I relaxed my stance. “I have used my second sight.”
He spread his arms wide. “Then use them on me, little witch. Tell me what you see.”
What was this now? No instruction? A frustrated sigh slipped from me and I narrowed my eyes to stare at him.
Oka leaned forward. “It is not just about your second sight, Pam. I’ve heard it said by the other familiars that this gift is about seeing someone’s ties to the mother earth.”
I glanced down at Raven’s feet, but there was nothing there. I bit my lower lip and narrowed my eyes further until they were mere slits that I could barely see out of. “Damn it.”
Raven laughed and slid from the table. “It takes a lot of practice. I’m glad to see I can stump you.”
My eyes flew open. “Well, it’s not like you told me what to do.” I wanted to call him names, but I still needed him to teach me. I still needed him to help me bring my friends back. I held that in my mind as I struggled with my anger.
He shrugged. “You either can do it or you can’t. It takes years in some cases and there is no right or wrong way. It is how you see someone’s power and understand it as a reflection to you. Let us move on to your next task, shall we?”
“Not until you show me one more thing.”
He folded his arms over his chest. “Rather demanding, aren’t you? Did you have something in mind?”
That’s where he had me. “I know a lot; it’s your job to teach me something I can’t learn from another witch. Otherwise, you are useless to me already.”
He flinched as though I’d hit him. “Useless?”
I shrugged and fought a sudden spurt of fear. “You get my point?”
He snapped his fingers and a cloak curled around him, as if it sprung from somewhere on his back and was released. Like wings. Like it was alive. Another snap of his fingers and the hood rose and slid over his face.
“Then learn this, little witch.” The voice that came from the figure was not Raven’s any longer. No, the voice was that of someone evil and dark . . . someone who would slit me open just for shits and giggles, just to see what my insides looked like.
Oka let out a long low hiss and her claws tightened on my shoulder. “Back away!”
I stumbled back as he took a step toward us. I whipped my hands up and called on the five powers in me, spinning them into a flashing, bobbing orb.
He lifted a hand and I tensed. With a swift move he knocked his hood back. “Now, can you do that with your cloak? Make it an extension of you? Make it shadow who you really are and in doing so, hide you from the world and your enemies?”
Heart hammering as though I’d been running for my life, I struggled not to toss the orb at him. Perhaps he saw it in my eyes because he went rather still.
“Pamela, I promised I would not hurt you.”
“I put no stock in your promises.” I spit the words at him, fear driving each syllable. “You did that on purpose to scare me.”
“Of course I did.” He barked a laugh. “I did it to show you the power of hiding your face. You can confuse your enemies and keep yourself safe if they do not know you. You can protect your loved ones that way too. If your enemies find out how much you love your family, they will use that against you.”
Carefully, I dropped my hand as I reabsorbed the energy from the five elements into my skin. Oka pressed her cheek to the back of my neck. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. He’d scared me to show he could still hurt me. I wasn’t a fool.
“Oka, come to my shoulder.”
She did as I asked, silent as she climbed out of my hood. I pulled on the currents of air around us and slowly brought the hood of my cloak up around my face, hiding both Oka and myself.
“That is well done, but you are not cloaked as I was. It is a gift of Spirit that allows you to hide. Think of it as being bent between dark and light, a place of in between.”
His words resonated and the dark part of me wept with joy, to be hidden in the night. To do terrible, dangerous, murderous things. I pushed that part of me away. I would not go back to that place.
I shivered and shook my head. “No.” I swept the cloak from my face. “No, I don’t want to. I will not hide who I am.”
Raven stared at me hard, as though I’d said something wrong. But all I knew was that I didn’t want to be in that place again. I’d been there before, when I’d run away to Milly. I’d lived with half my heart in the dark and the other half striving for the light.
And I refused to stand there again.
CHAPTER 12
STANDING IN FRONT of me in the library, Raven held his hand up in concession. I was not letting him bully me into magic that would lead me in the direction it had taken a long time to come back from.
In his eyes was something that looked like disappointment for my lack of trying to wrap myself in shadows as he did. I refused to rise to the bait. He didn’t know me. He didn’t know what I’d lived through already. I would not let myself succumb to darkness again, not if it was within my power.
“Fine, but you will want to learn it at some point. Just remember to anchor yourself through the earth when you do it. It is Spirit that creates the place to hide, but Earth that will bring you back.”
“Funny he mentions that now after you refuse to try,” Oka spoke quietly as she slid back into the hood on my back. I nodded my agreement with her. He was cagey.
“This book,” he turned his back to me and leaned over the pages he had open, “tells us how to gain your friend back. But it will require both of us, as I suspected, and an ingredient I have never heard of.”
My feet were moving before I thought better of it. I leaned over the page he stared at so intently.
Retrieval of a Soul
This is not to be undertaken lightly. But if it must be done, you will need the tears of a ghost to help breach the layers of the Veil.
That was it. There was no instruction, no details of anything else. Raven waved his hand at the page. “So, any idea where to find the tears of a ghost?”
