Rise: A New Adult Urban Fantasy (Spelldrift: Coven of Fire Book 1)

by Sierra Cross

  Rent was due in three days. Stellar.

  “You were saying, rockstar? You made how much in tips?” This time even I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut. Randy tossed me a smirk of contempt and rose from his royal barstool. “Okay, everybody outta here. Except Miss Hot Shit, the World’s Best Bartender.”

  The room cleared, like rats scurrying from the light. Not even Emma stuck around. Randy’s heavy boots clomped down the hall. And then I stood alone in the eerie silence. In the shadows, the gargoyles carved into the gothic revival mahogany backbar stared at me, judging.

  Angrily, I plunged my mop in the bucket of green, pine-scented cleanser and dragged it into the filthy corner behind the deep fryer. My back and feet ached bending over in my high heels, and as I worked my painful way through the kitchen, I couldn’t help thinking back bitterly to the plans my girlfriends and I had hatched together when we were at the U. The amazing adventures we’d have in our twenties, funded by the cool jobs we’d drive to in the brand new cars we’d lease. Work wardrobes with designer bags and sexy shoes. Weekend getaways to wine country. We’d start each day with sunrise yoga and a smoothie. At night, we’d be buying cocktails at a place like this, not serving them.

  And sure, in between those good times would be work. But as I bagged stinky kitchen garbage and hefted the bags outside to the dumpster, forty hours a week spent staring at a computer screen didn’t seem so daunting. At least I’d sit in a pleasant cubicle with photos of my cat on the desk.

  Not that I had a cat, but whatever.

  I sighed. I wasn’t the biggest fan of spreadsheets. Or cubicles. Or sitting still. But not having to stress about rent sounded awesome.

  So did yoga and wine weekends and cute shoes and a nice new car.

  Judging from their Facebook updates, my college friends—scattered from LA to Austin to the Bay Area to London—were now fulfilling that fantasy. In style.

  And here I was scrubbing vomit splatter off bathroom stall walls.

  What the hell am I doing here?

  Aunt Jenn was always nagging me to let her circulate my resume to the tech firm she worked for, Millennium Dynamics. Maybe she was right; I was wasting myself slinging cocktails at Sanctum. I should get my poop in a group and find a real job.

  But the shitty thing was…this place felt like home.

  I kicked myself for that thought. How could I have let myself believe that I was part of something here? I gave it my everything, yet I was just a replaceable cog in Randy’s eyes. I tried to belong here, yet not one of the wait staff stuck their neck out for me.

  Screw this place.

  Screw all of them.

  Screw this feeling.

  I grabbed a napkin and a Sharpie from behind the bar and scrawled in great big letters I QUIT.

  Chapter Three

  It was a ten-minute walk from my apartment to Aunt Jenn’s revamped Tudor house at the western edge of the Spelldrift. Our sub-section of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood had always been a hub for the magicborn community because of its unusual geological makeup of underground currents which subtly enhanced magic. From May to October, the neighborhood also drew tourists, who snapped up souvenir charms, tinctures, and gemstones in the occult shops dotting Alchemy Row, our local shopping district.

  Like me, Aunt Jenn was born here and raised with the hopeful dream of following in my mother and grandmother’s footsteps. But even the strongest bloodlines begat their share of Wonts. At age eighteen, bitterly disappointed to learn she had no more magic in her than the average tourist, Aunt Jenn had moved to the other side of town and descended into what she now called her “rebel era,” of aimless living, low-level jobs, and bad boyfriends. But then the accident happened and someone had to take care of her older sister’s kid, me. So Aunt Jenn moved back into the Spelldrift. Into my parents’ house, where she became my rock. And in my own way I became hers.

  Two Wonts, the sole survivors of Seattle’s most potent magicborn bloodline.

  But even in our darkest moments, we had each other.

  “Hey, Aunt Jenn!” I opened the arched front door with the harlequin leaded glass panel inset. “I’m coming to eat you out of house and home.” As it always did on Sunday mornings, the house smelled of cinnamon rolls and coffee, making my empty stomach grumble.

