You are their blood;
through the veins,
through the past,
through the bonds of power.
ONE
There was nothing remarkable looking about it, really. There were no red flags or warning signs of the consequences of stepping in its path, nothing that screamed stay back. But I swear the damn thing moved every time I came near it.
“Just pick it up,” I instructed my trembling hand.
I groaned and flopped back down on the bed. You’d think by now I’d get it through my thick head that I was its master. I called the shots, not that piece of metal shining back at me from the morning light hitting it through the window.
The last month had been a blur. Between finding out who killed my mother and discovering that I was some kind of homicidal assassin on the inside, I’d become a bit of a recluse. I’d resorted to consuming way too much popcorn and red wine while binge watching half a dozen shows on my laptop, all this self-destruction carefully planned around my schedule at Shakespeare’s Library.
Greer had been uncharacteristically patient with my self-imposed therapy, and everyone else in my life tiptoed around me like I was some fragile china doll an inch away from shattering. An intervention was imminent if I didn’t snap out of it.
My cell phone notification went off, reminding me that if I didn’t get off the bed and out the door, Katie was going to throttle me.
“All right.” I snatched the amulet off the dresser and put it around my neck. We’d had it back for weeks, but I couldn’t bring myself to wear it until now. It would probably still be in Greer’s vault if I hadn’t threatened to leave if he didn’t hand it over. It’ll get you killed, he’d argued. But he was dead wrong. It was my birthright, and no one would ever take it from me again—not even him.
I was the Oracle, and I intended to start acting like it.
The smell traveling up from the first floor was an effective distraction from the anxiety, and I was out the bedroom door before it could grip me again. I took the stairs two at a time and headed for the kitchen.
“Good morning, Sophia.” My eyes automatically went to the source of the smell. French toast was my weakness, and Sophia’s was unsurpassed.
“You hungry, Miss Alex?”
After months of raised eyebrows and contemptuous stares, Greer’s Italian housekeeper and cook extraordinaire had finally lowered her guard and welcomed me in. We still had our occasional ups and downs, and with her you never knew if your grace points reset back to zero every day, having to be re-earned. But I’d finally reached that coveted point where she trusted me and knew I wasn’t there to bilk her employer like some groupie from Crusades, Greer’s club playground and legitimizer for all his wealth. I admit, it was nice living in the big house with all the beautiful things, and having my meals prepared by a world-class cook like Sophia. But I really didn’t care about the money. A one-bedroom apartment would have suited me just fine. She also knew Greer and I weren’t sleeping in the same bed—a cardinal sin in her Catholic book of morals.
“Starving.” I grabbed a piece of French toast off the plate and headed back out of the kitchen. “I’m late. I’ll be home around five.”
After passing my unofficial probationary period at Shakespeare’s Library and declaring my intent to stay, I’d earned the responsibility of opening the shop on the days when I had the morning shift. Katie usually got there early, but I had the key so arriving late wasn’t an option.
“Sit down. I bring you coffee and a plate,” Sophia said in the thick Italian accent she would take to her grave. I liked the way she spoke, her no-nonsense approach to making statements instead of questions.
Her hand extended as I whizzed past her, grabbing my arm in that way a mother confiscates a ricocheting child.
“Can’t. I’m late.”
She released my arm. “Always in a rush. Your food will not stick.”
“You’re right. But go I must.”
She gave me a pointed look as I downed the breakfast in my hand and headed for the door.
My boldness wavered as I stepped outside and felt the separation from the sanctity of Greer’s fortress. Even with my new skillset, I thought it wise to exercise a little extra caution. I tucked the amulet under my shirt and took the steps leading to the sidewalk with a little less bounce than usual, knowing that there were hunters out there waiting for me to come outside and play.
Greer had warned me about the risks, but I’d proven I could handle myself, and his bad habit of trying to control me had pretty much been nipped in the bud. From now on, I made my own decisions: where, when, and with whom. I mean, it wasn’t like I was leaping off of buildings or looking for a fight. I was just a girl working in a used bookstore who happened to have the weight of the world resting on her shoulders.
I hit the sidewalk and headed toward Columbus Avenue. It was a perfect spring morning, and I managed to smile at every fellow New Yorker I passed. Some ignored me, but just as many smiled back.
In spite of my rocky reintroduction to my birthplace, I loved this city. It had everything you could possibly need—food, shopping, culture—and there was no other place I wanted to be. Accept for maybe a cottage at the seaside. I’d get there someday, but right now I had bigger fish to fry. I had a vessel to find and a prophecy to secure.
A bird kept flying over my head. That wasn’t so unusual, but given my history with them and the fact that it was aiming dangerously low, I thought it best to stay alert and get ready to duck if it tried to take a clump out of my scalp.
I shook off the paranoia and focused on the beautiful weather. The trees were just starting to show signs of life: green tips protruding from the lifeless limbs jutting from the trunks, bark no longer as ashen and gray as it looked over the winter. I suppose the bark never did look that dead, but winter has a way of tricking the eye. What a surprise when it all comes bouncing back to life.
