I could hear the faint wail of sirens approaching, and I looked desperately down the street where the neighbors were beginning to come out of their houses. Doña Magdalena’s screaming was deafening, and a gout of blue flame erupted from the second floor windows, knocking us off our feet and onto the cobblestones.
I propped myself up on my elbows, trying to push myself to a sitting position. The heat from the fire pushed me back again, and I covered my face with my arm.
“Maia!” Lacey was pulling me away, dragging me by my arm. “The cops are coming, we have to get out of here!”
Ophelia coughed weakly, shaking her head. “What happened?”
“Not now!” I said. The sirens were getting closer, and I looked back at the house, the roof had collapsed and pale blue flames were shooting through the holes that had been made by falling timbers and tiles.
I tucked my shoulder underneath Ophelia’s arm and supported her weight as we ran down the uneven streets back towards the hotel. Emergency vehicles flashed by us, and we ducked around corners to avoid them. My heart hammered in my chest as we pressed ourselves against a stone wall.
Lacey rang the bell at the hotel doors, waiting for the night manager to open the door. I closed my eyes, hoping that the sleepy man would just open the door and go back to dozing in his office and wouldn’t notice that Lacey was covered in blood. All I wanted to do was go back to our room without having to answer any questions as we stumbled unsteadily through the lobby.
The hotel doors buzzed, opening slowly, and we ran through the entryway. Ophelia’s shaking hand opened the hotel room door with tendrils of lavender smoke and we fell through the door together and collapsed on the carpet.
The leather bound book that I’d taken from Doña Magdalena’s bed was clutched against my chest. Lacey went into the bathroom and I heard the water running as she washed the Malleus’ blood off her face and hands.
Ophelia lay on her side, gasping for breath beside me. Her eyes looked strange, and her dark red hair was darker than it had been, but it might have been the light. Maybe I was seeing things. All that smoke... it couldn’t be anything else.
Epilogue ~ Ophelia
I didn’t remember much from the last day, I remembered teaching Maia to open the curtains, and going through the door of the ruined house... but that was all. Maia and Lacey had been reluctant to tell me what had happened, but when they did, I was stunned at my own weakness.
“I... went to her willingly?” Fucking hell.
Maia nodded slowly. “You swallowed her magic... you’ve been sleeping so much... I was worried that you wouldn’t come back to us. You really can’t remember anything?”
“No. Just the sound of her voice. She told me that she had lived more than her nine lifetimes... that she was taking from me everything that I had misused. She accused me of being ashamed of my power, hiding from it.” My hands clenched into fists. “All these years. I haven’t been hiding from my power. I’ve been hiding from her... from her thugs. She’s been killing Daughters, taking their power... that’s why she’s lived so long. But we’re the last of the Daughters. If she could take our power, take our potential... she would be able to live forever.”
“Our potential?” Maia looked confused.
“Everything we haven’t used, everything we might do with our magic... every unused incantation, every misplaced prayer. She wanted it all.” I shook my head.
“It was Maia who broke her hold on you,” Lacey said. “She lit the whole place up. Burnt her in her bed. I wish you could have seen it, you would have been so proud of her. It was kind of epic.” Lacey smiled encouragingly at Maia, who looked more than a little pleased with herself.
“You did?”
She nodded. “I don’t know what I was trying to do, but whatever it was, the fire just kind of... happened.”
“Well, whatever it was... thank you. She almost had me.”
Maia blushed just a little, and then she held up a black leather book. “I took this from her,” she said, changing the subject smoothly.
“It’s full of names... that’s what she was writing when we found her. Look.” Maia opened the book and handed it to me. She touched the singed page lightly with her fingers, tapping a name.
Turner
“This is you... your family. Isn’t it?” she asked. I looked down at the page in disbelief, tears filling my eyes as I read the familiar names. Ellyn Turner. Hannah... my mother and my sister. There were lines drawn through the names, all except for mine. One shuddering line for each dead Daughter.
Maia turned more pages. “She has my family too...”
Hickson.
“My mother... my grandmother... but my name was missing. She was writing it in the book when we arrived. See where the ink is smudged?” Maia’s voice shook slightly as she said these words.
“Look at all the lines...”
“What do you want to do, Maia? I know I just want to get back to New York, and back to my quiet little uncomplicated life.” I was also really fucking tired, and we were just about to get even more jetlagged, which I was not looking forward to.
“These are family trees... what if we’re not alone? Couldn’t we find out if these women had daughters of their own? I mean, we live a long time, right... there could be more, more women in hiding. Keeping their powers a secret.” She flipped more pages, stopping on another page, a long lineage with all names but one crossed out.
Vivienne Surette - La Nouvelle-Orléans
“New Orleans? Are you fucking kidding me? No way, I just want to go home. Home to New York, back to work at Haven. Back to boring old mocha’s and lattes and mopping the floor and chasing screenwriters off our free Wi-Fi.” I wasn’t in the mood for this bullshit.
“How long is it going to take for the Malleus to figure out that Doña Magdalena is dead... ugh, I hate saying her name. All these names, what if they’re next? You can’t tell me that you’re willing to let them die because you want to go back to slinging coffee for corporate assholes,” Maia said bitterly.
