by Hannah Marae
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Interlude
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Interlude
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Interlude
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Interlude
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Interlude
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Interlude
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Text and Cover Design/Illustration
Copyright ©2021
©Hannah Marae
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-7372363-0-6
ISBN-10: 1-7372363-0-3
Printed in the United States of America
www.somewherepress.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example electronic, mechanic, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written consent of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons—living or dead—is coincidental.
• Cover Design by
www.nicoledeal.com/
• Editing by Tiffany Kaye
www.writersuntapped.com
• Interior Design by Tyffany Hackett
www.tyffanyhackett.com
• Interior Elements from Freepik
www.freepik.com
To the SPN family
The car groaned like a beast in the throes of death.
“No!” Eden’s knuckles whitened around the wheel. “No, no, no!”
The car—a beat-up sedan she had picked up in Ohio—whined in response and shuddered as Eden let off the gas and slowed. She managed to pull off the road as the vehicle died with ominous rumbles emanating from under the hood. Eden waited a moment, then crossed her fingers and turned the key.
No luck. The engine sputtered and whined before dying all over again.
“Dammit.” Eden thumped her forehead against the wheel, brown hair falling around her in waves. Honestly, this was her fault. She was lucky the car made it this far. The check engine light had been on for weeks, a fact Eden happily ignored as she wove her way across the country. Ignorance was bliss, they said, but this time it had come back to bite her.
Mab would have told her to find a mechanic and spell them into doing the job for free. Normally, Eden balked at that sort of thing. Throwing magic at unsuspecting people left a bad taste in her mouth. But now, sitting here in the middle of the California desert, she had to admit maybe Mab had a point.
And as much as Eden wanted to sit with her head against the wheel pretending this—all of it—wasn’t happening, she had to get moving. Evening was coming, and the summer sky was taking on a pinkish hue. She didn’t want to be here when the shadows lengthened and bled into darkness.
Phone in hand, Eden climbed out of the car. She wrenched open the hood but slammed it shut as a cloud of steam billowed out to meet her. Magic could do a lot of things, but vehicle repairs were not among them.
She circled back to lean against the trunk with her phone clutched tightly in her hands. The device was her only lifeline, the difference between calling for help or hoofing it until she found civilization. Eden bit her lip until it hurt, tapping the pavement with one of her worn-out sneakers. The desert stretched around her, marred only by the strip of road she had followed for hours. There was nothing out here but scrubby plants and sky. Eden couldn’t remember the last time she passed another vehicle, let alone a town or a rest stop.
But who was she supposed to call? Mab was gone, and Eden had no other friends. No family. She had collected a few associates over the years, but no one would pick her up in the middle of nowhere.
“Fine.” Eden unlocked her phone to look up a towing company. Her shoulders slumped as she watched the loading symbol that seemed to spin forever. No signal. That was odd. She shielded her eyes and looked out into the rocky desert. Maybe she was between towers.
Jamming the phone into the pocket of her faded jeans, she took a breath and raised her right arm. She held out her hand, palm facing the sky, and focused on the tattoo inked onto the pale skin of her inner wrist, a small circle with notches representing the cardinal directions.
“Take me to what I need.” Eden gathered a whisper of magic from the well of power that resided within her chest. Her skin warmed as a faint buzzing sensation moved down her arm and into the sigil. The tattoo ignited with a soft blue light. A glowing arrow appeared at the center of the symbol, spinning in a flickering motion before finally settling westward.
“I was already going that way,” Eden muttered as she squinted against the blazing sky.
She extinguished the sigil and grabbed her backpack from the backseat of the car. After fishing a hair tie from the bottom of her bag, Eden gathered her long hair into a messy tail and slung her leather jacket over her arm. Locking the sedan’s doors seemed futile, but she did it anyway. Maybe she would return to find the windows broken and tires missing. Maybe she wouldn’t return at all. Traveling the country by bus or train was starting to sound appealing.
The fewer ties she had, the better.
Without looking back, Eden hefted the backpack over her shoulders and started walking.
——
An hour later, she came to a stop in front of a mid-century-style road sign.
“Welcome to Nowhere, California,” Eden read aloud. “Well, that’s fitting. All right, Nowhere, let’s see if you have what I need.”
As it turned out, Nowhere was a charming little town, one of those hidden treasures tucked away in the desert. There was a familiar quality about it, like something out of an old movie or a magazine. Eden passed an old-fashioned diner, a library with flowers in the window boxes, and an honest-to-God soda shop.