About twenty feet ahead, I spotted something on the sidewalk. It was a pigeon, still and dead-looking.
“Oh no,” I whispered, half out of concern for it, and half from the uncomfortable reality that I had no idea what I’d do with it if it was just injured. The cowardly part of me hoped it was dead.
I never understood how people could drive right past injured animals, like they were nothing, just trash on the side of the road. Growing up in Indiana farm country, I saw a lot of cruelty, a lot of cast-offs dumped to fend for themselves, to live off of garbage or rodents. I guess people just assumed the farms would take them in.
I reached the mound of feathers and took a breath before bending down to examine it. A woman approached and smiled sympathetically as I crouched next to the still bird. She said nothing as she continued past me, probably relieved that it was someone else’s problem. I gave her a weak smile back and considered doing the same, but it was wrong for so many reasons to just leave it on the sidewalk. But what’s a girl to do in the middle of Manhattan without a shovel or a patch of dirt? It’s not like there are drop-off locations for dead or injured pigeons.
Some Oracle I was. I couldn’t even deal with a harmless bird.
As my fingers grazed its side, a wing fanned out and flapped wildly against my skin. It made the most unsettling sound as its beak opened and its flat little eyes turned to look at me.
“Thank God,” I muttered as it jumped up and flew a few feet away. “I guess you’re not terminal, after all.”
A shadow blew past my face, and the sound of air fluttering above my head made me stumble back. I looked up and all I could see was a kaleidoscope of gray and white, fanning together in a riot of feathers, then receding to allow the mor
ning sky to peek back through. The birds were colliding and bouncing off of each other as if their flight navigation had gone all haywire.
I wanted to think it was all about them, but I knew that whenever the odd and strange occurred in my presence, it was usually somehow connected to me.
“Not today,” I groaned, wishing for just one normal day.
The bird on the sidewalk seemed to take its cue and lifted into the air. It circled me and then shit, the marbled excrement hitting the cement a few inches from my shoe. The commotion grew as the cauldron of pigeons came together in the sky, circling in neat formation just below the building line. I decided to get out of target range and ran toward the flow of pedestrians at the far end of the block where it intersected with Columbus Avenue.
I heard a dull thump, and one of the birds landed on the sidewalk a few yards in front of me, barely giving me time to stop before I trampled it. With its still body and oddly cocked neck, I was pretty sure this one was dead.
My brain was telling me not to bother and keep moving, but my curiosity compelled me to look back into the sky. Right about the time my eyes lifted, another one came crashing down, smashing against something hard before bouncing to the sidewalk just like the other one.
I winced as the sound of beating hail filled my ears. My eyes flew wide when I looked up and saw blood smeared around the sky. It was literally smeared in the air above me. I reached toward the red stains and gasped as more birds hit the sky and bounced off of it, blocking my view with a slurry of blood and feathers. My index finger ran clean across the smooth surface. The blood was on the outside. Like a mime, I felt along the invisible wall curving around me like a giant bubble.
“Well, what do you know,” I whispered in disbelieve.
When extraordinary things happened, I was usually on the undesirable end. It was nice to be on the beneficial side for a change.
The pounding started up again, and so did the hail of pigeons. The damn birds were gunning for me. For me.
For a moment I was paralyzed, unable to take a simple step for fear that I’d smash into the invisible wall. But then my instincts kicked in, and I ran toward the crowd at the end of the block. Thankfully, the bubble moved with me instead of trapping me in place under the hailstorm of kamikaze pigeons.
The sound of the birds was replaced by the steady hum of shoes and traffic as I turned into the sea of people at the intersection. I glanced up, and the blood and feathers were gone. So were the dead birds that should have been littering the street behind me. Not a single feather remained. The entire avian slaughter had just vanished, and I questioned whether or not it really happened or if someone was feeding me hallucinations as a distraction. Either way, it was effective.
“Clever,” I said aloud. A man looked at me as I stood in the middle of the crowd talking to myself. I just smiled as he passed and continued with my statement. “They really are clever little bastards.”
My hunters were getting cleverer, finding new ways to come at me in broad daylight.
“Damn it.” I had to look twice at my phone. I wasn’t just late; I was late late.
I picked up the paced toward the shop. A block away I could see Katie standing by the front door, sans any irate customers, but less than pleased with my tardiness.
“You’re late,” she grumbled as I walked up.
“I know, I know. I’m sorry, but there was this dead pigeon, and—”
Her eyes rolled and landed back on mine. “Just open the door.”
Katie had become a good friend. We’d known each other less than two months, but she’s the reason I knew what I was. She’s the one who found my birthmark, never asking for an explanation of why I had a strange mark on the back of my head, buried like a concealed tattoo under my thick hair. How good a friend is that?
Regardless of her respect for my secrets, I knew it was only a matter of time before I had to bring her into my world or cut her off completely. There would be no halfway with Katie Bishop. She wasn’t the kind of girl who followed blind faith, and eventually there would be a reckoning of all the strange things she’d see if she hung around me long enough.
