Hella looked at the blue bumps, shining and beautiful. She ran her fingers over them, smiling. ‘They’re nice,’ she said, then pulled him gently back, his fear replaced with relief. They kissed for what could have been a minute, or an hour. Hella’s hair was slightly messed, and Salem had the grace to make himself temporarily scarce and decided to chase a possum nearby. Harrow’s large shoulder muscles seemed to alternate between tensing and relaxing as their lips locked, at first slowly, then more deeply.
When they finally broke apart, they were both grinning from ear to ear. ‘Now that’s how you start a day,’ Harrow said, with a spring in his step. Wordlessly, they walked the short distance back to the shop, Salem trailing behind. Harrow shimmered back but made a brave move; he gently caught hold of Hella’s hand, and she caught his.
Chapter Forty-Two
Remy
Remy put her phone away. ‘It’s time for us to go. That was Hella. She’s on her way to the store.’
Sian twisted her long black hair into a bun on the top of her head, revealing the sparkling green amulet around her neck. ‘Yes, it’s time to bring our newest sister into the fold. She should know what’s happening.’
Remy watched as the other witches nodded their agreement. Sian stepped forward. ‘I will go, and speak for all of us. The rest of you should stay here. Keep working on the potion. We may need it sooner than we thought.’ Sian looked to Remy. ‘Bring your book back with us. Hella should see it. One day it may be hers.’
Remy gathered up her old book, filled with spells she had spent decades learning and perfecting. There were even spells, like the one her entire coven was currently working on, that she had created herself. She nodded at Sian. ‘All of the rugrats are at my store.’ Remy sighed. So many teenagers.
Hunter stood up from her chair, eyes dark and angry. ‘I know you have to get the Scire back, but I want my sister rescued, too. If it’s not too late, have Hella bring my Tessa back to me.’ The words sounded angry, but behind that, they were pleading.
Remy nodded. ‘We’ll do everything we can, Hunter. She’s one of us too. I promise.’
Chapter Forty-Three
Meele
Meele was awake the whole time, adrenaline coursing through her veins. She peered around freely, as the angels hadn’t bothered to re-blindfold their captives, though the windows were blacked out. The faerie felt the van hum along the slightly bumpy road out of town, along a long stretch of straight road past the ocean where she could smell the tang of salt. Her best guess was that they had been taken to Port Macquarie, or somewhere close by. Wherever they were, this Captor’s Point would be the first one Meele was thrown into, rather than breaking someone out of. At that, she felt a pang of annoyance.
The van’s smooth driving came to a grinding slow as gravel crunched under the tyres, perhaps along a driveway. Meele wondered how they would be held. In cages? If vampires and werewolves were kept together, they would likely kill each other. Meele glanced over at the vampire, quiet and seething in the corner. Vampire on vampire, werewolf on werewolf and vampire on werewolf. They would all kill each other. They might be held separately.
The van stopped. The angels got out, and Meele watched on as Amara tried to remain calm.
The van’s sliding door screeched opened, and each of them were pulled from the vehicle by the chains binding their wrists. Meele got a good look at her new home, even in the darkness. The building was large, at least ten stories tall, but old and poorly kept. One part of the building even seemed to have partially caved in on itself, the rest looking almost as dilapidated. Meele wondered if angels knew how to maintain earth-bound structures. She and the others were led inside, pushed and shoved if they dared to dawdle.
Meele listened to the angels’ thoughts. The angel with a mop of dark hair and emerald eyes seemed to enjoy shoving Amara, thinking unkind thoughts about how pretty her wings were, silver and glistening in the moonlight. The angel with blond hair and teal eyes seemed to be scowling at the floor as they were led down a few corridors through the maze-like building. Other angels stood in guard positions at doorways and entrances. Meele quickly lost count of them.
Meele focused harder on the blond angel, his thoughts unlike the others.
So many. Another one, I can’t believe it. Again. She’s so young, the blond angel thought, to Meele’s surprise. The two other angels took the vampire up a separate flight of stairs. They were each wondering which vampire they should bet on, the new one, or the old one already in his cage. The angels were to set them to fight. Meele frowned. She’d never heard of that.
