by Hannah Marae
Eden crossed her arms. “I wasn’t about to leave you, Mab. Not when the mark said you were alive.”
“That’s exactly what you should have done!” Mab shook her head. “Damn it. I should’ve thought about the mark.”
This conversation was going off the rails, just like the one they had right before they split for good. But Eden wouldn’t let it end the same way. She wasn’t giving up this time.
“It’s too late for that,” Eden continued. “I came to find you, to bring you back from . . . wherever this is.” She looked at the dark trees “Which is . . . where are we?”
“Where do you think we are, Eden?” Mab snapped.
For the first time, Eden took a moment to look, really look, around her. Bone-white trees and leaves the color of rot. It was always night in the visions. Always.
“The stars,” Eden murmured. She could see them now, crusting the black sky with pricks of light. “Zeke said there were too many stars. We’re there, aren’t we? The Good Night.”
Mab shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and kicked her motorcycle boot along the dirt. “Yup. The Good Night. Pretty, isn’t it?”
But Eden could barely hear her. The Good Night. All this time she thought the spirits were giving her the power to see through Mab’s eyes, but really, they were just windows into the veil.
“But how did you get here?” Eden was frozen, all warmth sapped away, her limbs slow and heavy. This couldn’t be real. “Are you dead?”
“To you I am,” Mab shot back. Then she sighed and stepped close, her cold fingers gripping Eden’s forearm. “Listen to me. You leave it alone. Trust me, you don’t want to tangle with Josephine Laurent. No matter what she says, it will never be in your favor. ”
“Josephine Laurent? Is that who you made a deal with? To find Florence?”
Mab swore. “Promise me, Eden. Don’t—”
A bright light flashed around them, and Eden closed her eyes on instinct. Her awareness shifted, like falling in a dream, and she realized she was lying on the ground. Lazarus knelt over her, one hand supporting her head while the other gripped her waist. When Eden opened her eyes, she saw relief reflecting in his own.
“Did it work?” Zeke appeared, leaning over them both, shotgun resting against his shoulder.
“Give her a minute,” Lazarus ordered. The hands around her loosened and changed position, and suddenly Eden was sitting beside him in the field.
“I’m okay,” she said, climbing to her feet with barely a waver. She was getting better at this.
Zeke leaned in. “What happened? Did you find Mab?”
What happened?
Eden hesitated. She had so much to tell them. That it had worked. That they’d found each other; Eden had held Mab in her arms and watched her with her own eyes. That they had spoken with actual words. That she was there.
Only, there was the Good Night.
Purgatory.
It was the place where Lazarus had found himself trapped, freed only by his mother’s sacrifice. And if the same had happened to Mab . . . he would never go through with it, Eden realized. This would be the end of the road for Lazarus and Zeke, and she would well and truly be alone. But there had to be a way, some trick they didn’t know, some chance to bring back someone who wasn’t dead. Mab hadn’t mentioned being taken by a spirit, but she had said a name.
“Josephine Laurent,” Eden whispered.
Zeke’s face screwed up in confusion. “What?”
“A name,” Eden replied, carefully avoiding Lazarus’s eyes. She wouldn’t keep this up forever, and she certainly wouldn’t get them into anything they couldn’t handle. But, finally, she had some sort of clue as to Mab’s disappearance. She couldn’t let the search stop now. “All I got was a name.”
Lazarus clenched his hand around the wheel and resisted the urge to lay on the horn. Three cars ahead, an obnoxious SUV with grubby hands flailing out the windows cautiously moved, approaching the order terminal and flashing menu of Burger Village. Inching the truck forward, Lazarus stepped on the brake and sighed.
They’d parted ways with Ignatius almost an hour ago. The shifter headed north to Oklahoma to lay the spirit in the compact to rest. Lazarus was starting to think Ig was the lucky one, the idea prompted by Zeke’s insistence at grabbing lunch before they hit the road. The clock on the dash read barely eleven, yet somehow the drive-thru was packed with cars.
“Alright.” Zeke turned down the music and slipped his laptop from the bag resting at his feet. “Let’s see what we can find on Josephine Laurent.”
