by Cate Corvin
“The last time I was walked the surface, there wasn’t that highway with its metal carriages.”
I followed him down, breathing in the sickly perfume of the black flowers. They bloomed in thick clusters, and I might’ve thought one a pretty gift for my sunlight, if not for the strange feeling of nausea they gave me.
“Cars. If you’ve never seen a car, you’re easily over a hundred years old.” The night-creature pulled his attention from the roses to examine me for several long seconds. “Do you remember Waverly? It’s a human town.”
I wracked what little was left of my memory and came up blank. Of what I did recall, I was sure there had been no human settlements nearby. “No.”
He sighed. “Waverly was settled in 1803. So, you’re over two hundred years old, at a minimum.”
My heart clenched like a hand had wrapped around it and squeezed.
Two hundred years, there and gone in the blink of an eye, and all I recalled of it was darkness and death.
I couldn’t show weakness in front of the night-creature. “What is your name?”
He’d finally turned his attention back to the garden. “Roman Frost. What do you remember about this place? Anything special about this garden right here, vamp?”
“My name is Locke,” I said, nudging a bramble of thorns aside. “Not ‘vamp’. I am more than what I was made into. There is something under these.” I knelt, pressing my face to the leaves.
“I knew it,” Roman breathed. “I smelled something wrong about this. Gilt’s a psycho about her stupid roses, and there’s no way to get under the thing without her knowing. My wolf can’t quite pick up what it is, and I’m not going face-first into a curse.”
I took a deep breath, tasted a familiar, sickly-sweet decay under the roses, and stood up. “There is a body under here.”
Roman froze, every line of his body a study in tension while he stared into the brambles. “I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
“Is there a reason you were searching for bodies here?”
“I wasn’t specifically searching for bodies.” Roman strode around the brambles, searching for a clear spot. “But Gilt really likes this particular garden bed. It’s where she hosts all her fun little get-togethers. I wonder if there’s something here under the body.”
He let out a rough sigh when he realized there was no way through the roses to the center of the bed. “Guess we won’t know unless I’m willing to piss her off.”
I was starting to like the brash young man. “Allow me to assist you.”
We had a delightful time ripping through the brambles, sending handfuls of black petals flying through the courtyard and snapping branches. I was filled with great joy as I imagined the look on Mallory Gilt’s pinched face when she discovered her favorite roses ruined.
The center of the garden bed was sunken into the ground, and Roman finally stopped his storm of destruction, looking at the shapeless lump in front of us. A tangle of dirty chestnut hair was wound into the roots of the rosebush he held, framing a pale face.
“I know her,” he said, his eyes flashing, and I gently took the broken shrubbery from his hand.
“I will retrieve her for you. Move.” He backed up and I uncovered the rest of the dead girl, scooped her up, and laid her on the flagstones of the courtyard.
Roman knelt next to her head, pushing the tangled hair aside. Her face was shriveled and insect-eaten.
“Izzy Bitter.” He swallowed hard, stood up and began pacing, his fists clenched at his side. “I fucking told her not to do it. We told her what would happen if she pissed off Gilt.”
I left the corpse and returned to the garden bed. There was surprisingly little earth for the roses to grow in, and she’d been resting on stone. The bushes themselves must’ve been feeding on the body buried under them.
I pushed earth aside, revealing polished white stone etched with sigils and defaced with blood.
The taste of decay was overlaid with that blood, years and years of it. The dead girl’s was the freshest, still tangy with copper, but beneath it was a hundred more layers, belonging to a hundred different people.
Roman stood at the edge of the ruined garden bed, his breath shallow and eyes glittering. “That’s a waystone.”
I kept pushing, revealing more of the white stone with its crimson stains. A sliver of memory returned to me. “Blood can close off waystones. Feel this.”
His lips drew back over his teeth, but he crouched next to me and pressed his fingertips to the white stone. “I feel it, but just barely.”
