Nine of Stars

by Laura Bickle

  But this place was warm. There was food. Very exotic things, which she had never tasted before: things called chocolate and pasta and rice. Nine had a special affection for the chocolate that Maria kept in a jar in the kitchen. She dipped in to steal a piece whenever she slipped through the kitchen. If Maria minded, she never said.

  At night, Nine dreamed of running with the rest of the wolves. She’d awake in a warm bed with a pillow wet with tears.

  And she had a roommate. The cat.

  Pearl sat at the foot of the bed, watching Nine. She didn’t blink, just stared. Nine had woken in the middle of the night to find the cat sitting on the bed, staring at her, eyes shining. Cats, she knew, could always see magic. She wondered how much this cat saw.

  Wrapped in quilts, Nine extended a hand to the small grey and white cat. The cat sniffed at her hand but made no further moves.

  That was good enough for now, Nine decided. She had, after all, invaded this cat’s territory. Nine was used to being the omega. She could play omega to this cat.

  Maria had come to the doorway of the bedroom, watching Nine and the cat. “There’s something I’d like to show you.”

  She was wearing a coat and boots. Nine put on a pair of Maria’s boots and one of her coats and followed her out of the house to a windswept field behind the house. They followed a well-worn path in the beaten-down snow.

  “Where are we going?” Nine asked.

  “It’s called the Eye of the World.”

  In the center of the field lay a pool, shiny as an obsidian mirror. It was surrounded by a large ring of stones. Nine placed her hand on one of the stones. This place radiated magic, calm and tranquil.

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “There’s supposed to be a door into the spirit world from here,” Maria said, the winter wind pulling her hair free of its braids. “I’ve never seen it, but I believe it’s there.”

  Nine walked to the edge of the pool and peered in. Clouds and sky, still and perfect, were reflected on the surface. And where her face should have been, Nine saw the outline of a wolf, with pointed ears and a grey ruff.

  She reached out, skimming her hand over the cold water, and smiled.

  A cold winter night seemed like the right time to go to church.

  To the Compostela, that was.

  The stars were bright overhead; Orion could even be seen dancing through the streetlight outside the bar. All the parking spots on the street were full; Gabe and Petra had to walk a half block to the door.

  It was the first time they’d been out since Gabe had been sprung from the hospital. Petra was glad to have him home; the small futon felt too big without him, even with Sig sprawling on the covers.

  He was home, but not unchanged. She knew that he’d lost much of the sight in one eye, and he moved much more slowly, with a cane. Some of his hair had begun to grow back, but he still groused about the winter drafts, his hat pushed low over his brow. But she saw improvement each day in how far he walked through the fields, and heard his lungs breathe steadier each night. When he walked in the field behind the trailer, she noticed that he no longer bothered to try to court the ravens with cat food and shiny things.

  They shouldered through the bar, finding a booth hewn of church pews to sit at near the back. The place was full of candlelight and the ring of glassware. After they were seated, their drinks arrived, unbidden, and Petra perused the menu.

  She lifted her glass. “To getting better.” Her treatment started next week. She was nervous, but guardedly optimistic.

  “To getting better.” Gabe clinked her glass with his own. “And to falling off mountains and successful chemo.”

  She took a drink of the sweet, cidery ale and smiled. “This will likely be my last one of these for a while.” She dreaded it and at the same time wanted to get it over with. She’d put it off for as long as she could, using the excuse that she had to tie up loose ends at work, until Gabe had insisted that she begin. “Rocks can wait,” he said then.

  “Then you should enjoy that drink,” he said now.

  Petra glanced surreptitiously around. There were no more flyers posted with Gabe’s likeness on them, and no uniformed deputies had appeared on her doorstep. She’d seen a picture on the front page of the paper about Sal Rutherford’s funeral. Owen had been standing front and center, in uniform, looking much more stoic than he had on the mountainside. If the man was up to public appearances, presumably he was back to his regular duties.

  “Looks like y’all have seen better days.”

  It was the bartender. He’d drifted by their table, nonchalantly scribbling on an order pad.

  Gabe tipped his hat. “There have been better days. Anything new here?”

  The bartender shrugged. “Big gossip has been about Sal Rutherford’s funeral.”

  “Did you go?”

  “I hung around the fringes. Lots of pretty talk about an ugly guy.” He shrugged.

