by Liz Schulte
It killed my father, cursed me, and changed the lives of every single person Ornias and I killed. But she was gone and couldn’t pay for her infraction. It fell to me to do so. That’s what the curse was really about. It wasn’t just that the dark energy pooled in the unborn child. It was the payment for magic so carelessly used. A payment that came due a generation late. All magic had a cost.
There was no way I could beat an angel, but I wasn’t supposed to beat him, just send him back. No one cared about me. No one was going to miss me. My death wouldn’t impact the world because I was never meant to be alive. And Orion saw it. He knew what I would have to do.
“Frost,” Leslie said, louder and closer to me than necessary.
“What?”
She frowned. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for five minutes. Could you go see if Orion has any idea what type of spell your mother would’ve used?”
I nodded, though I doubted he was still here. His job was done and he was getting the outcome he wanted all along. I was going to take Ornias through the door with me.
I strode into the black, black night. No snow was coming down and no moon penetrated the heavy cloud cover. Everything was completely still, until the wind hit me so hard it knocked me back. “I thought you might have left without saying goodbye,” I said before he appeared, but I knew he was coming. In the short amount of time I had known him, my body already sought out and recognized the indicators of when he was around. Some part of me collected them and held onto them because, after all, he was my spirit guide.
“I’d never do that,” his soft voice came from behind me.
I swirled around, my fist connecting with his jaw. The impact barely moved him.
He laughed, looking entirely too pleased for someone who was just hit. “You figured it out. All of it?”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” I said, trying not to shake.
Bleak hollow eyes looked down at me. “Destiny is best discovered.”
“You never intended for me to free my mother. Did she even write the letter or were you just getting me here? Was any of it true?”
He pulled in a deep breath and snow flurries swirled between us. “All of it was true and she did write the letter.” He looked exhausted for a moment as he studied the sky. “I did what I was supposed to do,” he said, but it didn’t feel like he was talking to me. The snow came down harder and he shook his head before he turnedback at me.
“So how does this work? I sacrifice myself and then what happens?”
“The universe is restored to its natural order,” he said. “Everyone is happy again.” His voice sounded anything but happy.
I nodded. “What if I don’t do it? What if I hide from Ornias and let him keep doing what he’s doing?”
He smiled a little. “Absolutely nothing. You can do that and they can’t stop you.” He glanced toward the sky and the snowflakes grew larger. “There’s nothing they can do about that anymore. They aren’t as strong as they used to be.”
“Okay, ease up on the snow already.”
He shook his head. “The storm is mine, but weather patterns are not subject to whims. Once set in motion, they must run their course. As with so many things in life, once it starts, it becomes out of our control.”
“I’ve seen you manipulate it.” The inside of my nose burned as I tucked my face into the collar of my coat.
“A little wind, slight precipitation fluctuation, but not stopping this monster.” He looked up at the sky again. “What will you do?”
“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.” I started back for the house and he caught my arm.
“Frost,” he said.
I looked over my shoulder at him, but it was too late. The course of events had started and I was frozen.
“If I could save you from this…”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t insult either of our intelligence. You wouldn’t save me. You’ve had ample opportunity to be a hero, but you never quite make it do you? That’s your tragedy. It isn’t that you’re stuck up in the sky. It’s that you will never be the person you want to be.”
“It’s different now,” he said, not letting go. “It’s different with you.”
“How?”
“I’ve gotten to know you.” His other hand touched my cheek. “You are more than I ever imagined you could be. Had I known, I’m not sure they could have kept me away this long.”
I shook my head as a smile that felt wry even to me spread over my lips. “In the greatest twist of fate, the necromancer fighting to find a life worth living discovers she was always just a dead girl walking.”
“Stop,” he said completely serious. “You are so much more than that. I couldn’t see it from up there. I knew you were smart and intrepid. I knew you were a survivor, but I couldn’t see you. Not the one who is standing before me. Look at the people in that house here for you. Look at me standing in front of you though everything up there tells me I should leave.”
“You should do as you’re told,” I whispered.
“I don’t want to. This is my chance to say something you haven’t heard enough of in your life.”
My eyes met his and the ice inside me threatened to crack. I didn’t know whether to stop him or beg him to continue. My heart pounded in my chest and the air caught in my lungs as I waited. Just once. Please just once don’t disappoint me.
“You are loved,” he said.
It took everything I had not to let my shoulders sag. “By whom?”
He let go of my arm and placed his hand on the other side of my face. “By them.” His jaw tightened. “And by me.”
I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t shake my head. It wasn’t true of course. He was fulfilling a dying girl’s wish to be loved. Unable to do anything else or look away, my eyes welled.
“I think I’ve always loved you, even if I didn’t know it and I couldn’t let you go without telling you. You have always been the first person I look to in my day and the last person I see as my light goes out. I know you didn’t feel my presence, but you have never been alone. I was always with you.”
