by Sarra Cannon
“This is probably why no one has been able to find her since she left Peachville,” Mary Anne said. “Back when I was growing up, there was just the one village as far as I knew. Everyone lived there together. But if she’s been creating these temporary villages and only living in them for a short period of time before moving on, it’s no wonder she’s been difficult to find.”
“How many witches are we talking about, though?” Connery asked. “Moving hundreds of crows all at once with no one seeing seems impossible.”
“Do you take notice of every single murder of crows that passes overhead?” I asked. “To most people, it would look like nothing more than a large group of black birds flying in normal formation. Most people would never dream it was an entire village of witches.”
“It’s possible they’re not even flying from village to village,” Mary Anne said. “If any of their witches are able to cast portals, all they would need to do is have the new village set up and then open a portal to the old one. Everyone could just walk through.”
“That’s true,” Rend said. “Most portals of that kind are only temporary, so they would be long gone by now.”
“Are there any other places to explore after this one?” I asked, turning to Silas. “Can you think of any other rumors you heard or places we haven’t been to yet?”
He shook his head, a frown on his face. “I’m sorry. I really thought we’d find at least a few clues along the way, but from the looks of it, they swept these places clean before they left. These were the only locations I found, and it took me months to find them. I was convinced we’d find crows in at least one of these villages, even if it wasn’t the Mother Crow herself.”
“Yeah, if we’d just been able to find one, I could have forced her to talk,” Rend said. “All we need is one crow witch who knows where the Mother Crow is hiding. We could force the truth out of her using one of my potions or even using this dagger that belonged to Solomon.”
“What about the dagger?” I asked. He hadn’t explained much about the weapon he now carried with him everywhere.
“The Dagger of Truth,” Rend said, pulling it from a sheath Essex had created for him.
There didn’t seem to be anything particularly special about the weapon. It was made of a very shiny silver, but it was relatively small and didn’t look that different from any of the ritual daggers I’d seen from the Order of Shadows.
“I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s made of pure demon steel,” Rend said.
“It was our father’s weapon, even before he came to the human world and joined the Order of Shadows,” Silas said. “It was made for him by the weaponsmith who still serves the king, and it was imbued with a spell that forces anyone standing near the dagger to tell the truth.”
“Like a truth serum spell?” I asked.
“Exactly that,” Silas said. “Solomon was obsessed with the truth because he’d been lied to as a shadowling, but that’s a story for another time.”
I stared at Silas, wondering what he could have meant by that and wishing he had time to tell me more. But time was at a premium right now.
We had less than a week now to find the Mother Crow and put an end to her to save both Rend and Katy.
“Do we have any idea how this other opponent is doing?” I asked. “Any chance he’s going to find her before we do?”
My stomach was in knots just thinking about it. Even if we managed to find the Mother Crow’s new village, it wouldn’t mean anything if Dagon got to her first.
“I put a few spies on him,” Silas said. “He hasn’t gotten very far in his search, either. In fact, the spies say he’s been following our lead, hoping that we’ll find the Mother Crow, so he can swoop in and attack her before we get the chance.”
“Of course he is,” Rend said, sighing. “Well, at least he hasn’t found her on his own. If he’s relying on us to do it for him, he’s just as out of luck as we are. We’re back to square one on this.”
“There’s been nothing from that stone she left?” Mary Anne asked.
I pulled the black stone out of my pocket. Since we’d been away from Rend’s house so much lately, I’d started carrying it with me everywhere, just in case she activated it while we were out.
“She seems to be taking her sweet time in opening that portal,” I said. “If that’s really what this is in the first place.”
“And we can’t very well sit around and wait for that to happen, hoping that she’ll do it before the week is up and we’ll somehow be able to sneak inside,” Rend said.
“Which means we need a new plan,” Mary Anne said. “And as much as I want to be a part of it, Essex and I have other duties with the Demon Liberation Movement.”
“Do you have to go back to the Shadow World already?” I asked.
“We need to get back and help Harper for now,” she said. “But as soon as we’re done there, I’ll find you and help with whatever you’re working on next.”
I gave her a hug and said goodbye before she and Essex shifted and flew out of the village.
“So, what else can we do?” I asked.
“If we just knew where to find another crow,” Silas said, pacing. “Someone we could capture or track. We do have a werewolf with us, after all. If we could just pick up the scent of one, that would be something.”
An idea was stirring in the back of my mind, but I knew that Rend wouldn’t like it. Still, we were out of options.
“I know where we might be able to find someone,” I said. “Or at least where there might be a trail to follow.”
“Where?” Rend asked.
“Remember the crow that’s been following me on campus?” I asked. “She’s almost always in the same locations, and she’s been there every single time I have been to class over the past several months. If I pretend to go back to school tomorrow, maybe she’ll show up.”
“It’s possible,” Rend said. “But it’s also possible that having us with you is going to scare her off.”
“Which is why I need to go alone,” I said.
