Dajia, on the other hand, didn’t look all of her twenty-four years. As a witch, she aged slower than humans. She wouldn’t live longer; she’d just remain classically ageless.
She let her dark chocolate hair fall over her moonlight-pale face and tried to fade into the shadows. It was a miracle she hadn’t seen any regulators yet. They normally started crawling the streets at sundown, looking for infractions to punish as if they had a quota to fulfill.
The amber glow of lights from her living room illuminated the snow several houses down, which meant Mom had waited up. Beyond that splash of light, the towering outer wall of the sector loomed over the dead-end street: dark, weathered concrete higher than the tallest building. The wall was their second bastion of defense, protection in case the regent’s magick ever fell.
Gods forbid, Dajia thought with a shudder. Her fingertips hummed with the ghost of the stars’ warning. Peril.
A heavy, gloved hand fell harshly onto her shoulder, and a man’s voice drawled, “Wanna tell me what you’re doing out past curfew, little girl?”
Oh, hell. Mom’s going to kill me.
Dajia glanced up at the tall, black-clad man. For a brief moment, she flashed back fifteen years before to the Purge and the sight of her parents’ disembodied heads on the hardwood floors. She stepped away from his grasp, her heart pounding and her vision blurring. On a hot rush of nausea, she tried desperately to shove away thoughts of her parents’ bodies.
When she’d gathered her wits, Dajia offered an innocent smile. “I didn’t realize it was so late.”
A black hood covered the regulator’s face, leaving only his sharp brown eyes visible. They narrowed irritably. “Wrong answer, kid.”
“I’m not a kid or a little girl.” Dajia straightened, adopting a haughty glare. “I’m twenty-four and a high school literature teacher.”
“Uh huh, and I’m the Regent High Witch.” The regulator jerked her shoulder, fingers so firmly latched she ached. “You got ID to prove that?”
Dajia sighed. There were no cars in Sector 14; they’d run out of gasoline years before. No reason to carry an ID.
“You just walk your cute little ass home, and I’m gonna speak to your mother about your attitude.”
For the third time in as many years, Dajia sulked home with a regulator shadowing her footsteps. Her young face was great for building relationships with her students, who felt a connection to their youthful teacher, but not so great for dealing with the law.
The woman who had once been Dajia’s nanny opened the door, her hazel eyes widening as she saw the regulator looming over her daughter’s shoulder. Dajia’s long-haired, tortoiseshell cat—Ghost—wound around her mother’s feet, her green gaze judgmental.
“Good evening, Officer,” Mom said, tone resigned but eyes spelling out filicide.
“Ma’am, I found your daughter wandering the streets after curfew. You are aware Sector 14 operates under Code 97816.2, all juveniles will be indoors by nine p.m.”
“Yes, sir. However, my daughter is a grown woman. Not a juvenile.” Mom squinted at Dajia as if she wanted to call her a child and send her to her room to think about what she’d done.
Dajia turned pointedly to face the man and crossed her arms.
“Ah. Well, she’s so… young. Ish.” He cleared his throat. “Nonetheless, Sector 14 operates under Code 97815.5, all adult persons shall be indoors by ten p.m. unless given special permission by the Regent High Witch.”
“Yes, sir, we are both aware.”
Dajia looked away from her mother’s scowl.
The regulator whipped his citation book from his back pocket and scribbled something across the top of the sheet. “Name?”
“Dajia Bray.”
His startled gaze drifted to her face, but then returned to his notebook. “Date of birth?”
“August thirteenth, ninety-one.” She was used to weird looks at the mention of her last name. Her parents had held high posts on the regent’s council, and the Bray family had been popular after the Reckoning. Now, there were only humans left—like Clark and his parents—who hadn’t been murdered at the whim of the High Regent.
Mom had tried to make Dajia change her name after the Purge, but nine-year-old Dajia had been as stubborn as the grown version. She hadn’t been Recorded as Justin and Vanele Bray’s child, and her fiercely protective family would never breathe a word of her origins. As far as they were concerned, Dajia’s new mother, Myra Sheen, was a Bray by marriage.