That was his excuse for the burger joint. Free Wi-Fi. When Lazarus pointed out that Zeke could just use the hot spot on his phone, Zeke had scoffed and started complaining about data packages and overage charges.
Eden leaned over Zeke as he connected to the restaurant’s network. He opened a search engine, and Lazarus watched out of the corner of his eye. At the same time, he wondered what was taking the obnoxious SUV so long to order.
“Ugh,” Zeke groaned as the webpage slowly loaded. “Hey, do you think there’s such a thing as a Wi-Fi sigil? This is taking forever.”
“It’s not like we’re going anywhere,” Lazarus grumbled. Finally, the SUV pulled forward, and Lazarus inched closer to the terminal. “You better know what you want before we get up there.”
“Double-bacon cheeseburger with extra bacon and no pickles,” Zeke rattled off. “And a mocha.”
“I’m not—”
“Oh, look!” Zeke cut him off. “Josephine Laurent.” He scratched at his stubbly chin. “Looks like there are only five of them in the country. Missouri, New York. Two in Ohio.”
“Five?” Eden balked. “How are we going to find the right one?”
“Just gimme a minute.”
Another car moved, and Lazarus pulled them forward. He couldn’t help but wonder how the threads of Eden’s visions tied together. First, it was flashes of Mab in a dark forest, and then it was something about a man in a suit. Now there was a name. Just a name. Lazarus was beginning to feel the threads were something more of a web. He could only imagine who was spinning it—Eden or Mab or this Laurent person. Since that evening in Ignatius’s yard, Lazarus believed that the mage was genuine. But seeing her come out of the vision, the bright lights sinking back into her tattoo, a look of confusion, and then determination, on her soft face. Something happened there, and the fact that she was pretending otherwise didn’t sit right with him.
“All right,” Zeke murmured. “Josephine Laurent. The one in New York is a real estate agent, and one of the Ohioans is in middle school. But Missouri, that looks promising.”
Eden leaned in, her excitement palpable. “What’s special about Missouri?”
Zeke shrugged. “It’s the closest.”
“Really? That’s it?” Eden frowned. “What if it’s not the right one and we’re just wasting time?”
“Then we’ll move on to the next one,” Zeke answered cheerfully.
Lazarus tapped the wheel. “Our Laurent is probably a mage, right?”
Shifting in her seat, Eden said, “It’s likely. Whoever she is, Mab made a deal with her to find her sister. On the phone, Mab said it was a bad deal and she had to pay the price. If Josephine Laurent was able to overpower Mab, then she must be powerful. And she probably has friends.”
“Great,” Lazarus muttered. “So how are we going to know we’ve got the right Laurent?”
“Look, we pull into,” Zeke read from the screen, “Booker and we look up Josephine Laurent. If Mab is close, the sigil will say so, right?”
“In theory,” Eden answered, her soft voice tinged with doubt.
“Well, if the sigil is wrong, then we’ll go on to Ohio, and New York, and so on.”
“Pretty flimsy,” Lazarus said.
Zeke rolled his eyes. “Our plan has been flimsy from day one. And I don’t see you coming up with a better one.”
The last car pulled forward, and Lazarus followed, approaching the
order terminal. “Missouri it is, then,” he said as he unrolled the window.
Zeke could almost believe Booker was a Nowhere town.
They pulled in late that night. Lazarus drove through a grid of well-groomed streets lit by old-fashioned lamp posts, the downtown area like something straight from a Norman Rockwell painting. Niche bookstores, shabby-chic cafes, and mom and pop stores sat alongside boutiques with campy names. Everywhere he looked, Zeke had to double-check that he wasn’t actually looking at a town full of spirits.
It was kind of a weird place for a mage. If it weren’t for Eden’s sigil lighting up like a Christmas tree, he would have thought they’d gotten the wrong Laurent. It seemed they had gotten lucky.
Their first stop was a grocery store that was about to close for the night. Leaving Lazarus and Eden in the truck, Zeke dashed inside to find a copy of the local paper. He grabbed an issue of the Booker Daily and went through the checkout, adding a few candy bars and an energy drink to the conveyor belt.
