House of Cards

by C. E. Murphy

  “Just me talking to Casper.”

  “What time is it?”

  “I don’t know. Late. Probably about time for you to get up and go to work.”

  Cole sat down beside her, looping his arms over his knees and glancing at her through bangs growing too long. “Grit…”

  “Whatever you’re going to say, Cole, can it wait until later?” She could still smell smoke on her skin and hair, despite having showered. “I don’t have anything left to fight with now. Can it just…wait? Please?”

  He answered with a long silence, finally ending it with a sigh. “Are you okay, Margrit? I mean, really. Are you okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Cole sighed again and reached out to put his arm around her shoulders and tug her toward him. “Okay. For right now, okay.”

  “Thank you.” Margrit turned her head against his arm, grateful for his silence, grateful for his simple humanity. They sat together a while before he pulled in a deep breath. “I’m not picking a fight. But do you smell like a bonfire?”

  Rough laughter scraped Margrit’s throat. “Yeah, I do. I—”

  “Nope.” Cole cut across the beginning of her explanation firmly. “I don’t want to know. We’re not fighting tonight,” he said, stressing the words. “You can tell me later. We can fight about it then.”

  “Okay.” Margrit unwound from his hug and scrubbed her face tiredly. “I should go back to bed. You should go back to bed. You have to be up in ten minutes.”

  “If I have to be up in ten minutes I should just take a shower.” Cole crooked a smile. “You could make me an omelet for breakfast while I shower.”

  “I could make you scrambled eggs with stuff in them,” Margrit countered wearily. “I never made a successful omelet in my life. I can’t flip them.”

  “Lawyers, always negotiating. Scrambled eggs with stuff in them sounds like a great breakfast.” Cole’s smile improved a few degrees and he got to his feet, offering Margrit a hand. She let him pull her up and they parted ways, Cole into the hallway bathroom that was by default his and Cameron’s, and Margrit to the kitchen.

  A white shadow on the balcony, little more than a blur against the night, caught her eye. For a moment the impulse to pull the curtains and ignore the world outside swept her. Then she lifted her chin and opened the balcony door, uncertain if it was relief or dismay that made her stomach jump as Alban turned to face her.

  “You’re all right.” He remained at the balcony’s far side, and she in the doorway.

  “I’m not dead, anyway.” Margrit hesitated, then dropped her shoulders. “Janx?”

  “Alive. Infuriating our hostess with his presence. I had to bring him to—”

  “I know. She dropped by to let me know.” Margrit looked over her shoulder to where she’d thrown Grace’s necklace, reminding herself to pick it up before Cameron or Cole saw it. “The police have got Malik’s body, Alban.”

  “No.” He all but whispered the word. “Or, perhaps, but they won’t by morning. Djinn were arrested tonight. They can’t be held with iron bars and metal handcuffs. They’ll take him away before any examination is done.”

  “Great. Accessory to murder and now responsible for missing bodies.” Margrit pressed her lips together and looked away, though she glimpsed Alban shaking his head.

  “Neither, Margrit. You acted in self-defense, and by human law, I acted to save another. Not that human law will judge me. We know how my people will rule.”

  A breath of laughter escaped her. “And I thought I was the lawyer here.”

  Alban returned her smile cautiously. “I may have learned a thing or two from you in the last week. Margrit—”

  “No.” She held up her hand, uncomfortably aware she was echoing Tony’s sentiment from earlier. “Not right now, okay, Alban? No apologies, no explanations, no anything. I need a couple of days. I can’t escape your world.” She bit her lower lip, searching for the truth within her. “I can’t, and I don’t want to. But I need a little time to back off and breathe. This…has been a hard week. So give me some time, okay? I’ll be fine. I just need space.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “I’m very, very certain. And right now you have to go, because Cole’s going to be out of the shower in a minute.” She had never had the chance to tell Alban that Cole had seen him. The impulse to do so rose and faded in the same breath; it would not send the gargoyle from her balcony, and she needed him to go. There would be time later to deal with the ramifications of Cole’s discovery. “Just give me a few days, Alban. It’s been too much.” Another wave of familiarity swept her; she’d pushed Tony away too often using that same argument. It was a mistake she didn’t want to make again.

