Descended from Shadows: Book of Sindal Book One

by D. G. Swank

  “Lucia’s smart,” Rowan said as she handed Archer the keys to her car. “Second basement is below ground level. And she’s got valets parking cars.”

  I nodded as we headed toward the building. Someone had charmed the atmosphere so that wisps of ethereal blue light, visible only to witches, guided us to the side of the theater’s flashy façade and around back to the alley, where a few feet in, the bricks on the wall rearranged themselves to let us into a stairwell. From there, we descended until we could go no lower, then followed the wisps through one more heavy metal door.

  Unfinished two-by-fours, tables stacked with cast-off props, and half-painted scenery filled the cavernous, cinder-blocked second basement of the Palace Theatre. The thirty-one Council members were perched on stacks of wood, huddled in half-moons arrangements of metal folding chairs, and a few even hovered in midair, their legs crossed. A quick head count confirmed every single one of them was present.

  “Did you find an empath ancestor nearby?” Rowan asked in a whisper, and I realized I’d been too shaken up to search.

  “No,” I said, not that it mattered. When I tried reaching out to find an empath just now, I hit a magical brick wall. “Someone set up barriers so that no magic can go in and out.”

  Rowan’s lips pursed. “Makes sense, but it’s still frustrating.”

  “Tell me about it.” Rowan could still glamour, but I was magically neutral, which filled me with unease. We were about to face some of the most powerful witches and mages in North America and I was practically at the level of a nonmagical.

  “Welcome, Phoebe and Rowan Whelan,” said a soft and breathy voice. It came from a tall, reed-thin woman with alabaster skin sprayed with freckles, and long auburn waves that reached to her waist. She looked closer to thirty-five than her actual forty-something years. “It’s a pleasure to see you girls again. You’ve grown in so many ways.”

  Lucia Hernandez was an empath and aura reader, able to peer into the thoughts of anyone she encountered. Though she was extremely gifted in those areas, her talents did not extend to concealing her emotions in reaction to whatever she learned. Both qualities had been positives for those of us who’d voted for her—we’d hoped her leadership would encourage transparency and stronger communal bonds in the Small Council.

  She let her eyes flutter shut as we approached her, holding out both hands to us, palms out. As we both placed a hand flat against hers, I tried to make my memories of what had happened in the past day as accessible as possible. I watched her expression change a dozen times as she watched our recollections in her mind’s eye like it was a movie reel.

  “Oh!” she gasped after a few seconds. When she finally opened her eyes again, scanning the Small Council like she’d almost forgotten they were present, she gasped and swiped at a tear that had rolled from her eye. “I’m so sorry, Phoebe. Rowan.”

  Had she sensed our concern that someone in the Small Council might be responsible? If she had, she didn’t let on.

  “Where is the other one?” asked an older man perched on a chair in the corner, his voice dripping with annoyance. “Three sisters, a triangle of safety for the Book of Sindal,” he said, using the phrase we’d repeated hundreds of times to argue for the book staying under our protection at the farmhouse. “I only see two sisters,” he said, as if the rest of us were too stupid to understand what he was upset about.

  “Why don’t you tell them?” Lucia asked, her voice sad and quiet. “We will need to put all our heads together to figure this one out.” She motioned to us.

  Warmth soaked into the skin of my throat, and from the way Rowan’s hand flew to her neck, I guessed the same had happened to her. An amplifying charm, commonly known as “the microphone charm.” I cleared my throat and the raspy sound boomed through the cluttered hallway. A deep breath brought the smell of freshly cut wood and acrid paint.

  “Um,” I began, and then mentally scolded myself for my own inarticulateness. “Last night, our sister was kidnapped. And they took the Book of Sindal too.”

  The room exploded in dozens of gasps, cries, and expressions of outrage.

  “You have unleashed another Salem on us,” shouted a witch with deep wrinkles and stark white hair as she stood with surprising vigor.

  Lucia held her hand up to silence them. “Sarah, hold your tongue. This Council has worked together to protect our kind since Salem. We cannot afford to lose cohesion now.”

  “Penelope didn’t protect poor Liam,” another witch countered.

  “I see no reason to remind you that I am not Penelope,” Lucia said in a stern tone full of rebuke. “Nor am I Artemis Bishop. We are only strong when we stand together.”

  More shouting rang out, and another witch stood, casting a death stare at Rowan and me. “The Book of Sindal is the single remaining repository for every dark spell, potion, incantation, and magical act that has the power to unmake the world as we know it. Six years ago, this Council gave you the responsibility to protect it. You have failed in your duty and left us all vulnerable to great evil.”

  She wasn’t saying anything we hadn’t already told ourselves, but it felt worse to hear it said aloud.

  Lucia lifted her hands, then said in her quiet voice, “Enough. To right this wrong, we must find out how this came about. Pointing fingers will solve nothing.”

  Her remarks carried as much authority as they would have had she used the amplification spell on herself. Everyone quieted, and Rowan stepped forward and began to explain what had happened. She was in Serenity Mode once again, and in calm, measured words, she recounted everything. The ritual. How she and I had fallen asleep while waiting for Celeste to return, only to wake up to headaches and wisps of strange magic in the air. It still seemed so surreal how our lives had changed in such a violent, sudden way.