  “Just getting out of the shower!” I heard her yell from upstairs. “Be down in a sec.”

  I plopped down on the overstuffed velvet sofa in the living room to wait.

  Since the remodel, this place looked so different on the inside it was easy for me to go months, years even, without relating it to the home I’d lived in as a child with my mom and dad. The wall between the kitchen and living room had been taken out. The Sub-Zero and granite replaced the avocado appliances and matching counter I’d grown up with. An oriental carpet runner with brass pinnings covered the wide wooden staircase. It looked fresh out of a remodeling magazine, but somehow still warm and cozy. It felt so much like home it was easy to forget the two lost years before the remodel.

  The small, framed photos of my adolescence stared back at me from atop the fireplace mantel. Me at a gymnastics meet. Aunt Jenn and me, riding horses on our Hawaiian vacation to celebrate my graduating high school. And four years later, Aunt Jenn beaming next to a cap-and-gown clad me at my college commencement. Me, I didn’t look as thrilled. Already I’d been wondering where to go from there. What kind of job I could find, that didn’t make me feel dead inside.

  Still no answers.

  “Let’s eat!” Aunt Jenn bounded down the stairs, smelling like a spa from all her high-end shower products. “But can I brag first? I ran six miles today.”

  “Good work.” I held up my hand for a high five. “So you’re on track for the half marathon?”

  “Better be, it’s coming up in January.” She bent down to pull a frittata from the oven. “Don’t forget you promised to come and watch me run.”

  “A raging typhoon wouldn’t keep me away.”

  “Might keep me away,” she said with a chuckle, and placed the frittata on a silicone trivet at the center of the table.

  I sat across from her, like I did when I was a kid, and let her scoop a cheesy, spinachy slice of deliciousness onto my plate. She didn’t cook often, but when she did—like for our Sunday brunches—she had it down to a science. High taste, low touch, she liked to say.

  Then Aunt Jenn smiled and asked, “So how’re things, Alix?”

  And there was no point trying to cover it up. With anybody else I could just say “Oh, everything’s great” and get away with it. But it seemed when she inherited me she inherited the ultimate mom’s bullshit detector.

  I took a deep breath. “I quit Sanctum.” Aunt Jenn’s eyes widened and she set down her fork. “You were right,” I added, anticipating her I-told-you-so. “I was wasting my time there.”

  To my relief, Aunt Jenn didn’t jump in with a smug parental response. She just let me sit with it for a minute. Compassion written on her face. Finally she ventured, “Alix? I know it doesn’t seem like it right now, but what if this is an opportunity in disguise?”

  I couldn’t help but snort at that. “Opportunity for what?”

  “To take it to the next level. To find a career that matches your potential.”

  I resisted an eye-roll. As much as I loved Aunt Jenn, her constant reframing could be annoying. Just because she wore success so effortlessly didn’t mean I could. “Easy for you to say, Miss Senior Vice President.”

  “It is easy for me to say,” she shot back, “because I’ve stood in your shoes.” I knew what she was talking about. The rebel era. “I was the office manager at a tattoo and piercing shop,” she reminded me, “dating all the bad boys who came in there. Getting my heart broken over and over.” She smiled sheepishly. “You were what turned it all around.”

  The accident was so devastating for my aunt and me that we walked around like zombies, barely remembering to eat or shower. She’d had no experience being responsible
for another human being it didn’t come as second nature to lead me. A school counselor finally suggested that we have regular meals and set a shower schedule. It was after that meeting that Aunt Jenn dug in and became a force of nature. She hired a meal delivery service and instituted a 6:00 p.m. dinner time—and always made it home from her job at Millennium Dynamics to stick to the schedule. Part of her grand plan was to bring out my magic. Upon the advice of a witch who ran a shop up on Broadway, Aunt Jenn had set up the shed in the backyard as a practice area, bought an incantation book, spellbeads, and a scrying pendulum—insisted that we practice five nights a week, no matter how tired either of us were. I could see from her point of view talking up the connection to my mother through magic seemed like a good idea. How was she to know that I was the runt of the magic litter? Barely got a spark out of me. Hopeless, the shop witch had declared when they thought I was out of earshot. “She’s magically deficient,” were her exact words. The memory was foggy; I couldn’t remember what the witch looked like or why I was there in the first place. But I remembered those words. That terrible feeling. Aunt Jenn was arguing that my mother was so powerful, and it’d been predicted that I would be even more powerful. The other witch assured her that I was a dead end of the magic line. That failure was just about enough to end me.