The regulator made note of where she’d been when he found her, what time it was, and that he had escorted her home. The fine came to nearly double the last one.
“Why is it so much?” Mom snapped, losing all pretense of being kind and cooperative.
“For the time it took me to escort her home, and for her getting smart with me.”
Dajia put her hands on her hips. “I’m right here.”
“Attitude,” the regulator repeated, pointing at her.
Mom put her hands on her hips in a mimic of Dajia. “You were mistaken in thinking my daughter was a minor. That’s your fault in bringing her home, not ours.”
“Maybe next time she’ll carry her ID.” The regulator saluted them with a two-fingered kiss and faded into the dark night with a sardonic, “Ever may He reign.”
Dajia closed and locked the door. “I wonder how long it took him to memorize the code book like that.”
“Don’t even speak to me, Day.” Myra threw the citation on the coffee table as they passed through the living room.
Dajia followed her to the kitchen, where her mother poured a short glass of whiskey—1932, unavailable in Sector 14 for over twenty years and protected like it was the holy grail—and slumped into a chair. “You are too old to be causing me so many problems.”
Ghost leapt onto the table and sat, wrapping her fluffy tail around her legs. Even the cat seemed disappointed.
“I hardly think three citations in as many years is ‘so many problems.’”
Mom turned her glass on the table. She hadn’t bothered to add ice. “Dajia, you know the laws. You’re a grown adult. When are you going to act like it?”
“I don’t know, Mom,” Dajia snapped. “I guess when I feel I’ve lived the childhood I lost.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No. Life isn’t fair. And neither is the damn curfew.” Dajia jerked open the refrigerator and pulled out a soda. The only kind available now, made at a factory in the mountains beneath the dome. She flipped the tab, but it came off without opening the soda. Irritated, she slammed the can to the counter and whipped out her dad’s wand.
Her mother bristled. “Don’t you dare, Dajia Bray!”
Dajia ignored her. “Aperio.”
A short blast of pink light from the wand opened the can, and Dajia picked it up.
“Dajia, you can’t use magick for everything,” Mom snapped, slamming a hand on the table. Ghost, who’d watched the scene with interest, jumped and hissed, racing from the room. “You’re lucky that regulator didn’t decide to search you and find your unlicensed wand. I don’t think you realize how much danger you are in simply by being a witch!”
“I can’t not use magick in my own damn home!” Dajia argued. “The regent has already taken away my parents and my freedom. He can’t have my magick, too.”
“I should have taken those wands from you as a child.”
“You would have had to pry them from my cold, dead fingers,” Dajia snarled. Horrified at her tone and words, she froze.
Myra stood, leaving her whiskey on the scratched oak table. She wrapped her arms around Dajia and held her tight. “It’s okay, baby. I miss them, too.”
Dajia sank against her nanny’s chest, cushioned by her curves. When she was little, she hadn’t understood how her mother could be all hard angles and bones, and Nana was all soft, feminine curves. Now, Dajia herself was hard angles and bones, crushed against the woman who had loved her enough to save her.
“I�
�m sorry,” she whispered.
“Me, too, baby.” Myra gently rocked Dajia in the cool, dim kitchen, as if she were a frightened child and not a troubled young woman. The clock over the gas stove audibly ticked away the seconds. “This is a hard reality to live, Day. I know that. I know it’s even harder for you.” She stepped away, cupping Dajia’s face in her warm hands. “But we are all we have. You and me. I wouldn’t survive if anything happened to you.”
Hot tears pricked Dajia’s eyes, and she leaned into her mother’s embrace. “Nothing is going to happen to me.”
“Not while I’m alive,” Myra teased.
FOR SEVERAL YEARS AFTER HER parents’ deaths, Dajia’s dreams turned to nightmares as she watched their assassinations replay every night. Their disassembled bodies flopped around on the floor of her childhood home. Their eyes blinked, mouths moving but no words coming out.
