by Liam Lawson
I grimaced. “He would know a lot about how to avoid being bespelled by something like an adze, right?”
“Everyone makes mistakes,” she snapped.
Thomas cleared his throat. He met Soraya’s resulting glare with a dispassionate look. “Adze don’t really do long term control very well. Only short term by ingesting the blood of their victims.” He glanced over to Absinthe. “That’s probably why you didn’t sense that Caleb was in danger like you did with the Road Wolves. The adze had consumed his blood.”
Absinthe nodded. “But what about after, when he was with Lilian?”
He shrugged. “Maybe a powerful enough mage can block it? Just guessing here, I really couldn’t say.”
“Can we focus please?” Soraya was almost shrieking. “Just what are you trying to say about my Dad, Thomas?”
“I think,” I swallowed. I did not want to have this conversation, but it was my responsibility far more than it was Thomas’s. “I don’t think your dad is a victim here, Soraya.”
She whirled on me, whipping her mane of curls behind her. “The hell he isn’t.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Absinthe said. “Because whether he’s under the adze’s control or working with it on his own, can still get through the wards you set around your house and hurt your stepmother.”
Soraya yanked out her phone and began texting. As she did, a thought occurred to me. If Valencia’s house was still vulnerable, then that meant that Scarlett was too. She’d be heading right there after school. As Soraya tried furiously to get in touch with her stepmother, my fingers flew across my screen as I texted Scarlett.
Scarlett was one of those people who answers her texts almost the instant they arrive. I got no response. I checked the time. Her school would have just let out and she didn’t have track practice today because of the meet she’d just run in. She should have been free to answer it.
“Absinthe,” I started to say but she answered me before I’d finished my sentence.
“She’s not answering my texts either.”
Soraya scowled. “Why are you texting Valencia?”
“Not Valencia,” I clarified. “Scarlett. She’s alone right now, the easiest target.”
Soraya looked like she’d been punched in the gut.
“It’s alright,” Absinthe said, grabbing her arm to help support her. My body felt cold and exposed in the now empty places where she’d been touching me.
“We’d be able to sense if she’s in danger,” Absinthe said softly. “We’ll be able to get to her.”
Thomas cleared his throat. “Not necessarily. Your danger sense didn’t work with the adze after it consumed his blood or with Lilian. If either of them gets the drop on her you might not know until it’s too late.”
This just kept getting better and better. I texted Scarlett again, not expecting a response but still aching with still more worry when one wasn’t forthcoming.
A giggle floated down from above us. I looked up to find Trixie the pixie—and wasn’t that a sickeningly dumb name?—hovering overhead, a hand over her mouth failing to stifle her laughter. “You’re all so big and so clueless it’s so funny!”
“Trixie,” Soraya called, fear transforming into anger in a cutting instant. “You know something about this?”
“More than something,” the pixie sing-songed. “But nothing’s free. You want to know about the she-snake hiding from the hunter’s magic? I know this thing. You want to know about your father and the adze?” She lowered her hand from her mouth, revealing a vicious smirk. “I know this thing too.”
“What’s the cost?” Soraya demanded.
I looked back and forth between them. I guess I’d thought that with the pixie bound through a magical contract to serve Soraya that answering questions would be a natural part of their relationship. Apparently I was wrong. Trixie indeed. Bitch.
“A boon for each answer,” Trixie replied, floating down to hover at eye level with Soraya. “To be called upon when I so choose.”
Soraya narrowed her eyes, raw anger burning in their dark depths. If I were that pixie, I would not have been hovering so close.
“A single boon,” Soraya said. “You told me the snake was your enemy. Anything we learn that could hurt her is already a boon to you.”
The pixie pouted but seemed to consider this. “A boon then. I say when.”
Soraya visibly grit her teeth. “You say when. Now tell me.”
“The she-snake is like our hunter here, blessed thrice over with magical affinities. Water, truth, and obfuscation. She can taste a lie and hide herself from the eye and from magic. She could be in this room and we’d not know it.”
