by D. N. Hoxa
My sword would have made me feel a bit better, but it was sitting in the penthouse. My footsteps echoed against the high ceiling, but nobody came to stop me. There wasn’t much to see in the hallway, and it definitely wasn’t an apartment building. It was some sort of a house—an old one, furniture in the rooms at my sides covered in white sheets, which was odd. There was always more space needed in the Shade for supernaturals who wanted to live here permanently, so why would the Guild waste such a big building like this?
When we reached the end of the hallway where a painting hung on the wall covered in a piece of white satin, I began to hear them. They were far away, but they weren’t whispering. Two people were chanting, and they were shouting out the words of their spell in unison.
It bugged me. Why wouldn’t they put a ward around them? Why wouldn’t they lock the door?
Because they wanted to be found or because they didn’t care who found them?
I stepped into the last room on our left, Nikola right behind me. There was a piano in there, an old one, the legs full of scratches, like a dog had chewed on them, and most of it was covered in a white sheet. At the other end of the room was another door, and it was half open, like whoever had gone through it couldn’t be bothered to close it. My steps were soundless and even Helen wouldn’t be able to hear them, not while the men were chanting, but when I looked inside the door, I realized why it had been so easy to come in here.
Half the room fell a floor below, with a broken stairway right in the middle. The railings on the sides were also broken, and we could see everything with clarity even through the doorway.
Below us, atop a single stair in the middle of the room, there was a stone fountain built in the wall, with seven separate faucets coming out of it the shape of flowers, but none of them were on. Helen stood in front of it, hands on her hips, looking down at the men in front of her.
She hadn’t changed at all. Her black hair still shone red, and she still dressed in black leather that hugged the shape of her tall body tightly. Before her, two men were on their knees, and something was in front of them, something that looked like a chest made of gold and wrapped in black velvet. They were both sorcerers and the bright pink magic that slipped from their hands gathered into the open chest, but I couldn’t see inside it.
The other three men stood right below the broken stairway. If I’d had my sword, I’d have gone straight for them before they saw me. As it was, I was going to have to jump in the middle of the room for better advantage.
I held up a finger for Nikola to tell him that I was going in first. It would give him plenty of time to shift.
Unfortunately, we never got the chance to make a move. The house began to shake as if just hit by an earthquake. It shook so much I had to hold onto the frame of the door to keep from falling.
I looked at Helen and found her eyes on mine. The surprise almost took me back. She wasn’t surprised. She didn’t shout.
She only smiled.
“Nikola, get out!” I said to the werewolf, just as Helen ran to the right of the room, where we couldn’t see. The chanting stopped, and all her friends were running behind her. The ground beneath us vibrated more.
“Where did she go?” Nikola shouted, trying to get inside the room, but there was no time. I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him to the hallway just as pink light swallowed the chest whole—and it continued to spread into a circle fast. An explosion was coming, and if we didn’t get out of the house, there was a chance it would fall on top of us.
Nikola resisted for the first few seconds, but soon, the vibration of the house began to throw us from one wall to the other. I had to make sure Nikola was right behind me before I got out, so it took us a while to see the outside sky. We were two feet away from the door when the pink light took over the hallway. It was coming for us fast. I had no choice but to grab Nikola by the shoulders and throw him at the door. I followed close behind, my foot an inch away from the pink spell.
But the light didn’t spread outside the door like I expected. Instead, it exploded into a thousand small versions of itself, light balls as big as half my fist, and they shot forward into the Shade. People screamed. The lights passed me, splitting and moving to the sides as if they were conscious, as if they could see me standing there, and I didn’t interest them. Nikola struggled to get on his feet—I’d thrown him harder than I’d intended, but he, too, couldn’t look away from the lights that kept coming out of the doors and shooting down the street, lightning fast.
“What is going on?” Nikola asked. “What is this?”
I only shook my head. Never before had I seen anything like it, but I knew one thing: whatever it was, it wasn’t anything good.
