A Darker Past (Entangled Teen) (The Darker Agency)

by Accardo, Jus

  She ignored him and kept her eyes trained on me. “Jessie, please. Let me do this. I know I can do this.”

  I couldn’t believe I was even considering this. “Worst case scenario?”

  “If it doesn’t work, you mean?” She set the vial down and sank to the grass in the center of her colorful circle. “Nothing happens. I have a major headache for a few days, maybe lose my voice.”

  Okay. Not so horrible. “There’s no chance of you summoning something with demonic teeth? Maybe a creature bent on munching humans?” I nodded to the rabbit. “Maybe turning Bugs here into a lethal killing machine with a grudge?”

  “None. If I fail, nothing comes through, which is a definite possibility. The spell works better if you have an item belonging to the witch you’re trying to summon.” She grinned. “For my thirteenth birthday, Mom channeled my granny using one of her favorite muffin tins. It was kind of awesome. I don’t have anything that belonged to Lorna, so this might be a waste of time.”

  “And since Lorna seems to have disappeared after helping Charles with that last job, I’ll bet no one has anything belonging to her.”

  Kendra shook her head. “Nope. I searched everywhere. Unless there’s information in the archives—which I’m now locked out of—all her stuff went with her.”

  Lukas sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. A second later, he sucked in a breath. “What the—” He pulled his hands out.

  In the middle of his right palm was a small shard of glass. Unassuming, with a crack that ran partially through the middle. It took a minute, but when I realized what it was, I jumped and clapped. “Oh my God.” It was the fragment he picked up off the floor in Town Hall. From Lorna Belfair’s mirror! I took the glass from him and held it out to Kendra. “I dunno why you kept that, but yay.”

  Lukas shrugged. “I guess I forgot about it.”

  Kendra took the glass from me, excitement gleaming in her eyes. “This should be a huge help.”

  I pulled Lukas back and forced myself not to squeak like a little girl as Kendra pulled out a small dagger. She didn’t flinch, and neither did I, as she reached for the rabbit. I didn’t turn away as she jerked the blade across its throat or as the rush of deep red poured from the now-still animal.

  Lukas took my hand and tugged me back a little farther as I tried not to cringe. “I know I’m supposed to be this big paranormal-busting badass, but I can never unsee that…”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and squeezed. “Power that potent requires sacrifice.”

  I wondered what Lorna had sacrificed. An animal? A person? In order to trap Gressil, it had to be something big.

  The wind kicked up, and Kendra bowed her head. Through the curtain of her swirling hair, I saw her lips moving. Every once in a while she’d twitch, and I’d want nothing more than to rush in and drag her out.

  When the wind calmed, Kendra looked up—only I was pretty sure she wasn’t just Kendra anymore. The irises of her eyes were snow white, and there was an orange glow around her head and shoulders. “Why have I been called to this place?”

  “Lorna?” I asked, taking a hesitant step forward. “Is Kendra all right?”

  Lorna lifted Kendra’s hands, turning them over several times with wide eyes. She picked up a strand of hair, then pulled at the edge of Kendra’s jacket. “Kendra… That is this girl’s name? She channeled me?”

  “She did,” Lukas confirmed. “We have a problem, and Kendra felt you might be able to help.”

  “I do not understand. How was she able to do this? She is a Belfair, is she not?”

  “Um, yeah?”

  Lorna tilted her head and watched me. Kendra stared back, the same thin-lipped glare I’d seen most of my life, but it was different. Colder. “That is…curious. Who are you?”

  “This is Lukas Scott, and my name is Jessie Darker. We’re—”

  “A female Darker? This is a welcomed surprise.” Lorna laughed. A bubbly sound that seemed so wrong in that moment. “Less of a surprise is seeing you two together—the Scotts and the Darkers. Still twisted up in knots. Apparently, history repeats and makes fools of us all.” She shifted and climbed to her feet, taking care not to step over the powder line. “You Darkers have your hands in everything, don’t you?”

  It might have been construed as an insult coming from someone else, but from Lorna, it was almost like she was saying, Really? Again?