  “Well. Sal was never charming,” Petra murmured.

  “We all have our dark sides, I guess,” Gabe said, taking a swig of his beer.

  “Yeah. And sometimes, the darkness finds us.”

  The bartender moved away, humming something that sounded suspiciously like “The Devil Inside.”

  He suspected.

  But he needed to see it for himself.

  Gabe drove Petra’s Bronco across the field. A thaw had come early, making the field mushy and thick with slush. As it evaporated, a thick mist clung to the earth. He wheeled the truck through the bumps and ruts. His own inner compass showed him where he needed to go.

  The Lunaria.

  It was dangerous going back to Sal’s land, he knew. Owen had not approached either him or Petra since they’d emerged from the backcountry. It had been six weeks, and no one had seen or heard much at all from the sheriff. Gabe was hoping he could drive in and drive out, beneath Owen’s notice.

  He stopped before the remains of the tree and shut off the engine. Popping open the truck door, he gingerly let himself out. He walked with a cane that was frustratingly slippery in the mush. The sight in his left eye was gone permanently, they’d told him. When he looked at the eye in the rearview mirror, it looked dead to him. But he was alive.

  He stumped over to the site of the tree.

  He didn’t expect much. The burned-out hulk of it had grown soft and begun to rot, the flesh soft underneath his palm.

  But it lived. The sapling tree, the one that had been given life, had grown. It had grown at least two feet since the last time Gabe had seen it. It was nearly as tall as he stood now, empty of leaves. But the wood was supple and smooth. It was growing.

  And that was what he suspected had happened to him.

  Gabe looked up. A white shadow dropped from the grey sky and landed on the dead tree.

  A white eagle. It ruffled its feathers, gazing at Gabe with dark eyes.

  He sucked in his breath. It was the bird from his dreams. In alchemy, it was paired with the lion, for transformation.

  He held out his arm. It lit on it with massive talons that dug painfully through the leather skin of his coat.

  “Hello, Gabriel.”

  Gabe turned, and the eagle took wing.

  “Hello, Owen. It’s good to see you.”

  The sheriff seemed as if he’d gotten his shit together. His hair was combed. He looked clean and reasonably present. Even his boot laces were tied. His right hand was wrapped in a leather glove with only two fingers. Looked custom-made.

  “I was hoping to catch you here.” Owen stood beside him to regard the tree. “Well, more than hoping. I’ve got a motion sensor back at the road that you tripped.”

  “Ah. So, you’ve moved in?”

  “Seemed like the thing to do.”

  “I saw in the paper that Sal was buried.”

  “Yeah. Haven’t seen so many flowers in one place since ever.” Owen gave a small shudder. “I also wanted you to know, I reburied the rest of the men that we found here.”


  Gabe blew out his breath. “Thank you.”

  Owen gestured to a line of chunky, frost-heaved earth about fifty yards west. “Backhoe had a helluva time getting through there. But we got a sunny day, and that helped. Didn’t know who was who, or what should be done about markers . . .”

  “That’s enough. I’m sure they’d appreciate the burial.” Anything would be better than spending years in the back of a coroner’s freezer, awaiting identification.

  “I heard that you made a decent recovery.”

  “Can’t complain. Wouldn’t do any good, if I did.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Silver metal flashed in Owen’s hand, and a handcuff clicked in place around Gabe’s wrist.

  Gabe stared down at the bracelet. “What’s this?”

  “You’re coming with me.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  Fast as a snake, Gabe reached out for Owen’s wrist and wrenched it down, hard. The bracelet of the handcuffs spun and glittered in the overcast light, popping free of Owen’s grip.

  Funny how all that old Pinkerton training came back. One of his instructors had been a magician, a man who went on later to train Houdini.

  “Goddamn it,” Owen swore, reaching for his gun. Gabe recognized it immediately—it was one of Sal’s favorites, a Smith & Wesson .357 with ornamental silver stocks.

  Gabe swung back with the hand encased with the handcuff, hit Owen squarely across the jaw. A bright line of red tore across Owen’s face, and he reeled back.

  Gabe limped toward the truck, reaching under his coat for his gun. He got exactly two yards before he was tackled from behind and tasted dirt. He struggled to get his gun free of the holster, pressed between the ground and his ribs, the ache in his lungs blossoming fire up his throat. Blood speckled the cold slush.