Now that was utterly terrifying. It also explained the interrogation and how she’d got the drop on me earlier.
“And my dad,” Soraya said. “Tell them my dad isn’t the enemy. I’ll pay your boon just to prove him innocent.”
The pixie frowned again, a deep and genuine frown, all trace of humor gone from her. “The adze is your father’s creature. It is at his mercy, not the other way around.”
“You’re lying,” Soraya screamed. “Why would you lie about that?”
“You know I cannot lie,” the pixie whispered, but in the quiet after Soraya’s outburst, her voice reverberated like a thunderclap.
Pain exploded through my chest. Not physical pain, but sharp and distinct. I sensed Scarlett calling upon our bond, using the magic it provided her with. I felt her fear and sensed that she was hurt, though not how badly. More powerfully still, I felt her magic tugging at me, letting me know unerringly what direction she was in.
I glanced over and caught Absinthe’s eye. She felt it too.
Simultaneously we rushed to the front of the shop.
“What’s going on?” Thomas asked, hurrying after us.
“Scarlett,” we said at the same time.
I continued. “She’s hurt.”
Absinthe pushed her way outside and expelled a gout of green flame from her mouth. The fires engulfed her and emerged as an enormous, saddle-patterned giant canine. I climbed aboard, fingers digging into the mane of fur about her neck and shoulders.
Thomas made to follow me onto her back, but Soraya pulled him out of the way. “There’s only room for two on her back and that’s my sister in danger.”
Thomas looked like he wanted to argue but instead gave a nod of understanding. “I’ll catch you up.”
I met his eye and gave him a nod of thanks. He returned it. I really didn’t know much about Thomas, but I knew then that I trusted him.
Without another word, we took off.
#
Scarlett was waiting for us back at Valencia’s house, a little bruised but already healing. From what Scarlett told us, she’d been attacked by Mr. Glow on her way home from school. The werewolf magic Absinthe had infected her with had already healed the wounds he’d managed to inflict, though not the trauma of the event.
If trauma was the right word. Scarlett was in a rage the likes of which I’d never seen. To hear her tell it, Mr. Glow had sucker punched her out of nowhere and nearly dropped her then and there. Apparently he hadn’t realized what she was and she’d got him right back, transforming and, depending on the telling (we heard it at least seven times), nearly burning him to a crisp or ripping off a body part (usually his arm). Maybe she really had. Either way, there was no way she was topping what Trixie the pixie had done to him. Just thinking about that made me want to squeeze my legs together. If nothing else about the last few days gave me nightmares that would.
We caught Scarlett up on what had happened to me, including and most embarrassingly, what had occurred with her mom at Mr. Glow’s direction as we all headed inside to check on her mom
“He did what to you two?” Her voice ignited with a series of Spanish curses I had never thought anyone capable of producing so quickly. She cut off when we reached her house and discovered that, although Valencia’s car was still in the driveway, there was no sign of her. Vlencia still wasn�
��t answering her texts or calls. Angelo and Mr. Glow had her.
Scarlett whirled on Soraya, storming over to her stepsister and getting right up on her face, eyes glowing with emerald fury. “Your father and his pet vampire are hurting my mom!”
Soraya had never been one to back down, especially not from her younger stepsibling, but here she shrank in on herself. Her eyes fell to the ground, unable to hold up under the weight of Scarlett’ gaze.
“It’s always you, isn’t it? Always fucking you!” Scarlett shoved her sister with more force than her lean frame suggested she should be capable of and Soraya stumbled back a good yard before falling on her butt.
“Why can’t you be more like Soraya?” Scarlett demanded, imitating her mother’s voice. “Focus on your grades so you can go to college like Soraya. Stay out of trouble and read books like Soraya. You’re more her daughter than I am, and you let that man—”
I grabbed her from behind and spun her around. Scarlett didn’t resist, instead burying her face, wet with streaming tears, into my chest. She screamed, “He has my mom!”
