by Apollo Blake
As dark as his eyes and twice as powerful, if it was even possible, it left me breathless, reeling—if I’d been standing, it might have knocked me off of my feet.
“God,” I mouthed. “God.”
I could hardly breathe.
Ursa clapped me on the back. “Alright?”
“You are. . .surprisingly capable,” Althea said haltingly. It was as much of a compliment as I’d get out of her, I suspected. She reigned in her surprise at the burst of magik. “Or you will be, once you’ve mastered the potential you just unchained.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Be careful with it,” she advised. Ursa’s eyes dated between us. “It could very easily overwhelm you. Or paint a target on your back, if you don’t learn to conceal it. One of the reasons Hunter has to practise ward magik,” Althea explained, expression grim. “He has to hide not only from his father, but from other charmers who might possess the gift of absorption. He’s one of the most powerful I’ve seen in generations.”
“And I can tap into that.” On top of my own abilities. Between the two of us, what did that mean? What could we be capable of?
She nodded. “You can. You should. If you can access his physical attributes Crayton, along with anybody else who might try, would be very hard-pressed to kill you.”
But I couldn’t grasp it. I hadn’t even been able to grasp my own sense of signatures and energy until now, and that was general magik. “We’ll see,” I muttered. “What about the gifts from the relic?”
“You should be able to find your way to at least one of them by now,” Althea said.
Ursa added, “You just have to breathe and center yourself.”
Easier said than done, but I followed directions. I reached into my own magik, trying to grasp the essence of it. It came more easily now, racing forth with the lightest prodding. It was a blast of cold light, so frozen it burned like fire, like falling.
I heard Ursa gasp and opened my eyes, not realizing I’d closed them in the first place. “What?”
Their eyes were wide, cheeks like rose petals. They pushed brown curls out of their face. “You. . .you’re invisible.”
I looked down. Couldn’t see myself. “Oh.”
When I moved my hand, I could feel it, reach out and touch it with the other one, but couldn’t catch a glimpse of either of them. “That might make things a bit easier. How do I turn back?”
I scrunched my eyes tightly and willed the mask to fall away. Slowly, ever so slowly, I faded back into existence, the magik melting to reveal the truth.
I wished I could paint that—the way magik was so often a lie, the way it looked as it melted away, leaving nothing but a person.
Another thing I didn’t possess the skill to capture. If I used invisibility for a career in government spying, I could probably afford tuition at a decent art school. Just saying. Mystical gay espionage, that’s the dream life.
“A valuable gift,” said Althea. “You’ll start to receive the others more quickly now, if there are any.”
“Good.” I stood. Almost time to go, though I was dreading what would come to pass once I walked out their door. “Any tips on murdering a magikal maniac?”
“My son.” The old woman looked thoughtful for a moment. “There is always the book,” she said, and Ursa sputtered.
“That’s too—” they stopped, wordless.
“Too?”
Ursa didn’t answer. After a moment or so, Althea spoke for them.
“The Silencing Tome. It chronicles the life of the first Charmer, a queen who worked miracles. It is said that at the birth of magik she turned to her sisters in arms and—”
I cut her off. “Listen, no offense, but I don’t give a rat’s ass if your grimoire passes the Bechedel test or not. Will it or will it not help me kill your psychotic offspring?”
In the corner, Ursa’s eyes widened a fraction of an inch.
I waited for Althea to incinerate me or something.
It never happened.
“It will not,” the consultant said grimly. “Though there are spells that will calm your mind before you go into battle, and—”
“No,” I decided immediately, “I don’t need calm. I need adrenaline. I work best when I’m wired.”
Althea opened her mouth to speak just as my phone rang. Uh oh. If Hunter had gotten to the club already he was going to be pissed to find me gone.
This had probably been a bad idea, but I’d wanted to speak to Althea myself, had to know I’d exhausted every advantage I could before facing her son. Needed time alone to clear my head, too. I fished out the phone and exhaled in slight relief after seeing the caller. Riley—still problematic, if she’d come to say goodbye again and not been able to find me, but more manageable than Hunter noticing my absence would be.
I swiped the screen and brought the phone to my ear. “Riley?” I asked, but it wasn’t Riley who answered.
“Hardly,” Destiny laughed into the phone.
THIRTY-ONE
WHAT HELL LOOKS LIKE
What did hell look like? If I was being honest it was probably this old pool hall in the West Side where me and Riley had used to go to score pot in the ninth grade.