I pressed my lips to his because it was the only thing I could do to make him stop talking. Every word he spoke hurt and I didn’t even care if they were true. I’d accept the gift he was giving to me. His mouth moved against mine and the snow funneled around us, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything but him.
I broke the kiss, leaning into him as the snow died down around us. “I guess that’s goodbye,” I said, my voice cracking.
If it was possible to see a heart break in someone’s face, I saw it happen in his before he closed his eyes, his fingers trembling against my cheeks as he pressed his forehead against mine.
“Is it going to hurt?” I asked.
He nodded against me. “Don’t do it,” he whispered. “It isn’t too late. You still have time.”
I pressed my lips lightly against his once more, then broke free completely. I backed toward the house unable to take my eyes off of him. I stood in front of the door long enough to feel cold again before he nodded, his shoulders sinking. The door closed behind me and I rested my head against the frame, collecting my thoughts.
“What did you find out?” Leslie asked.
I didn’t open my eyes, not ready to let go of that moment. “He doesn’t know anything.”
She was silent long enough I thought she might have left until she spoke again. “What exactly is your plan?” she asked. “You have a plan, right?”
I opened my eyes. “Of course I do.”
She nodded, looking relieved. “What is it?”
“Ornias needs me. I will set myself up as bait and when he arrives, you guys will open the door and I will push him through and the door will be sealed. Problem solved.”
She frowned. “I’m not sure it will be that simple.”
“Sure it will, unless we complicate it. Just trust me. This is what I do. The simpler the plan, the better.”
Leslie stared at me hard, trying to read my emotional state. I crossed my arms and waited until finally she sighed. “Fine. You know what’s best.”
I nodded and headed back into the room where everyone else should have been working, but instead they were fighting.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” Jessica said to Angel. “I take it you were dropped on your head a lot as a child.”
“Hey,” Terrick said, coming to her defense. “It wasn’t that bad an idea.”
“Really?” Jessica asked. “You honestly believe that she opened the door by summoning the constellation? Really? So tell me, how did things go wrong? How did she get the wrong one? You can’t summon a group of stars.” She threw up her hands. “Can you walk and chew gum?”
Leslie rushed past me. “Sorry,” she told the other coven. “Jessica doesn’t mean to be a jerk.” Jessica glared at her, then went back to her book, still looking pissed off.
“Just look for the Book of Shadows,” she grumbled at them.
Across the room, things weren’t going much better.
“How will that work?” Dom asked. “We have nothing of Ornias’s. We have no way to scry for him and we already established we can’t summon him. How do we leave clues for someone we can’t find?”
“Because we know where he’s going next,” Katrina said. She slapped the mailing list down on the floor. “He has already murdered these two people. He has obviously connected Frost to the store. We have no reason to believe he won’t keep going down the list. All we have to do is remove one of the protection charms from one of the houses and wait for him to show up.”
“Then what? What will keep him from killing us or that person?” Dom said. “The plan doesn’t work.”
“Also he could’ve figured out that she has moved on. He might be on his way here now. Until we know where he is for sure we can’t really know where we need to be. He could walk in here right now and kill us all,” Aisha said.
Selene looked up at me. “Are you sure I can’t call Olivia? Even if we don’t ask her to take care of the problem, she can probably locate him. At the very least she can tell us everything we need to know about fallen angels.”
I didn’t want to get any more people involved in this, but it was starting to look like the only way. Olivia was a wild card as an angel of death and I couldn’t predict what her reaction to any of this would be. On one hand she understood the importance of balance in the universe probably better than most, but on the other hand, from what I had heard, it never stopped her from doing exactly what she wanted to do. She might be able to save me, but that didn’t feel right. This felt like something I had to do on my own. Nevertheless I found myself saying, “Do it.”
Moments later Olivia appeared in the room like she had always been there, looking serene and detached until she saw Selene. They smiled at each other and embraced.
“How’s Bella?” Olivia asked warmly.
“So good. Spoiled rotten, of course. There will be no living with her when she’s older.”
Olivia grinned wider. “I would expect no less.”
“How are Baker and Charlie?”
“Growing faster than I could have imagined.” Olivia looked incredibly happy—which was almost eerie coming from an angel of death. “So I take it you need something?”
Selene gave her the rundown of our issue and Olivia set her penetrating blue-green eyes on me. In an instant I was positive she saw everything I planned to do, had done, and would do. She took slow steps toward me and I wanted to run away, but stayed rooted in my spot.
She gave me a sad smile. “Come talk with me.”
She went out the red door and Selene nodded encouragingly for me to follow. I trailed behind her to the kitchen where she sat at the table, waiting for me. I sat down beside her and a shot glass appeared in front of me. I looked at it, not touching it.
Olivia laughed, sending ripples across my skin and making me shiver. Not that it wasn’t a beautiful sound, but sitting this close to the living embodiment of death was freaky. “This isn’t the sort of conversation to have over coffee. I thought tequila was called for.”