She was well into her teens when the nightmares finally stopped. PTSD, her mother had explained. What they’d witnessed had been so traumatic, so violent, that their minds had to cope in the only way available. For Dajia, that had meant the nightmares and physical illness. For Myra, it had meant alcohol.
Dajia drifted in and out of a restless sleep and shaky dreams. She stood in her classroom, her twenty students busily penciling away at their desks. Her classroom was one of her great truths, the single most important place in her life beyond the home she shared with her mother. Every literary poster on the wall had been lovingly drawn by Dajia’s own hands. Pale yellow walls reflected daylight from the many windows, making the space cheerful. Happy.
The door burst open and three regulators came inside, wands held high. Swords gleamed in sheaths on their backs.
One black-masked regulator stepped forward. “Dajia Bray, you have been sentenced to death by the regent on grounds of witchcraft.”
Shocked, Dajia looked out at her students. They continued to work, oblivious.
Dajia reached for her father’s wand, only to find she didn’t have it.
The regulator unsheathed his sword.
“I’m a witch!” Dajia screamed, then clapped a hand to her mouth. She’d meant to deny it, to call herself human as she had a dozen times before, but the words didn’t form correctly. She tried again. “I’m a witch!”
The regulator nodded once. “We know.”
His sword whistled through the air. Her students looked up, watching dispassionately as death hurtled towards her.
The blade connected with a deafening explosion.
Dajia jerked awake, the room shaking beneath her bed. She sat up, struggling to make sense of the muddled place between dreams and waking. Beside her, Ghost gazed out the window, tail flicking.
The sky outside hung dark and starless, but for the hot, orange glow of a nearby fire.
Dajia stumbled from bed and searched for her boots in the gloom.
“Day?” her mother called.
“Here!” Dajia shoved her feet into her warm boots, snatched her dad’s wand from the nightstand, and hurried into the hall. She hit the switch for the light, but nothing happened.
Mom came from the direction of her back bedroom, tugging a sweater over her nightshirt. Her graying brown hair hung loose down her back, mussed from sleep.
“Lights are out,” Dajia told her, flicking the switch to punctuate.
Her mother didn’t reply, eyes widening as the full force of the statement settled between them.
The sector ran on the High Regent’s power. Not only did he keep them safe; he kept them comfortable, powering their homes for electricity and heat against the frigid weather.
“You don’t think something’s happened to the regent?” Dajia said.
Mom shook her head and opened her hands to the sky as if to say I don’t know.
Dajia grabbed her jacket from the hook in the foyer and shrugged it on. She opened the front door, ignoring her mother’s sharp rebuke as she raced into the snowy yard.
She didn’t know what to expect. Sector 14 had remained quiet and peaceful since the Purge, with nothing but minor violations against curfew or teens acting out in boredom. Dajia never felt unsafe walking the streets by herself.
But many homes utilized fireplaces for extra heat against the frigid northern wind. Maybe someone’s house had ignited, and they needed help.
Though that didn’t explain the lack of power in her house.
The cold accosted her the moment she stepped outside. Her eyes burned and watered. More snow had fallen while she slept, covering the streets and sidewalks. New snow always muffled the streets, making fresh and indifferent the world around them. In the sky above, the aurora borealis ribboned green, blue, yellow, an effervescent scar of color.
The fire-glow came from the wall. The second defense, meant to stand if the regent’s magick failed. Flames licked the edges of a massive hole, beyond which she could see an inky forest that hadn’t been visible in her lifetime.
Creeping through the breach came creatures the likes of which she’d never seen. Fairy tales. Boogeymen come to reality.
A guttural wail sputtered to life from the emergency siren located on their block. The decades-old piece of equipment emitted a sharp sound that ebbed and waned, gaining strength with each moment. Dajia stared dumbly at the tall post; it had always been there, since the day she’d moved into her nanny’s house, steadfast but silent.
Mom drew up beside her, her breath fog in the air. “Dajia. Get back inside.”
