Daughter of Souls & Silence

by Annie Anderson

  “Shh, Ria. You’re safe. I made you safe. You’re okay.” I rub her back gently like I used to do when we were kids. It helps some, but still she sobs, shaking like a leaf in my arms.

  “You don’t know. You can’t know.” She says the words over and over, a faint whisper and then louder as if she’s warning me away. But I do know – probably more than she does – about the dangers that once lurked in that building.

  “Try me, Ria. I found you, remember? I know exactly what was in that building.”

  Maria, pulls out of my hug, wiping her eyes and nose with a handkerchief Ian unearths from his back pocket. Since when did this man have a fucking handkerchief? Did I drink myself into a stupor and he became an adult overnight? I try not to frown at the scrap of white fabric, and watch my sister’s face instead, ignoring the man beside me.

  “A man came for Mama. Walked right through our wards as if it were nothing. He wanted to talk to Mom, but she was so mad at him. Not that I blame her. They talked but she shooed me out of the room like I was a child. I’m less than a decade shy of four hundred and she shoos me out of the room. I got pissed off and left them alone. Then, when I was on the stairs, I heard a boom, and the whole place shook. I thought the building was going to come down on us. The stairs collapsed, and I went through wood.” She pauses gesturing to her right arm where the damage is the worst. “Landed on the bottom floor. Then something cut me again. I couldn’t see what it was… But it was big, Maxima. So big, so strong, it threw me across the room.”

  “A Corax Demon,” I supply, to her bewilderment.

  I may have looked through all of my grimoires last night to find the devil bird, but I found him. It was in the one grimoire I should have looked in first since it was a Demonology text from Gramma. But, I was drunk and not thinking straight when I started.

  “A what?”

  “That’s what attacked you. Be happy you couldn’t see it in the flesh, little sister,” I say, trying and failing to suppress a shudder. “Head of a crow, body of a man, legs of a stag. Invisible to all Ethereals and humans except for ones of Demon lineage. And it smelled like rotting meat. That for sure wasn’t in the textbooks.”

  Maria looks horrified.

  “Is that thing still out there?” she asks, hysteria rising in her voice.

  “No. I took care of it. It is very, very dead. Do you remember anything else?”

  She nods and continues with her story, “I managed to get up, but th-the Corax thingy kept throwing me. I managed to make it back to the living room – back to Mom, but then the man grabbed her and took her.”

  “Who was the man? Did he have a name? Can you describe him?”

  “I don’t need to describe him. I know who he was. Andras. Your dad took her.”

  I figured as much.

  Chapter Fifteen

  MAX

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Max.”

  I can’t believe he has the gall to say that to me. In my own house, in this room, in front of my sister. Like yesterday didn’t happen. Like he didn’t just throw me out like garbage. Like him refusing to even look at me, but still thinking he can tell me what to do.

  Fuck. That.

  Without thought, I snap my fingers, the skin of his lips melting away turning into one piece of flesh with no opening. I snap them again, and his butt parks in the chair, his back slamming into the upholstered wingback.

  I sniff and don’t spare him a glance but catch him trying to struggle from my hold out of the corner of my eye.

  Maria’s eyes go wide before she curls her lips into her mouth. Either from trying not to laugh or to discourage me from doing the same to her.

  I turn my cold stare to him.

  “Don’t. Tell me. What to do,” I threaten through gritted teeth, seething in the wrath I’ve held back for far too long.

  Surprise lashes through his face, and I realize he doesn’t know this side of me. He doesn’t know how much care I took not to hurt him, not to hurt the people around me. To fit in and be welcomed. He doesn’t know how vengeful I can be or how far I’ve gone in my long life.

  He doesn’t understand what being a Rogue really means. Doesn’t get that I have been used and abused, left behind in the ashes, scraping by with nothing but my grit and will to survive.

  But I’ve always had my freedom. Always.

  And I won’t be told what to do.

  I give him five more seconds and snap my fingers again. His lips returning to their original shape, he parts them to speak, but I cut him off.

