“This is justice for those children,” I whispered in his ear. “Gilded Lily justice.”
I stood above him and waited for the light to leave his eyes. Once his final wretched gasp of breath was exhaled, I sparked a flame in my hand and wiggled it through my fingers before flicking it at the corpse. It roared to life the second it met his flesh, reducing it to ash in mere seconds. There would be no evidence of a crime. No trail for the police to follow. That was how we kept our coven, or ‘guild’ as Ivy called it, little more than a myth, a scary legend whispered in the streets. A way to breed fear in the hearts of morally repugnant men.
I glanced at my muslin shirt and found blood spray adorning it. As I walked down the alley, flames erupted all over my body as though I, too, were burning to death. But the heat never reached me; the flames never scorched my skin. Instead, the magic burned off any trace of Mr. Conroy and then died, just as he had. By the time I reached the cobblestone street bathed in the yellow glow of gaslight, there was not a sign of our encounter left to be seen.
Carriages rolled past as I stormed down the road, fueled by the high of exacting vengeance on a worthy party. But that sense of victory was always short-lived, for there was always another Mr. Conroy waiting in the wings, ready to make his fortune through dubious means. My chest burned, and I rubbed over my heart where the last shred of my soul remained—for the time being. Because every time I killed someone, however deserving they might have been, it felt like another piece of it died along with them.
But it was worth it.
It sated my own need for vengeance—a little.
Thoughts of Ivy and the others rescuing those children plagued my mind as I walked down the street, headed for the nunnery. Before I knew it, I found myself sitting on a stoop, drinking whiskey from the bottle. Anything to kill time so that I wouldn’t be there when they ushered those damaged souls into Sister Mary Jacob’s care. Blood and death, I could handle. Helpless victims, I could not. And so I sat and drank, then drank some more, until their imaginary faces began to blur and fade, and the ache in my chest numbed. Oblivion was so much more palatable than reality sometimes.
Maybe death wasn’t the worst fate for my victims, after all.
CHAPTER THREE
Ivy was waiting at the front door to the nunnery when I finally arrived, her lips pursed and eyes narrowed. “The Lilies have been worried about you,” she said, stepping back for me to enter.
“They’re always worried about me.”
Her arms folded across her chest, and I knew I was treading on thin ice already. “Only because you give them reason to.”
“Reason?” I countered, knowing it was a flimsy argument at best, so I hoped my biting delivery would overshadow that minor detail.
“Shall I list them all for you?” My silence seemed to invite that very action. “You’re reckless, evasive, drunk more often than not—”
“That last one seems a bit of a stretch—”
“And worst of all, distant.”
“Distant?”
She inhaled sharply through her nose. “Yes. Distant. At arm’s length. A lone wolf, if you will. So your sisters worry about you. As do I.”
Her sentiment hit me in the gut, and guilt simmered in my chest where my soul had once resided. The Lilies had adopted me, in a sense—taken me into their family and loved me as such. But they didn’t understand that loving me was a dangerous endeavor; one that came at a cost I did not want them to pay.
So I deterred it whenever possible, if only for their own good.
“And I’ve told you all not to bother.”
Her hands fell to her hips as she stared me down. “Yes, well, that’s a lovely sentiment in your mind, I'm sure, but it’s also useless because we care about you, despite your best efforts to dissuade us.”
If only I could…
With nothing else to say, I walked down the hall, glancing quickly into the room where the newly-acquired children slept. I stopped short when I saw how few there were.
“We received your message through Zella,” she said softly, as if reading my mind, “but I’m afraid we were too late. The children in the Fifth Ward were already gone when we arrived.”
“Gone?”
She stepped in front of me, honey-brown eyes peering deep into mine. “Dead.”
I silently cursed myself for not torturing Conroy further, then stormed down the hall, headed for our secret room.
“You did well, Oleander. Had the sickness not gotten there first, your efforts would have saved them.”
“Fat lot of good that does now.”
