“If you don’t mind, please call me Max. The only person who calls me Maxima is my mother, and she doesn’t like me much.”
Barrett whips his head back to me, the anger sliding off his face as he winces.
“Oh, damn and blast. That wasn’t what I meant at all. And after that spell… bollocks. Maxim— er… Max, I didn’t mean shouldn’t,” he sighs, covering his face with a hand in exasperation. “But existences like yours are rare. As in you’re the only one I’ve ever heard of. Demons and Witches can’t reproduce. The babies die. Every time. You just being alive is an anomaly.”
“Just what every girl wants to be called, Barrett. An anomaly,” Marcus grouses, uncrossing his feet and setting them back down on the floor.
“Fates, save me. That is not what I meant.”
“You going to hoard all the chips? I think I’m going to need some if we’re going to watch Barrett try and pry the foot from his mouth.” I hold my hand out to Marcus for a chip but smile at Barrett so he knows I hold no ill will.
Plus, if Barrett didn’t send that… thing to set my shop on fire, he isn’t my enemy. I don’t need to make him one. I have a feeling I have enough of those just being me without adding to it.
My eyes fall to my feet, and I finally grasp the full scope of my destruction. Broken marble, shards of wood, and rubble litter the floor. Like an angry child, I broke this room, shattered everything in my path.
I know it might just be from Barrett’s spell, but the urge to cry hits me. One of the only things I learned from my mother all those years ago was that once you cast a spell, you have to be prepared for the fallout. There is no reversing anything – not really. All spells have to run their course. I can fix something once it’s broken. I can give someone a memory back. I can even heal a papercut if I really concentrate.
But spells like the one Barrett hit me with will always run their course. Knowing that makes the sting in my eyes fade just a little.
Breathing a spell on my fingers, I snap them, watching as the green fire of my magics flare. Then the rubble moves, going back where it came from like an explosion in reverse. Every mote of dust, pebble of marble, and shard of wood go back to their original homes. The peak in the floor where the marble fractured flattens, the crack in the stone sealing before my eyes. The mahogany shards and splinters piece back together before sealing back into the door as it once was. As if I was never here. I turn back to them, and Marcus stares at the door slack-jawed while Barrett looks at the floor as if it’s about to jump up and bite him.
“What?”
“You do realize a whole coven of Witches your age couldn’t do that? Not to this place and not to that door.” Barrett doesn’t take his eyes off the floor as he talks and I’m almost glad. But that last bit of magic seems to have spent all that I had left. My rubbery legs carry me up to the bottom step of the dais, and I plop down hard on my ass.
“We’ve already established that I’m a freak, Barrett. No need to rub it in. And while we’re at it, can someone get this thing off?” I whimper the question while waving my charred ruin of a hand that still clutches the bone blade. I’ve tried not to look at it, but now that I have, I don’t feel so good.
The blood starting to drip from my nose doesn’t help matters either. The bright white of the room begins to dim and then cants a little to the side.
Then it’s lights out.
Chapter Six
IAN
24 hours earlier…
My hands shake a little as I smooth the close-cropped hair on my head before doing the same to the goatee on my chin. It was a nervous tick my brother pointed out at every opportunity he got – usually when we were playing poker, and I was losing.
I lost a lot. Kinda like I was losing now, but only at a much different game.
I’d lied those many months ago – by omission, sure – but lying all the same. I never told her I knew her, knew the way her lips tasted, knew how her body fit to mine. Knew her scent when she was aroused.
I knew lots of things about Max that she never told me.
At the time, she’d been nothing but an insanely beautiful girl sitting alone at a booth where she definitely didn’t belong. In the midst of the chaos around us, she wasn’t trying to sex up a random stranger or make a deal when no one was looking which was usually what places like that were for. All she did was people watch and sip her drink. But the closer I got to her, the more I realized she wasn’t a girl. Despite her young, unlined skin, this woman was old – older than me and probably wiser than me too. Her eyes were the dichotomy of young and ancient, having seen too much and yet not enough.
I found myself sitting at her table without a real thought in my head, only that I wanted this beautiful woman with the intricately tattooed skin and blazingly blue hair to smile. I can’t rightly remember what I said to her, only that I flirted and charmed and crowded her in the way Wraiths do when they see a mate. Testing, teasing for a reaction.
And I got it.
But I never got her name, and a few weeks later when we came to Kyle and Nicola’s rescue, Max was there. Broken and bleeding, she didn’t remember me. And it hurt to think I didn’t leave the same impression on her that she did me.
In the light of day, we hated each other. Well, that wasn’t true. I hated that she didn’t remember me, and she hated that I was an antagonistic asshole.
Until about eight months ago when she died in my arms.
The fear and agony of that day echo through me as I stare at the back door of Max’s shop. She lives here now, instead of the craftsman over on Lincoln, and a part of me hates that for her but loves how close she is to me all at the same time.
But all that could change tonight. Her closeness might be an agony instead of a balm. Because I have to tell her about that night in Aether. I have to tell her and I really, really don’t want to.