Now they were left with the two angels. Amara and Meele’s chains were tied together. They’re going to rip us apart, the young faerie thought. Meele wanted to offer some reassurance but could not think of any to give. In all likelihood, Amara was right.
They entered what seemed to be a great hall in the centre of the ground floor. Looking up, Meele could see the sky through the broken-in ceiling, and the round building’s many floors above. The great hall was decorated with hundreds of framed trophies; faerie wings painted with dried blood of varying sizes, colours and shapes were the most common decoration, taking up a large portion of the wall’s space. Next were framed fangs, of vampire and werewolf alike, and bloodied claws and whole furry paws. Glass cabinets were everywhere, and Meele was afraid to look inside, but she could not help it. Within each one was the mark of a warlock. A tail, pointed and scaled, ripped from the warlock so grotesquely. She saw shining scales and cringed away.
Amara was staring, horror-struck, all around, her soft eyes welling with tears. ‘No,’ she breathed. The blood and Marks of thousands of Cambions decorated the hall. Meele should be terrified, but instead, she felt a boiling rage build in her chest. She would make every one of these angels pay for what they had done.
‘Do you like it?’ the angel with dark hair said, chuckling. ‘We call this the Holy Hallway. It’s where we can display our finest work.’ He chucked her on the nose. ‘Maybe a piece of you will be up here soon, somewhere. Look at those purple wings, I carved those off a young faerie just last week. So beautiful.’ He looked at Amara. ‘It’s almost a shame that our buyer wants you, I do so enjoy decorating our halls.’
The angels tugged them into an elevator large enough to fit a dozen of them, the dark angel pressed the top button.
‘Why does that warlock buy from you?’ Meele asked.
The dark angel’s green eyes flashed, angry that she would dare speak. ‘Are you feeling betrayed? That one of your own kind would be working with us? He buys some of our pieces. Uses them for dark spells and things, he told me once. What do I care?’ He shrugged, indifferent.
‘Why would you sell to him? What do you get out of it?’ Meele pressed, anxious to find out why a warlock would do such a thing, promoting the bloodlust of angels.
The angel only smiled.
At that moment, the elevator stopped with a ding, and they all got off on the tenth floor. The dark angel grabbed Meele, pulling her hard by the chains, Amara behind, and slammed her against the stone of a pillar. The back of her head ached. ‘You do not get to question me, you filthy little beast.’ He hissed. ‘You don’t deserve to live, let alone speak to me in such a way. I am an angel.’
A bad one, his blond partner thought with a twist of guilt. Meele’s head whipped to him, raising her eyebrows. He looked at her, surprised. Knowing angels’ thoughts, in close proximity, without their realising it had great advantages, Meele thought, looking away. Don’t give it away now. It was a secret the fae had managed to keep from the angels for a long time.
Both faeries were led to a room, down a long hallway of barred cells, and thrown roughly inside. Meele and Amara, tangling themselves in the chains, fell to the concrete floor in a tumble.
‘We’ll be with you soon,’ the dark angel promised with a sly grin.
As Meele and Amara got shakily to their feet, something shuffled in the cell’s dark corner, a
rattling of chains.
‘Hello? Is someone there?’ Meele asked.
Then Meele heard it. The frantic thoughts of a young girl, a faerie huddled in the shadows dark in the corner. Slowly, she moved into a pool of light filtered in through the bars from the hallway. Meele’s heart melted a little. She wasn’t even a teenager.
‘I’m Tessa,’ she said. ‘Who’re you?’
Chapter Forty-Four
Hella
Hella and Harrow’s hands broke apart as they approached the Witches’ Wares front door. Remy’s Toyota was parked on the street. She was here already. As they let themselves inside, Hella distinctly realised that the chime of the bell was absent. She looked up expectantly, then over her shoulder as Harrow smirked.
‘I may have killed the bell on my way out last night,’ he admitted.
Hella rolled her eyes fondly at him. ‘It kind of annoyed me too.’ Then she called out, ‘Remy?’