My magic rose within me, answering her rage with my own. It had been building in me from the moment we discovered the underwear and dog leashes hung out like trophies at the abandoned cantina. I wanted to crush Angelo’s throat beneath my foot while I poured fire down on his face until even the skull crumpled into ashes.
My magic urged me to hunt him down, to set Absinthe and Scarlett upon him the way I had set them to tracking Scarlett’ friends before, and then once we’d tracked him down, burn him. Feed them his charred remains. No one would ever find the body. Everything wrong he’d committed would be avenged. The thought was as satisfying as a home cooked meal.
I almost gave in to it. I was reaching within myself to call upon my hunting spell when I caught sight of Soraya’s face.
Tears ran down her cheeks in twin rivers. She was about ready to come undone.
After everything she knew he had done, Angelo was still her father.
He deserved everything my magic wanted to do to him and more, but he was still her father. If I did what I so very much wanted to do to him in return for his evil—and there was no doubt in my mind that what he was involved in was evil—Soraya would never forgive me.
I took a deep, unsteady breath. What had been done to Valencia and me was done. I’d stop him, but I wasn’t going to rush in, metaphorical and mystical guns blazing, and simply end him. If only because the last time I’d used the hunting spell without thinking we’d gotten banged up pretty good fighting that poltergeist.
No, if I was going to hunt him, it had to be on my terms. Not his and certainly not my magic’s.
I stroked Scarlett’s hair until she stopped sobbing. She looked up at me, eyes no longer glowing but rimmed with redness from crying.
“I’ve got a plan,” I told her. “But I need you for it to work. Are you up for it?”
Slowly she nodded. “If it gets Mom back, yeah.”
“Alright,” I said. “Here’s what we’re going to do….”
Chapter Eleven
It probably said something really bad about us that no one even once suggested that we call the police.
Instead we set our trap and waited. Scarlett had called Angelo in tears, telling him she’d been attacked and couldn’t get in touch with anyone. He’d asked where she was, and she’d told him. I’d made it a point to clear the furniture either out of Eleanor’s living room entirely or at least push it to the sides. Hopefully it would avoid the damage that had been done to the last home I’d fought in. Not that there should be much of a fight.
Eleanor had all kinds of useful materials in her office, though calling it an office was a bit of an understatement. More like workroom, laboratory, and studio all rolled into one. Technically we weren’t supposed to go in there. Technically I didn’t give a rat’s ass because our lives were on the line and Soraya needed the material to lay a ritual trap for restless spirits, aka, the undead. This included Mr. Glow, as adze were a type of vampire. Given that he was a strain from Africa though, and not the more familiar Eastern European variety, we weren’t entirely sure how the spell would affect him. In theory he would fall over and become a corpse until the spell was lifted. In practice all we needed was a few moments of distraction and we’d roast him.
Scarlett and Absinthe were transformed and lying in wait on either side of the entryway, hidden from the front door’s view. Soraya and me hid further in, her ready to set loose the spell, me to support the girls with fire. The land’s power coursed through me, invigorating me and fueling my magic. That was the main reason we had to do this here. I wasn’t in good shape. Whatever crutch I could get I would take.
By concentrating our efforts, I hoped we’d be able to take out Mr. Glow easily. I may have struggled with him by myself, but I’d been weakened and caught off guard and Scarlett had gotten away from him on her own. That said something about his abilities compared to my werewolf-cu sith girls.
The sound of a car parking up the street reached my ears and a moment later Trixie appeared in front of me and Soraya. Apparently veiling herself and scouting for Soraya was worked into their contract because she hadn’t argued with Soraya’s orders.
“They’re here,” she said. “Angelo’s staying in the car, but Mr. Glow is headed for the front door.”
We nodded.
“He’s not like an Eastern European vampire,” Soraya whispered. She was breathing hard, holding a crystal rod in one hand and a heavy stone bound in a rope made of twisted sage leaves in the other. I couldn’t begin to wonder about what they did exactly or how they interacted with the bits and pieces of other things she’d scattered throughout the house. Apparently they would all work together to create a magical cage, or a literal “dead zone” for the undead. “He doesn’t have to wait to be invited in.”
