by Jessica Gunn
“Then let’s go out on our own,” Will said. “If not out of the country, at least down the block for breakfast because we have nothing.”
I glared at him. He returned the stare with a deadpan one. “Hilarious,” I said.
He touched a hand to his chest. “Funny? No, I was being serious. We literally have no food right now. That’s where I was headed when you came home. We can escape the country after we eat.”
Looks like I wouldn’t be getting that nap after all. “All right, fine. Let me at least shower.”
“Absolutely,” he said as he stood from the couch. “You know I love you. But you stink to high heaven right now.” He made a show of waving a hand in front of his nose.
I sighed, rolling my eyes. No one in this world was quite like Will. I was lucky to have him as a friend. Doubly lucky to still have him as a friend at all after what had happened.
Not like I had any friends at the Fire Circle anymore.
“Give me ten minutes,” I said as I headed toward the bathroom. Ten minutes of relaxation would have to be enough.
Will and I decided against our usual coffee shop in exchange for an actual grocery store. While breakfast was high on the priority scale, we really did need other things, too.
After showering and applying enough makeup to hide some of the bruising on my face from Blood Hunter’s last hit, we rushed out and right into the bakery section of the store. Coffee and pastry in hand, we began our shopping.
“How long do you think it’s going to take the Circles to make it safe, anyway?” Will asked as we pushed the cart up another aisle.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.” But I did know why Will was asking. His parents had had another child a few years ago, and his little brother was the most adorable thing in the world. Then his parents had split up when we’d been in college, and he hadn’t really seen either of them since. It was probably the saving grace they needed to not get wrapped up in all of this Talon bullshit, but I couldn’t imagine being separated from family for that long. Especially since mine weren’t in the picture anymore, for one reason or another. Death and divorce of parents were just a few of the many things Will and I had in common, and two of the things that had strengthened our friendship over the many years. Our parents had been best friends since before college. Before all the bad.
At least Will and I still got along. This whole protection program thing would have been hard if we didn’t.
“How’s Amelia?” I asked, changing the subject.
Will gave me a sheepish grin, then turned to grab a box of cereal off a nearby shelf. “She’s good. I don’t think anything’s going to happen, though.”
I’d been leery about Will getting a part-time job at a pharmacy in town. But he’d been going crazy cooped up in the house. We both were. And so far, the new identities the Fire Circle had created for us were holding up. Him dating, on the other hand…
“I’m glad. Just be careful.”
“Okay, Mom,” he said as he tossed the cereal box into the cart. “I can handle myself.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Unlike you,” he said. “Your face still looks awful.”
“Thanks, Will. You’re the best.”
He frowned. “I’m serious. Does it hurt?”
I ignored the throbbing and smiled for his benefit. “No. I’m good. Just a lucky shot.”
He regarded me for a long moment before turning away and heading farther down the aisle.
We finished our shopping and made for the front to check out. I loaded the belt while Will chatted away with the cashier, a girl our age who was getting really flirty with him. I ignored it as best I could and loaded the rest of our groceries.
A shadow in the corner of my eyes caught my attention. I glanced up, looking for the moving object, expecting a person but finding nothing. Weird.
“Ava,” Will said, his hand out. The cashier had rung up most of the items on the belt and they were waiting for me.
“Sorry.” I put more items on the belt.
The shadow passed by me again, a darkness on the edge of my vision.
I ran out into the main aisle this time, ignoring the curious gazes from other shoppers and an arched eyebrow from Will. Leaving the store through the front doors was a man whose gait looked very familiar.
My heart pounded in my chest. Those long strides, the set of his shoulders. I knew him. My heart leapt into my throat. Had they finally found me?
No. This man didn’t have white-blond hair. It wasn’t him. Was it?
I trailed back to the cash register, still ignoring the onlookers’ stares.
“Thank you, Christine,” said a woman’s voice from in front of me. The cashier.
My stomach dropped, all breath whooshing out of my lungs in a cold vacuum. I turned my head toward the cashier, my face feeling cool despite a bead of sweat trickling down my neck.
Will stared back at me, a look of terror on his face.
“Excuse me?” I asked the cashier.
She just grinned back like nothing at all had happened. “I said thank you. Your total is fifty-three eighty-five.”
I gulped as the cashier redirected her attention to Will and the cash he was handing her from my winnings last night.
No one had called me “Christine” in a long six months. No one had used my real name since him. Since the demon who had killed my team: Veynix.
Chapter 4
“Thanks,” Will said, putting himself between the cashier and me. He took all the bags and still managed to get an arm around mine, pulling me out of the store. He didn’t slow down until we were out on the street.
I stared ahead, dumbfounded as Will led me back to our apartment. “How did she…?”
Will shook his head. “Not sticking around to find out. Are you okay?”
“No.” My arms shook. It felt like they’d been shaking since the end of last night’s first fight. Like they’d never stop shaking.
“You need to tell Ben now,” Will said. “Or I will. Although I think they’d much rather appreciate an actual Hunter showing up at Fire Circle Headquarters instead of me.”