There were dozens of books scattered on the floor, so I got busy sorting them into orderly stacks on the library table in the center of the room.
Apollo had closed the night before, and he was notorious for leaving the previous night’s mess for the day shift. He was the shop manager, which meant he usually played catch-up on business after the doors closed, sometimes not getting out of there until close to midnight. His bad housekeeping wasn’t from laziness or lack of consideration for his co-workers. He just had a selective priority for simple tasks, meaning he was brilliant at things like finance and linear algebra, but God help him if he ever had to balance his checkbook or compose a grocery list.
We spent the next half hour drinking bad coffee from the deli across the street while I recounted my quasi-tale about a dead pigeon. I came close to telling her the entire ludicrous story, but I liked having a good friend, and today wasn’t the right day for testing that bond.
I was spared from making that stupid mistake by the sound of the front door chimes. A man came in with a young girl and asked if we had any books from The Boxcar Children series.
“I think we do,” Katie said. They followed her to the children’s book section at the back of the store.
With everything in order and no other customers in the shop, I grabbed the paper off the counter and scanned the front page. The headline was too strange to ignore: RATS ATTACK HOMELESS MAN IN CENTRAL PARK.
I snorted. “I got that one beat.”
The chimes on the door sounded again. “Can I help—” I looked up from the paper, but whoever it was had already disappeared into the stacks. “Guess not,” I muttered, getting back to the article.
Katie and her customers came back to the front desk. “This was one of my favorite books when I was your age,” she said to the girl. “You’re going to love it.”
She handed the man his bag and waved to the girl as they turned to leave.
“She was cute,” I said as she smiled back at us and followed her father out of the shop. “Almost makes me want one.”
“Yep, she was a charmer,” Katie agreed.
We watched the girl through the window as she walked down the sidewalk holding her father’s hand. They stopped at the intersection, and the girl reached for the bag. When her father refused to hand it over, her face twisted into a furious knot. She managed to grab the bag out of his hand and threw it on the curb before marching into the street.
“Yeah…” Katie tightened her lips and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
She motioned toward the aisle on the other side of the shop, the one that housed the section on magic and metaphysics. “What’s she looking for?”
I glanced in the same direction. “I don’t know.”
“Wiccan,” Katie observed.
“Wick what?”
“A witch. Definitely a witch.” Katie stretched her neck, but the woman was too deep down the aisle for her to see.
“How can you tell?”
“My friends?” she snickered. “Please. Half of them are witches, or Druids, or some kind of hoodoo doctors.”
“Your friends are into voodoo?”
“Hoodoo. Folk magic. They’re the ones always sprinkling red brick dust on their window sills.”
Maybe my secrets wouldn’t be such a stretch after all, only I think the witches she was familiar with were a little different than mine.
I got up and walked down the aisle on the other side of where the woman was browsing. She’d walked in and disappeared into the stacks before I got a look at her, and I was curious to see what kind of witch she was. Most of them made a beeline straight for me, but not this one. I’d say this one was avoiding me.
My fingers walked along the book spines until I found a fat one. I quietly pulled it from the shelf to get a window to the other side. All I could see was the top of h
er head, so I put my ear to the shelf to listen. She was quietly humming.
A minute went by as I listened, trying to recall the tune I was sure I’d heard before, like a familiar scent I couldn’t quite place. And then it all came back. My mother used to hum that same song.
What is this?
Her head lifted slightly, and I saw the bright green band wrapped around her hair.
“I know who you are.” I hadn’t planned to just blurt it out, but my emotions and the impulse got the best of me before I could devise a more strategic way to confront her.
The humming stopped, and I could feel her standing behind the shelf with a smug grin on her face and her brown eyes fixed on me through the wall of books. She was here for me, but there was no fun in just walking into the shop and introducing herself, seeing how she never bothered to tell me her name when we first met. It was really more of an encounter. I ran into her at the hotel I was staying at the first week I arrived in New York. She gave me the creeps, with her morbid eyes and penetrating stare. If it wasn’t for Greer, I still wouldn’t know who she was.
She pulled another book from her side of the shelf, and then another until her face was completely visible. Her head cocked as she looked back at me through the empty space, never blinking her large brown eyes.
“You don’t look so well, Alex.”
She put the books back in place. The sound of her shoes disappeared down the aisle just before she came around to my side.
Lumen was a small woman, but I knew better than to discount her based on her size. She looked younger than me. But when Greer showed me a picture of her standing next to my mother thirty years ago, looking exactly like she did today, I knew she was anything but the innocuous girl she purported to be.
“What do you want, Lumen?”
“That’s not a very nice way to greet family, is it?” She stayed at the other end of the aisle, leaving a good ten feet between us like I was contagious.
Greer said she was a member of my mother’s coven, but he never said anything about family.
“As far as I’m concerned, I don’t have any family,” I responded with contempt. “If I did, I wouldn’t have spent all those years living in other people’s houses. If I had a family, they would have looked for me, protected me. Would you like me to continue?”
The Blood Thief (The Fitheach Trilogy Book 2) Page 1
