by D. G. Swank
After a series of deep breaths, I envisioned a doe, her brown eyes seeking weaknesses in her environment, and her heart yearning to protect, to nurture. Margaret’s magic was powerful, and even though it had left the world with her nearly two hundred years ago, it took over my body without much effort. My backside rose up as my legs lengthened. My hands hit the ground and hardened into hooves, and my breasts turned to muscle, smoothing flush against my ribs, which now housed a massive heart nearly as large as my human head. My ears flicked this way and that, seeking to pinpoint the chirp of a bird, a falling leaf, and the running trickle of water half a mile away, in order to calculate their exact distance from me.
As opposed to the sharp vision and vibrant color perception I’d had only moments ago, the forest now appeared grainy, in shades of brown and muddy green. The fact that I could see nearly three hundred degrees without moving my head a millimeter made up for that deficit.
Now I stood on four legs, ready to walk our property’s perimeter and connect with as many animals as possible. They lived out here, they saw everything. And if need be, they would serve as an early warning system.
My part of the ritual depended on them.
Accessing the powers of two ancestors at the same time hadn’t come easily. When I was in middle school, Mom had brought me out here and made me practice, month in and month out, walking the forest beside her in one animal form or another. At the time, I’d complained that it was creepy, trying to suck magical energy out of dead people’s bones. Wasn’t tapping into them one at a time gross enough?
She’d never lost patience with me. Not once. Now she was gone, and I couldn’t help but wish I’d had more patience with her.
I set off loping along the edges of our land, picking up on the energy of rabbits in their warrens, birds and squirrels in their nests, mice in their repurposed tree stumps, rat snakes in their holes. I felt the presence of the book, as I always did, as though it were a small, warm pit settled in my chest, throbbing in time with my heartbeat. The closer I got to it, the stronger that feeling became. I called upon that sensation, of the book being safely where it belonged, and as I passed I asked each animal to watch, to listen, and to sound the alarm should anything breach our boundary in search of our book.
Animals had a network of magic separate from ours. Overall, it was weak in comparison to human magic, but it was deeply communal in nature. The different species here were tied to our earth and to one another, and their reverence for the land—and the community we’d formed together—created its own protection, even stronger when they worked in sync. Just as our ancestors had lived on this land and protected it with their lives, so too had these animals and their forebears. The earth gave humanity more than it deserved, our father used to tell us, and it was the magical faction’s calling to give as much back to the planet we called home as the rest of humankind took from it. It was a worthy and weighty responsibility—one I constantly strived to fulfill.
I’d nearly finished my circuit around the four-mile perimeter of our property, my soul full of all the life forms that lived here, ready and willing to commit themselves to our service, when a loud pop startled me. My heart hammered, and my chest and ears pointed toward the noise. A flash of light burned through my left cornea, followed by the scream of a terrified, dying animal. The latter sent my skittish deer heart into a gallop, but before I could struggle against her instinct to bolt, the forest went dark and quiet once again.
Being in deer form dulled my thoughts a little, making them rounder and less precise. Still, I had the sense that it was probably Celeste adding something a little more dramatic to the ritual after our disagreement, letting her frustration out through expression. I’d never heard a noise like that before, but perhaps I’d never been near enough to overhear part of her ritual.
Worry settled in my center as I cantered back to my clothes. We should have tried harder to include her. We should have asked questions about how she was handling everything, and really listened. Rowan and I should have gone to greater pains to get her to explain her role, and what it took from her, and not just because we might be asked to fill the void someday.
Because we loved our sister.
A shudder—part relief and part exhaustion—wracked my body as it transformed back into a human. The blessed feeling of returning to my own skin, the detail coming back to my thoughts and awareness, washed over me like a familiar wave.
Before I headed back toward the house, I took a moment to send my gratitude to the ancestors for lending me their talents, for their continued role in our protection and also that of our world.
My hands and feet were filthy after loping through the woods, despite the leaf cover, and my fingers snagged twigs and snarls as they attempted to comb through my hair. Visions of a hot shower filled my head, spurring me into a quicker pace. I wanted to ask Celeste about the noise, and that animal’s horrible cry, but it would have to wait. Rowan always finished first, then me, and then, hours later, Celeste. In the meantime, I desperately needed a shower.
Rowan was always bugging us to make sure the bathroom fan was on when we took a very hot shower, and her voice rang in my ears. It’ll make the walls damp. The paint will bubble, mold will grow, and the wood will rot. And then we’ll have to renovate our only bathroom. Is that what you want?
By now, Celeste and I knew the speech so well we could mouth the words right along with her. We knew she was right too, and maybe it was childish that I couldn’t resist the delicious sensation of a steam-filled bathroom, but so be it. I headed straight for the bathroom when I got inside, purposefully not looking for Rowan first. Today, I needed the comfort of a steamy bathroom.
As I stepped out of the shower and into the fog of humidity twenty minutes later, clean as a whistle and inhaling lavender-infused steam, I decided I’d be happy to defend my bad decision.
