by Jessica Gunn
“In an evil sense, or…?” Rachel asked.
“Magik only. Ether isn’t inherently good or evil. The two sides of this war have nothing to do with what’s happening here.” Nate squeezed Krystin’s hand once, then let go. “I… If I’d realized this sooner, I might have been able to do something, but I think she’ll be okay. Giyano didn’t give her too much elemental magik.”
“Enough to cause this, though,” I said.
Nate nodded. “I think he wanted to send her a message. And he succeeded.”
I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorframe. I hadn’t known about magik backfiring. And even if I had, without Nate’s training, we might not have known what was going on. Maybe that was the basis of teamwork right there—one Hunter filling in the blanks when the others didn’t know. But for me, as their leader, that was unacceptable. I might have been a magik user, but I’d never learned anything beyond my own power.
My gaze fell to Krystin’s form on the bed. She’d stopped seizing and writhing, now looking like she was sleeping and nothing more. “Is there anything we can do to help her?” I asked Nate. “Can you infuse her with more ether or something?”
A small smile edged his lips. He shook his head. “I wish it worked like that. She should be out of the woods soon.”
I bit the inside of my cheek, swallowing down the feeling of helplessness threatening to overcome me. “Good. I’ll keep an eye on her. You two should go get some sleep.”
“No,” Rachel said. “We’ll wait this out with you.”
I shook my head. “There’s no point. If Giyano shows up again, or god forbid he comes here, we need to be ready. Go rest.”
Rachel frowned. “You need rest, too.”
“I’m fine.”
Silence followed, but eventually, they stood and left the room, closing the door behind them.
I took the seat Nate had vacated next to Krystin’s bed and peered down at her. Just like the other night, I wondered how it was possible for someone so fierce and determined in her waking state to look so peaceful and innocuous asleep.
“You need to wake up soon,” I said. “Turns out you were right after all. This team needs help. Your help. You’re more fit to be their leader than I am. And I—” My throat closed around the words, tightening around the cowardice of not being able to say them to her face when she wasn’t unconscious. Of admitting that maybe something more than attraction and annoyance lay between us. “You’re the only one who can help us scare off Shadow Crest. Who else will bring Riley home? We need you—I need you. So wake up.”
Wake up, Krystin.
Her eyelids fluttered and my heart jumped as if it were actually possible that my words alone had stirred her.
But Krystin’s slow breathing continued and her eyelids settled. Asleep.
WE LET Krystin rest for most of the day after she finally woke up. Around two in the afternoon, when she hadn’t yet come out of her room, Rachel forced a plate into my hands.
I looked down at the sandwich. “What’s this for?”
She looked at me, deadpan. “Bring it up to her. Figure out what’s going on in her head.”
I wanted to tell her that nothing was wrong in Krystin’s head. She probably felt too exhausted to move. But the way Rachel’s stare pinned me to the wall told me I was wrong. “Fine. Okay. I’m going.”
Rachel smiled. “Good. We’ll be waiting for you guys down here.”
I rolled my eyes at my cousin, then turned for the stairs. At the door to Krystin’s room, I stopped and listened. She wasn’t moving around inside, but a lavender scent floated through the space between the floor and door.
I knocked. “Krystin?”
A few moments passed before she answered. “Yeah?”
“Can I come in? I brought you lunch.”
Another couple beats passed. “Sure.”
I released a deep breath of tension and turned the knob.
Krystin sat cross-legged on the floor in front of a small table filled with purple candles, amethyst stones, and burning incense. A clear crystal quartz rested in her palm. “Hey.”
Looking around at her setup, I said, “Hey. I’m sorry if I’m… interrupting something.”
“You’re not.” She set the quartz crystal on the table. “I’m trying to clear my head.”
My brow creased. “Are you still feeling ill?”
“Not in so many words,” she said. “His magik’s gone from my system, but it’s still a shock to my own power. I don’t think he was trying to kill me. Giyano knew what he was doing.”
“Which was?”