  “You aren’t going anywhere,” Owen panted, working his arm around Gabe’s neck. He shoved his knee in Gabe’s back and began to choke him.

  Gabe’s vision dimmed, but he smelled leather. Fresh, new leather. He turned his head and bit down on that soft kidskin, on Owen’s wounded hand.

  Owen howled, but Gabe didn’t let go. Owen’s grip loosened enough for Gabe to strike him in the nose with the back of his head. He crawled out from under the sheriff, clawing forward on the ground.

  His fingers knew this land, knew the trapdoor in the dark. He grabbed the ring that opened the door, hauled up with all his might. The door in the sod opened.

  Gabe launched himself into the darkness. Out of habit, he expected the tree to catch him. But the tree was dead, and he slammed into a static tangle of frozen roots, clawing at them to keep from falling directly on his ass. The icy tendrils shattered under his boots, sending him falling down to the bottom of the chamber in a hail of splinters. He landed on his wounded leg, pain jarring up and down his spine.

  “You won’t get away from me.”

  Owen’s silhouette loomed in the opening of the trapdoor.

  Gabe drew his pistol and fired. Owen ducked out of the way. Dirt spewed back at him, and muzzle-flash illuminated the chamber below the tree.

  It had been hacked to pieces. With his good eye, he could see where the roots had been sawed away, where the Hanged Men had been taken from their slumber. There was no liquid sunshine here, just sawdust and a rusty stain on the floor where Sal’s body had once been. He felt it in his aching bones. The tree was gone. But more than that . . . malevolent things had begun to creep into the space it occupied. Shadows slithered through the ruins of the tree, scuttling and chattering.

  A lump rising in his throat, Gabe turned to stump off down the dark passageway. Once upon a time, this had been his world. No longer. This place, his kingdom, was dead. Something new was on its way to take his place.

  The lurid red light of a signal flare caught and sizzled behind him, stirring shadows. Owen was coming.

  Gabe fled into the dark beyond.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my amazing editor, Rebecca Lucash. I appreciate all the support and wonderful opportunities. Thank you for the chance to get Petra and Sig out for a romp in the snow!

  Much gratitude to my wonderful agent, Becca Stumpf, for championing my work all throughout my career.

  Thank you to Caro Perny, for all her magical publicity super powers.

  Thanks to my dad for the long discussion about melting antimony. I knew you’d know, even though I had no idea what I didn’t know.

  Thank you to Marcella Burnard for the last minute reading and listening to my never-ending story angst.

  Thanks to my brother, Matt, King of the Dungeon Masters, for rolling the twenty-sided die and giving me a fresh read.

  And gratitude to Jason, who knows how to argue the finer points of frostbite and head trauma. You make sure that I don’t beat my characters up beyond retrieval. Unless I meant to do that (which happens often enough).

  About the Author

  LAURA BICKLE grew up in rural Ohio, reading entirely too many comic books out loud to her favorite Wonder Woman doll. After graduating with an MA in Sociology-Criminology from Ohio State University and an MLIS in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, she patrolled the stacks at the public library and worked with data systems in criminal justice. She now dreams up stories about the monsters under the stairs. Her work has been included in the ALA’s Amelia Bloomer Project 2013 reading list and the State Library of Ohio’s Choose to Read Ohio reading list for 2015-2016. More information about Laura’s work can be found at www.laurabickle.com.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Laura Bickle

  Dark Alchemy Prequel Novels

  Dark Alchemy

  Mercury Retrograde

  Anya Kalinczyk Series

  Embers

  Sparks

  Delphic Oracle Series (written as Alayna Williams)

  Dark Oracle

  Rogue Oracle

  For Young Adult Readers

  The Hallowed Ones

  The Outside

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover and interior spot art by Shutterstock.

  nine of stars. Copyright © 2017 by Laura Bickle. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

  Epub Edition JANUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780062437655

  Print Edition ISBN: 9780062437662

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers Australia Pty. Ltd.

  Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street

  Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

  www.harpercollins.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Canada

  2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor

  Toronto, ON M4W 1A8, Canada

  www.harpercollins.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollins Publishers New Zealand

  Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive

  Rosedale 0632

  Auckland, New Zealand

  www.harpercollins.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF, UK

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  195 Broadway

&nbs
p; New York, NY 10007

  www.harpercollins.com