That was, if she ever came out of her room. Her door was closed when I left the bathroom, presumably because she’d holed up in there to get a few things done while I finished my part of the ritual, and it was still closed after I emerged from my bedroom dressed in yoga pants, a camisole, and my favorite cashmere wrap sweater.
I was ready to binge on TV and cheesy, carby goodness from Dirko’s. Nothing beat their “Kitchen Sink” pizza after a long day. Nothing. But Rowan didn’t like being disturbed while working, so I settled on the couch.
Tucking my feet under me, I pulled the afghan off the back of the couch and tossed it over my legs, sinking into the warmth. Then I yawned as I began to scroll through my favorites to find Dirko’s number. Then yawned again.
I stared into my phone, my vision watery from all the yawning. Good grief, I could probably lay my head back and fall asleep. It was weird, but my eyes were heavy. My head was buzzing.
Why am I so tired?
That thought was the last thing I remembered before there was nothing.
Chapter Three
The first things I saw when I opened my eyes were the floor-to-ceiling windows that stretched along the back of our house. They were pitch black.
During the new moon, we turned on extra lights around the house, just for a little extra security. Obviously, I’d fallen asleep before I could do that, but where the hell were Rowan and Celeste?
God, my head hurts.
My temples pounded with an endless throbbing drumbeat that I was sure I couldn’t bear a moment longer. Still struggling to pry my eyes open enough to see anything beyond darkness, I fumbled for my phone in the dent my butt had made on the couch. I found it wedged between the cushions, a cold brick that wouldn’t light with the push of either button. Dead.
Every time I blinked, wisps of light and snatches of sound danced at the periphery of my senses, just out of reach. I knew what it was—my finely tuned senses were detecting lingering magic—but I’d never experienced it directly upon waking.
Magic that I, obviously, had not worked, since I’d been sleeping.
It didn’t belong to my sist
ers either. As we were coven members, I was as familiar with their signatures as I was with my own.
I swore under my breath as I pulled myself to sitting, fear kicking in as I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark living room. The coffee table and TV were there, solid before me, and the backyard stretched out into an endless black pool past the deck.
Suddenly, the knob to Rowan’s door twisted and clicked. Then heavy steps fumbled out of her room. The tiny, blindingly bright flashlight from her phone bobbed through the dark toward me until she finally reached the light switch. The blinding brightness flooded my eyes, forcing a whimper from me.
When I finally acclimated enough to pry my eyes open again, my heart nearly stopped.
The coffee table and TV were still in place, yes, but the same couldn’t be said of anything else. The recliner on one end of the kitchen and the midcentury modern armchair on the other were both upside down, their tired springs reflecting grotesque frowns at us. I whirled back to the small office tucked just inside the front entrance of our house to find the hard drive cracked open and books scattered across the carpet as though someone had blasted them off all at once. Drawers hung open, some pulled out and overturned, and scraps of shredded paper littered every surface like confetti.
Across the house, the fridge gaped open and the kitchen cabinets drooped off their hinges helter-skelter. Shards of dishes dotted the countertops. The sight squeezed a pained squeak past my lips.
Those had been my mother’s dishes, adorably vintage and filled with family history, bought for her as a wedding present. Our father had loved to take them out at gatherings and name-drop his way through the history of each piece. He always seemed to love the connections our family line boasted and would tell anyone about my mother’s family history as though he’d somehow laid claim to it by marrying her. The dishes were a symbol of that.
I let out a slow breath as I picked up a couple of broken fragments.
“It’s just dishes,” Rowan said softly, in her own way trying to comfort me. “Not our parents.”
“No, I know.” I pressed the two pieces together, as if I could fix the plate, but it was too shattered.
I didn’t know why my eyes were welling up.
“The memories aren’t broken,” Rowan said, taking the pieces from me and tossing them down atop the rest.
I nodded. Though, I wondered how intact my memory of my parents was to begin with. Sometimes Rowan seemed to have a different impression of our parents than I had. It’s not like they were perfect, she would say. How rosily you view the world, Phoebe Whelan.
Like we were one person, Rowan and I panned our eyes to the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. Now that the lights were on, the damage to them was clear as day—an impact mark in the center of each gave way to radial cracks twisting outward. Several large shards remained attached to the frame, waiting to slice anything soft that dared to scrape against them. The rest had been shattered completely and lay in shards on the floor below.
My heart sank until it felt heavy as a rock in my stomach.
Had Celeste done this?
Guilt slammed me hard at the thought, especially when I realized something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
As Celeste’s sister, as two-thirds of her coven, we could always feel her.
Except now I couldn’t.
I gasped, suddenly finding it difficult to draw breath, and Rowan stumbled toward the couch. Our eyes met, and I knew the realization had struck her at nearly the same time.
“Celeste,” I cried.
“And the book,” Rowan choked out. She reached over and scrabbled for my hands, clutching them until her knuckles glowed white. We closed our eyes, and I sent my mind along the coven connection we’d formed when Celeste was just seventeen.
My eyes popped open after a few seconds, then locked on my sister’s.
“They’re both gone,” we said together.