  “You used to work with an ancestor of mine. Charles?”

  “I worked with several Darkers.” She squared her shoulders and her expression hardened. “They were good men doing good work. They deserved the support of the coven.”

  Someone sounded bitter. “But they didn’t get it, did they?”

  “No. They did not.”

  “You went against your coven to help them.” I didn’t know how much time I had, so I got to it. “There’s one demon in particular that you helped trap. We need to know how you did it.” I pulled the pen from my back pocket and scribbled Gressil on the back of my hand, then held it up for her to see.

  She leaned closer. Her demeanor changed instantly. “Why do you care about Gressil?”

  I cringed, waiting for an unwanted puff of purple smoke, but nothing happened.

  “Because he’s escaped,” Lukas said.

  “Impossible. I sealed him in my own mirror. And I know Charles gave the glass to the priests at Saint Vincent’s for safekeeping.”

  “I won’t go into specifics, but yeah, he’s out, and he’s pissed. We need to trap him again, but—”

  “You can’t trap him.”

  “I can’t,” I repeated, annoyed. “See, that’s not a word in my vocabulary. Why can’t I?”

  “Because only true Belfair magic is strong enough to accomplish such a task, and that magic doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Lukas took a step closer. “You’re in the body of a Belfair witch right now. How does it not exist?”

  I nodded. “And as hard as it would be to get her to help us, the current coven leader Cassidy Belfair could do it if we knew how.”

  Lorna flashed me Kendra’s best I-feel-sorry-for-you smirk. “The current coven leader has no real power. None of them do. The Belfair coven is nothing more than hat tricks and illusions.”

  She was crazy. That was the only explanation. I’d seen Kendra do magic—albeit, bad magic—plenty of times. “What are you talking about?”

  “The real magic is gone, dear girl. It has been for a long, long time.”

  My stomach churned. “No… This isn’t possible. I’ve seen—”

  “As I said, tricks and illusions. Minor casts. A shadow of what we once were.” She tilted her head again. “However, there may be a way to get it back. With the help of Belfair magic, you could retrap Gressil.”

  Now we were talking. “I’m all ears.”

  “I’ll require a token first.”

  “Of course you will,” Lukas said with a sigh. “Typical witch.”

  I smacked him and turned back to Lorna. Plastering on my most accommodating smile, I asked, “What do you need?”

  “I wish to know what became of my beloved Sam.”

  I looked from her to Lukas and shrugged. “Sam? Who was Sam?”

  She leaned forward and with a grin that was all Kendra, said, “Samuel. Samuel Darker.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I bit down hard on my tongue and hoped to hell Lukas kept his mouth closed. A pound of fairy dust said Lorna didn’t want to hear that Samuel Darker was spending eternity in the river. “I know the name, but not much about him. I’m sorry.”

  “You could find out. I know for certain that the Darkers keep their records detailed like the Belfairs.”

  Obviously, she wasn’t understanding the gravity of my situation. “With all due respect, Lorna, we really don’t have time. I’ve got a particularly nasty demon—you may have heard of him, Lucifer?—breathing down my neck. I’ve only got a little time left to get this done, or it’s my head on the docket.”

&n
bsp; “I want to know about Samuel. I want to—He—” She doubled over, gasping, and lost the battle with gravity, hitting the grass inside the circle with a soft thud. “Samuel—”

  Lorna collapsed and fell still, Kendra’s hair falling across her face. It was only the slight flutter of several strands by her mouth that kicked my heart into motion again. Still breathing. Not dead.

  I shot forward and toed the multicolored powder line until it broke. I didn’t know much about witch magic, but I knew never to cross an unbroken line. “Ken?”

  It took a moment, but when she stirred and finally picked her head up, she looked like she hadn’t slept in weeks. “Did it work?” Her voice was hoarse, and the sun seemed to bother her eyes. One hand up to blot out the light, she used the other to push herself off the ground.

  “You don’t remember anything?”

  “I remember feeling really warm, then a little dizzy. Now this. What happened?”

  I stood and sighed. “We have a problem…”

  She rolled her eyes. “What, you mean another one?”

