An acorn, which means part of the spell I prepare will require making sure I can improve heath if injured—or possibly means my friend has already been injured and will need immediate care. A wheel, which tells me my spell will need to have transformative qualities. And finally, a bird, which tells me I’ll need a spell that will give me perspective.
There’d been some numbers, too—7, 9, 2—but any good tea leaf reader knows that not every symbol means something. So I focus on what my gut tells me is relevant right now.
I close my eyes again, this time envisioning the three symbols in my mind. Somehow, they’re connected. The sooner I figure out how, the sooner the spell will reveal itself to me.
I try not to let the pressure of running out of time get to me. Rushing this will only make it take longer. I can’t be distracted. I need to focus.
An acorn. A wheel. A bird.
Come on. What is it?
My fists clench at my sides as I realize what it’s telling me to do. No. That can’t be right.
But when my eyes spring open, the tea leaves spell the incantation I need to make it happen. The one I need to undergo a transformation I want nothing to do with.
2
I can’t exactly perform a shapeshifting spell in my bedroom. Not with my family downstairs. Besides, I don’t have everything I need for a spell like that. And I’m not exactly thrilled about where I have to go to get it, because it means dragging more people I care about into this damn mess.
I tell my mom I’m going to a friend’s place, which isn’t technically a lie, and then I hop on my bike and ride down to the edge of town. There are some shops run out of the warehouses on the other side of the train tracks here.
People think it’s just homeless people who live here, and the city has given up on trying to run them off. Mainly because it never works and it costs too much to jail them. That, and no one actually owns these buildings anymore. It’s become a sort of self-service homeless shelter.
Except these people aren’t homeless. But only those of us who need the supplies they sell actually know that.
I lean my bike against the railroad crossing sign and then walk down the incline toward the warehouses. People mill about outside, sort of like you might expect at a flea market, but the tables are lined with magic wares instead.
I pass by all of that and head around to the side of the warehouse farthest from the tracks. There’s only one door here, toward the back. It’s my mentor’s shop. She doesn’t really sell anything. More like she teaches things.
Before I reach the door, it opens, and a young man steps out. His gaze falls on mine, and his eyes narrow as if inspecting me.
“Are you lost?” he asks.
I roll my eyes. “No one finds this place by accident. I’m looking for Esme.”
“Is that really such a good idea?”
I cross my arms and take another step closer. This time, I’m the one scrutinizing him. Dark hair, soft brown eyes, and the lightest dusting of freckles on his nose. He can’t be much older than me, though he’s certainly much taller.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” I say. Then I walk past him and head into Esme’s shop.
The young man is right behind me, catching the door before it closes and following me inside. Creeper.
“She’s not here,” he says from behind me. When I whirl toward him, he adds, “She went out. But maybe I can help. Name’s Finn.”
“Esme never leaves here,” I reply, challenging him.
“It was an emergency. She said she had to find someone and asked me to watch the shop.”
“Find who?” I step closer. “Why would she have you watch the shop? I’ve never even seen you before.”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Like hell.” My insides twist. I don’t have time to hunt Esme down, but she’s the only one who can help with the transformation spell, seeing as how I’ve never actually done one before. “Look, I need to find her. It’s an emergency. Lives are at risk.”
Finn’s eyes widen. “That’s what Esme said when she left.”
“I don’t have time for this.” I brush past him, then pause in the doorway. “Listen, when she gets back, tell her Hadley was looking for her, okay?”
Instead of responding, he grabs my arm and spins me toward him. “You’re Hadley?”
“Yes. And I really need to talk to Esme. I have maybe forty-minutes left before one of my friends dies, and she’s the only one who can help me. So, if you’ll excuse me.”
I try to break free of his grip, but he’s still holding my arm. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out why I told a stranger about my situation. It’s as if the words left my lips without permission.
This time, I’m more direct. “Let go of me,” I insist, tugging harder to free myself.
“I’m sorry,” he says, releasing my arm. “It’s you. You’re the one Esme is looking for.”
In that case, I’m glad this guy isn’t blabbing off to anyone where Esme went. But it raises a ton of other concerns.
“She could have called.”
Finn shakes his head, a dark, heavy look overwhelming his expression. “She said she had to talk to you in person. It was right after she read her tea leaves this afternoon. I’ve never seen her in such a panic over a reading before.”
“Well, she didn’t come to my house.”
He must read the concern in my voice, because he reaches out and touches my shoulder. “She’ll be okay. She’d want you to stay focused. Maybe I can help. What do you need?”
“A transformation spell.” I clasp my hand over my mouth. Why did I say that? Shapeshifting spells are frowned on by the magic users this side of the tracks.
He drops his hand and heads toward Esme’s mixing counter. As he’s shuffling some bowls around, he says, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anyone.”
“Funny, I’d told myself the same thing.”
He reaches up onto one of the shelves and grabs a bottle of absinthe. “I tend to have that effect on people. I guess you could say it’s my gift.”
“It’s a little invasive, don’t you think?”