“Absolutely not,” he said. “We’re not going to use you as bait, Franki. I won’t put your life at risk like that.”
“It’s either that or you die,” I said. “And you don’t have to be far away. Just far enough that she doesn’t know you’re there. Connery can follow me more closely, since he’s the one who can track her scent the best. All I need to do is get her to show herself. If we do that, do you think you could follow her back to wherever it is she’s staying?”
Connery shrugged and leaned against the post on the porch nearby.
“I could certainly try,” he said. “It gets tricky with all the flying, so if she goes too high or flies too far, it might be difficult for me to follow the scent, but it’s worth a shot.”
“Then I think we have to take the risk,” I said. “Rend, you and Marco and Silas can be hiding somewhere close by. Far enough away that she can’t see you, but close enough that you can be at my side quickly if she tries to hurt me in any way.”
“I don’t like this, Franki.”
“I don’t either, but unless anyone has a better idea—”
“I think it’s a good plan,” Silas said. “If Franki’s presence on campus can draw this witch out, it’s possible we can either follow her or capture her. If she knows anything about the location of the Mother Crow’s village, we’ll be able to get it out of her.”
“It’s settled, then,” I said. “Classes are mostly over for the day today, but tomorrow morning, I can follow my normal schedule. If this crow is still watching me and following me, she’ll be there. All we need is for Connery to get close enough to her to pick up on her scent.”
“I can take it from there,” he said. “As long as she shows.”
“She’ll show,” I said. “She has to.”
“Why are you so confident about this?” Rend asked.
I met his eyes, my hands trembling. “Because right now, it’s our only hope.”
<
br /> A Part Of You
Franki
By the time we got back to Rend’s, I was exhausted. We’d been pushing ourselves so hard the past couple of days with nothing to show for it but the passage of time.
Time we couldn’t afford to lose.
It was good that Dagon wasn’t any closer to finding the Mother Crow than we were, but that didn’t exactly set my heart at ease.
“I’m going to go check on Katy,” I said. Rend started to stand up from where he sat in the kitchen with Silas, but I held a hand out for him to sit back down. “I’ll be right back. Just give me a few minutes.”
“Okay,” he said, worry etched into his features. “Let us know if there’s any change.”
“I will,” I said and headed up the stairs to check on my friend.
She was still sleeping, her face still pale and lifeless.
There had been no other change, though, which I guess was a good thing. She hadn’t been eating or drinking anything, no matter how many times we’d tried to get some kind of liquid into her, she never kept it down.
I pinched her skin to make sure she wasn’t getting dehydrated, but she seemed to be okay. It was almost as if she were locked in time. The spell seemed to be keeping her body working normally, but I was terrified every day that we’d wake up to find she’d stopped breathing.
I took the black stone out of my pocket and turned it over in my hands.
Why hadn’t she activated it yet?
I wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse, because I had no idea what that witch had up her sleeve.
Somehow, we had to figure out a way to be smarter than the Mother Crow.
Hopefully, we’d have better luck tomorrow on campus. If the witch who’d been watching me for months was still there, I had no doubt she’d show herself.
All I had to do was try to get her to talk to me. I just had to make her stick around long enough for Connery to get a good trace on her. Hopefully, she would lead us straight to the crow’s hideout.
For tonight, though, all I wanted to do was find some level of peace as we waited to make our next move.
I kissed Katy’s forehead and left her sleeping to go in search of food and a large glass of wine. I was hoping it would help me sleep, because unlike these vampires, I needed to rest.
Sleep had been hard to come by over the past few days.
Rend had offered to make a special potion for me that would help me sleep, but considering Katy’s current situation, I didn’t want to take anything that would be difficult to wake from. I would take my chances with a glass of wine and a hot bath.
But first, I needed to eat.
Connery and Rend still sat at the kitchen table, talking, and I rummaged through the fridge for any kind of food.
Sadly, vampires didn’t need much to eat, either.
Well, other than blood, but that didn’t exactly sound appetizing to me.
I settled on an overly ripe banana and a pack of crackers I found in the back of the cabinet.
“How is she holding up?” Rend asked.
“The same,” I said. “No signs of deterioration of dehydration, but she’s still sleeping.”
“That’s good, I guess,” Connery said. “Better than it could be.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said. “I just want all of this to be over.”
“You and me both,” Rend said, taking my hand. “It’ll be over soon. We just have to keep working on a solution. We’ll find her.”
“Hopefully tomorrow will be a good day,” I said. I glanced around the kitchen area. “Where’s Silas?”
Rend hooked a thumb toward the living room. “He said he was going outside to get some air. Why?”
I shrugged. “I’ve been wanting to talk to him about some things,” I said. “Give us a few minutes alone?”
Rend frowned. “Okay, but just so you know, I’m still not entirely sure we can trust him, Franki,” he said. “All these things he’s saying about your father? It’s pretty far-fetched considering the Solomon I knew.”