Unmasked. Someone using my real name. Could these past six hours get any worse?
Get a grip. Think. My location had been leaked. It was totally possible that, in the two hours since I’d left Midnight, Talon had been informed of my location and Veynix had been told, too. It was totally possible that they’d had time to come into the city and screw with people’s brains and magik, or pay off the local business owners to freak me out. If fighting in Midnight had taught me anything, it was that Darkness had no shortage of money or ill morals.
They’d do anything to get the job done. Anything.
“We need to get back right now,” I said, “and get the hell out of here.”
“We’re in the middle of the city in broad daylight,” Will said. “I’d say we’re fine for now.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “Talon doesn’t care about witnesses, not in cases like us.” My old team had discovered a plan so secret that even the reports about that night that were passed between the Leaders of the Hunter Circles didn’t include what we found.
Dacher, Leader of the Fire Circle and my top-level boss, hadn’t allowed us to even speak it aloud more than once or twice.
Will shifted some of the bags on his arm. “And what are we going to do when we get home?”
I picked up the pace and swallowed any misgivings about ditching the Fire Circle. They’d had their chance to protect Will and me. And sure, maybe someone calling me by my real name could have been a coincidence, but it was a hell of a coincidence. “Pack up and leave. The cashier wasn’t a demon—unless she was wearing contacts to hide the color of her eyes. But between the fight last night and what just happened, I’m not taking any chances. I’ll call Fire Circle Headquarters once we’re somewhere new.”
Will paused outside the door to our building and looked at me with a pleading expression. “Like where, Ava?”
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I shrugged. “You need to have been somewhere to teleportante there. But I can get us out west to Boulder. Or at the very least to an airport or bus station.”
We’d traveled a lot with our parents. The possibilities were endless; it was whether or not that amount of distance would make a difference to Talon that was the real question.
Will sighed and adjusted the bags again. “Look, I know you don’t trust the Fire Circle to do their jobs, Ava, but they put us in New York for a reason.”
“They don’t trust me, Will,” I said, looking him straight in the eyes. “They didn’t send us here for ‘protection.’ They sent us here to keep us contained. Watched. On house arrest. Half the new Command thinks I bargained with Veynix for my life.” Just speaking his name aloud sent shivers rolling down my arms. “It’s me they don’t trust. And I’m pretty sure they didn’t open a bigger investigation only because of the connection they think I have to Talon and Landshaft.”
They probably thought I knew where the city of Landshaft was because of what had happened. But the truth was no one knew Landshaft’s location. The city had been covered in protection and concealing magiks centuries ago, and no one ever returned from any scouting missions. All the Fire Circle had ever discovered were isolated establishments or houses where members of Landshaft conducted their trade. Drug dealing, Ember witch trafficking. Or the trafficking of any magik-user that they could turn into a demon and a soldier for Evil in the final war—whenever that was going to happen.
My team had come across one of those isolated operations. But rather than a lower-level demon or bounty hunter, the operation we’d discovered just happened to be run by Talon, the most elite group in Landshaft.
The same group now run by the right-hand man of the Empire of Darkness’ late heir.
“Ben won’t let anything bad happen,” Will said. “He’s always championed us against the rest of the Command and Fire Circle.”
I dug into my pockets for the building key. “Doesn’t matter what he will and won’t do, Will. He’s just one guy with minimal sway. If he really wanted to help us, he would have had us moved to another Circle farther away.” I slid the key into the lock and pushed open the door.
“I’m sure he did the best he could.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from speaking again. Will didn’t know the full goings-on in the Fire Circle like I did, and I’d been sort of out of the loop for almost six months now. Will knew there was a leadership turnover, but not why. And not how severe it’d been. There was a tremendous amount of political change and tension in the air. Not just within the Fire Circle, but in all of Darkness after their heir had been replaced by his sister. Then she had died, and power vacuums popped up everywhere and expanded.
This was exactly how Talon and its new leader, Jerrick, had come into power. And exactly why they’d developed the program they had. The secret operation that had cost my teammates their lives.
I grabbed some of the bags from Will and together we climbed the run-down, slightly moldy stairs to our apartment on the fourth floor.
“We don’t necessarily need to escape now,” I said as we walked down the hall. “But if I tell the Fire Circle what happened and they don’t take any steps, we’re out. Okay? I don’t want you to get caught up in this anymore than you already are.”
A pit, dreadful and dark, formed in my stomach. We’d have to convince our families to move too, if things really got bad. Or at least get his little brother out of the way. Six months ago, the Fire Circle had said they’d have Hunters watching everyone in covert ways, but I wasn’t sure how much I believed that.
“Have more faith in your bosses,” Will said.
“Only when they have more faith in me.”
Ben and his team had been good to me, like Will said. But when only I’d survived Veynix’s attack, most Hunters in Boston had turned their backs on me when I’d needed them most based on some ridiculous notion that I must have made a deal with Veynix to survive. Although, to be fair, those rumors had probably started because of a certain incident involving Veynix that I’d rather not have recalled.
