by D. G. Swank
“He sounds sweet,” I said.
“Maybe he was, when we were kids. As we got older, he started going down a darker path. Talking trash about the Council, hanging out with guys who thought our laws were handcuffing them. Lots of really disrespectful talk about the leadership. Especially the witches,” Bran said, his tone hardening. “Maybe he hoped I would follow his example, but it had the opposite effect. I’d never had any real structure in my life. I joined the Protective Force to help keep the peace of our people. I don’t know what Donall’s up to anymore. I can only hope he tempered his views as he got older.”
“You don’t talk?” I couldn’t fathom the pain of not talking to one of my sisters, no matter how much we disagreed.
He shifted a little, and I hoped I hadn’t gone too far—hadn’t made him want to pull away from me.
“Our dad died,” Brandon said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.” I turned onto my side to face him. “How did I not know?” Losing both parents had caused me more pain than I ever could have imagined.
“It was before you and I met, before we moved to Mount Vernon. Mom got remarried to a guy who wasn’t a mage, which caused quite a scandal among our immediate family. Donall was furious, and after he left for college at eighteen, he pretty much dropped out of both our lives. Mom and my stepdad moved us to Mount Vernon soon after. It was hard. I missed him. I still do.” His voice grew thick with emotion. “I was collateral damage.”
“Gods, I… Bran, I didn’t know.”
“How could you? I never talked about it.” He paused. “The truth was that my father and brother were weak in both magic and character. They couldn’t deal with it and they blamed everyone around them rather than accept it.” He shot me a glance. “And I couldn’t deal with their scapegoating."
It was selfish, but seeing Brandon’s pain made me consider what it would feel like to be estranged from Celeste. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. The concept of living a lifetime without her was just unfathomable.
I pushed up on one elbow and leaned over him, kissing him lightly, then grew bolder.
Brandon kissed me back, hard, then flipped me onto my back. I sensed desperation in him, as though I’d opened his trunk full of ghosts and demons and he was eager to put them back in. His hand slid between my legs and quickly brought me up to speed before he entered me. Our first time, he’d set a slow pace, gradually increasing the tempo, but this time he was hungry for me. My body answered his call, readily climbing with him until we both cried out. Brandon called out my name, and then we both collapsed into each other’s arms and quickly fell asleep.
My life back at the farmhouse was simple. Each morning, I would wake up and drink coffee, sometimes out on the deck. The sounds of the birds building nests and squirrels chittering as they searched for food etched the morning light with texture and shape. Maybe I’d get ready for work, or maybe I’d spend the day reading a book or tending the house. No, it wasn’t exciting, but it belonged to me. To my sisters and me. My family.
In my dreams that night, I was on my deck on one of those perfect early fall mornings, clutching a steaming mug of coffee, cocooned in one of the living room blankets that Rowan always scolded me for bringing outside. As I watched the tree line in my dream, though, something different was added to the mix.
Crows.
Just one at first, starting off as a black dot and speeding toward our house, pitching down into the trees and sending squirrels and birds scattering. Then two more, moving in tandem, landed on a branch and cawed something that sounded like a devious plan. Another group descended on the forest, then a whole murder of them. Their caws wove together and then screeched dissonantly in waves, making it impossible to ignore them. The sound rang in my ears, jumbling my thoughts until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I jumped to my feet and my coffee sloshed hot over my thighs, soaking my pants and steaming in the cool air.
“Shut up!” I screamed.
Immediately, they did exactly that. But the softly warming autumn sky turned dark at the edges, like we’d skipped the entire day and sunset was already barreling toward us. Orange to pink to magenta to purple to deep, inky blue, which bled over the sky in mere seconds.
Then, with their eyes fixed on me, the crows, a hundred of them, cawed in unison.
“Rise, the Dark.”
The sharp, unmistakable words stabbed into me a hundred times, making my flesh prick and ache in tiny points all over my body. Then everything went pitch black, saturated so thickly I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I didn’t even have a second to panic because Rowan’s voice sliced through the opaque air.
“Bee? Bee?” Her alto voice, usually so measured and calm, pitched up, its reediness betraying her panic. “Bee, where are you?”
“I’m right here!” I called, feeling more frantic every second. Then a high-pitched scream erupted from the woods—one that was unmistakably Celeste’s.
I screamed too, groping in the black, desperate to find the rail of the deck, a chair, anything to help me get to Celeste faster. It was a lost cause, because on my second scream, someone dug their fingers into my upper arms and yelled my name, right into my face.
“Phoebe!” the deep voice boomed in my ears.
Something about it made the light come back. Slowly, the corners of my vision brightened, and seconds later, when the voice repeated my name, my thoughts answered with another name. Brandon.
I was sitting upright. The room was dark, yet infinitely brighter than the terrifying world of my dreams.
“Phoebe, it was a bad dream.”
But it was like no dream I’d ever had before, incredibly vivid but with events more surreal than had ever before featured in my subconscious visions.
Brandon tugged me back down, enveloping me in his arms. “It’s okay,” he whispered into my ear. His hand rubbed comforting circles on my back. “Was it about your sister?”