She looked down at the quartz for a few long moments, then back up at me. “Giyano thinks the power inside me—the one that’s supposed to save Alzan—is a weapon the Powers want to use for themselves—in ways beyond the prophecy. He swears the power isn’t as based in Good as the Powers would have us—me—believe.”
I closed the door behind me and brought the sandwich to her. “And what do you believe?”
She chuckled once, bitter. “Honestly? I think the Powers were dumb when they handed the responsibility of saving their precious, tide-of-war-turning city to me. I might have been raised on the straight and narrow path of becoming a top Hunter and Blackwood witch, but you’ve known me for less than a week and know that’s not exactly something I’m capable of continuing on with.” She shook her head. “I may fight for the side of Good, but I’m not one of them.”
Oh boy. Instead of talking right away and risking shoving my foot down my throat, I sat on the floor opposite her. “I never said you weren’t a good Hunter.”
“I’m a fantastic Hunter,” she said. “That’s not the problem.”
Then what was? If she didn’t want to use her prophesied power for Evil, she didn’t have to. No one, not even Giyano, was holding a knife to her throat over it. It was pretty damn obvious that while Giyano might not be scared of her or me, he was scared of the power Krystin possessed. The one she refused to accept, right along with that prophecy. And for that, I didn’t blame her one bit. The idea of having my life planned out for me, start to finish, wasn’t appealing.
But Alzan wasn’t in the picture right now. And whatever power Jaffrin and Giyano were convinced she had, it clearly wasn’t either. Even she said she’d need this mysterious “other half” first. That left only one thing she’d be afraid of.
“You’re not evil, Krystin,” I told her. “You’re not even a demon. There are plenty of things I’m still learning about Darkness and the Hunter Circles, but I do know Giyano couldn’t have turned you into a demon just like that. You need more power involved and Autumn Fire.”
Autumn Fire was the changing season when dark, demonic magik was at its height, and when the Trade rounded up and captured humans, Hunters, and witches to be transformed into demons. It was a special kind of nightmare that no one ever wanted to endure.
Krystin curled in on herself, bringing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. Her shoulder, bare underneath a tank top, had healed completely. Whatever damage Giyano had caused now only lived in her head—the wounds that took the longest to heal.
I should know.
“I can feel his magik inside me, Ben,” she said. “It’s not gone. And because it’s not ether-based, it should be being destroyed my own magik. But it’s not. It’s still there.”
“It hasn’t even been a day,” I said. “Give it time.”
She shook her head, rolled her eyes, and rocked forward to blow out the candles on her small table. “We don’t have time, Ben. All Hallows’ Eve is right around the corner. Any last demonic transformations that are going to happen will happen before then. And that Giyano is being ballsy enough to attack us outside Hunter’s Guild says that whatever Lady Azar has planned for your son, Riley, it might be happening soon.”
“Don’t say that,” I snapped.
“Oh, come on, Ben,” she said, looking up at me. “Don’t tell me you haven’t considered the possibility that her
goal might be to turn him into a demon.”
My fists balled in my lap. “She’s had him for two years. Why now?”
“Actually two years or more than two years?” she asked.
I glared at Krystin. “Why does it matter?”
“Exactly two years or more than two years, Ben. That’s the question. She kidnapped Riley when she did for a reason.”
I gulped, thinking back. It’d been more than two years. Giyano had kidnapped Riley on a summer morning in late May. It’d now been over two years since that day.
My stomach dropped, blood rushing out of my face and limbs. My fingers went cold, shaking. “No.”
Krystin looked away, as if the sight of me losing my shit was too much for her. “That’s what I was afraid of. Are you one hundred percent sure Riley doesn’t have magik, Ben? Because I think Lady Azar has been waiting for All Hallows’ Eve, for the last night of the year they can turn someone into a demon, for the night when that dark magik is at its strongest. Which means she must be utterly terrified of what Riley’s capable of, especially if she’s waited this long.”