There was this long alley behind the tin building that housed the pool hall and bar. Narrow and full of weeds and boulders, lined on the other side by a faded red fence taller than us, enclosing a yellowed lawn, and a long white duplex with white rubber siding and black finishing. They blocked out the sun, so it was always shadowy there. Weeds sprouted all along that alley, and we’d always met our dealer at the mouth of it and then ventured deeper when the girl left, sitting against the base of the wall and smoking from an old pipe Riley didn’t have anymore, this tiny blue thing she called Hypatia, after some crater on the moon.
Sometimes as we smoked someone would shove open the heavy back door of the pool hall and leave it propped open with a cinder block. If they saw us, they said fuck all, and nobody ever called the cops.
I guess in most ways I miss that alley—even though it was open on both ends it felt like its own little world on the inside, like nobody could reach us there—and it offered a safe space where we could hide from the outside for a while, listening to the bad music and the sound of pool balls clacking together emanating from inside. But I still hated it. It was where we’d gone to get high and spill the things we couldn’t elsewhere. We’d sit there and talk until we were both crying, and we didn’t comfort each other, because we weren’t that kind of people, but we were there, just there, sitting inches apart, and the being there—the act of existing near each other—that was enough comforting for the both of us.
We’d looked away from each other, staring at that ugly, flaking, stupid fence, and told one another the bullshit that we pretended not to care about or couldn’t normally talk about, because it split us open like eggs, and just passed that pipe back and forth.
We stopped going there sometime around the beginning of eleventh grade when the dealer had moved to Vancouver and I’d found a new one and Riley had quit smoking altogether. I didn’t remember exactly the last time I’d been there, when the last time had been or what it was like.
I guess life is like that; you never knew your last words would be your last words until after the fact, never truly could tell the last time you’d see a place until that time had already passed. But the murkiness of it annoyed me, knowledge and memories eluding my grasp, maybe impossible to reclaim. Lack of closure.
And that was what hell seemed like: not burning, not being tortured, or rotting alive, or absolute isolation.
Just not knowing or not remembering—not being able to go back and change anything. Looking back on things you’d done wrong or left unfinished that you couldn’t reconcile with. If that was truly hell then I was already living it, every day, with a pile of regrets ever-expanding behind me.
But for some reason I equated suffering with the mental image of the fucking alley behind the ugly pool hall, and I think a part
of me, forever sixteen and confused and angry, always will.
The point is, for as long as I could remember, that’s what suffering had looked like.
And now? Not it looked like this: not being close to Hunter. Not being able to reach out and touch him, or have him standing next to me throwing insults at me while he held my hand. Not being able to do magik with him, feeling our powers flare together through the bond in a way that stole my breath, left me intoxicated on the rush of it.
Why? I have no clue. Because of magik, maybe. Because I’m a fucking idiot, probably. Both. The bond was so close to settling now, it was like we were partly the same person.
Didn’t change anything.
There was only one option for me now. He would never forgive me for this. And I didn’t want to live like that, without him, without magik, but I could. I could if I had to. I could if it meant saving Riley. I looked my only choice in the eyes, and I made it, without a second thought.
THIRTY-TWO
A WIN/WIN SITUATION
I stood alone in the snow, doubts snapping at my heels, resolve keeping me from moving. Snow swirled around my face, wind lifting the pale strands to get caught in my eyelashes. It was dark out here, and empty. The grass was covered in a light dusting of snow, my tracks the only ones leading out into the middle of the baseball field. I’d come to the middle so I would see Destiny coming from a distance, so I couldn’t be jumped or ambushed.
The world felt like it was being held together by duct tape.
She’d told me to meet her on the lower west side, so I’d chosen this shitty, overgrown baseball diamond full of dog shit and ice and weeds.
I’d also sent Ursa to Temptation to tell the others to track my signature. I wasn’t stupid enough to think I could rush in, guns blazing, and save Riley on my own—but I could try, however futile it might be, to lead backup in to help me before it was too late. It might end up being too late. I’d felt Hunter’s panic and rage and desperation pour through the bond fifteen minutes later while I was on a bus hurtling across the Harbour Bridge. It had been too late to turn back, not that I would have.
Once I got past Crayton’s wards they would lose me, and then they’d have to pick up the trail on foot. But if I could distract him long enough for the others to arrive, we could pull this off. That’s what Ursa thought. It had to count for something, right?
My strength, everything I’d witnessed and survived to get to this point, it had to count for something.
Shaking. Pacing. Spinning around in the cold for any glimpse of this stupid Vampire. My hands shook at my side, breath frosting in the air.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and whirled around, facing the rows of trees on the other side of the fence, pine needles bowing to the breeze, dark sky above them full of empty black space.
I turned again, and Destiny was there. Somehow I wasn’t surprised at all. She stood five feet away with her hands on her hips, black top sparkling with glittery beads that reflected the streetlights nearby.
Her hand wasn’t in a cast or brace or anything. It hung at her side, perfectly healed.