Chapter Five
Sin Montero
2 hours earlier
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” I said for the third time in the past half hour.
Malin batted her lashes at me. “I can talk you into anything, silly,” she said, giggling.
Unfortunately for me, that was absolutely true. She was one of my best friends, and there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do for her—and she knew it. That’s why I was in this situation in the first place.
“Okay, I got them,” said Jamie, my other best friend, coming to us with a tray full of drinks in fancy glasses. Drinks were her thing—she worked the bar at the best club in the New York Shade, and whatever she made was drool worthy. Just not right now.
“Looks like we’re all set,” said Malin, clapping her hands.
We were in her apartment in the Shade, in her living room that didn’t look like a living room at all at the moment. Her furniture was pushed against the walls, her carpet was rolled and standing against the door, and her dark hardwood floor was covered in white chalk and salt and sage and whatever the hell witches used for their rituals. I didn’t understand any of the symbols she’d drawn all over it, and Malin was sitting right in between them. Even Kit—a little red and very angry squirrel that everyone thought was my familiar—was interested, and nothing except food in general and chocolate in particular really caught his attention. He sat beside me, tail wrapped around his legs, and he just watched intently. On the other side of the room, Uma—Jamie’s familiar, a beautiful black cat—lay on the couch and slept.
Tonight was a special night for Malin. She wore a beautiful dark red dress, and she had somehow managed to tame her curls long enough to put a hair tie around them and secure them behind her head. She’d even painted her nails, and she’d never had patience for that before.
Because before she wasn’t about to get her Talent back.
“Guys, I really don’t want to do this,” I said when Jamie sat next to me on the floor, in front of Malin’s many circles and offered me a glass from her tray.
“Don’t be such a pussy,” Jamie said. “Drink up. It’ll give you a boost.”
“C’mon, Sin. Let’s just get it over with, okay? This ritual requires twenty minutes of chanting.”
“I know!” I had the handwritten papers right on my lap. “What if something goes wrong? What if I lose your essence halfway through? What if I get a word wrong?”
It was all my fault for agreeing to this in the first place. A few months ago, when we first found out about an organization called the Uprising, we also found out that they’d figured out a way to take the Nulling off darkling supernaturals. Since then, Malin, who was a necromancer and therefore Nulled as a kid, had began the task of reading every single one of her mother’s spell books, until she found a ritual that she thought was going to separate the Nulling from her body.
The best part? I needed to be the one to do it. It was a necromantic spell and only a necromantic witch or sorceress could do it. I wasn’t one by any means, but my Talent enabled me to steal people’s essence from them and basically become them for a few minutes. So, yeah, I really didn’t want to do this.
“You won’t get anything wrong, Sin,” Malin said. “We talked about this. I need my Talent, okay?
And if it doesn’t work, so be it, but by the goddess, we’re going to try this. Tonight.”
“How do you even know this is the right spell?” I complained. Because if something went wrong and I somehow hurt Malin, I would never be able to forgive myself.
“Sin, you’re stressed out. Do you know what stressed out people need?” Jamie asked. I didn’t want to know, but she told me anyway. “Alcohol.” She grabbed my hand and brought the drink in it to my lips. “Drink.”
“It’ll be over before you know it,” Malin said, more excited than I’d ever seen her before. “Everything will be fine, I promise.”
I drank Jamie’s cocktail, just a sip, and it burned me like live flames. Whatever she’d put in there, she hadn’t spared it. I put the glass down on the floor and grabbed the papers Malin had written for me.
Could I really pull this off? Malin was a Level Three witch. Before, I’d only ever stolen from a Level Two when I was a kid and from a Prime werewolf when I was an adult. But since I found out that I was what they called an Alpha Prime, a Level Five magic wielder that I didn’t know existed until a couple weeks ago, I’d…experimented. In the name of safety, of course. I’d hid in the Shade and had stolen magic from people just to measure the time, because if I ever did need to do it, I wanted to know what I was getting myself into. What to expect.