I shook my head. Slowly at first, building as the thoughts swirled together and fit themselves into place like a jigsaw puzzle. No, Riley didn’t have magik. Not that I knew of, but I hadn’t known much two-and-a-half years ago. My own powers hadn’t come in until I’d turned twenty-one. But Rachel had an older brother and he didn’t have any powers that we knew about. “No, Krystin.”
“I’m just saying—”
I glared at her. “Riley does not have magik. And even if he did, it’s likely to be elemental magik like Rachel’s and mine. Weak magik. Nothing worth waiting until All Hallows’ Eve for. And why didn’t she do it any other Halloween previous?”
But the more I said it, the more Krystin’s words sunk in, I realized that maybe, just maybe, there’d been more to Riley than we’d known. That maybe he had stronger magik than I ever could have fathomed. Strong enough to warrant Lady Azar’s apparent waiting.
“We’ll get him back,” Krystin said. “I won’t let you lose him. And I sure as hell won’t let Lady Azar turn him. He’s just a kid.”
“My kid,” I said. Mine. The child I’d freaked out about having until the day he’d arrived. The baby with blond hair like mine and eyes like his mother’s. My nose and ears. My infuriatingly stubborn streak. He’d been taken from me—maybe for good—by Shadow Crest. And I was scared, so unbelievably scared, that we’d never get to him in time.
“It’s okay,” Krystin said.
But it wasn’t. None of this was.
Krystin reached out a hand to mine and squeezed. The contact sent chills rolling down my spine, spiking awareness of where our skin touched, where she existed in relation to me. “I’m scared too. I’m terrified Giyano is right—that this power inside me is dark magik. I’m scared we won’t find Riley in time. I’m terrified of what Lady Azar’s plans mean for the Fire Circle, for Cianza Boston, for everything headed our way.”
“Fantastic,” I snapped. “Our fear won’t help us.”
“No? I think it will.”
I met her icy blue gaze with my own. “How?”
“Because Lady Azar has no fear,” Krystin said. “She doesn’t know the meaning of the word. She’s never had to. Aloysius himself is her father. She’s been protected and trained her entire life.” Krystin smiled. “But you know who else has? Me. And I’m on your side. And if we have fear and she doesn’t, that means we have the one tool we need. You know what that is?”
“What?”
“The will to live. Lady Azar’s never feared death, never had that rush of beating it. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have something to fight for, and that’s the most powerful magik in all the world.”
I cracked a smile. “Hope?” I said it like it was the stupidest word in existence.
“No, Ben,” Krystin said, smiling. “Unfettered determination and human instinct. Demons don’t know, don’t remember, what that is. We’ll get Riley back, and we’ll do it before All Hallows’ Eve because we have the one thing they don’t: faith.”
CHAPTER 13
KRYSTIN
Giyano’s magik wasn’t in me for long. My body rejected it in fewer than twenty-four hours, although the small taste offered so much more than a mere glimpse. No, his magik had given me the barest understanding of what made dark magik dark. Demonic. Different. But more than the fear that understanding caused, that feeling of being able to look headlong into a demon’s magik and see exactly how it’d twisted Giyano’s once-human soul, the dark magik called to me. Like a set of magnets set millimeters apart—calling, scrambling to get closer, defying even gravity to do so.
That was what Giyano’s magik had done to mine, to my soul. It pulled mine closer to his until it had almost killed me. He must have only given me a minute dose, but not enough to kill me. Not this time. Instead, my magik had backfired. And I’d been out for too long.
The next morning, Jaffrin called. We’d purposely neglected to tell him about our run-in with Giyano at the Guild the night before.
I sat next to Ben on the couch, trying to ignore the way his powerful aura rolled off of him the way Rachel’s magik did. Except, on Ben, his power always arrived with the barest wisp of the thoughts he couldn’t keep to himself. It wasn’t enough to understand the words, but impressions sometimes made it through my mental walls. And right now, Ben was feeling my power, too. He couldn’t see it, but with the two of us this close, our magik auras twisted together into a fluorescent green.