Instead, it was Sian who greeted her, the head of her coven with long raven-dark hair twisted into a knot on the top of her head. ‘Hella,’ she smiled, as if greeting a close friend. ‘Warlock,’ she smiled, less sweetly, but still kindly. Harrow frowned at the generalisation. ‘Oh, and handsome familiar.’ Sian bent down to pet Salem who seemed to like her immensely, purring loudly. She waved them inside, to the training room.
Harrow leaned in to whisper into Hella’s ear. ‘You still owe me that breakfast date,’ he said with a soft smile. Hella returned it and nodded.
As they entered the room, Hella almost laughed aloud at the scene; Remy had set up a large pewter cauldron on the coffee table and something inside it was bubbling merrily as the old witch stirred it with a long wooden spoon. Drifts of blue-green smoke poured from the lip.
‘Now that’s something you don’t see every day,’ Hella said. She set her backpack down on the couch and both Remy and Sian glanced at it, then to her.
Sian motioned Hella over to the boiling pot. ‘We need to initiate you, Hellora. You’re one of our witches now. And we could use your strength. One of yours has been taken.’ Sian glanced at Harrow, meaning Meele. ‘But so has one of ours. The sister of one of our own has been abducted. We need to get them back.’
‘And Tommy called as we were on our way here,’ Remy interjected. ‘Amara, the faerie who healed him’—she nodded at Harrow—‘never returned to her House. They think she was taken too.’
‘Well, where are they? Do you know?’ Hella asked, perched on the edge of the couch.
‘One thing at a time. Do you agree to the initiation?’ Sian asked, motioning her forward.
Hella frowned, then shrugged. ‘Sure?’
The raven-haired witch held Hella’s hand over the cauldron with an athame in her other hand. ‘You are our sister now, Hellora of House Corvime.’ Sian used the blade to slice into Hella’s palm, letting her red blood drip into the cauldron.
‘Witches are odd,’ Harrow commented from the armchair. He sat cross-legged, warming by the fire burning in the hearth.
‘We’re not odd, warlock. We’re just different than you, that’s all. Now, hush,’ Remy snapped.
Sian smirked. ‘Now that you’re part of our coven, Hella, we can help train you. You have more sisters you will meet one day.’ Sian lowered Hella’s hand and tucked the athame into her belt as Hella had been doing. They both looked into the cauldron, which simmered without an obvious source of heat, then suddenly glowed brightly. ‘There.’ Sian smiled. ‘Now, we’re connected. To more important things.’ She nodded to Remy, who seemed to take over as Sian wrapped a soft bandage over Hella’s hand.
The old witch gathered supplies on the low table, then suddenly pulled out a map. ‘I have a plan,’ she announced to the group. It wasn’t one of the cheap tourist maps of Mill Valley they sold over the counter; this one was a world-map, old and wrinkled.
‘What are we doing?’ Hella asked her guardian.
Remy set aside the cauldron, and instead laid out a bunch of vials around an almost-flat copper bowl. Remy then spoke to Harrow. ‘Dear, I need you over here with me, come sit.’ Frowning, Harrow moved obediently, sitting on the floor by Remy’s armchair. ‘Okay, this is what we’re doing. Hella, pay attention. You could do this one day. I think I know how to find Meele.’ Harrow visibly perked up. ‘What we have to do is scry for her. That’s a witch’s term.’
Remy picked up a handful of herbs, sprinkling them into the nearly-flat copper bowl, then poured in a vial of what looked like her own blood. For a moment, her amulet glowed blue. She muttered a spell, blue sparks flying, and all four of them bent over to watch. Remy picked up a long silver chain with a pointed amethyst at the end and set it aside carefully.
‘This,’ she declared proudly, ‘is a scrying crystal. All the stronger for having never been used. Now, what we have to do is check the map, first for Cambions in town, then if that doesn’t work…’ She trailed off. ‘I have a plan B. Okay, Hella, give me your hand, please.’
Harrow sat forward. ‘Wait, what’s plan B?’
Remy waved at him. ‘Never mind that just yet. Shush while we focus now.’ She turned to face Hella. ‘Dear, this will be stronger with both of us. All you have to do is focus your chakras,’ she said, then added, ‘oh, and don’t burn anything.’ Sian held Hella’s free hand, connected.