“Petal and Willow are assessing the survivors for any magical abilities while Agnes attends to their other needs. You can be angry at yourself all you want, but you cannot save everyone.”
A fact of which I was well aware.
“Where is Hazel?” I asked as I climbed the stairs to the library.
“Distracting herself with a new potion. You know how she gets when children are involved.”
I didn’t bother to answer. Instead, I pulled the worn black leatherbound book on the fifth shelf that served as the lever to the secret door and waited for it to swing open. The second it did, Hazel’s high-pitched voice cut through the air like a knife.
“FIRE IN THE HOLE!”
I turned just in time to protect my eyes from the glass shards flying across the room toward us. Liquid hit the floor at my feet and smoked for a moment before burning a mark into the wood. I’d learned quickly—the hard way—what happened when Hazel shouted that bizarre phrase and I didn’t move. I knew not to repeat that mistake.
Scanning the scattered furniture and walls of books to make sure they hadn’t erupted in flames, I let out a sigh of relief. Then I looked back to where the petite redhead at fault stood next to the work table in the center of the room, covered in thick pink liquid. Its cloying rose smell overtook the space, and I sparked a flame in my hand, hoping its sulfurous odor would drown it out. Thankfully, Ivy was already sprinkling coarse salt to neutralize the failed magic. We always had copious amounts of it on hand in our secret lair. Hazel was well-intentioned, but a calamity, to be certain.
“Explain to me again why you say that before your concoctions explode?” I asked, dusting stray glass off my leather Carrick coat.
“It means ‘take cover’ or ‘look out below’.”
Ivy gave me a sympathetic glance before patting Hazel on the shoulder. The poor Daughter of Earth’s auburn curls were even more disheveled than usual, and dripping in pink, thanks to her failed experimentation. “Maybe you should just focus on cleaning up for now.”
“Miners used to say it before detonating TNT,” Hazel continued, unfazed by Ivy’s suggestion, which was really more of an order punctuated with a smile. Unfortunately, Hazel did not catch on quickly. She was, however, incredibly resourceful and knowledgeable about herbs and flowers and ‘organic compounds’, which made her an asset to the guild in alchemy—when she didn’t nearly kill us in her potion-making process.
“What is TNT?” I asked.
Her brow furrowed. “You know, dynamite?” My blank face stared back at Hazel, and she exhaled in frustration. “Being from the future really sucks sometimes.”
“I’m sure it does, dear,” Ivy replied, as she always did. She didn’t have the heart to tell Hazel that she didn’t believe her. I, however, had to bite my tongue to keep my thoughts on the matter from escaping. “Now let’s get this cleaned up, shall we?”
Ivy looped her arm around Hazel’s shoulders and directed her toward a broom. At that moment, Petal, the youngest of the Lilies, walked in. The slender brunette didn’t flinch when she saw the damage, probably because she already knew it had occurred. Clairvoyance was such a handy trait—sometimes. My mother had been blessed with a touch of ability to see the future, but not enough to save herself from a brutal death.
Or me from my fate with the demon.
“I wanted to get here as quickly as I could.” She was winded, as i
f she’d just run from assessing the young girls we’d rescued. She stood there expectantly, as though we’d summoned her.
“Why did you rush over—”
My question was cut short by a quiet rap at the door. Petal shot me a smile, then turned to open it.
“If you were that good, you’d have opened before she knocked,” I muttered under my breath.
“I’m still honing my Ether skills,” she replied before pulling open the heavy door, exposing the false bookshelf on its outer side—the side that formed a wall in the library of the nunnery where our guild was hidden. Agnes Rose, a young novitiate in her second year of study, stood on the other side of our secret entrance, hands clasped and head slightly bowed.
“Hello Petal,” Agnes said with a smile. She was a simple but pretty girl, her hair hidden beneath a white veil that trailed down her back past her shoulders and the rest of her concealed by the shapeless black dress she always wore. She seemed so nervous around us that I could never get a real sense of her personality. And she never looked directly at me in particular, as though she could sense my lack of a soul and it scared her—as though I scared her. “I have a note for you all…from Mr. Grisholm.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you so much, Agnes.” Ivy swooped in with the elegance and grace of a dancer and pulled the sealed note from our benefactor out of her hand.