According to my little experiment, I would be able to copy the essence of a Level Three supernatural for twenty-four minutes and seven seconds. But—the only Level Three I’d stolen from in the Shade had been a sorcerer, like me. For all I knew, it could be different for a witch.
Fuck it. There was no way I was getting out of this, so I might as well get it over with.
“If something happens, you tell me, okay? If something doesn’t feel right or if I make a mistake, stop me. We can try again after.”
“Of course. It’s my life we’re talking about, so don’t worry about it,” said Malin.
It didn’t make me feel any better.
Getting my phone out of my pocket, I put on the timer, took a deep breath and focused on her essence. It was like a ball of bright light wrapped around a supernatural’s torso. The stronger they were, the bigger and brighter their light. Their essence, the source of their magic. Malin’s essence wrapped around her tightly, the white light taking over my mind completely. My own magic came alive, hungrier than it had ever been before I’d grabbed that amulet and it had almost killed me. I’d thought I’d returned the magic I took from it, but apparently, it hadn’t worked the way I’d hoped.
Good thing, too. Without it, I wouldn’t have been able to do this for my friend. I wanted her to have her Talent back because I didn’t believe in the Nulling, but I was afraid of hurting her. That’s why I had to make sure that I didn’t.
Replicating her essence took a bit longer than it would for a Level Two. According to my experiment, I needed six and a half seconds for a Level Two, but for Malin, my timer showed it took nine and a half. I had yet to time replicating a Prime. The foreign magic came to me, slipping into my skin, gathering in my chest, giving my own essence a clear view of what it was, how it worked, how much it shone and how much power it held. Then, my magic began to shift itself into it, stretching and glowing the way Malin’s magic did, until it became exactly like it, and the two kinds of magic melded together, turning into one.
I released a long breath. For the next twenty-four minutes, I was no longer a Marauder sorceress. I was a Necromantic witch.
Grabbing the pieces of paper from my lap, I began to chant right away.
Sweat covered me from head to toe. I read slow, double-checking every word before speaking it out loud, though I’d read the ritual four times since I got here. I just wanted to make sure I didn’t ruin anything by missing a letter, and Latin wasn’t exactly easy to pronounce. Jamie stood perfectly still beside me, and Malin had her eyes closed, chin up, legs under her and her hands on her thighs. Beads of sweat slid down my forehead, making it itchy, but I didn’t dare let go of the papers.
After the first five minutes, my tongue began to tire. My jaw, too. I kept on going, a little faster, a little more confident when I felt the magic moving inside me, responding to the words coming out of my mouth. My mind was blank—nothing but Malin and the ritual in it.
By the time I reached the fourth piece of paper, my chest began to hurt. The words were harder to speak, not because they were more complicated, but because every letter was laced with magic, and I’d already given so much. The harder I tried to pull, the harder it was to get it out of me and release it into the world, into the ritual.
The symbols Malin had drawn around her started to move eventually, as if trying to catch my attention. The dried leaves and the different herbs she’d surrounded herself with moved, too, as if the wind was blowing inside the apartment. Kit squeaked weakly. He was feeling uneasy. I pushed through, much slower now, even though I had no idea how much time had passed since we started. I couldn’t look at my phone for fear I’d miss a word.
The room began to spin as magic burned me, sliding in my veins, boiling my blood, looking for a way to get out. With shaking hands, I put the last piece of paper on the floor in front of my knees, never taking my eyes off it. I raised my hands toward Malin as I chanted, expecting a flood of lights to leave my skin. But it didn’t because I wasn’t a sorceress now. I was a witch, and witch magic was invisible.
Even so, it was just as powerful as some of the strongest sorcerer spells I’d used. My hands vibrated as the magic rushed through them from my chest. It pushed my hands back as it released itself, and I had to push back just to keep on going.
The last paragraph.