  …

  Didi’s was a small coffee place in the heart of Penance. With my favorite drink, their seasonal mint-spiked hot chocolate, in front of me, I leaned forward on the table and frowned. It was time to come clean with Kendra, and I was dreading it. She finally thought she had her magic under control, excited at the prospect of moving on to bigger spells, and I had to tell her it wouldn’t happen. First thing was first, though. “So apparently Lorna and Samuel, one of my ancestors, had a thing.”

  Kendra choked on her latte. “A thing thing? Oh my God.”

  “Right? Lorna was about to tell me how she locked up our guy, but she wanted to know what happened to him first.”

  She set down the cup and frowned. “And you don’t know?”

  “We do,” Lukas said, sipping his coffee. Hazelnut. Mom made a comment about how she didn’t want me drinking it, and how I hated the flavored stuff, so that’s what he drank. She was a horrible influence on him. “But it’s complicated.”

  I took a swig of my hot chocolate. Mmm. Minty goodness. “Samuel Darker is in the Shadow Realm. Valefar has his soul.”

  Lukas nodded. “Valefar rubbed Jessie’s nose in the fact.”

  Oh my God. He had, hadn’t he? Or, had he? Val would never be classified in the helpful category, but he was a stickler for his deals. My service being one of them. If there was even the slightest chance he’d lose me, I was betting he’d bend and twist things to gain an advantage. “Maybe not.”

  Lukas glared at me. “There was no other reason for having you retrieve—”

  “Sure there was. He was told he couldn’t help us, but maybe he was. He must have known Samuel had something to do with Lorna and that our only path would lead us to her.”

  “And you were supposed to put the two together?” He obviously wasn’t buying it.

  “Well, yeah. This is Val we’re talking about. Roundabout and random.” I shook my head, convinced now. “No. I really believe he was trying to help.”

  “So Samuel’s soul is in the Shadow Realm,” Kendra said. “And you’re afraid to tell Lorna?”

  “Technically, it’s in the box I gave to Valefar, but that’s not all.” Acid churned. This was the sucky part. “She said something else… Something about Belfair magic.”

  Kendra downed the rest of her latte and frowned. The place was empty. There was only one other person, but he was at a table on the other end of the room. We were safe to talk. Still, she looked around and lowered her voice. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Lorna says the only thing that will trap the demon is real Belfair magic, and that it doesn’t exist anymore.”

  At least she looked just as confused as I felt. Her head tilted to the left, mouth falling open slightly. “Doesn’t exist? What does that mean? The coven—”

  “She implied that what the coven does is a shadow of what they used to be capable of,” Lukas said softly. He might hate magic, but he knew how sensitive Kendra was when it came to hers. What it meant for her to live up to the Belfair name.

  Kendra laughed. She waved her empty cup at me, grinning. “That’s insane. Mom does magic all the time.”

  I hated to push this, but we needed to know for sure. “When was the last time you saw her do a complicated spell though?”

  “I—well, she—” She shook her head. Eyebrows furrowing, she stared down at the table, thinking. “I really can’t remember. Mom has always been kinda private about her casting, and I wasn’t a coven member until a few days ago. I can keep my eyes open going forward, but I still don’t believe it. I would have known…”

  She looked confident, but her voice was anything but. She wondered, and more than that, worried, and I hated to be the cause of that. Unfortunately, we couldn’t wait for her to dig around. “You have to ask her, Ken. Lukas and I are running out of time to take care of this before it’s lights out à la Lucifer.”

  “And that’s not even taking you know who’s timeline into consideration,” Lukas added.

  “If we don’t stop him now, it’s going to be too late for all of us. The coven included,” I interjected.

  She slid the small piece of glass from Lorna’s mirror across the table. “Here. Hold on to this in case we need to summon Lorna again.”

  I didn’t pick it up. It was so small. So innocent looking. Yet it was technically a powerful piece of the Belfair past. “You sure?”

  “Yeah. I’ll only lose it, and if what she said is true about the Belfair magic, then why take a chance? That stupid piece of mirror might be the only thing that made it possible for us to talk to her in the first place.”