  For the first time in what felt like days a genuine smile broke over her face. Margrit stepped out the kitchen door, crossing the step or two to Alban and winding her arms around his neck. “I’ll come back to you, Stoneheart. Just give me a chance to catch up on my sleep, okay?”

  Before he could speak, she stood on her toes and stole a kiss, heart hammering with joy that came from nowhere. Then, still smiling, she darted back into the apartment and turned to wave at the stunned gargoyle.

  There was hope.

  Alban watched Margrit slide the door closed, astonishment making him thick and slow. He had come in all expectation of finding refusals and goodbyes, and instead had been offered hope. Slow delight washed through him, and he turned to do as he was bade: give her space and time.

  Seconds later he settled on the roof across the street, crouching where he could see her apartment windows.

  She had not, after all, said how much space.

  Read on for a special sneak peek at

  The Black Witch,

  the first book in The Black Witch Chronicles

  by Laurie Forest!

  The Black Witch, Laurie Forest

  PART ONE

  PROLOGUE

  The woods are beautiful.

  They’re my friends, the trees, and I can feel them smiling down at me.

  I skip along, kicking at dry pine needles, singing to myself, following close at the heels of my beloved uncle Edwin, who turns every so often, smiles and encourages me to follow.

  I am three years old.

  We have never walked so far into the woods, and the thrill of adventure lights up my insides. In fact, we hardly ever walk into the woods. And Uncle Edwin has brought only me. He’s left my brothers at home, far away.

  I scramble to keep up with him, leaping over curved roots, dodging low-hanging branches.

  We finally stop in a sunny clearing deep in the forest.

  “Here, Elloren,” my uncle says. “I have something for you.” He bends down on one knee, pulls a stick from his cloak pocket and presses it into my tiny fist.

  A present!

  It’s a special stick—light and airy. I close my eyes, and an image of the tree the stick came from enters my mind—a big, branchy tree, soaked in sunlight and anchored in sand. I open my eyes and bounce the stick up and down in my hand. It’s as light as a feather.

  My uncle fishes a candle out of his pants pocket, gets up and sets the candle on a nearby stump before returning to me. “Hold the stick like this, Elloren,” he says gently as he bends down and holds his hand around mine.

  I look at him with slight worry.

  Why is his hand trembling?

  I grasp onto the stick harder, trying my best to do what he wants.

  “That’s it, Elloren,” he says patiently. “Now I’m going to ask you to say some funny words. Can you do that?”

  I nod emphatically. Of course I can. I’d do anything for my uncle Edwin.

  He says the words. There are only a few of them, and I feel proud and happy again. Even though they’re in another language and sound strange to my ears, they’re easy to say. I will do a good job, and he will hug me and maybe even give me some of the molasses cookies I saw him tuck away into his vest before we left home.

  I hold m
y arm out, straight and true, and aim my feather-stick at the candle, just like he told me. I can feel him right behind me, watching me closely, ready to see how well I listened.

  I open my mouth and start to speak the nonsense words.

  As the odd words roll off my tongue, something warm and rumbling pulls up into my legs, right up from the ground beneath my feet.

  Something from the trees.

  A powerful energy shoots through me and courses toward the stick. My hand jerks hard and there’s a blinding flash. An explosion. Fire shooting from the tip of the stick. The trees around us suddenly engulfed in flames. Fire everywhere. The sound of my own screaming. The trees screaming in my head. The terrifying roar of fire. The stick roughly pulled from my hands and quickly cast aside. My uncle grabbing me up, holding me tight to his chest and racing away from the fire as the forest falls apart around us.

  * * *

  Things change for me in the forest after that.

  I can feel the trees pulling away, making me uneasy. And I begin to avoid the wild places.