  But Aunt Jenn wouldn’t let me slip through her fingers. It was after that she’d cut ties with the remaining shreds of my mother’s magic community, hired a general contractor to remodel the house, and shoved me into every sport available. It was also then that she enrolled in night school to get her MBA and turned her job into a career. Over the next several years, we both found our paths to cope with the pain.

  But I’d gotten stuck on my path, and I needed another nudge in the right direction.

  “Aunt Jenn… Do you think you could set up an interview for me at Millennium?”

  Aunt Jenn laughed. “To be perfectly honest, I’ve been waiting for you to say that since before you graduated. I’d just about given up hope. Yes, I’ll set something up.” She stood up from the table and hugged me. “Alix, it may feel like a stretch today, but I know your personality, your strengths. Your profile aligns beautifully with working for one of Seattle’s most innovative companies. The technology’s new and exciting, the people smart and talented—you’ll make tons of new friends. Dare I say you seem to be emerging from your own ‘rebel era?’”

  “You may, but only because you’ve been there.” I squeezed her back, grateful to have her in my corner.

  A week later, I stood hyperventilating in line at Strong Brew. The morning was unseasonably warm and sunny for November, and my interview was still two hours away, but nervousness had already turned my hands into ice blocks.

  As I walked up the counter to order, my urban chic knee high boots pinched my feet. Shopping for interview clothes with Aunt Jenn at the mall had made me feel uncomfortably like a kid again. It was bad enough she’d had to spot me rent money. When she whipped out her AmEx gold at the mall and insisted on paying for my new designer tweed blazer and wool skirt, my pride rebelled. I decided then and there I was going to win this job and use my first paycheck to make us square.

  Which meant, I couldn’t screw up the interview.

  “Alix.” At the familiar sly, British-accented voice, I turned to see Asher’s classically beautiful gaze trained on me. He wore a crisp linen button down with the sleeves rolled up his lean chiseled arms. Whips of black tattoos peaked out from the edges of his long black leather gloves. “What’s a sexy witch like you doing in Wont’s clothing?”

  “Uh, witch?” I could hear the irritation in my own voice, which meant he could too. But hey, I no longer worked at Sanctum. I didn’t have to treat Asher with kid-gloves because he was a regular. Sure, he had diamond-sharp cheekbones, but if magic was some big turn on for him, screw that. “I’m as Wont as Wont gets, remember?”

  “Right.” Asher gave an incredulous little laugh. Then, when he saw I wasn’t kidding, I guess, he quirked his eyebrows, perplexed. “Who cast that deception spell on you, I wonder?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Listen, it’s been fun exploring your witch fetish.” Not really. “But I’ve got a job interview—for a real job—and I need to get my head in the game.”

  “Of course, that explains your kit.” Asher bowed sardonically. “Much more Wontish and respectable than the bar gig, I’m sure.” He gazed down at the stainless steel to-go cup in his hand as if deliberating. Knowing his penchant for whiskey, I wondered if it contained just coffee or something stronger. When he looked up again, his entire tone had shifted. To anger. “Alix, did you not hear a word your friend was trying to tell you?” His normally measured voice clipped, ultra-low. Whoa, what the hell was happening? The urbane man I’d flirted and joked around with so many times at the bar was now glaring daggers at me. “The scales are tipping. Every one of us magicborn must do our part…”

  He went on ranting at me, but my brain stuck on two words: us magicborn. Us? So Asher wasn’t a tourist after all? My mind reeled as I ran through all the magicborn beings my mother had told me about, so long ago… There were witches, and guardians, of course. Shifters, who kept to the margins of city life. Fae, who avoided cities altogether. What was Asher?

  Other than, spitting mad at me.