  I nodded and pocketed the glass. “Do you want to do this alone?”

  Kendra paled. “No way. You have to come with me, Jessie. In fact, call your mom. Have her meet us at my house. Maybe bringing in a supernatural army wouldn’t hurt, either.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea, given how adamant Cassidy is about us not hanging together anymore? And our moms kind of hate each other…”

  “I’m sure.” Kendra stood, and for the first time, I could see a little bit of Cassidy in her. The determined set of her jaw and defiant chin. The way she stood, shoulders square and back ridged like nothing or no one could knock her down. For the first time ever, I was able to see the possibility of her stepping up to claim her birthright as the leader of the Belfair coven.

  If there was a coven left after this was all settled.

  …

  Fifteen minutes after we arrived at Kendra’s house, Mom slid from the car, followed by Dad. “Is everything all right?”

  “Not sure yet. We’re about to confront Cassidy. Thought you should be here.”

  Her eyes went wide. She looked from me to Kendra. “Confront her about what, exactly?”

  “Lorna Belfair said—”

  Mom threw up her hands and glared from Lukas to me. “Whoa. Lorna Belfair? Lorna Belfair who, unless I’m mistaken, is dead? Paulson is out of town, not to mention he knows better than to summon spirits for you. How did you talk her?”

  “I did it,” Kendra said softly, stepping up beside me. “This was all my idea, Mrs. Darker. The threat this demon represents to both our families is too great to let my mother’s issues get in the way.”

  “And it’s not just that,” I said. “When we spoke to Lorna, she said the only way to take this thing down was with true Belfair magic. Magic that doesn’t exist anymore.”

  Mom’s brow furrowed. “Doesn’t exist? I don’t understand.”

  “She insinuated that something had happened to diminish my family’s magic.” Kendra glanced over her shoulder at the house and swallowed. Squaring her shoulders, she turned back to Mom. “If it’s true, along with what Lorna said about the demon, then we’ll have a problem dealing with him. We need to know where we stand.”

  Mom nodded. She looked as proud of Kendra as I felt. To Lukas and Dad, she said, “Best to stay here. Overwhelming Cassidy isn
’t the way to do this.” To Kendra and me, she said, “Let’s go.”

  One by one, we marched to the Belfair doorstep like prisoners walking to their last supper. Kendra led us into the house, and we got about five steps in before Cassidy came running.

  “Did our conversation the other day go in one ear and out the other?” she bellowed. “Get them out of this house. Now.”

  “Mom, I—”

  “Now!” Cassidy curled her fist tight, and began to glow. Even if what Lorna said was true, and the Belfair magic had in fact been weakened, I still didn’t wanna stick around for whatever was left.

  I threw my hands up and stepped back, pulling Mom with me. “Okay, okay. We’ll go.”

  Mom sighed. She wasn’t the least bit affected by the show. With a level gaze, she said, “You will never learn, will you? We’re trying to help. Ourselves and you. Your entire coven—your daughter—is in terrible danger, yet all you can do is scream and flail like a child. I pity you, Cass. You’re about to lose everything, and you can’t even see it.”

  Cassidy looked ready to spit fire. She nodded to the entryway. “I trust you can find the door. Don’t let it hit you in the self-righteous ass on the way out.”

  “I’m sorry, Kendra,” Mom said as she herded me out the door and onto the porch. When we got outside, I tried to turn back, but she held tight to my arm and steered me toward the car.

  “So we’re running out of time,” I said once we’d made it to the end of the driveway. Dad and Lukas met us halfway to the car. There was a smell in the air. Like overripe bananas. It was similar to the smell at school when Kendra camouflaged the note from Mr. Fritz, as well as when the mirror broke, seconds before Gressil appeared. I inhaled. “Okay. What is that smell?”

  “Magic,” Dad said. “You said the dead witch told you Belfairs had no magic, but it appears Cassidy has some juice left.”

  I glanced back toward the house. It looked the same as it always did. “Magic…smells?”

  Mom’s eyebrows shot up. She glanced from me to Dad for confirmation.