  Over time, the childhood memory becomes cloudy.

  “It’s just a dream,” my uncle says, comforting me, when the burning scene returns in the dark of sleep. “About that time you wandered out into the forest. During that lightning storm. Think on pleasant things, and go back to sleep.”

  And so I believe him, because he cares for me and has never given me a reason not to believe.

  Even the forest seems to echo his words. Go back to sleep, the leaves rustle on the wind. And over time, the memory fades, like a stone falling to the bottom of a deep, dark well.

  * * *

  Into the realm of shadowy nightmares.

  Fourteen years later…

  CHAPTER 1: HALFIX

  “Take that, you stupid Icaral!”

  I glance down with amusement at my young neighbors, a basket of freshly picked vegetables and herbs balanced on my hip, a slight near-autumn chill fighting to make itself known through the warm sunlight.

  Emmet and Brennan Gaffney are six-year-old twins with the black hair, forest green eyes and faintly shimmering skin so prized by my people, the Gardnerian Mages.

  The two boys pause from their noisy game and look up at me hopefully. They sit in the cool, sunlit grass, their toys scattered about.

  All the traditional characters are there among the brightly painted wooden figures. The black-haired Gardnerian soldiers, their dark tunics marked with brilliant silver spheres, stand valiantly with wands or swords raised. The boys have lined the soldiers up on a wide, flat stone in military formation.

  There are also the usual archvillains—the evil Icaral-demons with their glowing eyes, their faces contorted into wide, malicious grins, black wings stretched out to their full size in an effort to intimidate, fireballs in their fists. The boys have lined these up on a log and are attempting to launch rocks at them from the direction of the soldiers with a catapult they’ve fashioned from sticks and string.

  There are assorted side characters, too: the beautiful Gardnerian maidens with their long black hair; wicked Lupine shapeshifters—half-human, half-wolf; green-scaled Snake Elves; and the mysterious Vu Trin sorceresses. They’re characters from the storybooks and songs of my childhood, as familiar to me as the old patchwork quilt that lies on my bed.

  “Why are you here?” I ask the boys, glancing down into the valley toward the Gaffneys’ estate and sprawling plantation. Eliss Gaffney usually keeps the twins firmly near home.

  “Momma won’t stop crying.” Emmet scowls and bangs the head of a wolf-creature into the ground.

  “Don’t tell!” Brennan chastises, his voice shrill. “Poppa’ll whip you for it! He said not to tell!”

  I’m not surprised by Brennan’s fear. It’s well-known that Mage Warren Gaffney’s a hard man, feared by his fastmate and children. And the startling disappearance of his nineteen-year-old daughter, Sage, has made him even harder.

  I look to the Gaffneys’ estate again with well-worn concern.

  Where are you, Sage? I wonder unhappily. She’s been gone without a trace for well over a year. What could have possibly happened to you?

  I let out a troubled sigh and turn back to the boys. “It’s all right,” I say, trying to comfort them. “You can stay over here for a while. You can even stay for supper.”

  The boys brighten and appear more than a little relieved.

  “Come play with us, Elloren,” Brennan pleads as he playfully grabs at the edge of my tunic.

  I chuckle and reach down to ruffle Brennan’s hair. “Maybe later. I have to help make supper, you know that.”

  “We’re defeating the Icarals!” Emmett exclaims. He throws a rock at one of the Icarals to demonstrate. The rock collides with the small demon and sends it spinning into the grass. “Wanna see if we can knock their wings off?”

  I pick up the small figure and run my thumb across its unpainted base. Breathing in deep, I close my eyes and the image of a large tree with a dense crown, swooping branches and delicate white flowers fills my mind.

  Frosted Hawthorne. Such elegant wood for a child’s plaything.

  I open my eyes, dissolving the image, focusing back in on the demon toy’s orange eyes. I fight the urge to envision the tree once more, but I know better than to entertain this odd quirk of mine.