I touched my fingers to the shot glass. I didn’t drink, not normally. Control was way too important to give it up to a substance. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Anything you do,” she said easily.
“Will you be there when I die?”
She studied me. “I don’t know that your death is written in stone, but when it happens, I will be there, yes. You won’t be alone.”
I nodded, clenching my teeth together and fighting against the emotions that wanted to come forward. “They won’t understand.” I glanced back toward the room.
Olivia nodded. “The people left behind seldom do.”
I took a deep breath and flattened my hands against the table. “Can you find Ornias?”
“Is that what you want me to do?” she asked.
I looked without seeing. My heart beat faster. “That’s what I want,” I whispered, not at all sure it was true.
18
JESSICA
This was impossible. Without the Book of Shadows we were never going to find the answer. Winter could have written the spell herself. She could have taken one of about fifty spells and changed it in about a billion different ways. Short of finding the book, our only other choice would be for Frost to resurrect her and literally ask what she did.
I slammed another useless book shut.
“I give up,” Angel said, echoing my thoughts.
“There’s an answer,” Terrick said, running his fingers through his hair, which stayed stuck up in parts. “Every puzzle has an answer.”
“The book has to be here,” Leslie said. “Are you sure we have checked everywhere?”
“Well, if it has to be here and we don’t have it, then obviously we haven’t checked everywhere,” I said and Leslie made a face at me.
“I can help,” a new voice said from the doorway.
I turned around. A woman with long fiery red hair stood in the doorway, holding a deep purple cloth bag with a pentagram on the front.
“Who the hell are you supposed to be?” I asked at the same time Terrick and Angel broke into smiles.
“Alexis! You came,” Angel said. “I knew you would.”
“I still don’t like her,” her chin went up, “but I love you guys and if you’re going to help her, then I guess I have to.”
I glanced at Leslie.
She leaned over. “Frost was a little Frost-like when she met them.”
“Ah.” I nodded. “What’s in the bag?”
Alexis turned her reddish-brown eyes to me. “And who are you?”
I stood up. “Jessica. Frost is in our coven. You’ve met Leslie. That’s Katrina, and that’s Selene,” I said, pointing out the others.
“And how did you get here in a snow storm?”
“Elves are a great way to travel if you don’t mind puking on route,” I said. “But we have a pissed off fallen angel looking for us and zero time to prepare, so why don’t you stop wasting time? Do you actually have something that will help or do you just want to be the center of attention?”
“What’s the deal with this coven?” She turned back to her friends. “Are they all rude?”
Angel laughed, but Terrick shook his head. “No, she’s right. What did you bring?”
With a sigh, Alexis reached into the bag and pulled out a Book of Shadows. “This is Winter Darkmore’s Book of Shadows. After my mother died, Aunt Rosemary kept it.”
“I’m sorry you lost your mother,” Leslie said. “How did she die?”
Alexis pursed her lips. “I thought we were in a rush.” She held out the book.
I took it while Leslie continued to talk to Alexis. “Thanks.” Sitting crossed legged on the floor, I opened it to page one. This wasn’t my first dark Book of Shadows, so I was prepared for the allure of it, but it didn’t hit me. It actually felt like any other spell boo
k.
Terrick plopped down next to me. “So how do we find what we’re looking for?”
I looked at him. “Are you a dark witch?”
If he thought the question was strange, he didn’t show it. He shrugged. “I don’t know that any of us consider ourselves dark or light. We never had any reason to define ourselves like that. Why?”
“Because Winter was.”
He nodded. “Everyone knows that. I mean her daughter is a necromancer.”
I looked back at the book. “Right. But the book isn’t dark magic.”
“She only went dark at the end. The Kilkenny coven has never been a dark coven.”
Then it was possible she had two books. “Was she dark or light when she opened the door?”
He shrugged.
“Hey, Les,” I interrupted her as she was catching Alexis up on what had happened. “Did Winter open the door, light or dark?”
“It’s my understanding she was light.”
I went back to the book. “Okay, you said you guys have been around for generations, right?”
Terrick nodded. “But the size of our coven varies with each generation. Winter’s era was the last time they were at full strength.”
“But Frost’s family has been around a while.” He nodded. “So it’s reasonable to assume that the beginning of the book wasn’t written by her. It was probably Frost’s other relatives, so we’ll skip forward.”
“Why?” Terrick asked. “It could have been an old spell.”
I ran my hand over the soft handmade paper. “It’s a feeling I have. This spell would be personal to her. Orion was her first magical experiment, which says to me she was reaching out beyond the book for the first time and you always remember that moment. That’s probably why she wanted to help him. I have to assume she would’ve wanted the first spell she added to the book to be the one that set him free.”
Terrick raised an eyebrow. “Let’s find out.” He leafed through the book, stopping at each new form of handwriting until he didn’t find anymore. “This is it.” He flipped the section back to the beginning.