The Gilded Lilies, as we were notoriously known, were a coven of vigilante witches brought together by Grisholm to protect the women—human and otherworldly alike—of New York City. We operated out of the Sisters of Sacred Hope, a Catholic building that served as both a shelter for women in need and a place for aspiring nuns to give their lives to God, a deed I couldn’t even begin to fathom. Sister Mary Jacob, the elderly nun in charge of the wayward women who sought refuge there, didn’t know the truth of what we were or of the guild’s secret lair.
But Agnes did.
Why the pious young woman had anything to do with a guild of heretic witches, I didn’t know. Maybe it was an attempt to save our damned souls, or maybe she thought that, in some perverse way, we were doing God’s work by protecting the women of New York City. Whatever her reasons, she kept our secret between herself and us (and God, of course).
“Is there something else, Agnes?” Ivy asked.
“No, Miss Ivy.”
“It’s just Ivy, dear,” our leader said with a smile. “Please do give Sister Mary Jacob my love when you see her.”
“I will, Miss—I mean Ivy.” The young soon-to-be nun gave a slight curtsy, then stepped back to allow Willow, who’d snuck up behind her on all but silent feet, to enter. As the quiet wisp of a blonde crossed the room, she gave my arm a light squeeze of acknowledgement before she took a seat in her favorite armchair. Agnes gave a shy wave goodbye, then closed the door, hiding us away from the rest of the establishment.
“So, what does the note say?” Hazel asked, her pale, freckled face peeking over Ivy’s shoulder.
“If you’ll give me a moment to open it, I can tell you.” Ivy gently ripped the note open. As she scanned the page, her eyes continually darted to me. A note from our benefactor so soon after we’d just completed a covert mission was an ominous sign at best. There was typically a longer interval between assignments; Grisholm always did his due diligence before tasking us with a dangerous job.
“What?” I asked, barking the word with little tact. I didn’t like being stared at. It made the scars that covered most of my body itch and my stomach twist into knots. “What does it say?”
“Grisholm says there is something foul afoot in the city—”
“As always,” Hazel muttered under her breath.
“True, but this time, it appears that the foul thing might be a…demon.”
All eyes in the room fell upon me, as though I might combust at the mere mention of demons, which, in fairness, had happened before. But that was when I’d first arrived on the Lilies’ doorstep. My hatred of demons had woven itself into the fiber of my being during my captivity. My reaction to them had been visceral and almost impossible to control. I was much more stable now.
Truly.
“How does he know this?” I asked, rushing to take the note from Ivy.
“How does Grisholm know anything? He just sorta…does.” Hazel’s input did nothing to improve my devolving mood.
“Knowing Grisholm’s powers and ways is not, and never has been, part of our agreement with him,” Ivy pointed out. “He brings us the information and we deal with it. That’s the way it works.”
“Except this time, it’s personal,” I all but growled through gritted teeth. “He’s going to tell me, if he knows what’s good for him.”
“I don’t think he does,” Hazel said. When my harsh glare met hers, her eyes went wide. “What? I’m just sayin’, I don’t think he knows what’s good for him if he’s courting disaster with a demon.”
“His instructions are to track and surveil this being,” Ivy said, “and nothing more.”
“You four aren’t tracking anyone,” I said, heading past the workbench toward the room that lay beyond.
I swung open the door and walked by the racks of dresses and various garments the other Lilies often used to disguise their identities; the ones I never wore because my skillset was best used for hunting prey, not luring them. Beyond the colorful frocks was my destination: the wall of weapons. I pulled down my twin daggers and slid them into the sheaths that were hidden by my coat. It was long, black, and made of magically-warded leather—the perfect shield. The others huddled in the doorway and watched as I suited up for battle. None but Ivy dared to try to talk me out of it.