“She used blood magic to make it sleep. Blood sacrifice.”
“That’s why so few have escaped,” Roman said bitterly. “With all the laws around covenstead sovereignty, the Tribunal can’t just walk in and start investigating. She’s been making sure all exits are covered and using us to do it.”
“Yes.” I scooped earth back over the waystone, obscuring its stained surface. It would take far longer than this night, and much more magic than he had, to purify the stone and erase the damage done to it.
Roman helped, and when we were done the garden looked like it had suffered a localized storm.
“You’re all right, Locke.” He stared down at the body of the girl he knew, his face grim. “Even if I don’t believe you about Lu.”
I brushed dirt off my hands. “What isn’t there to believe?”
He let out a short laugh. “I’m sure she considers you more than a friend. She brings you blood. What kind of girl would do that if she didn’t care?”
“The kind with a caring heart.”
Roman sighed and picked up the dead girl, cradling her shriveled form against his chest. “Guess Lu isn’t lacking for that.”
“Where will you take her?” I asked, nodding to the body in his arms.
“I’m going to dig her a proper grave.” I walked at his side, back into the gloomy shadows of the grounds.
“Did you love her?” The very idea would’ve seemed foreign to me if not for my sunlight. More than ever, the thought of her mortality weighed on me like stones.
She too could end up like this poor girl, her life snuffed out in an instant.
“No. I barely knew her. But she deserved better than to be one of Gilt’s sick little experiments.” Roman stopped at the edge of the woods. “All of us deserve better. If you’re really Blondie’s friend, Locke, you’ll do what I do: keep your eyes open. Watch everything. If Lu goes somewhere, go with her, whether she knows or not.”
“Is that what you do for her?” My voice was silky, the inner predator purring. It liked the idea of stalking Lu, but part of me recoiled at the thought. What if that stalking became hunting?
I was sure he was the one who’d been the cause of her tears. It was there in the cruel, hard lines of his face and his unanswered question.
But there was also a hidden pain.
“Always,” he said, and gave me a cutting look before striding into the forest, his head bowed over the corpse.
I left him to his somber business and retraced Lu’s scent, finding her window. She slumbered in the arms of the other night-creature, Roman’s twin, her hair as pale as the moon and draped over his chest.
She smelled so delicious, so ripe and alive, that my throat ached like fire. I slipped back into the night before the predator could take over again.
Chapter 8
Lu
Anthony waited for me by the gate on Saturday morning, wearing an ill-fitting black suit instead of his usual coveralls.
The periapt in my wrist ached when I passed through the gate, but none of the wall guardians appeared as I followed on the heels of Gilt’s human servitor.
The gate clanged shut behind me but I barely noticed, distracted by the car parked on the drive. It was a far cry from the beat-up Toyota my covenmistress had driven me here in.
Anthony held open the rear door of the glossy black Rolls-Royce Phantom, and I slid into the creamy interior with bated breath. The leather was soft a
nd slick under my bare legs.
I didn’t relax an iota as Anthony drove me down the mountain highway, only five miles to Waverly, the nearest human town.
Alicia and I had come from the opposite direction, so I hadn’t seen the local town before now.
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting, but there was something charmingly old-fashioned and anachronistic about it, like a bubble of the past mashed together with modern times.
The paved highway gave way to neat cobblestones, and the tall, thin two-story houses were mashed together, most of them painted white with overspilling flower boxes in the windows. A neat row of boutiques lined Main Street, the windows filled with everything from elaborate pastries to crystal balls. Dogwood trees were in full bloom. Even the streetlights were pretty glass orbs, perched atop lamp posts of twisted bronze.
It was hard to believe that such a peaceful and charming place was only a few miles away from a manor where so many people had died. But that had to be the reason for the charms painted on doors and the glittering lines of salt coating the windowsills, repellents against the newly risen dead.
My stomach twisted in a knot when I reached for the Phantom’s handle. The shops were open, and a human woman was walking a fluffy little dog in front of them on a pink polka-dot leash.