I nodded again, still trying to catch my breath.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Did I? Was the dream a message or was it my subconscious trying to sort out the events of the last several days? “No,” I finally said. “I’m already forgetting what I dreamed.”
Not true, but I saw no point in rehashing it.
“Go back to sleep,” he said, burrowing his face into my shoulder. “You’re safe. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
His words comforted me, because I believed him. I’d seen him in the Cauldron. He’d broken rules because some slimy mage had insulted me. I couldn’t imagine what he’d do if someone actually tried to hurt me.
I reassured him I was really okay, and before long, he was lightly snoring.
My mind refused to settle down. It may have only been a dream, but I couldn’t shake the worry about my sisters. I reached out to Celeste and felt nothing—not surprising, but hardly reassuring. I reached out to Rowan next, expecting her to be asleep. Even though we were too far apart to have a conversation, I should have been able to sense that much. But when I reached out to her, something felt off.
Something was wrong.
I told myself that I was overreacting, but when I tried to go back to sleep, the nightmare replayed in my mind and I was even more certain my instincts were right.
Wouldn’t Brandon’s team have called him if there were trouble?
Not if they were the source of the trouble. He’d already admitted some of his agents might be traitors.
Brandon mumbled in his sleep and rolled over to his side, freeing me from his grip. I had to pee, so I got up and went into the bathroom, taking my phone with me.
I tried to call Rowan, but she didn’t answer her cell phone. She usually had the ringer on vibrate, so I wasn’t too concerned until I called the home phone line Rowan insisted we keep in case the internet went out and she needed to fax something. (Which had never once happened.) The only calls we received were from telemarketers, which we often ignored, but Rowan would surely have picked up the phone in the
middle of the night.
She didn’t.
I started to go back to bed when my phone vibrated with a text from the number Celeste had called me from.
Bee, are you awake?
Oh my gods! Celeste? Yes, please tell me where you are, CeCe! Let me come get you.
You can’t tell Brandon what I’m about to tell you. Swear it.
It felt wrong, but my sister came first. I swear.
Is he watching you now?
No. He’s asleep.
After a long pause, she sent, I’ve come to get you.
I sucked in a breath. You’re HERE?
I’m in the hotel lobby, but they’re after me so I can’t wait long.
Let me tell Brandon. He can help you.
No! You can’t trust Brandon!!! You can’t trust ANYONE. If you tell him, I’m leaving without you. He’ll take me to the Small Council. They might kill me, Bee.
Execution was rare, yet it did happen in extreme cases. Surely they wouldn’t kill her, but now that the fear had been planted in my head, I couldn’t get it out. They would likely accuse her of stealing the book, and it was within the realm of possibility that they would call her a traitor to her own kind.
There was a pause before she sent, I’m scared, Bee. I need you. Help me save the Book of Sindal from the Dark Set.
My breath stuck at her last text. I’d let her down so many times. Could I let her down now? I didn’t want to run off and leave Bran, but what if she was right? What if I couldn’t trust him after all? She’d been with the Dark Set. Maybe she knew something I didn’t. Once I got her far away from the Dark Set and I was sure that I could trust Bran, I’d call him. But if she was really in the lobby, I couldn’t let her leave without me. Okay. I’ll come with you and I won’t tell him.
Thank you. Please hurry! I’m scared.
Chapter Fourteen
I grabbed my bag off the other bed and took it into the bathroom, dressing quickly in jeans and a T-shirt. My hands shook as I slipped on my shoes.
Brandon was still asleep when I walked out of the bathroom. I snatched his car keys off the dresser, thinking he might not be able to chase after us if he couldn’t start his car, then quietly let myself out the door. I almost expected him to open the door and call me out for leaving, but I made it to the stairwell and pushed out a sigh of relief when the heavy metal door closed behind me.
Our room was on the fourth floor, so I had plenty of time to think as I walked down the stairs. By the time I reached the first floor, I was having second thoughts. How had Celeste even found me? I couldn’t feel her through our bond, but could she somehow still feel me?
Taking a deep breath, I walked out the door, wishing Celeste hadn’t broken our coven bond so I could sense where she was. The lobby was brightly lit but empty. Even the front desk was unmanned, not that I was surprised. It was a little before four in the morning.
“Celeste?” I called out in a loud whisper.
Suddenly I was pitched into darkness—a thick, choking, consuming dark, like the one that had surrounded me in my dream with the crows. The air was fine to breathe, but the shock of being plunged into sudden, inexplicable blackness made me panic all the same.
Someone was here, and it wasn’t Celeste.
I scrambled to come up with a plan, telling myself that I wasn’t helpless even if I felt that way. I closed my eyes against the suffocating dark, trying to figure out how to use Great-Grandma Imogene Booker’s elemental magic.
I could make magical light.
I held up my hand palm-up, and was about to call forth light when I felt a presence behind me. A leather gloved hand clapped over my mouth.
Shit.
“Shhh, not a word,” a thin, sinuous voice said an inch from my ear. “Remember the first stupid rule of the Valeria. Blend in at all costs. A suddenly blind, helpless girl staggering through a hotel lobby won’t blend in very well, now will she?”