It takes another five minutes before I sack up enough to get out of the car, the threat of losing her creating a vicious noxious hole in my chest where my heart used to be. The trek to the back entry is long, each step weighing me down, but eventually, I get the door open and traverse the stairs even though my feet feel like lead.
At about the third step from the top the hint that something is wrong trickles into my brain. There is no music. No movement. Nothing. I can’t rightly say how she lived her life before, but every time I have ever come to visit her, Max always has a TV on or music playing. Always. As if the silence physically grated on her, she methodically made sure there was something going on in the background.
And there was nothing.
The second? I couldn’t feel her magic anywhere. Max has an aura, a presence that physically presses in and lets you know she’s there. It’s comforting when she’s happy and almost grating when she’s angry. It’s the light caress of her magic even when she isn’t using any. It just is.
I’ve only felt it gone once, and any time she isn’t where she said she would be, I lose it a little. I should have noticed before now that I couldn’t feel her. I should have noticed before I ever walked through the door, but I was so worried about how she’d react to our history I wasn’t paying attention. Now my senses are on high alert.
Pulling in the scents from the hallway, I get a faint hint of someone who shouldn’t be here. Ruby’s signature fragrance filters through my brain, but it’s nearly gone now as if she left in a hurry. Max’s however, lingers, her scent clinging to almost every part of this building. But there is something else, too. Something made of smoke and death and… something I can’t place.
I take a few more steps up the stairs, my feet light this time instead of my idiotic plodding when I wasn’t paying attention. I strain to hear something in the building – breathing, walking, anything.
Something’s wrong. Someone’s here, I’d bet my life on it, and it’s not Max. Calling on the power I assume I got from my mother, I cloak myself in the darkness around me. Sometimes I think this is the dumbest ability I could have gotten. I’m half
Wraith, and I can’t travel. I’m half Witch – I think – and I can’t do half of what Witches my age can. The only thing I can do that they can’t is make myself essentially invisible. When compared to traveling, healing, and soul-eating, it’s a neat party trick but has few practical uses.
This just so happens to be one of them.
But pain lances through my head before I can take another step, ripping a groan from my lips. I manage to duck the heat of the next blow, but my cloak of darkness falls from me as soon as I can’t concentrate on it. Blood trickles down the back of my neck as I haul myself up the last few steps. Like an idiot, I don’t have a weapon on me. How long had it been since I went anywhere unarmed? And yet – when it came to Max – I never seemed to think straight.
Despite my best efforts – and the lucky instance of my Wraith eyesight – I can’t actually see my attacker. The scent of magic rising fills my nostrils, cloying smoke-filled power like a perfumed house on fire. My whole body freezes, caught in a web of control, agony lighting up my senses so much it steals my breath. Whispers – low, commanding murmurs bombard my brain, but I can’t quite make out what they’re saying.
Odds are, I don’t want to know anyway.
My eyes frantically comb the stairwell, searching for a hint – something, anything to tell me who or what’s here.
My power flickers, sputtering once, twice before I’m able to cloak myself again, wriggling from the invisible binds of magic to Max’s door. Turning the knob, I fail to feel the zing of magic that usually accompanies just knocking on it.
It’s unwarded. Unprotected.
Max hasn’t had an unwarded anything since Micah Goode attacked her. Not that her wards did much to keep him back in the first place, but that doesn’t stop her from checking and rechecking them. Making sure they’re as strong as she can make them.
But before I have a chance to let the worry fully consume me, the agony hits me again, and all I see is blackness.
MAX
Barrett’s face is the last thing I want to see when I open my eyes, but that doesn’t stop the man from being three inches from my face when I finally regain consciousness. Granted, Barrett is pretty if you don’t mind the giant stick up his ass. Shockingly clear blue eyes set in a pleasingly attractive face, square jaw, not too overly bushy eyebrows, decent medium brown hair. Problem is, his face is perpetually dialed to disapproval.
Even now. I just woke up from a major magical cat nap – okay… I passed out from using too much magic and probably shock – but still. No relief. No ‘thank the Fates you’re not dead.’
Nope.
Barrett and my mother probably get along like freaking gangbusters based on their general level of disapproval alone.
“Don’t look so disappointed, Barry. I’m sure I’ll die at some point, and you’ll get the joy of watching me come back to life. It’ll be a hoot,” I groan, planting a hand in soft plushness of a pale linen couch to sit up.
It’s then I notice I’m no longer in the white high courtroom, but what appears to be a stately office, and not Caim’s either, even though the courtroom and his office are both somehow located in Aether.
And yet not.
Then I start giggling, and Barrett’s eyebrows start their ascent up his forehead.
“I just got it,” I say still chuckling. “Aether. Everywhere and nowhere. The road to all places. No wonder there are so many pockets here. Speaking of, where the hell am I? I mean really. Is this Aether or somewhere else?”
“Somewhere else,” Barrett murmurs, sitting down on the edge of the carved mahogany coffee table. “And you’re right. Aether is like a hub. It connects places, makes the world smaller and all that. Not everyone can travel like you can, so we needed a thin place where we could move easily.”
I find it more than a little disconcerting that he knows I can travel, but I decide to stay on task.
“A thin place?”