“That’s…” Dajia trailed off, her heart pounding, blood rushing in her ears. She shifted her gaze to the breach in the wall. “Those are ravagers, aren’t they?”
“Get back in the house!” Mom snapped, shoving her toward the door.
As her mother locked the door, Dajia sank against the foyer wall, her knees weak. The sector was safe. It was meant to stand forever. She’d been certain she’d live and die without ever laying eyes upon the creatures that had divided—and nearly conquered—their world.
She couldn’t shake the image of them slinking through the breach: Their ashen skin like snow on rocks. Bodies hairless. She’d caught a glimpse of bear claws at the end of spindly arms, and knees that bent backward like a wolf’s.
And no eyes, like the worst sort of nightmare.
They’d be fast, she knew. Faster than the inhabitants of Sector 14.
Mom grabbed her hand, jerking her from her horror. “The basement, baby. We have to hide.”
“We can’t hide from them,” Dajia said, her breath coming faster. She recognized this panic, the same breathless, voiceless hysteria that accompanied visceral memories of the purge.
Even inside the house, the siren wailed loud. That was its purpose, she reminded herself. A warning to the sector that the walls had been breached.
“We must.” Nana’s bruising grip dragged her to the basement door and into the darkness beyond.
Dajia flashed back onto another time and place, another bruising grip and racing heart in the moments before her parents died. She felt herself losing control, breathing ragged, heartbeat drowning out all sense of self. Ghost wound around her ankles, seeming to offer support in her own feline way.
Myra looked around frantically in the pitch black. “The hot water closet.”
“They’ll find us,” Dajia murmured, remembering tales of the ravagers’ preternatural sense of smell.
The two of them faced each other in the gloom. Dajia read fate in her mother’s eyes.
“I love you, Day. More than I could ever express,” Myra said, her voice catching. “It has been an honor raising you. Being your mother.”
“Stop.” The word fell between them, powerful in its ferocity. Dajia’s fingers tightened on her father’s wand. She couldn’t stand the defeat in Myra’s tone, or the thought of saying goodbye. She found a renewed sense of purpose in her mother’s voice. “We’re not dying tonight.”
“Like you said, we can’t fight them.”
“We try anyway.”
In another lif
e, she’d stood beside her father on the beach as her mother giggled and tossed water at them with magick. Justin Bray had whispered a single word in her ear.
“Praesidio.” His voice had been soft but firm. He’d clasped her hand, lifting the wand. “The most important spell you’ll ever learn. Powerful, but hard to hold onto, the way water slips through your fingertips. You won’t perfect it now, but you will in time.”
Dajia had mimicked the word, alien on her lips, and squealed happily as a thin barrier formed around them, displacing her mother’s water wave before it could soak them.
Justin and Vanele Bray had exchanged surprised glances. Dajia had been six years old.
Her father’s face was nothing but a memory, fading ash on a past that no longer belonged to her.
In the present moment, Dajia spoke that powerful word into the silence of the basement. “Praesidio.” Magick flared the wand tip pink.
She remembered how to set wards. Her training had been little and sporadic and meant for a child, but she remembered. Dajia scooped Ghost from the floor and passed the silent ball of fur to her nanny. “Get in the closet.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Protect us.”
Mom grabbed her wand hand and shook her head fervently. “No, you can’t. The regent will sense your magick. He’ll come for you.”
“I imagine the regent has other things to occupy his mind.” Dajia motioned to the eerily silent world above them, where dark creatures slunk through the night. “Our imminent danger is the ravagers. They’ll smell us, and they’ll find us. I don’t give a damn what the regent thinks about me.”
Dajia shoved her mother in the closet and lifted her wand. First, a circle: sacred space to hold them between the worlds. She could cast the protective spell dry, without the ceremony of calling the quarters, but it may not hold. She already had the handicap of using a wand from a soul dead for fifteen years. It couldn’t channel her magick the way her own wand would. Not for the first time, her shortcomings as a witch crippled her, and she bit back frustrated tears.
The Shadows and Sorcery Collection Page 41