  “…If we lose much more ground, the balance will shift beyond repair!”

  “Um, what balance?” At this point I was dying to know what he was talking about. “And what does beyond repair mean?”

  “Don’t play all innocent and clueless.” Asher gave me a look. “I heard you talking to your friend, it’s clear you were raised in magic just like I was. You know the score, even if you’ve turned your back on our people. God knows we have our hands full, but by all means, keep sitting on yours.”

  Funny he should mention hands. Mine were heating up with rage. How dare he attack me for being born magically deficient? “You don’t know the first thing about me, Asher. I haven’t turned my back on anyone.” More like magic turned its back on me. “Look, I’m sorry the magicborn world’s full of drama, but it’s not my prob—”

  “Are you blind?” He motioned to the bustling foot traffic outside. “Or are you really that repressed that you can’t see that our local crowd is increasingly more demon than human? Too many Nequam are passing through the gate and infiltrating the city.”

  “Nequam?” I repeated dumbly. Matt’s last words to me reverberated through my mind. “Too many are getting through.” A chill ran down my back. Is that what Matt, too, was trying to warn me about?

  “Sure, maybe Neqs are too stupid to scare you,” Asher said, misunderstanding my confusion as some sort of bad-assery. “But their Caedis lords are never far behind, as they say.” As I mulled over the word “Caedis,” he added, “What will you do, Alix, the next time they storm the gate? Pour yourself a flaming cocktail and watch our city burn?”

  I squirmed. I could barely understand him, and part of me was dying for an explanation of Nequam, Caedis, and the rest…but it agitated me to no end that he seemed to see me as some kind of magical slacker. If there were demons, how was I supposed to fight them? Me, with my dismal, almost-unmeasurable levels of magic. For heaven’s sake, even Mom’s power hadn’t been enough to keep her safe from the accidents of life. And yet…though Mom lost her life, she never lost sight of her mission. She walked the path she was born to walk. What would that feel like?

  I was about to ask Asher what was this gate he was talking about, when I heard my name being called in a bored voice.

  “Alix. Alix, small latte?” The barista—a goth teen whose look screamed “magical tourist”—wore a thinly-patient smile, telling me it wasn’t the first or second time she’d called my drink. Behind her the clock read 9:17. Crap, I had to go to my interview.

  My mother’s path was a dead end for me. Fantasizing otherwise would only make the pain worse.

  I grabbed the hot drink, muttering an apology, then turned back to my interrogator. �
��Good luck, Asher. I can’t be late for my interview.”

  Asher let out a stunned breath as I turned away.

  “My bookshop is approximately one hundred yards in that direction,” he called after me. I didn’t turn to see where he was pointing, just kept marching toward my parked car. But his voice penetrated through the street noise. “Talisman Books. Come by, if you’re ever in the mood to find out who and what you really are.”

  After that dumpster fire of a conversation, it was no shock that I still felt off-kilter by the time I reached Millennium’s east side campus in downtown Bellevue.

  Dappled sunlight shone between the pine trees as I pulled into the dense but tidy, multi-level, concrete parking garage. I followed the color-coded signs to visitor parking. Everything here was bright and well-ordered, unlike the chaos of night shifts in a bar.

  A group of employees in business-casual clothes passed me as they exited the card-entry elevators, heading to the carpool parking for what I guessed was an early, off-campus lunch. They laughed comfortably with one another, and I felt a funny pang in my chest as I tried to imagine myself as part of a group like that. Could I fit in here?

  As if to answer that question—at least in part—the HR representative, Addison, was a tall young woman who looked about my age, with a discreet eyebrow ring and flat-ironed ice-blue hair. We bonded over the fact that our boots were identical. Before taking me to my first of four interviews, she led me on a tour of the campus, starting with the food court, which resembled a high-end mall. Luxurious anchor restaurants at each of the four corners, rows of smaller stalls between them, and expansive seating. An installation of lush rainforest foliage defined the center, a recent upgrade that made me wonder if Millennium kept a full-time tropical landscape artist on its books. Thanks to Aunt Jenn, I already knew my way around, but it felt different now that I was seeing it as possibly my company.