We’d been warned there would be violent physical effects if anything should happen to either the book or one of us—our magical bonds, to one another and the book, ensured it—but we’d never experienced it firsthand.
Until now.
Rowan’s body pitched forward, over her knees, and she vomited onto the carpet. Tears trailed down my cheeks. Rowan was the neat freak. She would never, ever have done that if things were even remotely okay.
“All right,” I babbled, rubbing her back and swallowing back my own nausea. “This is fine. We’ll just track her. We can do that, remember? We have a coven bond, we can… witch-GPS her, or whatever, in great times of need.” I knew this all to be absolutely true. There were protections in place for witches. We looked out for our own, and part of that involved establishing coven bonds so that we could communicate with one another remotely in times of great need.
Rowan sat up, chest heaving. “This is a time of great need,” she said raggedly.
“It is.” I nodded, trying to make my words sound sure. Decisive. “Celeste needs us.”
“Bee,” Rowan said as she struggled to compose herself. “We had that fight, and now Celeste and the book are gone…” She didn’t finish the accusation, but it was there all the same.
“No,” I barked out, harsher than I’d intended, denying my own suspicion and hers. “She would never take it and run off. Never.”
Rowan looked chastised, but I could still see the doubt in her eyes, a doubt that still throbbed in my own chest.
“Let’s find her,” I said, hoping I was right. That Celeste hadn’t run away from us and taken the book with her. The book siphoned energy from her. Surely, if she’d decided to run off, she would have left it behind.
Unless she plans to use the spells within the covers.
No. Celeste might be upset with us, but she wouldn’t betray us. Especially that way. It wasn’t like her—nobody was less power-hungry than Celeste. Besides, she couldn’t open it without us. We’d accepted the duty of protection together, so it was bound to all three of us.
Rowan and I turned to face each other and clasped hands, palms pressed flush together. Her fingertips curled down, resting between my knuckles, and I let the smooth, cool feel of her skin on mine ground me. I breathed in deep, and so did she. We would have to reach further this time. Call on more magic. Whatever it took to locate Celeste, to make sure she was alive.
“Your hair smells good,” Rowan said. Her voice shook, but I knew she was trying to force us both to relax.
“Your breath smells gross,” I answered, managing a small smile.
We both knew that goodwill between coven members was necessary to complete this task, and any anxiety we felt would make the job harder. I focused my mind on my love for my sisters. It was less simple than it had been a decade ago, but the complications between us had built in layers of history that fortified our coven bond against almost anything.
Looking into Rowan’s bright green irises was like looking into a mirror. Together, we let our eyes flutter shut for a second time, this time focusing all our magic and energy on finding the third pair of eyes that perfectly matched ours.
Like a hawk swooping over the earth looking for prey, my vision roved over our land and the surrounding area, searching for our sister. It was a field of black, and we were hoping for a small green flare, any pop of power at all, anywhere. With every passing second, the throbbing in my skull seemed to worsen. The opaque black of my mind’s eye seemed to pulse along with it, bending and stretching, teasing at the empty space inside me that Celeste had left behind.
With that thought, Rowan gasped. Her eyes flew open and she choked out, “It’s too much. It hurts too much.”
“Headache?”
“No,” she said. “My whole body. Like my limbs are going to just fall away. Like every cell is too heavy to operate.”
I wanted to sob. Wanted to scream, to awaken every ancestral magic power available to me and demand they help me. But my head hurt so badly, and the only rational explanation for the disappearance of the book
and my sister was that a witch had stolen them both.
And taken them so far away we couldn’t find her, not even with our magic combined.
No, hidden. Please let her be hidden. I couldn’t consider the alternative.
“Of course they were taken,” Rowan said, addressing the last thought before I gave it voice. “Celeste wouldn’t leave. She wouldn’t take the book. Or even allow it to be taken, no matter how angry she was at us. I was wrong to suggest otherwise.”
Her restored faith in our sister filled me with more relief than it should have. And yet...
“Rowan,” I said, “we should have at least been able to sense her magic. That’s the whole point of the bond. We sense one another. We should at least have heard her, felt...” My breaths were coming short. My head was still throbbing, and now dizzy with panic too.
That thought I couldn’t consider had taken over the forefront of my mind.
“She’s not dead,” Rowan insisted, sounding like she was trying to convince herself as much as she was trying to convince me. “We’d feel a void if she was. There’s no void. We just can’t feel her.”
I nodded. Our mother had taught us that the loss of a coven member left a void in the remaining witches’ souls. I’d often wondered if that was what had killed our father after her death. There was no sucking void now. Only fear and panic.
Now that I’d convinced myself that Celeste was still alive, I turned to a new concern. There were only two things the Small Council had entrusted to the three of us—stay together and protect the Book of Sindal.
We’d failed at both.
My near-hysteria returned. “What will the Small Council do to us when they find out?”
“Stop,” Rowan hissed.
She’d grabbed my shoulders, and now she dug her perfect half-moon manicure into the skin there. In a distant corner of my mind, I worried that she was damaging the cashmere knit— stretching it out or, worse, tearing it. Focus on that, I told myself. Center yourself on the here and now.