Dried leaves and powders began to rise in the air, as if pulled by invisible strings. Malin’s head fell back and her chest forward, and she let out a cry. My heart almost leaped out of my ribcage. Her arms spread to the sides, and she screamed again before she began to shake just as badly as I was.
The last sentence. Only five words. I can do this.
My jaw hurt so bad. Every muscle in my body screamed. My tongue didn’t want to cooperate. Kit climbed on my shoulder, squeaking, pulling at my earlobe, begging me to stop. But if I stopped now, what would happen to Malin?
No, stopping was not an option. I’d come this far.
Two more words. God, it was so hard. Breathing was hard, too. Malin screamed again, and her legs no longer touched the floor. Her red dress floated around her, rising in the air just like her, just like the herbs and leaves around her.
One word.
The power of the magic that tore itself from my palms pushed me back. I couldn’t stop it. I fell on the floor on my back, eyes open, but I couldn’t see anything. My body vibrated like I was being electrocuted. Warmth slipped down my nose and my ears whistled. My mind gave up on me.
When my eyes opened, I didn’t expect to see, but I did. I didn’t expect to hear anything other than that awful noise, either, but I heard—Kit squeaking in my ear, Jamie calling my name, slapping me.
Why the hell did people always slap me when I was unconscious? I could feel the pain perfectly fine.
I managed to raise my hand up to stop her, and she grabbed it, pulling me to sit. The entire room swam before coming back into focus. The first thing I saw was Malin, sitting in the middle of the now completely ruined ritual drawings she’d worked so hard on, mouth open, eyes wide as she looked around. I can’t tell you how good it felt to see that she was alive. It was like the world was mine all over again.
“Hey, you okay? Look at me,” Jamie demanded, grabbing my face in her hands.
“Fine,” I mumbled. “Mal?”
“I’m…I’m…” She raised her hands and looked at them, a look of pure shock on her face. “It worked.”
“Fuck you!” Jamie said, not daring to go close to her, to the ritual. “It worked? It freaking worked?”
Mal looked at me and her face broke into a smile. “It worked. By the goddess, I can feel it. It worked!”
> I closed my eyes and let out the breath I’d been holding. That was it. She was alive. She was obviously coherent. Her mind was her own.
And now so was her Talent.
Putting my hands in front of my face, I bit my tongue to keep from crying. The next second, Kit, and Jamie and Malin were all over me, hugging me and kissing me, laughing and crying at the same time.
Eventually I couldn’t hold their weight so I fell to the floor again, and they basically lay on top of me. For a long time, all we could do was laugh and cry and hug each other.
Finally, Jamie sat up and demanded we do the same. “We have to celebrate!” she shouted and offered us glasses. Some of them had spilled all over the floor, but four were still intact.
So we drank.
According to Jamie, the ritual had lasted twenty-two minutes and twenty seconds. I had no idea for how much longer I’d been able to hold onto Malin’s essence because I’d fallen unconscious at the end, but it was okay. I didn’t need to know. I could test a Level Three witch another time.
“The wards are still okay, right?” I asked. She had the place tightly warded, but you could never be too sure. The last thing I needed was the Sacri Guild coming to the door because they sensed the magic I’d just used.
“Airtight,” Malin said. “And the Shade has got our back, too.”
Yeah, the Shade loved her, just as much as she loved it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t say the same. For the past half a year, the Shade had hated my guts and I didn’t even know why.
“I need to try it,” she said when she was done with her drink.
“No!” Jamie and I shouted at the same time.
“Not right away. Remember what you said—your body needs to rest first,” Jamie reminded her, and Mal sat back down on the floor with us.
“I can’t believe it. I really, honestly, can’t believe it. I feel…” She touched her chest, taking in deep breaths. “I feel fucking invincible, guys!”
“Well, I feel like shit. If you’ve got any cookies and that potion you give me when I feel like shit, now would be a good time to go get them.”