I frowned at the page and then up at him. “You don’t know?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never dealt with a ghost before. They primarily stay on their side of the Veil. And catching their tears sounds . . . what is the word humans use? Dodgy.”
I reached out to touch the page and he pulled the book away. “No fingers on the old paper. It’s fragile.”
A lie. I could feel it in the air between us. I drew myself up. “Don’t be a fuck wit, Raven. You and I both know it is elemental-made and as such will not be breaking under my damn fingers.”
Oka snickered and dipped her head down. “Fuck wit. That’s a new one.”
“Good old English slang.” I spoke to her but never took my eyes from Raven.
Anger flashed across his features but it was gone before it ever settled. “Fine, you want to see what it says?”
He flipped the book around so I could see the words appearing below that had been hidden from me.
Retrieval of a soul comes at a high cost. One must be ready to defy the mother goddess, to defy the world as it was made to bring back a loved one. This is not necromancy, there will be no raising of a body without a soul. This is true resurrection.
And it will tear at the very fabric of the world no matter if it is done correctly or not.
Spit in my mouth dried up as I read. The words crushed what was left of my hope. How could I bring back someone when doing so would tear at the fabric of the world? Yet Raven didn’t seem to want to stop me. I lifted my eyes to his. “Why would you let me do this?”
He closed his eyes and rubbed a hand over his face. “It is . . . complicated.”
A tap on the window turned us both to the panes of glass across from us. Hovering in the air was a figure in white with long white hair spilling out around the lean body.
Raven pushed me hard toward the hall. “Go, I will deal with this.”
I was through the door and he’d locked it
before I could fully comprehend what just happened.
“I think we should do as he says. If nothing else, the Sylph will come for you if we dawdle.” Oka butted her head against mine as if to send me along faster.
I pulled the cloak around me and let Spirit flow through me. I rode the element to a place I knew well. A place that should be safe.
The police station where Will worked was better than anything else I could think of. As a shifter, he had connections to the supernatural world I did not. He was my best bet in trying to find the tears of a ghost. I took us to the roof of the police station. Just to be on the safe side.
The crunch of gravel under my feet grounded me as I stood and took the place in. There were still deep gouges in the roofing where Eve had landed and taken off, where the Beast of Bodmin Moore had tried to take Rylee out. Not many of the memories I had of here, or knew from here, were good. But still, it was where I’d find Will. And I believed in my heart he would know where I could find the ingredient. Okay, maybe hoped was a better word than believed.
As I let my senses catch up with me after landing, I drew a breath and a shiver wandered down my spine. There was the slightest hitch of air that was not my own. But maybe I was imagining things. That was possible.
“Oka, do you hear anything?”
She popped her head up and her ears swiveled. “There is someone on the roof here, but I smell nothing. Their heartbeat is erratic.”
I dropped to a crouch and the cloak pooled around me. Suddenly I wished I’d pushed harder in learning to hide myself as Raven knew how. “We can hear you. Come out slowly,” I said.
Nothing happened for a solid minute. I held a hand up with a ball of flame hovering over my fingertips. “Now, or I will toss this your way.” I wasn’t even sure what their way was, but I was getting good at bluffing.
A figure stood and stepped out from around a few of the planter boxes. A boy, maybe my age but I wasn’t entirely sure. He had dark hair that hung over his eyes. He was very muscular, not like the lean bodies I was used to seeing on boys my age. “What are you doing hiding up here?”
“What are you doing Jumping the Veil at your age?” His voice was low, deep. Maybe he wasn’t my age after all. I didn’t move.
“I didn’t Jump the Veil.”
“Bullshit. Who taught you?” His eyes darted to mine and there was a flicker of red.
Red.
Demon.
I threw the ball of flame as I lurched forward. With my other hand I pulled the sword from my back. It would kill demons. I’d seen it take down Orion.
Oka clung to me as I raced at the demon. There was no question about what I had to do. He pulled a weapon from the air, a staff that had blades on either end. He spun it out and I caught it in the middle with my blade, snapping it in half.
His eyes widened and he stumbled back, now with a weapon in each hand. Maybe that had been a bad idea.
He whipped both out, one around his head and one toward my feet, but there was a hitch in his movement, like he was holding back. I rolled to the side, tucked my head down and came up with the sword held above my head. I caught his two blades on mine and jerked my handle hard. The force of my move sent him sideways and he went to his knees.
Oka stayed off to the side. “The smell on him . . . he’s a demon!”
“I know.” I breathed the words, saving my energy for the fight. “You fucking piss stain, I’m going to send you back to the seventh Veil.”
He dropped his weapons and held up his hands. Covered in blood. I frowned. Did demons bleed? I hadn’t even hit him yet.
“I am already injured and I . . . I am only half demon. I was born here, in London.”
I wanted to run him through, my hatred for demons was so strong. They’d destroyed my family. They were the reason Alex was gone. The reason Rylee was no longer a Tracker, the reason we’d lost so many. His words took a moment to sink in.
I blew out a slow breath. “What do you mean you were born here?”
His hands shook and dripped with blood. “My mother was a witch, she called up a demon. He raped her and I was the product. Seeing as we’re sharing.”