Her narrow eyes flashed with annoyance. “Let’s get this over with. I have better things to do than play cab driver.”
“Where’s my friend?”
“Back at the house.” She grinned at me, gloating. “We wouldn’t bring the bait into the shark tank, would we? You can come and get her on his terms, if you want her.”
“I hope he pays you well. Not that it would be worth it, if he did.”
“You don’t know anything,” she said breezily.
The Vampire walked away without another word, leaving me to follow without looking back. I watched her retreat, halfway expecting her to turn around and knock me out. Instead, she hopped the chest-high fence, and waited while I did the same, less gracefully. Destiny led me to a luxurious car idling on the side of the road, walking around to the driver’s side.
“Get in.”
I climbed into the passenger side. The chariot of the enemy.
My hands were shaking, and I was tempted to shove them into my jacket pockets to hide it, but figured I might need them to defend myself. I gripped my knees and dug my fingernails into black denim.
This might as well have been a hearse waiting to take me to my own funeral.
The Vampire drove. We flew through the streets in the sleek car, lights flashing by, nothing but bright lines blurring from the speed like they were trying to drag me back, hold me away from our destination the way Hunter wanted to. But I was here, and I was doing this. If it meant going against the light, then that’s what I would do.
“Is he going to kill me?” I asked, “Or just drain my powers?”
“Depends on his mood,” Destiny said, uncaring. “Could you not talk to me right now? I’ve got better things to focus on.”
“Fantastic.”
Idiot, I thought at Riley. Stupid, stubborn idiot, making me care about you. This is what happens when you care.
It was my fault, though, in the end.
I’d sent her home. I’d said she would be safer if she left the club. If she had stayed there, she might not be in Crayton’s clutches right now. I had no idea what he would do to her, but every image of her face crumbling in pain, all of the ways he could hurt her, kept flashing through my mind, making me crazy with violence.
I would kill Crayton. I would kill every last living thing that got between me and my friend, if I had to.
“Hurry up.” I told the Vampire.
She glared at me, but a second later her foot pressed harder on the gas and we shot forward into the unknown night, closer to my potential destruction.
THIRTY-THREE
PAIN, AND MOTION
Destiny took me to a tourist spot. It loomed out of the dark like something from a fairy tale, sliced apart by branches still holding a few fiery orange leaves, massive lawn dusted with snow, lights glowing from inside the thin, ancient windows.
“The witch house?” I asked, frowning at her. Fitting.
The massive green home looked like something out of a Victorian-set horror movie.
“Uh-huh.” She pulled the keys from the ignition and the car went dead. “Look,” she said. “Crayton isn’t someone you want to mess with. Give him what he wants, get your friend, and go. Don’t be a fucking idiot.”
“That would make it easier for you, wouldn’t it?”
I expected her to make some smart remark, toss another catty insult at me. “It’s your funeral,” she said instead, and slammed the door.
There’d been a note of fear in her voice.
I followed her from the car, feet crunching on the dirt driveway, and stared at the witch house. It wasn’t a big tourist attraction—more of a local one, really. A notorious place. I only knew about it because I used to live on the West Side, before Mom moved us Uptown to be closer to bars and cash in on tourists. The witch house was a large, fancy estate, dating back to who knows when, with a sloping roof like a witch’s hat and moss coloured wooden siding. The long, double-ended driveway was made of coral gravel, and short, violently twisted trees lined the edge of the front lawn.
Around the corner, a smaller guest house stood separately, and just beyond that a thin line of shrubbery separated the estate from the Bowlarama—a bowling alley with an arcade and bar inside. Beyond that, a steep, muddy slope led down to the back parking lot of Lancaster Mall. Just down the street from us was Sims Corner, an intersection that led to the Reversing Falls—one of the most popular tourist spots in the city, though there were no tourists in town now: just ice and darkness.
Everything so ordinary, so typical. I might die here tonight.
It didn’t feel like the sight where a mystical battle would unfold, but the more I glanced around, the more it fit. A dense fog hung over the ground, and the moon was high, partially obscured by black clouds. In the distance, a horn honked. Where were the black cats and cobwebs?
I shivered against the biting frost and walk
ed after Destiny, down the drive toward the front door. No going back, now.
Remember why you’re here. Step after step after step, each bringing me closer. To fight. To kill. I am not the prey.
“Always assumed this place was broken into apartments.”
“It was. Crayton bought it and restored it, turned it back into a single unit.”
It was more of a small manor than a house. The heavy white drapes blocked everything but the light from escaping through the windows, but I knew that behind the extravagant trim and detailed ironwork railings bordering the low front steps, the house hid a sickness that had to be destroyed.