“Ooohhh, no. You’re not pulling that shit on me. We’re going back to New York, I’m going back to work, and I don’t give a shit what you decide to do. If you want to go gallivanting around the Louisiana swamps, you can be my guest, but I’m not fucking doing it.” I crossed my arms over my chest and leaned back against the pillows I’d been propped up on.
Lacey bounced on the edge of the bed. “Really, Fee? I’ve always wanted to go to New Orleans... besides, Eli keeps talking about going there and finding other Laudans. Musicians, like him. I think he’s getting tired of New York...”
I groaned and rubbed my hands over my face. Was this really happening right now?
“Look, I’m not making any decisions right now. When we get back to New York, I promise I’ll listen to whatever you have to say... but right now, I just want to sleep, and then I want to get the fuck out of here and never smell this city, or dead rats, ever again.”
“Fine,” Maia said as she pulled the book from my lap and held it against her chest again. “But I’m not letting this go.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
Maia stared at me, unblinking, and I felt her magic swirling towards me. Good. She was finally ready.
“Fine! You two are awful!” Lacey shouted, and her laughter broke the tension that had been hanging between us. “Fee, I think I should talk to Eli about what happened... I kind of... um... ate a lot while I was here. I don’t think that’s normal. I feel like I’ve gained a thousand pounds. Can vampires go on diets?” Lacey looked genuinely concerned, but I couldn’t help but laugh at her.
“You’ll definitely have to ask Eli... I am uniquely unqualified to answer that question.”
Lacey frowned, holding her stomach gently. Maia clutched the book, glowering at me from her chair.
Let her stew about it. I wasn’t saying shit. I knew she wanted to go to New Orleans, and I also knew that she couldn’t go alone. Doña Magdalena’s words t
umbled through my mind, wasted potential. Her accusation that I had been hiding from my magic... what if I had been? That was my business. I’d been alone, with no one to rescue me when things went to shit. But now I was responsible for more than just myself. And if Maia was right about that book, and if she was right about the Malleus, I had a duty to my sisters.
I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less than that responsibility... but I had a choice. I could hide from the world again, hide from who I was. Go back to ‘slinging coffee’ in a hole in the wall café in Brooklyn. I liked that hole in the wall. I liked singing coffee and mopping floors... it was simple.
But nothing that had happened in the last six months had been simple, and I’d seen things that I couldn’t erase from my mind; heard things that I couldn’t stop thinking about...
Maybe my mind was already made up.
“I’m no good at steaming milk! Why the fuck do you keep making me do it!” Maia cried for the fourth time that day. Her face was a mask of anger, resentment and a petulant refusal to see reason.
“If you don’t keep doing it, you’re always going to suck at it. Just suck it up and try again,” I said with a smile.
The café was closed, but David had let me use it to train our newest employee, a completely cranky teenager who was pissed off that I’d woken her up early to drill her on espresso protocol and high-maintenance drink creation.
“I could have gotten my own job, you know,” Maia grumbled from behind the espresso machine.
“I know, but this way I can keep an eye on you. Besides, you have enough bad habits as it is, I don’t need you adding more to the list. You’ve only been here for a few months and I’m pretty sure you’re getting some New York attitude.”
“Fuck you, I’ve always been like this,” Maia scowled.
“Your espresso sucks. Do it again.”
Maia swore and threw the cup into the sink, spraying coffee up the wall.
“I’ve got nowhere to be today. The more you fuck up on purpose, the longer we’re going to be here,” I said through gritted teeth.
Maia grumbled something I couldn’t hear and busied herself at the coffee grinder.
We’d been back in New York for a few weeks, and David had held me to my promise to take that goddamn manager’s nametag. It was sitting on the bathroom shelf at my apartment. Mocking me with every glint of the light it reflected.
I hadn’t said anything to Maia or Lacey, but I was still feeling the effects of the ancient witch’s magic. Her voice echoed in my mind during my quiet moments, when I zoned out while mopping, or when I was watering my herb garden. Her words haunted me. Her accusations cutting just as deeply each time I heard them. The wounds she’d given Maia were healing, but she’d have scars... I couldn’t apologize those away, couldn’t pretend that nothing had happened, which is what I desperately wanted to do.
The book Maia had taken sat on my kitchen table. Maia read it every night, flipping the pages and taking notes, researching names on Lacey’s computer. There would be no forgetting what had happened, and nothing I could say or do would convince Maia to forget what she’d said she wanted to do.
“I’ve been thinking,” I said casually, flipping a chair off one of the tables and scraping it across the tiles. “We should go on a road trip...”
Maia stared at me over the coffee machine, her eyes wide. “You said you hadn’t made a decision yet... are we really going to go?”
I nodded, but didn’t reply. Maia pressed her lips together and focused on the milk she was steaming, determined not to fuck it up this time.
I waited as she finished the drink and placed it on the counter.
“I’ll let David know that you’re starting on Monday,” I said. “Let’s go the fuck home.”
Ophelia, Lacey and Maia’s adventure will continue in the swamps of New Orleans in Daughters of Hecate: Book 3 ~ Power of Three.
Also by Meredith Medina
Daughters of Hecate
Prequel ~ Witchmark
Book 1 ~ Sticks & Stones
Book 3 ~ Power of Three (coming soon)
Book 4 ~ Vampire Punk (coming soon)
keeper of the flame
Book 1 ~ Twice Cursed
* * *
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Moonlight Burns: (Urban Fantasy) (Daughters of Hecate Book 2) Page 19