He shrugs, then grabs an apple and cuts it in half with a boline. He’s cut it across the core, revealing a star in the middle. “They say the truth will set you free.”
I cross the room and come up to his side. “Do they?” I peer down over his work. “Can we use something other than absinthe?”
“You’re worried it’s poisonous,” he says.
“It is poisonous.”
“That’s a myth. But even if it were, the healing properties in the apple and juniper would cancel it out. Well, that and the spell.” He cuts his gaze to me as he puts the juniper and the absinthe in a wooden bowl together. “You do have a spell, right?”
I stop myself from growling. “Of course I do. I wouldn’t do this if the tea leaves hadn’t suggested it to me.”
He arches an eyebrow. “And you know the consequences of this decision? I mean, besides the obvious?”
Well, no. I’d intentionally not read that part of my tea reading. But I’m not telling him that, and I back away before he can try to get it out of me. “What I do with my body is my choice. No one else’s.”
He brushes off his hands and nods. “No arguments there.” He lifts Esme’s blessed rose water and pours a splash over the herbs. “You must really love this friend. To make this kind of sacrifice.”
I clench my teeth. He doesn’t know the half of it. If this doesn’t go well, I’ll be dead anyway. Then it won’t really matter much if I have the curse of shifting on my shoulders. “Are you almost done? My situation is kind of time sensitive.”
“Usually people say thank you when I help them. But I’ll let that slide, since you’re under duress and all. And yes, I’m almost done.” He dips a basting brush into the potion and glazes the apple. Then he hands me a piece of paper. “Write the spell here.”
I do as he asks and write transform-mă cu blestemul etern
itatii on the rag paper.
“Transform me with eternity’s curse,” he reads. “Are you sure?”
“If that’s what those words mean, then yes, I’m sure.”
At the way his expression turns sour, I can tell he’s disgusted that I don’t speak his language. Of course, I hadn’t realized until that moment that he was Romani. So he must really not like me right now.
“Okay,” he says. “Then let’s do this.”
He pins the spell on Esme’s clothesline that she keeps up exactly for this purpose, then hands me a match. I say the words and light one side of the paper.
Before I realize what’s happening, he does the same. I narrow my eyes at him, but I don’t dare speak. I don’t want to ruin the spell because he’s doing something stupid. As the paper burns, Finn cuts the apple in half, then hands me one piece to eat while he eats the other.
When the paper burns out, I don’t feel any different. “Did it work?”
“You don’t exactly have time to wait around if it didn’t, do you?”
“No.” I head toward the door, then turn back to him. “But I need it to have worked.”
He nods. “Then it worked.”
“You shouldn’t have—”
“I got the same spell in my leaves this morning, Hadley. And I suspect I’m the only one of us who bothered to see how this might end.”
I raise my hand. “Don’t.”
He zips his fingers across his lips. “I won’t. But I’m going with you.”
3
We trek into the woods on the outskirts of town beyond the warehouses. I have maybe thirty minutes left to find the vampires and turn myself in to save Iris.
I’m trying to avoid thinking of my best friend—really, the only friend I have—because I can’t afford to lose focus. And yet, images from our shared past keep flashing through my mind. We’ve been friends forever—we were in the same daycare together, and have been inseparable ever since.
As I stare blankly at the worn trail ahead, Finn takes my hand and gives it a gentle squeeze, bringing me back to the present. Something about having him around makes me feel a little better. And I can’t argue with fate. If what he said back in Esme’s shop was true, then he’s meant to be here, too.
There’s a brief moment where I wish we had more time. Not because I’m mega-stressed about not getting to Iris before the vampires do something I can’t save her from, but also because there’s something about being around him that causes a sense of peace to settle over me.
Maybe it’s that whole bit about truth setting you free. I feel like I can tell him anything, and not merely because he could find it out anyway if he wanted to.
“Close your eyes,” he says.
I do as he’s asked. “I never imagined I’d be doing this with a stranger.”
His palm sparks against my own, sending tingles up my arm that reverberate in my elbow and shoulder. “Never?”
At that word, I get a sort of déjà vu feeling. But it’s gone before I can place it.
“Imagine freedom,” he says. “Imagine you have wings and that you’re soaring. Believe that the possibility is as real as the sky above you. A sky you haven’t touched, but that is undoubtedly there.”
I feel lighter just listening to him. But that light feeling soon turns to pain. An agony like nothing I have ever before experienced. Every muscle in my body seizes up. All my bones feel uncomfortably dislodged. In that instant, I’m certain my skull’s on fire and my joints have all broken.
I do not exist outside of pain.
I am pain. It has become me.
There’s a moment—a precipice—where I begin to fall away from the pain. Where it’s hit its worst and starts to ease. Where my body starts to mend. And then it’s gone completely. The pain that felt so impossibly intense I was certain it would never end is gone.
Am I dead?
No, comes a voice in my mind. Finn’s voice. Open your eyes.
When I open my eyes, I’m staring at a raven, and in that moment, I realize I am small, because this bird is right at eye level with me.
It takes a moment for my body to respond to my mind’s request to look down at myself, but it happens. And when it does, I see my bird feet and my own black feathers. I glance up again at the other raven—one I know to be Finn.