Back in the truck, he opened the newspaper as Lazarus drove them across town to a quiet motel. The paper was filled with the typical small-town fare: local plays and summer events and a profile on a big festival that had started the previous day. He couldn’t find anything on Josephine Laurent, though that didn’t mean much. A mage, especially one in the business of making deals, was bound to keep a low profile.
The next morning they woke early, driving back across town to a trendy coffee shop along Main Street. Grabbing his laptop bag, Zeke followed Lazarus and Eden inside. He set up at a booth in the back while Eden went through the line. While they waited, Lazarus carefully thumbed through the morning paper, probably looking for anything that resembled their kind of job.
After the vampire fiasco, Laz had been committed to reaching Booker without distraction. He turned off his phone, giving Ignatius orders to call Zeke only in case of an emergency. If there was anything unnatural between Texas and Missouri, they didn’t hear about it. And it was almost kind of weird. The past five years of Zeke’s life had been dictated by newspaper articles and internet conspiracy forums. Driving with one destination in mind was oddly freeing.
But Zeke could tell it bothered Lazarus. He kept reaching for his phone and staring at the black screen before tossing it aside only to repeat the process ten minutes later. It was as much a crutch as it was muscle memory. Laz didn’t know what to do with himself if he wasn’t continually taking on the mantle of Protector of the World. Hell, it wasn’t even like they were taking a vacation or anything; they were still on the job. It was just that one job was never enough for a man like Laz. He had to fix everything.
Zeke opened his laptop and got to work. By the time Eden returned with their coffees, he had discovered that Josephine Laurent lived at 1 Cadence Lane, the only residence on a dead-end street near the outskirts of town.
“Nothing on the mage,” Lazarus commented, pushing the newspaper to the middle of the table. Eden slid in beside Zeke, looking over his screen as she raised a cup of coffee to her lips.
Zeke rolled his eyes. “I could’ve told you that.” Turning to Eden, he grabbed his mocha and took a long, burning swig. He tilted his screen in her direction. “I got her address.”
“So what’s the plan?” She set down the cup and put her palms flat on the table, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Storm in under the cover of night and grab Mab before anyone notices? Or should we go a more direct route?”
“Whoa!” Zeke held up his hands. “Slow down, there. That might not be the most . . .”
“It’s a terrible plan,” Laz cut in with an amused smirk. “You’ll get yourself killed.”
“Okay, I was kidding. Obviously.” Eden waved a hand. “You two are the experts. What’re we going to do?”
Lazarus thought for a moment. “First, we’ll need to check it out and make sure this is even our Laurent. It makes absolutely no sense to run in half-cocked. Stop laughing, Zeke. Then we need to figure out how to get inside. This might be our biggest hurdle. A mage’s home is going to be warded.”
“So how do we do that?” Eden asked.
The table went quiet. Zeke idly tapped his finger against the spacebar, maintaining the illusion of thought but really hoping that Lazarus would take the lead. On the other side of the table, Laz cracked his fingers and inspected the tattoo on his palm, looking very much like he was hoping Zeke would be the one to speak first.
“Well?” Eden crossed her arms over her chest, looking annoyed.
Throwing a dirty glare at Lazarus, Zeke folded his hands together. “Can’t you just magic something up?”
Eden raised a brow while Lazarus thumped his face into his palm. “Yeah,” Eden said, pulling up her sleeve. “Let me just use my breaking-and-entering sigil.”
“I was just wondering.”
Eden went on, “Sure, we could find the wards and break them. That’s not really all that difficult if you know what you’re looking for, but it’s still a lot easier said than done. You’d need to get inside first to spot where the wards are even located.”
“And that just brings us back to square one,” Zeke mused. “If we can’t get in under her nose, then we’ll have to get in over it.” When he was met by blank looks, he said, “You know, we’ll have to be the opposite of sneaky. We could pretend to be exterminators or send Laz in with a pizza delivery.”
“I’m not doing that.”
Eden bit her lip. “We could just go in and make a deal of our own. Maybe we don’t need all this subterfuge. Maybe we can work something out.”
“No.” It was Lazarus’s turn to lean forward. “That is a terrible idea. You don’t make deals with mages.”
