Blood Rite
Page 19
“Can we have cake?” she asked.
“There should definitely be cake,” I said.
“Dancing?” she asked.
I looked around us. Half of my friends were dancing already. If we gave them sugar, I’m pretty sure there’d be no stopping them.
“Sure,” I said with a shrug. “Why not?”
“You should go to weird zombie pocket dimensions more often,” she said, getting out her phone and sending a flurry of text messages.
I shook my head and left Jinx to party planning. I had preparations of my own.
Chapter 48
“A toast,” I said, raising a glass of mead. “To friends.”
The fermented honey drink was popular with every faerie present. Considering we were throwing a party in Eden Park, a magic garden filled with pookas, we’d probably go through barrels of the stuff. It would be worth the cost.
“To coming home,” Ceff said.
“To family,” I said.
Everyone was here. Even the faces of those who couldn’t be present in body, like my father Skyping in on Torn’s phone and Skillywidden reflected in the surface of the small pond where I stood. Each of their faces mirrored the love I’d come to feel for my chosen family. I would die for every one of them. But, for the first time in ages, I didn’t think I had to.
Jinx was right. We were stronger together. No matter what Faerie’s claim on me meant for the future and no matter what monsters Mab threw at us, we would prevail. We had to.
I was done losing the people that I loved.
“You okay, lass?” Hob asked.
“I know what I need to do,” I said.
In the end, it was all about choice. Everything important was about choice. I’d chosen my family. Jinx and I chose to be sisters and so we were. Ceff and I chose to love and trust each other and now we were betrothed. Sparky and I chose our bond, for me to be his safe place, and now he was my son. Even becoming a hero had been due to a series of choices.
“Ivy?” Marvin asked, shuffling large feet.
“It’s okay, dear,” Kaye said. “This is her destiny.”
Icy tendrils of magic slithered across the small pond. Frost rimed the water’s surface, but concentric circles rippled at its center, pulsing to the beat of my heart.
“Am I hallucinating?” Jinx asked. “Please tell me I’m hallucinating.”
“She made a Choice,” Forneus said, coming to stand at Jinx’s side.
“What?” Jinx asked, sounding horrified and clutching Sparky to her chest.
“My heart and the heart of Faerie are one,” I said. “I’m pretty sure they always were. I just didn’t realize it until now.”
“That’s because you had to choose it, princess,” Torn said.
“The lass be more than a princess now,” Hob said, voice barely a whisper.
A crown broke the surface of the icy pond, held aloft by the hand of a creature so beautiful it hurt to look directly at her. I’d never seen a high elf. If the lore was correct, the elvish nobility had left Faerie and the human realm long ago. But the thing I remember being told about elves was that they were an extension of the land, manifestations in the form of Faerie. It was probably a good thing that they were gone. If elves really did look anything like Faerie, we’d spend our days enthralled by them, because Faerie was too gorgeous for words.
Instead, I focused on the object in her hands. I hadn’t seen it from this vantage point before. I’d felt the burning of the ice and the piercing of its thorns, but I hadn’t seen the elegant weave of icy vines and frozen roses. It was beautiful and deadly as befit a queen of Faerie.
“Is this what you really want?” Ceff asked.
“Yes,” I said, a tear running down my cheek. It wasn’t like before, back in the Necropolis. This wasn’t a prison sentence being meted out by an outside force. I wasn’t frozen in place and my tears were lukewarm rather than razor-sharp chips of ice. The choice was mine to make. “I choose this.”
Ceff nodded and took a step back to stand at my shoulder. His message was clear. He would not stop me, in this or in any of my decisions. My choices would always be my own.
“You can do this,” he said. “I believe in you.”
For the first time in a long time, I believed in me too.
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About the Author
E.J. Stevens is the bestselling, award-winning author of the IVY GRANGER, PSYCHIC DETECTIVE urban fantasy series, the SPIRIT GUIDE young adult series, the HUNTERS' GUILD urban fantasy series, and the WHITECHAPEL PARANORMAL SOCIETY Victorian Gothic horror series. She is known for filling pages with quirky characters, bloodsucking vampires, psychotic faeries, and snarky, kick-butt heroines. Her novels are available worldwide in multiple languages.