My spine tingled, mostly because I thought he might be telling the truth. “How were you injured?”
“That’s not sharing.” He smiled, though it turned into a grimace.
I narrowed my eyes and stared at him hard, trying to see just how strong he was, because if his mother was a witch then . . . a slight echo of light rose around his ankles, a connection to the earth. From there the power spread upward along his legs, torso, and limbs, but it hovered away from his hands. And the light was just that, light. Not dark. Did that mean he wasn’t a bad guy?
“What are you doing?” His eyes narrowed and I shook my head.
“You’re blocked from your power, aren’t you?” I asked the question even though I already knew the answer.
He stared at me, his eyes not the black I thought but a green so dark, it was hard to tell they were green even in the light. “I am blocked. How did you know?” He blinked and there was just the flicker of red again, but he seemed to . . . push it back? Was that right?
“I just do.” I shrugged, suddenly understanding why witches wouldn’t share this info. It was a leg up understanding what your opponent could and couldn’t do. “How did you get hurt?”
He took a step, groaned and slid to the ground with his back against the retaining wall.
“There’s a pack of shifters around here, they seem to be aware of what a demon’s eyes look like, of what they smell like. I tried not to hurt them, but got bit in the end.” He lifted his shirt and showed me a wound that was indeed a large bite out of his side. Next to it were the vertical claw marks that could only belong to a rather large cat.
“You should learn to hide that demon side of you. Demons aren’t exactly on the ‘people we should trust and be friends with’ list.” The words popped out of me before I thought better of them.
He tried to smile, but it slid from his face in a split second. “Yeah, I got that. I’ve been hiding for years, if I’m honest, love.”
“I’m not your love.”
“You aren’t trying to kill me. That is love as far as I’m concerned.” He grinned.
I glanced at Oka, doing my best to send her a silent question. Should we help him?
Oka took a breath and nodded. “Yes, I think so. Maybe he can offer a trade?”
The demon didn’t move as she spoke. Of course, he couldn’t hear her. No one who wasn’t an elemental could. Bonus points for having a familiar.
“I need to know where to find some ghosts, or the tears of a ghost. You know of any around here?” I didn’t move toward him.
He nodded. “Yeah, over on High Street. There’s two ghosts that haunt the local pub.” He looked at me. “Why?”
“Damn, you really aren’t one of the bad guys, are you?”
He grunted. “Sorry to disappoint.”
I slid the sword I still gripped overly hard into the sheath on my back. “I’m going to heal you.”
“Why would you do that?” He tipped his head to the side and stared up at me with one eye.
“Because . . . you aren’t one of the bad guys.” I shrugged and made my feet walk in his direction. It took everything I had to control my hands from blasting him into pieces. Demon, not demon. Demon, but not bad. I knew it was possible, just not common. I crouched by his side and stared at the wound. “It might hurt.”
“Lovely.” He breathed the word through gritted teeth. I put my hands on the wound and fed my power through my fingers, knitting the wound together, giving him a little something of my own energy, of my own essence in order to put him back into one piece. His skin closed over under my hands until there was nothing but bright pink scar tissue. I stepped back and called up some water to my hands, washing my fingers clear of his blood.
“Thanks for the tip about the ghosts.” I backed away. “But I’m going now, and if you want to be safe from
that shifter pack, you should go, too.”
He shook his head and pushed to his feet. “I’m afraid it isn’t that easy. They scented me and I think they have some of the humans watching for me too. If I could get out of the city, I would have by now.”
I frowned and rubbed a hand over my brow. “Well, I can take you somewhere, I guess. Where do you want to go?”
He stared at me hard. “Who are you? No one does things like this anymore. Certainly not for a demon, half demon or not. Good bad or otherwise.”
I bit my lower lip. What would Rylee say? No . . . what did I say?
“Because it’s the right thing to do. And sometimes, that is the only light in the dark —the right thing.”
I held my hand out to him. “Where do you want to go . . . wait, what is your name?”
He put his hand in mine and a shot of power like I’d never felt before ricocheted between our fingers. He sucked in a sharp gasp, but didn’t let go. A grin tugged at his lips. “My name is Ajax. But my friends call me Jax.”
“Pamela, and that cat is Oka.”
He looked at her. “She talks?”
“Not to you,” Oka grumbled.
I grinned. “I can hear her. You can’t.”
He hadn’t let go of me yet. Nor had I let go of him. “Where do you want to go, Ajax?”
“Any ideas where they might not know anything about demons?” His eyes were on mine and I struggled against the weird emotions rocketing through me.
“North.”
“North. I tried north,” he said.
“I mean like . . . North America north. Alaska. I haven’t found any supernaturals up there, nor demons.” Which was the truth. Marco and I had found neither hide nor hair of anything in the cold white north. Strange considering some of their legends.
Jax tightened his hold on me. “Are you sure it won’t cost you to take me?”
He seemed to have some understanding of how the Veil worked at least. I nodded. “All good. Just don’t let go or you’ll end up a wank stain in the middle of nowhere.”
Pamela (The Rylee Adamson Epilogues, Book 3) Page 10