To her credit, Eden only looked mildly offended. “You made a deal with me.”
“I took a job, not a deal,” Lazarus corrected. “And you’re different. A deal with Laurent is how your friend got into trouble in the first place. It’s a bad idea.”
“How am I different?”
Lazarus balked. “You’re . . . you.”
“Eloquent.” Zeke smirked.
“Fine.” Eden rolled her eyes, her cheeks going a faint shade of pink. “You’re the boss, so what’s your plan?”
“The first thing we’re going to do is drive down to Cadence Lane and get the lay of the land,” Lazarus decided. “Then we can figure out how to proceed from there.”
Tapping the table, Lazarus stood to leave. Eden grabbed her paper cup and followed. Chugging his mocha in one hand and picking up his laptop with the other, Zeke climbed out of the booth a few moments later. He trailed behind, coming to a stop beside the bulletin board near the coffee shop’s entrance. Event fliers and sales pitches covered the board, but one thing caught his eye.
Looking around to make sure no one was watching, Zeke tore down the flier and pushed through the door. He hopped into the truck beside Eden and passed her the paper. He watched her eyes dance down the page as Lazarus pulled out of the lot and onto the street.
“Booker’s own Summer Festival,” she read aloud. “Starts tomorrow. So?”
Lazarus started up the truck and pulled out of the lot. “We don’t have time for this.”
Zeke jammed his finger at the flier. “No, look closer.”
At the bottom of the page, there was a list of events, mostly the usual fare: food stands, vegetable weigh-ins, shows put on by the community theater. But at the bottom of the list there was something unusual.
“Fortunes told by Madame Laurent,” Eden read. She looked up to Zeke, eyes bright with excitement. “This could be our in!”
“Madame? Seriously?”
“If she’s making deals,” Zeke said, “maybe this is how she does it.”
“It’s as good a chance as any,” Lazarus agreed. “At least we can get a feel for Laurent and whether or not she knows Mab.”
——
Cadence Lane sat a few miles outside of town, nestled into a private, wooded area that Zeke suspected was property belonging to Josephin
e Laurent. The house itself was practically a castle, a behemoth of dark brick and peaked roofs with old windows and a wrought-iron fence circling a manicured lawn. Evening had fallen, and the house was quiet as Lazarus pulled unassumingly down the street. There were no cars in the driveway, and the exterior lights were off. Other than a few lit windows, the place could have been abandoned.
“I can feel the warding from here,” Eden said as Lazarus turned around in the cul-de-sac. “It’s . . . extensive. She’s definitely our Laurent.”
“Think you could break them if you needed to?” Zeke asked. The truck slid past the house once more, Zeke and Eden glued to the window.
When they turned back onto the main road, Eden sat back. “Breaking them isn’t the hard part. All you need to do is disrupt the symbol. The problem is finding them all. Not to mention getting in there in the first place.”
Lazarus tapped his hand thoughtfully against the wheel. “But is that something you can do?”
She sighed. “I want to say yes, but I don’t know. There’s a lot of magic here. I mean, a lot. Seeing her at the festival should give me a better idea. At the very least, we’ll need to figure out a way to get in and identify the wards before going after Mab.”
“Pizza delivery boy?” Zeke offered.
Lazarus rolled his eyes and glanced over. “If we ever go with that plan, you’ll be the one slinging pizzas. I can promise you that.”
The next morning, Lazarus followed the flier’s directions to a large field several miles outside town. As they pulled past, Eden marveled at the festival and how large it turned out. An entire field was dedicated to parking, complete with bored-looking ticket takers and flaggers shouting into walkie-talkies. Only an hour after opening and the lot already held hundreds of cars. It was only half full, too. Booker was tiny, but apparently, the event managed to draw in people from surrounding areas. It felt more like a state fair than a small-town festival.
As soon as he saw the busy parking lot, Lazarus started muttering behind the wheel. He merged into the river of vehicles, inching forward until they approached the parking attendant. Trading a five for a paper ticket, he followed the flaggers past rows of unevenly parked cars. When they pulled into their spot, he gave the flagger a polite wave. Then he turned to Eden and Zeke.