She found the mechanic’s garage down the street from the diner and stopped to arrange the towing of her car. After, she went down the road to the Strange Weather Motel, using a spelled credit card to take out a room. The place was shabby but cute in that vintage sort of way with its wood-paneled walls and campy paintings of the desert. An anthropomorphized cactus grinned down from dusty needlepoints and drawings in shabby frames. Eden tossed her backpack onto the queen-sized bed and slipped into the leather jacket that once belonged to Mab. Then, she ventured back up the street to the diner to feast on a burger with a mountain of fries.
She was back in th
e motel room by the time night had settled. The tub was dingy, but Eden filled it anyway, slipping into the steaming water with a sixty-year-old grimoire on sigil magic. When her skin was pink and wrinkly, she drained the tub and dried off, putting on a spare shirt and shorts she kept in her bag. Television on low, Eden crawled into bed to read a particularly fascinating entry on energy sigils. It was as close to a relaxing evening as she’d had in months, and she planned to enjoy it before getting back on the road.
Hours later, she awoke from a dreamless sleep. A strange buzzing filled the air, the muffled sound of a generic ringtone. Bleary-eyed, Eden removed the grimoire from her chest and sat up in bed. The TV had gone to infomercials, the parking lot outside her window now dark. She hadn’t realized she’d fallen asleep. She felt around the bed for her vibrating phone and finally found it beside her feet. Eden squinted into the light of the screen and read a name.
Mab Fielding.
Mab.
Mab was calling.
Her first thought was to decline the call. Eden hadn’t spoken to Mab in months. Their last conversation was messy to put it nicely. A falling out was never pretty, especially when it came to a pair of equally stubborn mages.
The impulse passed quickly, and Eden’s cheeks reddened in shame. She’d known Mab for as long as she could remember—since that night four years ago beneath the burned-out streetlights. They’d been together ever since. Eden would do anything for her.
Almost anything.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, she accepted the call. Eden slowly pressed the phone against her ear. “Hello?”
“Eden?” Mab’s low voice was shaky, hesitant like she wasn’t sure she had the right number. Eden sucked in a breath and closed her eyes. A missing piece of herself had settled back into place.
“It’s me.” She relaxed, leaning back against the pillow. “Been a while.”
“Yeah, well.” Mab’s voice cracked. “It’s gonna be a bit longer.”
Tensing, Eden sat up. “What are you talking about; what’s going on?”
“I fucked up, Edie.” A shuffling sounded on the other end of the line, a scraping noise like curtains being closed. “I fucked up real bad, and now I gotta pay.”
Goosebumps pricked Eden’s bare arms, the hairs on the back of her neck raised. She threw back the sheets and climbed out of bed with the phone held tightly against her cheek. “What do you mean? Mab, what’s going on?”
Silence.
“What’s bad, Mab?” Eden paced the room, now wide awake and full of panicky energy. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s happening.”
“They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?” Eden pressed, a shiver crawling up her spine. “A hunter?”
Even over the phone, she could tell Mab was shaking her head. “I made a deal with someone who could find . . . But it was a bad deal, Eden, and now it’s time to pay up. I just wanted to say goodbye. I—” In the background, glass shattered. Mab’s distant voice shouted something unintelligible, something that sounded like a spell. Then she was back, speaking as clearly as if she was inside Eden’s head. “I’m sorry.”
The line went dead.
It was barely dawn when the truck rolled past the welcome sign and into Nowhere.
Lazarus knew when it happened. The world felt the same way it always did until he passed that sign. As soon as it was behind him, a pressure built behind his ribs, a sense of unease that could only come from the thinning of the veil. The sensation passed abruptly, like your ears popping on an airplane, and then Lazarus felt normal again.
And he was nowhere.
He drove through the sparse neighborhoods toward the town proper. On the other side of the bench seat, his cousin Zeke sat slumped back, drumming the pads of his fingers against the knee of his worn-out jeans, keeping time with the guitar solo spilling out from the radio. Behind them, the sun was chasing the darkness west over the sleepy town. The grid of two-lane streets was free of vehicles, and most of the businesses still had their lights off. But Lazarus knew the diner would be open, housing a few grizzled old-timers and the waitress in half-moon glasses.
Lazarus pulled into the parking lot. He switched off the radio and climbed out of the old Chevy, leaving the keys in the ignition. Zeke grabbed his laptop bag and made straight for the building while Lazarus circled the truck, stopping to pet Hades, the big black dog that rode in the bed.
They got their usual booth in the back, passing the long counter with two grizzled types hiding behind newspapers, as expected. The comforting scent of maple syrup filled the air, punching through the haze of grease and coffee. No sooner than they’d sat down did the waitress glide over, bubblegum, half-moon glasses, and all. If there was one thing of note about Nowhere, it was that it was predictable.
“What can I get ya?” The waitress—her name tag read Jan—asked. She held court over the table with a tiny notepad and a chewed-up ballpoint pen. As Zeke spoke, she scribbled furiously.