Finn tilts his head. Are you okay?
I nod, as much as a raven can. Or at least I think I’ve nodded. As okay as possible.
The words don’t leave my mouth. Or rather, my beak. But I hear them, and when Finn responds, I know he’s heard them, too.
Because we performed the spell together, we’re connected. We can communicate, even in animal form.
I spread my wings and try fluttering them to see if I get any lift. I don’t. Across from me, Finn seems to be having better luck.
You’re still acting from your human mind, he tells me with his voice in my head again. You have to be know you are the bird. Do not think of how to fly. Just fly.
I struggle for couple more minutes that I really don’t have to waste on learning to be a bird. I have to do this, though. If I don’t, Iris will die. I refuse to attend her funeral as the person who couldn’t pull it together to save her life. What kind of person can’t figure out how to fly when her best friend’s life is at stake?
Apparently, this one. Because it’s still not working.
Finn charges at me, a god-awful cawing sound coming from his wide-open beak. I jump, and before I know it, I have lift off. It takes me a moment to adjust to the air, but as if by instinct, I do.
Sorry about that, Finn says.
There’s no time for sorry, Finn. Let’s go.
4
It’s a short flight before we reach the center of the woods. I know the vampire nest will be around here somewhere. And I know I only have about twenty minutes left. I always prefer to arrive a little early, rather than on time, and that’s never been more true than it is today.
The thing is, I read Iris’s tea leaves a few months ago, and I know that girl has a real purpose for her life. She’s going to save some lives, stop the fall of the world as we know it. Or rather, she’s going to be a key player in helping someone else do so. That’s one of many reasons I can’t let her die.
But that reason is still secondary to her being my best friend and this world being worth nothing to me without her in it.
I didn’t tell her all that when I read her tea leaves, of course. This isn’t the kind of thing fourteen-year-old girls need to worry about. Unless you’re me. Because I really had no choice in the matter.
Finn’s quiet while we fly, and I’m not sure whether to be thankful or concerned. But if I should be worried about him, it’ll have to wait. Right now, I have a one-track mind. And my concentration is rewarded when I spot movement between the trees below.
Over there. I swoop down and to the left to indicate the direction.
I see it, Finn replies.
He follows me as I fly lower and lower until I’m weaving between the leaves in the trees. I land on a branch, and he comes to my side.
Human, he says.
Look closer. Her neck.
The telltale mark of fang punctures mar her neck. She’s human, yeah. But she’s a donor. And judging by the way she’s milling about freely outside, so close to what appears to be some kind of shelter, tells me that she’s willing.
But Iris isn’t.
I need to get inside.
Wait, Finn says. Assess the situation first. We don’t know how many are in there.
It doesn’t matter. I only have ten minutes left.
I fly back a bit the way we came, then dive down to the ground. I close my eyes and focus on returning to my human form. It’s every bit as as painful as shifting the first time, but it’s over a lot quicker. I had expected to be naked, but I’m fully clothed.
“The feathers,” Finn says, landing and shifting to human form beside me. “Only some of it is your hair. The rest of it’s the fibers of your
clothes.”
“Okay.” I start my trek in the direction we came from. It shouldn’t be too far. I’m not really concerned with how or why things work right now. Just need to get where I’m going, and fast.
After several yards, I can see the makeshift shelter the woman had been outside of moments ago. She must have already gone back inside.
I take in the shelter, trying to determine what the best way in would be. It appears to be built into the side of a muddy hill. There’s a rounded wood door and some round windows. Moss and vines are taking over. There doesn’t appear to be any sneaky way in. No telling how big it is on the inside, either.
Through one of the round windows that’s not fully obscured by moss, I can see part of the interior. As I take another step, my vantage point shifts, and I can see through the window at another angle. That’s when I see Iris sitting on a stool guarded by a vampire.No need to tie her down, of course. No one runs off anywhere when there are vampires involved. That tends to be a deadly waste of time.
Iris clearly realizes that. Every line of her body radiates terror. Her head tilts forward so her long, straight, blonde hair falls over her face—something she’s done when she’s anxious ever since we were in kindergarten. Anger at the sight of her fear flashes through me, competing with the low-level hum of dread I’ve had running in the back of my mind from the moment I got the ransom note.
As I’m about to step out into the open, Finn grabs my arm and pulls me back.
“This doesn’t feel right,” he says.
“Of course it doesn’t. But I don’t have time to wait until it does. And I need you to stay here and make sure Iris gets to safety.” I yank myself free of his grasp. “Will you do that?”
His expression is stony—angry, even—but he nods. “Yes.”
As I start to walk away, I hear him whisper behind me, “Be careful, Hadley.”
And with that, I stride over to the vampire nest and knock on the door.
5
The vampire who answers the door has dark hair and darker eyes. I try to take comfort in the fact that his irises are not glowing red. Which I hope means he’s not about to eat me. But the truth is, I don’t know a whole lot about vampires. Maybe his eyes are never red and that’s the stuff of movies.
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