BTS Red Carpet Award winner for Best Novel, Raven Award winner for Best Urban Fantasy, Imadjinn Award winner for Best Short Story, Independent Audiobook Award winner for Best Short Story, SYAE finalist for Best Paranormal Series, Best Novella, and Best Horror, winner of the PRG Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Paranormal Fantasy Novel, Best Young Adult Paranormal Series, Best Urban Fantasy Novel, and finalist for Best Young Adult Paranormal Novel and Best Urban Fantasy Series.
When E.J. isn't at her writing desk, she enjoys dancing along seaside cliffs, singing in graveyards, and sleeping in faerie circles. E.J. currently resides in a magical forest on the coast of Maine where she finds daily inspiration for her writing.
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Keep reading for sneak peek at Craven Street.
CRAVEN STREET SAMPLE
Flight from the Rookery: Cora Drummond
I squinted at the address from the evening’s dispatch, struggling to decipher the building number in the eternal darkness of Thrawl Street. Like most of the East End, gas lamps here were few and far between, leaving Whitechapel’s residents and visitors stumbling in a quagmire of fog, smoke, and shadow.
The conditions were rife for the wicked dealings of man and inhuman beast alike, though my finer dress and reputation for charitable good works, both mundane and supernatural, had seen me safely through many nocturnal ramblings. Not that I took my safety for granted. Being set upon by thieves was but one possibility.
In recent weeks, we’d seen an uptick in natterings about spectral activity and more than one credible case of demonic possession. Something had agitated the city’s spectral citizens and underworld denizens alike. The presence of demons was particularly vexing and, though the dispatch indicated a possible ghost sighting, I’d be a fool to assume that the night held only the threat of a simple banishing ritual.
My eyes scanned the narrow street, flicking to the intersection of Brick Lane to the east and the barely discernable crossroads with George Street to the west. The street was barely wide enough for two women to walk abreast, a feature that added to my unease. It would be far too easy to become trapped here between these deteriorating buildings. Their moldy brick and stone façades, gangrenous in the half-light, the last thing I’d see before the curtain of death fell.
I considered my decision to forego a position considered suitable for a young lady, but shook off the thought with a snort. I hadn’t the patience or skill of a dressmaker, nor the inclination to become a dutiful wife. Working for the Special Paranormal Research Branch might require quicker wits and a stronger stomach than the aforementioned options, but it was never dull.
The Special Paranormal Research Branch, a secret group of talented men and women working within the British police force, was created to monitor and gauge paranormal threats. I was part of an all-female unit with a success rate so high that we’d had more than one letter of gratitude from the queen.
Unfortunately, my unit’s successes had done nothing to put us in the favor of our male counterparts. Working outside the home, especially doing work that put us within close proximity to the darker side of the human and inhuman condition, was felt to be unsuitable for women. Saving Queen and country from demons, ghouls, and angry spirits was socially unacceptable, scandalous even.
So, with righteous fury and considerable displeasure, our male colleagues tried to make our work unbearable. Indeed, it was obvious even to the least observant that our male colleagues expected us to quit. We were repeatedly assigned the most abominable cases, frequently forced to walk Whitechapel’s tortuous and twisted streets. Not that it stopped us.
Through patronizing smiles and tedious sneers, we’d been labeled the Whitechapel Paranormal Society, as if we were no more than a sewing circle or a charitable group. But instead of quitting, we embraced the moniker, going so far as to use our “society” as a cover for our movements throughout the East End. It was astonishing the places a group of Spiritualists are permitted to venture. No soul wants to anger a restless spirit or those whom they believe to command them.
Not that we traveled unmolested. Whitechapel was rife with violent crime, both human and paranormal. For that reason, we usually traveled in pairs. But we’d suffered a recent loss, leaving us at sixes and sevens. As special sergeant, the safety of my constables was my responsibility. Which
left me on my own to investigate a possible supernatural disturbance, a situation I was regretting as I caught sight of the same dirt-besmeared walls I’d passed thrice already.
During my years with the S.P.R.B., I’d learned to find my way about the East End’s warrens, but I dare say the Flower and Dean rookery put even my navigational skills to the test. I’d lost the final hours of daylight searching that labyrinthine warren for the lodging house where guests had allegedly been terrorized by a ghostly apparition.