He rolls his eyes up, scanning the ceiling as if it holds all the answers. My guess is it doesn’t because he heaves out a sigh before answering me in a cautious tone as if he doesn’t want to say too much. “Places where the barrier between this world and the next is thin, where it’s easy to traverse along the ley lines to get where we need to go.”
“You mean the veil? Because the veil is a person – three people, actually.”
His eyes fall back to me, the blue in them blazing.
“Yes and no. The Veil keeps the dead on the plane they’re supposed to be on. They are the barrier that keeps our worlds separate. But Demons don’t need to use the Veil to go to Hell just like Angels don’t need it to go to Heaven. We aren’t bound by it because we’re alive, hence thin places.”
His expression turns speculative and assessing, and I don’t like it one bit. I obviously know more than he expected me to, and rather than wallow in just how uncomfortable that makes me, I decide to go for moxie.
“You’re telling me I could open one of the doors in Aether and walk right into Hell? Please remind me never to come back here, mmm-kay?”
“I’ll make a note of it.”
The door behind Barrett opens, and Marcus strides through, a black old-timey doctor’s satchel in his hand. “How’s our patient?”
“Alive. And inquisitive. You got the things I asked for?”
“Yes, I got your frankenbag,” Marcus grouses passing over the satchel. “You sure I didn’t need to bring chicken blood and a sacrificed goat, too?”
“Nah, not this time,” he mutters in all seriousness – either in sarcasm or just not realizing Marcus’ joke, and I can’t decide which one is more frightening.
“Alright, Max, I need to get that blade off your hand which means I need to perform a break. Have you done one of those before?” Barrett asks as he starts pulling items from the bag. A small silver bowl no bigger than my hands cupped together, a squat black candle with runes etched into the wax, a large vial of salt, and a few bunches of dried herbs tied together with twine.
“Kinda,” I hedge. I mean, I have performed a break, but it didn’t exactly go well – for me. The last time I did one, I had a Demon compelling me to do his bidding, and I ended up burned at the stake, so you know…
Not exactly a point in the win column.
“It’s a simple spell, but the blowback can be anywhere from minute to life-threatening. It is better if the person who cast the spell in the first place to perform the break. It minimizes the blowback.”
That doesn’t sound good at all. More like it seems like an excellent way to fuck this up royally.
Here goes nothing.
Chapter Seven
MAX
I should have gone back inside the wards, but I didn’t. Instead, I followed the sounds of agony to find a man clawing away from the warding snare. It didn’t matter that he flashed back and forth between what I assumed was his true form of semi-solid black smoke and his glamour of a human man – the snare still caught him.
Something about the man called to me. I’d never seen an Ethereal like him. Our coven was secluded – hidden away from everyone and everything else who moved in the shadows of our world. He felt familiar in a way that I could not deny.
I had to help him. Had to.
But the only way to help him was to drop the wards – to put my family in danger. It was wrong. It was the worst idea I could think of.
“S-s-s-s-save m-m-m-me…” The thought hissed through my head, but I knew I hadn’t heard a sound. It wasn’t my voice, it was his.
“I will,” I promised, but I didn’t tell my mouth to do so. It was as if my mind had been taken over by someone else. The closer I got to him, the more I needed to do whatever I could to make sure he lived.
Without my mind telling my feet to do so, I pivoted toward the hex marks of our coven’s ward, snapping the protection spells one by one until the snare around the man’s foot fell away.
“S-s-s-s-save m-m-m-me…”
Then I found myself whispering words I didn’t know –
spells too advanced for my young body to handle. In my head, I screamed to stop, but I couldn’t halt the Latin falling from my lips or the charged green light flickering from my hands.
I was not in control, and I had a sinking feeling that this man, whoever he was, had taken over my body and my powers to free himself. Blood dripped from my nose, and I crumpled to the wet bracken of the forest floor.
I had to get away from him – whoever he was – before he took control over me again. But I didn’t get the chance. The sound of hoofbeats hit my ears, and their simple squelching echo was enough to put a pit of fear in my belly.
Horses meant men. Men meant humans. Humans who could have seen me do magic. Humans who all too frequently burned women alive for even the assumption of practicing magic.
I didn’t have enough time to put the wards back up. I didn’t even have enough time or energy to run.
A pair of footman grabbed me by my elbows, wrenching me from the forest floor and away from the man who was anything but.
They shouted at me, calling me Witch and Demon. They spat in my face, and tore at my clothes searching for a devil’s mark. It wouldn’t have mattered if I didn’t have one. They thought I killed the man who was lying so still in the mud and leaves he appeared dead. They saw the green light coming from my hands – they saw my magic.
They tied me to a tree, took a lantern from the coach and threw it at my feet – the glass and fuel exploding as it hit.
Flames caught the cotton of my dress first, and sooner than I thought possible I was left to scream out my dying breaths alone as men watched me burn.
“Max. Maxima. Max!” Barrett’s voice filters through the haze of the last time I performed a break. But I’d never done one on my own – never of my own free will. Never without that man or Demon or whatever the hell he was speaking for me.
Daughter of Souls & Silence Page 4