  “I have no intention of doing anything stupid. I have no intention of doing anything at all. Andras wants Teresa? They can work it out by themselves. I have no interest in what my parents need to hash out. I’m only pissed they left Maria behind. Now that she’s here safe, it’s not my business. Clear?”

  “Crystal,” he murmurs, and once again he won’t look me in the eye. I’m really starting to hate that.

  I snap my fingers again, letting him up from the chair, and he doesn’t hesitate to get the hell out of the room. At least he’s smart.

  “Do I want to know why you disfigured that guy to prove a point?” Maria asks, the mirth in her voice shoving bricks of pain off my heart.

  I think about it, debating whether or not I want to get into the whole Ian situation with her. “Nope. You mad?”

  “Why again would I be mad at you?” She seems genuinely confused, and I hate to be the one to break it to her that when she came to me for help, I only ever intended to help her. Not mom.

  “I wasn’t lying to Ian. I won’t go look for Mom,” I tell her, a thread of shame skirting through me.

  “I would never expect you to,” she murmurs, grabbing my hand. “That would never be your job.”

  She sounds compassionate, but there is a thread of something else. Something that just doesn’t sound like Maria being Maria. I blink at her, surprised that she sounds… like she knows what happened.

  No. She knows exactly what happened to me.

  “You know why I was kicked out, don’t you?” I don’t intend it to sound like an accusation, but it does all the same. She knows more about what I went through – maybe from my mother’s own mouth.

  She knows. And I don’t.

  Maria’s face would be a mask of pity if she had any for me, but that was never how my little sister rolled. Her heart hurts for me, and I almost don’t want to know what it is she’s about to say.

  But the other part of me prays it’s a good reason. Craves that it’s something I can forgive my mother for. Hopes beyond hope that for once I’ll feel even an ounce of love from my mother – even tangentially.

  “And it wasn’t for breaking a ward, either. Mom did it to keep you safe. To keep you out of the Royal Court and away from your family. If you were Rogue, they couldn’t accept you, couldn’t pull you into the fold, so the first time you messed up…” she trails off, sympathy in her every expression.

  I want to cry, but my mouth forms a smile instead even though the tears fill my eyes. This is so much worse than I thought.

  “She tanked my life to save it?” I say chuckling, but it’s a laugh of disbelief.

  “I’m not saying she did the right thing. Hell, when I found out I almost went to the Witch Conclave to have your status reinstated. But she told me who your family is, told me exactly who they are. Trust me when I say, you may prefer your Rogue status after all.”

  “I guess I won’t know, now will I?” I shrug, wiping the stubborn tears that refused to stay confined, trying to pass it off as if it doesn’t burn through my gut in the worst way.

  “So why did you call me? Don’t you guys have a houseful of minions at your disposal?” I ask in a roundabout way what the hell they are doing in my city in the first place.

  “Not anymore. Not after what happened last year,” she murmurs, reminding me of the massacre in their coven home. Last year a pair of Witch siblings and their ilk ripped through the Witch world, slaughtering Coven leaders in an attempte
d coup.

  While some of my blood family survived, many didn’t.

  “You guys didn’t beef up security?”

  “We did, but it isn’t like they travel with us. We employ other Ethereals too. Shifters and Wraiths. But we came here on Witch business. It wasn’t prudent to take security with us. We thought we could handle it on our own. We thought wrong.”

  Her hand trembles as she wipes her mouth.

  “Are you hungry? I’m not much of a cook, but I make a mean breakfast.”

  Her shaking stops, and a smile emerges from the fear lining her face. “That would be great, thank you.”

  “You’re full of shit,” Maria says as she shovels another forkful of French toast in her mouth.

  I take another sip of my coffee. “What?”

  “Not much of a cook, huh? I thought I was getting toast and butter not cinnamon French toast with blueberry compote and sausage links.”