Hella pouted, then nodded. ‘Okay.’
Remy held the pointed crystal by the long silver chain in her left. She waved it over the map, mainly around Mill Valley, but also a little way out of town. Hella thought she saw the crystal pause here and there, but that’s all.
Harrow frowned. ‘Is it working?’
After a moment, Remy sighed. ‘Not really. I feel a lot of Cambions in the area, but that doesn’t exactly help us.’
‘Plan B?’ Harrow suggested.
Remy nodded. ‘Indeed. Hella, switch places with Harrow, would you, dear?’
Hella and Harrow exchanged confused looks, but got up and traded places.
‘What we can try now is something I’ve never done before. But I’m fairly confident it will work. We can find all three of them by finding Amara,’ Remy said.
Hella saw Sian, now sitting back on the couch, arms folded, frown. She didn’t know what her sister witch had planned, Hella thought.
‘Usually, when you scry for a warlock or faerie,’ Remy continued, ‘you need something of theirs. Blood, or hair, or something that belongs to them. In this case, I think we have some of Amara’s magic. In you, Harrow. She’s healed you.’
‘What exactly are you hoping to do here, sacrifice me?’ Harrow asked.
Remy’s mouth twitched. ‘No, of course not. I want to use you to do the spell. With any luck, it will lead us to all of them.’
Harrow considered for a moment, then nodded. ‘Okay, then. What could go wrong?’ he said dryly. He smiled over at Hella, and she blushed, remembering their walk over here. His warm lips, his hands on her face, her shoulders. His hand in hers.
‘What we have to do is take a little of your blood,’ Remy began, ‘and add it to the scrying bowl. If we find her, Hella, I need you looking into this crystal.’ She placed a large amethyst crystal ball in the middle of the table. ‘You might be able to see something. Hopefully they’re all together. We might connect with Amara, but I think it would be Meele you might see, Hella. She always has an amethyst on her, and you’re best suited to try to connect to it. If we can’t speak with her, maybe you can see something that might lead us to them.’
Remy looked at Harrow, then Hella. ‘Everyone good with that?’
Sian remained still, but the others nodded. Remy took a small athame from her pocket, then held out her hand. Harrow placed his arm in hers.
‘You witches are very stab-happy, you know,’ Harrow said, with a glance at Hella. He dropped his blue eye in a wink.
Remy drew the blade vertically down his forearm arm for maximum effect. Harrow gasped and shimmered at the same time. His whole body tensed as Rem
y moved his dripping arm over to the copper bowl, letting the dark-blue blood fall into the water. The liquid curled in on itself, backwards, then forwards, until it took over the bowl, spilling over the edge. Satisfied, Remy nodded.
‘Good, step one complete. Now, the spell.’ She held Harrow’s injured arm, then said something in Latin. Hella tried to keep her eyes on the crystal ball as it glowed softly, but watching Remy was extraordinary, and she couldn’t help but glance worriedly at Harrow.
At that moment, Tommy Terra walked in the shop and came inside. He froze, his mouth agape. ‘I came to see if you needed any help?’ No one answered him.
‘Harrow?’ Tommy looked down at him with concern etched into his pale face. Harrow’s blood poured from the deep gash. He looked up at Tommy with something like pleading.
Sian pulled Tommy onto the couch. ‘Don’t touch,’ she warned.
Remy waved her left arm, blue flames licking up her skin. Harrow cringed from the fire, but Remy held tight to his right hand, his arm a river of blue blood. The flames gathered up the potion, bringing the blood and herbs up over the table coalescing in the air over the map like a blue and bloody cloud. It seemed to build, and build, growing stronger. Then Sian leaned forward, a warning on her lips, fear in her eyes. Then the potion exploded.
Tommy and Sian were thrown backwards off the couch with two sickening cracks. Hella flew sideways, hitting her head against the stone wall by the fireplace. She saw Harrow and Remy stuck together, still at the table.
Harrow tried to mouth something to her. ‘Are you okay?’ Though his own face was screwed up in pain.
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