When he hung up, I asked, “What’d Jaffrin want?”
Ben pocketed his cell. “He’s looking for volunteers to go up to Salem with Avery’s team.”
Rachel’s gaze lifted. “He doesn’t think Avery can handle it?”
“Jaffrin’s always assigned a few dozen Hunters to the area right before All Hallows’ Eve,” I said. Though I’d just now been assigned to a team, I’d volunteered to go up to Salem before. There was something about Salem during Halloween, when the air was crisp and the leaves changed, that drew sightseeing tourists in droves to marvel at what once was. Salem, Massachusetts, once the home to the “witches” of Colonial America.
So much more had happened there besides the witch trials. But neither the tourists nor townies knew. And there was a certain beauty in that. Lucky them.
“I say we go,” I said. “There’re only nine days until All Hallows’ Eve. Something’s bound to be going on up there. Call Jaffrin back and tell him we’ll meet the other teams there. It’ll be good for us to get out and train against actual demons.”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. It seems like nothing more than a good way to get tourists killed.”
I twisted, sitting sideways on the couch to catch Ben’s eyes. “Okay. You’re right. Darkness doesn’t often do anything on All Hallows’ Eve. That’s because they’re usually too busy channeling power at some random conduit point somewhere and making new demons. We more than likely won’t run into any demons. But that’d be good for us, too.” We needed to learn how to work together, and doing so in a situation in which we wouldn’t end up dying was the perfect occasion.
Ben’s mouth thinned.
Nate crossed the room to the kitchen and began rummaging around in the cabinets. “Krystin’s got a point. Besides, a weekend out of Boston sounds good to me.”
Ben looked to Rachel, who nodded. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll call Jaffrin back. He said they’re leaving this morning, so go pack up while I’m on the phone.”
“Sweet,” I said, then headed upstairs. Not that I had many things up there, anyway. I’d never packed to stay for good when I’d showed up in that alleyway a few nights ago.
Now, I sort of regretted that. Maybe this would work out after all.
There was also just as great a chance that Giyano would tear our team apart.
AFTER AN HOUR-LONG CAR ride in two separate cars, followed by another twenty-minute walk from the first two available parking spaces
we’d found, we met up with the other Hunters. Many—aside from Avery and his team—I’d never seen before. Most were either younger than us, in their teens but more experienced, and the others were older, probably only on this detail because Salem appealed to them more than the same old activities in Boston.
We greeted the other Hunters in passing along Essex Street, sometimes with little more than a small wave in order to not draw attention to ourselves. Which wasn’t hard. Almost every street and shop had been packed full with tourists seeking out old histories and witch supplies, or just checking out the area. It made canvassing Salem for demons harder since the only way to point one out was by their burgundy eyes or powerful auras.
“Where to first?” Nate asked, glancing around to crowded cobblestone streets and brick buildings.
Ben checked his phone. “It’s only eleven in the morning. If a demon’s going to attack, I doubt it’ll be before the sun goes down.”
“Even so,” I said, “given that All Hallows’ Eve is right around the corner, I’m willing to bet there’s plenty mischief and demonic activity to find.”
“There’re museums,” Rachel said as she pulled her blonde hair out from beneath her scarf. “Festival stuff. Everything. Might as well treat it like a vacation day and keep our eyes peeled for anything off.”
“Let’s head out then,” said Ben. “Keep an eye open.”
And we did. The late morning moved into afternoon as we made our way between brick buildings and shops. Street musicians performed for tourists on Essex Street, their music echoing down the main thoroughfare. The scent of fried dough and popcorn sifted through the air, carried on sounds of children laughing at the occasional person in costume. We passed faeries and witches, ghouls and vampires—all fake, of course. Only one of those things actually existed, and I doubted the witches of my line and of the Cassano and Ember lines matched the witch image in these people’s minds. Although I wasn’t totally sure ghosts didn’t exist, but surely they weren’t like the grey-painted humans walking around scaring people.