  She also got German potatoes and biscuits, but I can’t take credit for those. I didn’t make them from scratch. “What? Aidan bought me groceries. I didn’t want to waste them.”

  “I’m not complaining,” Aidan says around a mouthful of food. “But explain the takeout menus to me. I thought this food was going to rot in your fridge. Instead, I get the best breakfast I’ve had in a while. But don’t tell Aurelia I told you that or she’ll kill me.”

  Shrugging, I set down my coffee mug, collecting the forks and butter knives, stacking them on top of my plate. “I work too much, and I work late hours. I don’t want to cook food at midnight when I finally get off work. Those are all the places that deliver until two.”

  I collect the plates, setting them into the sink and starting the water. It’s almost comforting to have people in my house, sitting at my table. Feeding them. It’s been so long since I’ve had that. It relieves the burn in my gut that I’ve had since Striker left, even though I was the one who told him to go. It does nothing to cure Ian’s absence, but that’s a whole other wound to heal.

  “Where did you—” Maria begins, but her words are stolen from her by a blast in my living room. I feel it in my bones, in my teeth, through every tissue in my body.

  That blast is every single one of my wards breaking at once, snapping against my flesh like a whip. At least this time they don’t break my skin. Not like last time when Micah was the one breaking through them.

  Once I catch my breath, I run to the living room, wanting to see who was ballsy enough to blast their way into my home. But it isn’t a person at all. It’s a silvery orb of light. From the light steps a specter of a man – not a ghost, but a reproduction like a recorded message.

  I’d seen a few of these, but not for some time. Manifestation Lights. It was something used in olden times when one wanted to send a message, but didn’t want to travel. Obviously, it predated the telephone, and I hadn’t seen one done in at least a century. Maybe two.

  How someone could bust through my wards for a message boggles my mind. The man turns in a circle, the spell seeking the recipient before the message will start. He’s tall, with long dark brown hair past his shoulders, his face scruffy as if he’s deciding whether or not to grow out a beard. A scar bisects his left eyebrow, cutting high on his forehead and ending mid-cheek. His eyes, though, they are what sets him apart. They aren’t hazel or brown, but a piercing glowing gold that could never be passed off as human. Even in this grayed out form, they search, their power flowing through the room even though this is nothing more than a trumped-up recording.

  Something about them niggles at my brain, but those glowing orbs finally find me and he begins to speak.

  “Daughter. I have taken your mother from you. Give me the bone blade and I will return her unharmed. Fail, and I will not be as generous. Don’t make me ask twice.”

  So, this is Andras.

  His voice is calm and succinct British, and just like any other absentee dad, he knows nothing about me. If he knew anything at all about me, he would have taken Maria instead of my mother. He would have known there is exactly zero things I would do for Teresa Alcado.

  Maria, however, is a whole other story.

  The message fades, the silvery orb winking out of my living room much the same as it came in. I fight the urge to shrug and continue on with my life because while I loathe our mother, Maria seems to still love her despite all her many, many faults.

  That and a muttered ‘meh’ would be considered rude.

  Everyone else in the room stands frozen, like they’re waiting for me to freak or issue orders or something. I skirt them both, heading back to the kitchen and start the dishes, ignoring them and their stares completely.

  “That’s it? Your dad breaks through your wards, informs you he’ll hurt your mom to get what he wants, and you’re just going to do the dishes?” Aidan asks incredulous.

  I squeeze the dish soap on the scrubby sponge and start attacking the now cool griddle. “Yep.”

  “Wow. You really hate your mother, don’t you?”

  I think about it for a second. Do I hate Teresa? Maybe, but more, I’m indifferent. She’s all but admitted hating the fact that my father left her. Hated that I look like him – even though I couldn’t really see a resemblance. Maria said that she threw me out of the coven to save me, but I just can’t see her lifting a finger to do me a favor. Every favor from Teresa has consequences. Every single one. Take the bone blade for example. I had to ask for it, beg for it, even. And what had that blade brought me? Nothing but pain and a personal poltergeist that I had to figure out how to kill.