“A tall stack of waffles with butter on top. And scrambled eggs on the side with a plate of bacon.” Zeke counted on his fingers as he ordered as if making sure he didn’t forget anything. It didn’t help. “Oh! And a mocha, please.”
“What size?” Jan asked in a flat voice.
Zeke flashed a bright smile and passed her the menu. “The biggest size you’ve got.”
After Lazarus ordered his usual rack of toast with an egg over easy and black coffee, Jan drifted toward the kitchen. He leaned back in the booth and rubbed at his gritty eyes. A headache percolated somewhere in his skull, and he could only hope it was the sort that could be chased away by caffeine.
“Damn, what a night.” Zeke seemed to echo Lazarus’s thoughts. He rolled his shoulders, then slumped down on the table, cradling his head in his tattooed arms.
They’d come off the job late, too tired and beat up to drive far. Zeke passed out in the truck, his temple bouncing against the window with every bump in the road. When Lazarus felt himself dozing behind the wheel, he knew it was time to pull over. He left Zeke in the cab and sprawled out in the bed with Hades. It wasn’t comfortable, but the dog did make a nice pillow, and Lazarus got a few hours of sleep after a job that had nearly gone sideways.
“It should’ve been simple. In and out,” Lazarus mused. He leaned his head back and briefly closed his eyes. “The spirit hadn’t been around long enough to go vengeful. The obituary said he died a few weeks ago.”
“Yeah, well, it almost did.” Zeke sat up and yawned, sweeping back his disheveled hair. Black hair. Dark eyes. Morgan family traits that both Zeke and Lazarus shared. Their light skin bore uneven tans, the result of long hours in the summer sun, and their faces—squared and elfin in Zeke, long and rugged in Lazarus—held matching shadows of stubble.
“Don’t think I’ve ever seen a fresh ghost so pissed off,” Zeke continued. “It was like he’d spent the last decade clawing his way out of the Good Night.”
“It’s almost like someone riled him up and set him loose.”
The job was supposed to be quick and clean—just a loose spirit haunting an abandoned factory in some little town. But the ghost had managed to take a victim, an urban spelunker who found his way into the building’s sublevels. The unfortunate man met his end at the hands of a pissed-off displaced spirit, and the aftermath was as messy as hell.
Lazarus and Zeke managed to capture the ghost in the end, but they couldn’t exhume the body. Cremation was a bitch that way. Lazarus had no choice but to shatter the mirror that held the spirit, returning it to the Good Night. He had no doubt it’d manage to crawl back through the veil eventually, and then someone else would have to deal with it.
The food arrived quickly, and they tucked in. Lazarus took a long sip of steaming coffee and willed the caffeine to do its thing. Across the table, Zeke was halfway through his stack of waffles before he began gulping at the sugar concoction in its appallingly large paper cup. Aside from the scraping of forks against plates, they
ate in silence. Zeke dug his phone out of his jeans pocket and started playing a game, annoying blips filling the air as he slurped down the last of his coffee. Lazarus pinched the bridge of his nose and concentrated on actually waking up.
Outside the diner window, Nowhere was coming to life. Nondescript cars slid slowly down the street, pedestrians with blank faces treading up clean sidewalks. It was so easy to get sucked into the fantasy and believe he was somewhere real.
The town had become a sort of haven over the years, where they could lay low and clean their wounds. It was a decent place to make a few bucks too. Lazarus could slip into a role, and Zeke worked remotely right there in the diner as an IT consultant. The job was a pain in the ass most days. Zeke was always having to stop and take calls, troubleshooting software, and running server updates. There was some wiggle room—his boss was his father, and the pay was pretty decent considering he worked sporadically. But it was never enough to get them by, especially when they factored in the gas and supplies that came with ghost hunting.
After Jan cleared the plates, Zeke ordered a second mocha and then slipped a bulky laptop from his messenger bag. He cracked it open. “One thing I love about Nowhere,” he said, “is that the Wi-Fi connects automatically. I don’t have to hunt down Pam or Sam or whatever her name is to give me the password.”
“This one’s a Jan,” Lazarus replied, though he wasn’t sure Zeke heard him. Already, he was slipping on his headset and booting up the old machine. Lazarus downed the dregs of his coffee and stood. “I’m gonna find some work. Keep an eye on Hades?”
“Yep,” Zeke said absently, pressing his phone to his ear. “Hey, Dad. Yeah, I’m doing good.”
Lazarus didn’t stick around to hear the pleasantries. Mordecai Morgan was his uncle, but he didn’t seem to like Lazarus much these days. Something about the fact that his only child had left college to “traipse around the country catching spirits like butterflies.” Lazarus never defended himself. He never told Uncle Mort that he had tried shooing Zeke away countless times in the early days. Now, it was all too routine to bother.