So the lobby hadn’t gone dark. He’d blinded me, which brought on a whole new level of terror, but I couldn’t let it get the best of me.
Think, Phoebe. Think.
I did my best to catalogue the facts, hoping it would help me identify the bastard later. He was a man, of course. His voice had a trace of an accent, but one that was difficult to place. He smelled like sweat and sawdust, or like a cedar closet.
He was also very dedicated to trying to make me feel helpless, small, and terrified. Terrified, okay, but I was neither small nor helpless.
The ring with Grandma Whelan’s strands of hair and stapes bone encased in it tingled against my knuckle, like it knew I needed its help. At the same moment, my muscles sucked in energy from the tiny points of electricity in the room’s circuitry, the motion of the lobby’s revolving door, and even from the people sleeping in the beds above my head. There wasn’t time for me to so much as think an apology at them before I let the borrowed motion of our surrounding atoms propel outward from my body.
The man rocketed away from me with an electrical jolt, and in the same instant, the powerful darkness spell he’d cast over me shattered. The sudden ability to see was almost as startling as its loss, and so was the sight of the large, dark-cloaked man writhing on the floor.
Other than using that ice trick at the Cauldron, I’d only used this ancestor’s power a couple dozen times, usually at Rowan’s insistence. I’d caused more than one woodland creature, small and large, considerable pain by blasting them just like I had my attacker. I’d pulled some energy out of Rowan once, and she’d taken more than a day to recover.
I’d hated those sessions so much, but now I was grateful for her insistence.
The mage was strong, though, and struggled to his feet in a few moments.
His expression morphed from shock and pain into a rage-filled snarl.
Darkness started to creep in at the edges of my vision again, and I pushed my shoulders back, tensing all my muscles, as if that would somehow help stall the onslaught.
It didn’t. He was upon me in a second, his hand at my throat, and the strength I’d gathered from the room’s kinetic energy wasn’t enough for another blast. Not yet. But magic wasn’t the only way to get out of a stranglehold. I reached up and wedged my fingers under his, bending them back until I felt a snap. He cried out and dropped his grip.
The air rushed back into my lungs like a tidal wave, and I stumbled backward, the wall breaking my fall.
The sickening sound of bone hammering flesh filled the lobby, and I lifted my gaze up to see Brandon pummeling the cloaked mage. Brandon was a couple inches shorter, and yet he countered or dodged every punch the mage threw his way.
I lifted my hand to my necklace, my fingers ghosting once more over the bones there. Grandma Corlew’s spirit invigorated every cell of my body with an incredible strength, stronger even than the borrowed power I’d used to fend off the last cluster of hooded mages and witches. It felt as though I were fortified somehow, down to my very soul.
With Grandma Corlew’s talent, I shattered the glass of the lobby’s revolving door like it was as thin as a wine glass. I gasped in amazement as every single shard slowed down and came into hyperfocus. Somehow, my talent had amplified to a level I’d never experienced before. I felt in control of each and every individual fragment of sharp glass. I wiggled my fingertips and stared, mesmerized, as the shards wobbled with the motion.
I’d planned to hurl them at the hooded mage, but Bran was behind the big man, locking his arms behind his back and holding him immobile. I wasn’t sure I could control my newfound strength well enough to stop the shards of glass from penetrating through his body and hitting Brandon too.
“Get out of here, Phoebe!” Brandon yelled, his face red and contorted with the effort of holding the hulking mage in place.
“I’m not leaving you with this lunatic!”
Bran’s eyes darted to the hovering mass of glass shards, which I controlled with one hand poised in the air, my other hand on my necklace. His face grew even redder as he
twisted the mage around and drew his knee up, sharp and fast. The mage crumpled to the floor again, the fabric of his cape pooling around him on the shiny hotel floor. Brandon darted away, taking cover behind one of the large stone columns that studded the lobby, and with all my concentrated energy and a precise flick of my wrist, I shot a door’s worth of glass shards into the circle of fabric on the floor, pinning the perimeter of the cloak to the floor to trap him. I only noticed after I’d done it that the fabric was rippling oddly.
My heart stopped in utter shock and confusion when I realized the cloak had gone flat against the floor. A tiny creature struggled to stand in the center. Its shiny black head popped out a second later, and turned to me, revealing a sharp beak and tiny, piercing, beady eyes.
A crow.
My heart twisted and dropped into my stomach.
“Rise, the darkness!” it cawed, exactly like in my dream, down to the intonation of every single syllable.
It shook its body again, and I watched, horrified, as it spread its wings. I lunged for it, trying to trap it with my body, but before I could reach the bird, it took three tripping steps, then took flight, sailing through the door I’d just broken in an attempt to stop it. To stop him. Was the talking crow the mage? Was it a spell?
In an instant, Bran was beside me, holding me tightly to his chest.
“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice shaking.
I nodded.
He held me at arm’s length, looking me over. “Are you sure?” His voice sounded gruffer this time.
“Yes.”
As soon as he was assured of my safety, his eyes lit with anger. “What the fuck were you thinking, Phoebe? Where were you going?”
Tears filled my eyes. “Celeste.”
“What about her?”