I shuddered at the memory of his lips on mine.
Will stopped dead in his tracks right before our apartment door.
I almost ran into him. “What? What is it?”
“Did we leave the door unlocked?” Will asked.
I almost slammed into him. “No. Why?”
He lifted the arm with the least grocery bags and pointed to our front door. “It’s open.”
My breath hitched. Dread washed over me. “Stay here.” I set the groceries on the ground outside of our door.
“No.”
I spun on Will and whispered, “Yes. If there’s a demon in there—”
“Don’t stand there and try to tell me I can’t fight it after you came home limping in pain.”
I gave him a hard stare. “Just wait here, Will.”
His eyes narrowed, but he set down his bags and crossed his arms. “You get two minutes.”
“That’s all I’ll need.”
I moved to the doorway and carefully, slowly nudged the front door open the rest of the way. The knob had been destroyed, the unit nearly falling out of the door itself. I pulled in a steadying breath and entered the apartment.
And froze.
Nothing had been touched. Everything, every pot and pan and couch cushion was exactly where we’d left it an hour ago. The television still sat in front of the window with Will’s Xbox—the one thing he’d brought with him from home—and small collection of games right next to it. Whatever someone had broken in here for, it wasn’t for anything mundane.
I reached behind me for a knife I always kept hidden at my back and found empty air. My fingers skimmed my shirt, but no sheath or blade lay there. I must not have armed myself before heading out to the store.
Step by cautious step, I made my way into the kitchen and grabbed a steak knife from the knife block. My weapons were all in my room. Shit.
I made my way across the empty living room to Will’s room first. As expected, the space was empty. That just left my room.
I padded back across the joined kitchen and living room until I could see my bed through the door.
My space had been torn apart. Sheets had been ripped from the bed, clothes pulled from the closet. And on the wall next to my weapon’s chest, a knife had been shoved into the drywall, one with a red handle and a dancing gold flame. My Fire Circle knife, the one I’d been given at graduation from training. The one that identified me as a Fire Circle Hunter. The one I’d given myself near-fatal scars with, and the same knife I’d hidden away six months ago in a box in my closet here because of it.
That box now lay on the floor as well, torn apart and emptied.
The car flipped, end over end, spiraling down the embankment. Screams, cries, blood—so much blood.
I blinked, shaking my head to rid myself of the memories. I lifted a hand to pull it from the wall. My breath hitched when I saw what the knife had pinned to the wall for all to see. My fingers shook as the room began to spin, and no matter how hard my chest heaved, it felt as though my lungs wouldn’t take in any breaths.
Beneath the knife was a newspaper clipping of the car accident with an incorrect headline reading: FOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS DIE IN DRUNK DRIVING ACCIDENT ON INTERSTATE – INVESTIGATION PENDING.
Underneath that was skin shed from a snake. And not just any snake.
A cobra.
Chapter 5
Six Months Ago
I smacked the laptop’s screen, hoping it’d help the webpage load. Screw this online class, screw this midterm. This was the last night we’d have off from patrolling for demons until after Thanksgiving break. Which was fine by me because after this semester was over, I’d done with school for good. But it was also the last night I had to work on this midterm before it was due in, oh…
I glanced at the clock at the bottom of the laptop screen. Three hours.
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��Come on,” I groaned.
“Everything okay?”
I startled, my gaze jumping toward my open bedroom door. Brian stood there, a goofy grin on his face. “How long have you been there?” I asked.
“Long enough to see you beating the laptop.” He nudged the door open with his knee since his hands were each carrying a small milkshake. “Thought you could use something to cheer you up.”
A grin split my face from ear to ear. “You always know how to make me happy.”
Brian nudged the door shut again behind him and placed one of the milkshakes on my desk. Then he kicked off his shoes and took a seat on the corner of my bed, though it wasn’t that far. Our knees brushed as I turned to face him. The one-story ranch house our team called home wasn’t huge, but we’d made it work.
“How long have you been back for?” I asked. He and Emily had left for a grocery run some time after dinner. But I hadn’t heard them come back. Although I doubted I’d have heard anything over my own frustration with this midterm.
“Ten minutes or so,” Brian said. “Emily went a little extra on stuff for Friendsgiving.”
My brow furrowed as I drank some of the chocolate milkshake. “Friendsgiving? We’re doing that this year?”
Brian’s expression faltered for a moment before he nodded. “Yeah, didn’t Jeremy tell you?”
I frowned and glanced back at my laptop. “I’ve been neck-deep in school work. Must have missed the memo.” But I did know that Liz wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving, and neither was Brian. And ever since joining the team, they’d become my real family, Will excluded. This house was home for me.
“It’s okay.” He gestured to the laptop. “Why don’t you take a break?”
I winced. “I shouldn’t. It’s due at midnight.”
“I can help,” Brian said as he set his milkshake aside. He leaned in toward the laptop.
“Oh?” I asked, arching an eyebrow. “And how much do you know about biochemistry?”