Her mouth flattened into a thin line when she saw the idling Phantom and she abruptly turned into an alley, the dog bouncing around her feet.
The local humans either feared or hated Gilt. I added that little tidbit to my mental tally as I wrenched the door handle open and stepped into the free human world.
My mouth went dry as the Phantom drove off, and I was left to stare at Waverly alone. According to Anthony, I could buy what I wanted within reason- the shops knew to bill Giltglass coven for anything their students purchased. Apparently, a town pass was a rare enough occurrence that there was plenty of funds for it.
I wished Shane had come with me. I felt more alone than ever out in the human world by myself, but he’d needed to return to the forest today. He’d kissed my forehead at dawn and told me to enjoy my time outside Cimmerian before slipping off to the forest.
But first, I had a task to complete.
The Historical Society was the first building on the street, a cute little cottage of white brick with a ruffled awning. The name was painted on a wooden sign outside the darkened windows, bright red and impossible to miss.
A bell tinkled overhead as I stepped inside. My nose was assaulted with the scent of yellowed old books, pine air freshener, and cats.
“Good morning! How can I help you?” An older woman with curled graying hair popped up behind the counter, and I opened my mouth to tell her my name.
Her eyes took in my uniform, landed on the Cimmerian crest embroidered in gold over the heart of my jacket, and all the kindness in her face vanished. “Miss Darke, is it?”
I nodded, feeling uncertain and ill at ease. Now that she’d had time to take in my psychic signature, she looked distinctly pale.
“Back this way, if you please.” She waved for me to follow her through a short corridor, where she opened a reinforced steel door on a cinderblock room that looked more like it belonged in a prison. “Artifacts are in the box. Do what you need to do, and don’t worry about clean up. Just go when it’s done.”
I swallowed hard as the steel door clanged shut behind me. I hadn’t expected a warm reception from the humans here, but that was a little coarser than I’d hoped for.
The only objects in the room were a battered steel table with a cardboard box resting on top. I approached slowly, lowering my wards and feeling for any hint of a curse and cantrip that might make this messy, but nothing reached back for me.
For all appearances, it was just a cardboard box.
I hesitated before I unfolded the top and peered inside, and almost knocked it off when I jumped back.
The box was filled with human bones, a jumbled assortment of graying, crumbling ivory and rotting bits of cloth. Whoever this person was, their remains had been tossed in the box like so much trash.
My heart hammered and my hands had gone clammy, but I forced myself back to the table.
Why did Gilt want these bones destroyed? There were plenty of bodies and cairns on Cimmerian’s grounds.
The skull was buried under a femur and half of a curled hand, barely held together with dried tendons.
I was suddenly sure that this was a test. The old woman manning the Historical Society was going to call Gilt as soon as I left the building, and report whether I had gone through with the desecration of remains or not.
But I didn’t have to destroy all of them.
With trembling hands, I reached into the box and took the skeletal hand, wrenching one of the remaining bones away with a sharp crackle. It was just small enough to be hidden in my pocket.
“I’m sorry I have to do this to you,” I whispered, closing the box again, and summoning embers of wildfire from my soul.
The box began smoking and finally caught fire, the bones crackling and popping from the heat. I backed away, coughing into my sleeve, as the wildfire tore through the box and its contents and left nothing but a pile of steaming ash behind.
The Society’s sole worker eyed me as I strode down the hallway, desperate for clean air and trailing smoke. “It’s done,” I said, and her wary eyes lingered on me until I pushed outside, harboring contraband and feeling sick at heart.
I was sure I heard the sound of an antique rotary phone being dialed before the door shut behind me.
And now I was free. Mission accomplished. Remains desecrated. Clue stolen.
I was going to enjoy every minute of my ill-earned freedom.