She’d said all this before, but I didn’t call her on it. I could taste her fear and hated that a part of me found it arousing. I wanted to make her my prey, to run her down and claim her for my own. I held my tongue, shoved down my completely inappropriate desires, and let her process. Whatever helped to calm her down wasn’t something I was going to interfere with.
It was a shame that the sun wouldn’t roast the vampire. As summer drew closer night was taking longer and longer to arrive. Hopefully he’d at least be weakened by its presence outside. At the very least, Trixie said that the damage she’d inflicted would have taken a lot of energy for him to recover. I tried, and failed, not to think about what that might mean for Valencia.
Hs shadow fell over the door window and without hesitating he shoved it open, breaking the lock and nearly tearing the frame from its hinges as he burst inside. His eyes glowed with yellow light and his fangs were bared. There was something manic about his appearance that should have made him terrifying. Except that he’d been so much more horrifying before, when he’d been completely in control. By contrast, this fury bespoke weakness.
Once he’d been in control. Now he wasn’t, and he was less frightening because of it. Or at least, I thought so. Soraya apparently didn’t agree because she let out a little yelp and dropped the crystal rod to the floor with a clink.
Scarlett and Absinthe leapt from their hiding places and Mr. Glow’s savage expression was replaced by one of unadulterated panic as the girls bore down on him, green flames licking from their open maws. Absinthe reached him first, going in low to take his feet out from under him.
She was abruptly airborne, flying over Scarlett to land in the empty living room behind Soraya and I. Flames roared from her mouth and she snapped at the air.
Not the air, I realized a second too late. At a shadow. Either the poltergeist from earlier hadn’t been killed or this was a new one. If it was the same one, then that confirmed Angelo’s involvement in the human trafficking operation we’d broken up. Either way, the empty room provided few things it could hurl about, especially with Absinthe’s fangs and flames brought to bear upon it.
> I rushed to her aid, remembering exactly how dangerous that thing had been before. If it got loose the entire house would be weaponized against us. With Mr. Glow in the picture there was a good chance we wouldn’t survive that.
Mere feet away I blasted the pair of them with my fire, energizing and strengthening Absinthe and torching the poltergeist. The land’s magic raced through me and laced my fire with still more strength. But the shadow in the fire didn’t stop wriggling or trying to escape Absinthe’s fangs or shrieking.
Shouting behind me alerted me that something was coming my way and I ducked just in time as Scarlett and Mr. Glow tumbled past, grappling and biting each other. I split the difference of my fire between my girls, bathing them and their opponents. Mr. Glow’s shrieking joined the poltergeist’s. There were few things in the world, magical or otherwise, that liked fire.
Nobody yielded. They struggled, thrashed, bit, slithered, and clawed. Blood flew, theirs and the girls. My flames sputtered. I was exhausted and the continued stream was proving difficult to maintain. I pushed on. If either one got loose, we were dead.
Chanting sounded from the entryway and a burst of energy washed over us with a little tingle. Soraya had pulled herself together and cast her spell. The poltergeist ceased resisting and Mr. Glow momentarily stiffened. That was all it took. The girls ripped them apart. Mr. Glow lost limb after limb, each ripped away and hurled across the room in arcs of gelatinous blood. Once apart from the main body and exposed to my flames, they ignited, erupting into clouds of sparks and ash.
The Poltergeist’s end was less dramatic. The more Absinthe bit at it the less of it there was until my flames simply evaporated it.
The girls turned toward me, doggy grins on their muzzles. We’d done it. My plan had worked.
I grinned back at them. “That wasn’t so hard.”
The now familiar click of a gun made me whirl around.
Angelo had Soraya in a headlock and was pressing the muzzle of a gun into her temple.
Terror and rage filled me. To my back, both girls snarled, the sounds like twin truck engines rumbling through the house. It made my chest rumble and fueled my anger.