“Oleander—”
“You know I need to do this, Ivy. Alone.”
“You cannot possibly face a demon by yourself,” she argued. “You barely survived being imprisoned in their realm, and nothing has changed since then. We still have not finished translating the grimoire, and that is necessary for us to succeed against them.”
The sodded grimoire…the tome of evil spells in ancient tongues, from our world and others. It held the answers we needed in order to slay demons, but it would not give them willingly.
And now that the time to use its precious contents was finally upon us, we were still empty-handed.
“I don’t plan to face him—I plan to do what Grisholm asked.”
“Then why are you arming yourself?”
“Because I know what they’re capable of.” I stared at her, silently begging her to challenge my words, knowing damn well she could not. “And because they can kill witches.” I pushed my long black hair out of the way and fastened the buttons of my coat, the collar extending up to my chin for protection. “Petal, can you sense him anywhere?”
The young witch closed her eyes and tried to search a city of over eight hundred thousand for an earthbound demon; no easy feat for anyone, let alone a twenty-year-old Daughter of the Ether just discovering the depths of her abilities. Petal squinted and sweated as the seconds passed like hours, and my fingers fiddled with the pommel of a dagger beneath my coat.
“I see tenements,” she finally said, searching her mind for details.
“That’s half the Fourth Ward—”
“Wait…now he’s in Tompkins Square…”
“Those are two miles apart,” Hazel whispered, disbelief thick in her tone. “How can he move that fast?”
“Union Park!” Petal shouted. “He’s stopped there for something. It’s like he’s waiting.”
“That’s in the Eighteenth—only a half mile or so from here,” I said, a wicked smile tugging at my mouth. “With any luck, he’ll still be there when I arrive.”
“Oleander—”
“I have to go!” Before the others could argue, I rushed through the secret door into the library and started down the spiral stairs. Ivy was tight on my heels.
“Oleander, stop!” The weight of the Daughter of Air’s command halted me, and I looked over my shoulder to find her glaring back, hands on hips as
her magic blew her midnight-blue skirt around her. “I know you want vengeance—that you’ve been waiting for it since you came to us—but you’re not prepared for that yet. None of us are.” When I didn’t respond, she huffed out a breath. “Here,” she said, shoving a glass vial in my face, “drink this. You’ll need it to keep pace with the demon.”
The vile liquid smelled awful and tasted even worse; it nearly came right back up the second I swallowed. But as it settled in my stomach, I immediately felt a surge of magic course through me. “What in the name of all that’s holy is it?”
“Hazel made it earlier this week. It’s to enhance your strength and speed even further.”
“Will it make me explode, too?” I asked, thinking of the incident only minutes earlier.
Ivy gave a playful wink, masking her concern for a moment. “Let’s hope not. Now remember what Grisholm said: you are to gather information only, not engage, is that understood? You are no good to us dead.”
I gave a curt nod, and she turned on her heel to march back upstairs, leaving me to my hunt. I hurried through the nunnery and outside, where the gaslights on the main streets lit the way through the city. But I preferred the cover of shadow and darkness. My eyes still hadn’t taken to the light since I’d returned to the earthly realm.
With an incantation for stealth on my lips, I weaved my way through the bowels of the city, the power of Hazel’s spell driving me forward with ease. As I ran, I found myself cloaked in wispy black tendrils—smoke from my magic. Daughters of Fire could call it to them if they were strong enough, and I was the strongest to ever exist, according to Ivy’s records. I often wondered if that was why the Lilies had been able to summon me; if my magic was strong enough to be found even in the demon realm.
As I stomped through tepid puddles, the stench of excrement, decay, and death filled my nose. The city was riddled with disease and poverty, and barely habitable unless one was amongst the filthy rich (such irony to that phrase). And that was where I was headed; toward the neighborhoods where the who’s who of society lived, those willing to exploit the impoverished to make their fortunes. If I had my way, they’d all be put to death on principle alone.
A Curse of Nightshade (Witches of the Gilded Lilies Book 1) Page 2