I bought a latté and a blueberry muffin on Giltglass funds and sat outside a café, soaking up the sun and the scent of roasting coffee beans and vanilla cake that filled the air. It was far better than the dusty, musty scent of the Historical Society.
The human girl working in the café had looked me up and down, taking in the Cimmerian uniform with a look of distaste, but in her case, I wasn’t sure if it was because I was a witch from Giltglass territory, or because the skirt was scandalously short thanks to Daphne’s pranks.
She’d blanched when she handed me the coffee cup and our fingers brushed. Humans and witches just didn’t mix well. The same magic that felt like a psychic signature or personal magical wards in my own mind felt like a pervasive sense of dread and discomfort to most humans.
It was two for two this morning.
The realization of how alone and reliant on Gilt I was weighed on my shoulders like a stone. Even if I chose to never be part of a coven again, I wouldn’t last long in the human world without going insane from the loneliness of it. No witch could.
And it disturbed me how much I missed Cimmerian now. I was sitting outside a cute café, drinking a latté with a foam heart on top, surrounded by flowering dogwood and the scent of vanilla beans and sunlight and freedom, and all I wanted was to go curl up in my library.
The key Dominic had given me felt like an anchor in my pocket, weighed down next to the finger bone. I knew Shane would be expecting me to enjoy my time away from Cimmerian, but I couldn’t bring myself to try to go mingle with the humans here, no matter how much I liked their town. This wasn’t where I belonged.
I finished picking at the muffin, put the lid back on my coffee and walked down Main Street. Other humans were starting to appear, but most of them gave me a wide berth. Several stared curiously, and I found myself ducking down a narrow alley between shops just to get away from the weight of those gazes.
I didn’t expect to find myself staring at a Warden.
My heart jumped into my throat, thumping as the taste of copper filled my mouth. The last time I’d seen one, they’d surrounded me as I spoke to the Tribunal, begging them to understand just before they sentenced me to a lonely and impossible existence.
And then there was his company.
The Warden was talking to Domini
c, whose arms were crossed over his chest, his back to me. The Warden’s dark eyes moved from Dominic’s face to me, cool and assessing, and I felt like I was back in the cold iron chair in front of the Tribunal, pleading even though I knew it was futile.
Dominic turned, the only sign of surprise to see me there a slight tightening of his full lips. “I haven’t seen him,” he told the Warden, and broke away to walk towards me.
My feet felt like they’d been glued in place on the pavement. The Warden wore the traditional leather armor, dyed black and edged with blue silk, inscribed with protective sigils and glowing faintly at the edges. “Let me know if you do,” he said, his deep voice as cool and unemotional as the Wardens who had gripped my arms and yanked me in front of the Tribunal.
Cold sweat beaded on my back as he walked away, and a flash of blue light snapped between his fingers. When I blinked the light away, he was gone, pulled away with a runestone keyed to another location.
“Lucrezia,” Dominic said, cupping my face. I gripped my coffee cup with nerveless fingers and took a shuddering breath.
“Why were you talking to a Warden?” Were all of them so cold? He didn’t look familiar to me, but then, the Wardens as a group had just seemed like a single, faceless entity that was there to keep me from running, to hold me still as the Tribunal crushed me under its heel.
Just because they hadn’t sentenced me to life in Obsidian didn’t mean that they cared what happened to me after the trial.
“He was looking for an escaped warlock.” Dominic’s fingers smoothed my hair, brushing a loose lock behind my ear. “What’s wrong?”
“I… I just don’t like Wardens,” I whispered, looking down at the ground. A carpet of broken glass glittered under my feet, a flaw in the perfect exterior of the town.
“Why is that?”
It wasn’t fair to hate them. They were just doing what they were meant to do: protect witch- and humankind.
That didn’t stop a twisted knot of misery and anger from forming in my stomach when I thought of how casually they’d dragged me in front of the Tribunal, like a criminal instead of someone who’d been the victim. I hadn’t started the fight with Jonathan Arrow, but I’d had no choice but to end it.