  Again.

  I couldn’t say I hated her. But love her? Want her safe and unharmed? Want to stick my neck out to help her even though it would surely earn me not a stitch of gratitude in return?

  Yeah, no. Hard pass.

  “I don’t hate her,” I finally respond, not turning to look at him. “I just don’t care about her. He should have picked a better bargaining chip.”

  Water sluices the suds off the griddle and I arrange it in the drainer so it won’t fall out.

  Suddenly, all the windows in my kitchen crack at once, the glass making an audible creak before the glass shatters, blowing into the room like shrapnel.

  Now what?

  Chapter Sixteen

  MAX

  My fingers make a bloody smear on the white of my kitchen cabinets, as I pull myself from my defensive crouch. Ears ringing, I look around the room, the edges of it fading in and out. Aidan’s down, Maria at his side, her jean-covered knees in the glass as she tries to rouse him.

  In the fading daylight, it’s harder to see, but the source of the trouble is a face I know well. In the dark, he was gray – somewhat solid. But in the light, his specter is barely there. I have a barely tangible hope that he’s somehow fading away, but even I know my luck isn’t that good.

  I reach behind me where I feel nothing but an empty sheath, and I take my eyes off Micah to search the floor for my athame. This is a mistake. Micah doesn’t care about a wounded Wraith or my sister. He doesn’t pay them any mind at all.

  All he wants is me and my pain.

  When I look up again he’s right there, pinning me against the counter, his icy hands once again burning by flesh through my long-sleeved shirt.

  “I should thank your daddy for breaking your wards. Maybe after I’m done with you, I’ll hunt him down and give him a big kiss,” he whispers, the words hissing on each ‘s’ like a snake. Fangs rake my neck, their frigid points not breaking the skin, but digging in all the same.

  He won’t bite me again, knowing he can’t drink, can’t consume me like he would his other victims, but he wants to. I can feel it. I was unaware ghosts could get stiffies, but here we are.

  I’m afraid to even murmur a spell, knowing the pressure of my throat merely swallowing could cause the fangs to pierce the skin. I’m stuck. Pinned. Weaponless. Helpless.

  “I exilium sive spectra,” Maria calls, the red glow of her magics high in the air. It doesn’t do muc
h against Micah, but pulls him back just enough so I can move.

  The light catches the silver of the athame, and I dive for it, cutting myself on broken glass to get it.

  I don’t throw it this time, instead I keep my hand on the hilt, slashing at Micah, driving him back, out of my kitchen. The blade slices his flesh, but it doesn’t seem to really hurt him, just spilling silvery blood on my glass-covered floor. I try punching, but my fist only finds air, so unlike when he touches me.

  Well, that’s just unfair.

  I move to slash again, but Micah spins, shimmering out of the way and appearing three feet from where he once stood? Floated? Do ghosts really stand?

  I murmur the words my sister called, “I exilium sive spectra.” To banish a ghost. A little on the nose, but I’d never begrudge Maria a spell that’s working in a pinch. My power is greater than Maria’s ever could be. Not hating on my sister, but her blood is pure Witch, and she’s a moon Witch at that. There is no way Maria could have my power at dusk except for the three days of the full moon, and even then, it would take a full coven of Witches to do what I can.

  Sometimes Demon blood has its privileges.

  This time Micah skids back, his body losing its spectral balance and he rakes his hands across the ground, looking for purchase as if he’s forgotten he’s dead, all the while he curses me. Yelling at me every single thing he’ll do to me.

  I want to murmur the words again, but something in his cursing perks my ears up.

  “You think I’m your only enemy? You think I’m the only one who wants you to burn? That blonde bitch who sent me after you? She’s watching you. Always watching you. You’ll never find peace. I’ll make sure of that.”

  It’s the blonde bitch comment that snags my attention. I only know one blonde bitch.

  “Immobilis exspiravit,” I mutter, snapping my fingers. “What blonde. Who sent you to me?”