I smiled at him. “You don’t think it’s possible for love to change a person?” I asked. “To make them want to be better?”
He squeezed my hand. “I know it’s possible,” he said. “But what you and I have is special, Franki.”
“Maybe it was the same for my mother and father,” I said.
“I hope you’re right.”
“Me, too.” I kissed his cheek. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”
I left Rend and Connery in the kitchen and went searching for my brother.
Brother.
It was still such a foreign thought. I’d grown up thinking I was an only child destined to never know my own family, and yet I’d had a half-brother the entire time. And I still had barely gotten a chance to know him.
He left so soon after the Devil died that I never got to speak to him then, and since he’d returned, we’d been so caught up in searching for the Mother Crow that we hadn’t thought of anything else.
Tonight, though, all we could do was wait. It was the perfect time to ask him some of the questions that had been burning inside me for months.
I found him sitting at the very edge of the mountainside, his legs dangling out into the unknown darkness below.
He turned as I approached and smiled.
“I was hoping you’d come out,” he said. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks,” I said. I joined him on the ledge and sat crisscross facing him. “We haven't really had much time to talk.”
“I think it’s still hard for me to believe I have a sister,” he said with a laugh that echoed across the darkness.
“I know exactly how you feel,” I said.
We sat in silence for a minute as my thoughts raced. Where did I even start? I wanted to know everything about our father. About how Silas had grown up and why he’d chased Solomon here to the human world.
I wanted to know if the things he said about Solomon’s voice in his head were true. If Silas actually believed them the way he said he did.
Instead, all I could think of to say was, “Do you feel the darkness inside you the way I do?”
Silas turned to me, obviously surprised at my first question.
He looked down at the stone around his neck.
“He wasn’t always the demon you’ve heard stories about,” he said. “When I was a shadowling, he was a good father to me. He seemed to love my mother, and he took care of us. He taught me so many things growing up, and he was always there for me when I needed him.”
“So, what changed?” I asked.
He breathed in and out, shaking his head as if he’d been searching for the answer to that question for a lifetime.
“I don’t exactly know,” he said. “There were rumors about demons disappearing from small villages. Powerful demons. But no one really knew what was going on. Some people said they’d run away or been killed by something that stalked us in the shadows, but it was nothing more than rumors at the time. Even the king denied that any of it was true.”
My hands fidgeted in my lap as he spoke.
“But as the rumors became more prevalent, the Devil—who was known back then as Simon—was determined to get to the bottom of it,” he said.
“The Devil’s real name was Simon?”
Silas laughed. “Not quite as menacing, huh?” he said. “He gained his nickname only after they’d come here to the human world to try to find out what had really happened to the demons who were disappearing.”
“So they came for similar reasons to most demons, like Rend and Jackson, who were searching for people they loved or missed? Searching for the truth?”
“Yes, but they weren’t really looking for anyone in particular,” he said. “It wasn’t like they lost their father or mother or a sister or anything. To be honest, I think the Devil was looking for any excuse to get out of the Shadow World.”
“Why?” I asked.
“He’d gotten on the king’s bad side,” Silas s
aid. “He’d been caught stealing on several occasions by the King’s Guard, back when they used to police the villages in the Outerlands. He was living on borrowed time as it was. His crimes were escalating, and I think he knew it wouldn’t be long until the King put him in the dungeons. Or worse. Coming after the Order was really just an excuse to get to a new world where there would be new possibilities for him to steal and continue a life of crime.”
“But he convinced our father to come with him?”
“Our father left to find out the truth,” Solomon said. “He wanted to make a difference. I think he saw himself coming home as a hero someday, returning demons to their families and protecting those of us who remained home.”
I shook my head. “Why didn’t he stick to that, though?”
Silas shrugged. “From what he tells me, he isn’t even sure how it all happened,” he said. “The Devil was persuasive. Always taking it one step further. Pushing a little bit harder past this line or that line. He convinced our father that the reason they weren’t able to help free or protect the demons from back home was because magic was too difficult to cast in this world without drawing that power from the life around them. He said that if they could just cast this darker magic, they would have access to unlimited power. And they could kill the witches who were stealing demons in the process. It seemed logical at the time, I guess. And it’s easy to get addicted to great power once you have it in limitless supply.”
“I feel his darkness inside of me,” I said, finding it difficult to breathe. “Whenever I reach for my power, I can feel it there, like shadows swirling inside the deepest part of myself. I watch other people cast, and their magic comes out as light. Pure power. But with me…”
“It’s like you know the light is there, but the minute you try to access it, the shadows come sneaking out, threatening to take over the entire thing,” Silas said.
My eyes widened. “That’s exactly what it feels like,” I said. “When I first connect to that power, it’s something incredible and almost beautiful. A surge of energy and light. But when I actually try to use it, something happens. The darkness threatens to take over, and I am so scared of it, Silas. I don’t know how to control it.”