  Often, if I close my eyes while holding a piece of wood, I can get the full sense of its source tree. With startling detail. I can see the tree’s birthplace, smell the rich, loamy carpet beneath its roots, feel the sun dappling its outstretched leaves.

  Of course, I’ve learned to keep these imaginings to myself.

  A strange nature fixation like this smacks of Fae-blood, and Uncle Edwin has warned me to never speak of it. We Gardnerians are a pureblood race, free from the stain of the heathen races that surround us. And my family line has the strongest, purest Mage-blood of all.

  But I often worry. If that’s true, then why do I see these things?

  “You should be more careful with your toys,” I gently scold the boys as I shake off the lingering image of the tree and set the figure down.

  The sound of the boys’ grand battles recedes into the distance as I near the small cottage I share with Uncle Edwin and my two brothers. I peer across the broad field toward our horse stables and give a start.

  A large, elegant carriage is parked there. The crest of the Mage Council, Gardneria’s highest level of government, is artfully painted on its side—a golden M styled with graceful, looping calligraphy.

  Four military guards, real-life versions of Emmet and Brennan’s toys, sit eating some food. They’re strapping soldiers, dressed in black tunics with silver spheres marking their chests, with wands and swords at their sides.

  It has to be my aunt’s carriage—it can’t possibly be anyone else’s. My aunt is a member of our ruling High Mage Council, and she always travels with an armed entourage.

  A rush of excitement flashes through me, and I quicken my pace, wondering what on all of Erthia could have possibly brought my powerful aunt to remote Halfix, of all places.

  I haven’t seen her since I was five years old.

  * * *

  We lived near her back then, in Valgard, Gardneria’s bustling port city and capital. But we hardly ever saw her.

  One day, clear out of the blue, my aunt appeared in the front room of my uncle’s violin shop.

  “Have you had the children wandtested?” she inquired, her tone light, but her eyes sharp as ice.

  I remember how I tried to hide behind Uncle Edwin, clinging to his tunic, mesmerized by the elegant creature before me.

  “Of course, Vyvian,” my uncle haltingly answered his sister. “Several times over.”

  I looked up at my uncle with confused surprise. I had no memory of being wandtested, even though I knew that all Gardnerian children were.

  “And what did you find?” she asked probingly.

  “Rafe and Elloren are powerless,” he told her as he shifted slight
ly, cutting off my view of Aunt Vyvian, casting me in shadows. “But Trystan. The boy has some magic in him.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Vyvian, quite.”

  And that was when she began to visit with us.

  Soon after, my uncle unexpectedly soured on city life. Without warning, he whisked my brothers and me away to where we now live. In tiny Halfix. At the very northeastern edge of Gardneria.

  Right in the middle of nowhere.

  * * *

  As I round the corner of our cottage, I hear the sound of my name through the kitchen window and skid to a stop.

  “Elloren is not a child anymore, Edwin.” My aunt’s voice drifts out.

  I set my basket of vegetables and herbs on the ground and crouch low.

  “She is too young for wandfasting,” comes my uncle’s attempt at a firm reply, a tremor of nervousness in his voice.

  Wandfasting? My heart speeds up. I know that most Gardnerian girls my age are already wandfasted—magically bound to young men for life. But we’re so isolated here, surrounded by the mountains. The only girl I know who’s been fasted is Sage, and she’s up and disappeared.

  “Seventeen is the traditional age.” My aunt sounds slightly exasperated.

  “I don’t care if it’s the traditional age,” my uncle persists, his tone gaining confidence. “It’s still too young. She can’t possibly know what she wants at this age. She’s seen nothing of the world…”

  “Because you let her see nothing of it.”

  My uncle makes a sound of protest but my aunt cuts him off. “No, Edwin. What happened to Sage Gaffney should be a wake-up call for all of us. Let me take Elloren under my wing. I’ll introduce her to all the best young men. And after she is safely fasted to one of them, I’ll apprentice her with the Mage Council. You must start to take her future seriously.”

  “I do take her future seriously, Vyvian, but she is still much too young to have it decided for her.”