool for school, his hair mussed but seeming like he meant it to be that way. Ez had wanted to stay at the beach but caved after I’d reminded him that the amusement park was full of marks. What can I say; I’m a fiend for Skee-Ball, and Ezra likes to pick pockets. Lock made him turn all the wallets in to the lost and found at the end of the day. Ezra didn’t actually want the money, he just liked the challenge, and that challenge doubled when he had to find a way to get thirteen wallets into the lost and found without anyone noticing.
I smiled at the picture and went about the annoying process of taming my hair into a ponytail. I’d have to do some laundry soon or clean my room, I thought as I took in the mess around me. It was too small to not keep it in some sort of order. Though if I left Lock in it long enough, he’d clean it for me, which was enticing. I use the word room in the loosest sense of the word—it was just a small loft above the den. There was enough space for a single mattress and box spring, a nightstand, and a sorry excuse for a dresser. I think the loft was originally intended to create an office space in the one-bedroom cabin. Whatever its initial intention might have been, it was cozy, it was clean (sometimes), and it was mine. I’d never had my own room until I started living with Cade. Every once in a while, I would reach out to touch the wall, just to make sure it was real.
Cade had tried to give me the bedroom downstairs when I’d moved in, stating some nonsense about a teenage girl needing her own space, but I refused. Moving me into the house had been costly—the walls had had to be treated with fire-retardant sealers and paint, a sprinkler system was installed,
and we were probably the only house in America that owned fifteen fire extinguishers. Cade rarely has to get them refilled anymore except for maintenance reasons, but he still checks them. Regularly. The couches and mattresses are routinely treated with a chemical that makes them fire resistant. And, hey, it makes them stain resistant too. We buy the stuff in bulk and keep it in the unattached shed, where Cade stores anything even remotely flammable on lockdown. I’m not allowed within ten yards of the storage shed.
At least he wasn’t making me do monthly fire drills anymore. I think after he’d forked over the cash to get the cabin spelled and warded against fire by a Coterie-sanctioned witch, he’d chilled out a bit. He would have felt better with an independent contractor, but there wasn’t a witch within three hundred miles who would come near me without Venus’s okay.
Wards aren’t cheap, so we only had the witch do the house itself. Between the magic and the stuff we sprayed on the walls, we figured we were covered. The furniture and linens had to settle for human-made chemicals only. Except for my sheets. They sported a fine edging of warded embroidery. You think silk sheets are expensive? Not even close to how much warding will set you back. I guess it’s a good thing I can’t go to college (as if Venus would allow anything that might cut into my time, or as she saw it, her time). Couldn’t afford it anyway.
So I wouldn’t take the only bedroom in the house. Cade did enough for me; I wasn’t about to make him sleep in a loft.