  “We woke more than twenty-four hours after we completed our parts of the ritual,” I said, picking up the thread for Rowan when she started to lose steam. I should have continued with the story of how we were attacked on the way here, but something inside, some base instinct stopped me. Somehow, I knew divulging that information to this entire group could end up doing more harm than good.

  “An entire day,” Lucia confirmed, shaking her head gravely. “This is… I don’t know what to say. This is grave indeed, my friends.”

  I swallowed, trying to keep my earlier panic from returning. “Our entire house was torn apart. Windows and computers smashed, drawers overturned. Our protection spells on the house were child’s play to whoever left that lingering magic.”

  I needed the Council to understand how sorry and terrified I was, to see the same in Rowan. They needed to realize we’d done nothing to cause this—that we’d done our best to prevent it too.

  Unless… unless there was something Celeste was keeping from us. Something she’d hidden, something that was darker and worse than we could have guessed.

  For all of my certainty that I knew my sister inside and out, there was no denying that Celeste’s moods had grown more volatile over the past several months. It was clear from the fight we’d had just before Celeste stomped out of the house and toward the Book of Sindal’s hiding place that all of our patience and understanding and even therapy hadn’t worked to repair the damage. Not really. And there was no denying something strange had happened during the ritual. That animal’s screams still echoed in my ears.

  I snuck a glance at Rowan, whose mouth was slightly ajar with her purposeful breathing. She met my eyes, and her brow furrowed. As usual, we were in sync, and as usual, we agreed in silence to protect our sister. We would have to trust that it was the right decision.

  I only hoped Lucia wasn’t reading our minds now.

  “Forgive me,” a deep, velvety voice boomed from a dark corner next to a discarded set piece painted to look like library bookshelves.

  I gave a small, rueful laugh, feeling slightly comforted by the appearance of something so familiar, albeit fake, in the deep, dark meeting place of the Valerian Small C
ouncil. A man emerged from the shadows, and I was awash with recognition.

  My heart tripped.

  I knew this face. I’d seen this man day in and day out for the better part of four years. Hell, I’d mooned over him the entire time we were in high school together. Back then, his hair had been darker, his skin baby smooth. Whereas I had been painfully shy, he’d been the all-star football player with hundreds of friends and a steady stream of girlfriends.

  “Forgive me,” he continued, “but are you saying that the greatest protections known to the magical world and to this Small Council were placed on the Book of Sindal, and despite the most diligent efforts of its guardians, some witch or mage has managed to break through them?”

  “Y—yes,” I stammered, fighting the sudden dryness of my mouth to come up with something coherent to say. I was shocked. Brandon Cassidy, my old high school crush was a mage. Though adult witches could sense one another, there were protections for children, who weren’t deemed mature enough to understand the costs of revealing our way of life. So of course I had no clue back then that he also possessed magic.

  But Brandon’s self-satisfied smirk seemed to suggest he’d somehow been aware that I was a witch since the first moment he’d met me, all those years ago. For all that had happened to us over the last twenty-four hours, it was this realization that made my cheeks burn and my eyes prick with tears.

  It just figured that the most terrifying day of my life, when I stood in front of the Valerian Small Council and admitted my utter failure as a member of the magical community, was the same day I learned that Brandon Cassidy was a mage. Not only that, but he was clearly important enough to have merited a ticket to witness my complete shame.

  “As I said,” I rambled, “we’d just performed the fortification ritual that evening. Everything should have been in order.” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, and that was all it took for the memories of high school Brandon to crash over me like a tidal wave.

  Even though I’d been too shy to tell him how I really felt, we’d had a few… moments. Junior year, I’d been reassigned to a new homeroom, and locker, and for a few glorious months, my locker had been next to his. One morning, he introduced himself and said he liked my hair, which Celeste had experimented on. It felt like a giant, tousled mess to me, so I just stammered and blushed. Then, in a moment I’d never, ever forget, Brandon chuckled, picked up one of the longer ends, and rubbed it between his fingers. All I could do was look up into his deep green eyes and gasp.

  After that, he would give my hair a little tug every time he saw me—usually when it was just the two of us standing at our lockers, but sometimes also when we passed each other in the lunchroom or on the way out of the building at the end of the day. I never got the courage to say anything else to him. Then one day, Rowan saw our little exchange play out, and shot Brandon daggers from her eyes. I wondered if she’d sent him a mental image of his violent death or something, even though I knew it wasn’t in her talent set. Hell, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d glamoured herself to look like Medusa for a split second.

  I never knew for sure why she did it though. Maybe she’d acted that way because we both assumed he was a regular guy, and we weren’t really supposed to get serious with anyone who wasn’t magical. Maybe she just wanted to protect me from a known player. Either way, her worst death stare hadn’t done a thing to make him stop flirting with me. He wasn’t the kind of guy who scared easily.

  “Well, it seems it wasn’t in order,” present-day Brandon interjected, his words ringing with alarm. “And how is it possible that we have no clue who might have the skill to pull this off?”

  Everything within me stiffened at the accusing tone in his voice. My memories of him seemed to be slightly rosy, in light of the haughty man in front of me. Either that, or he’d changed. A lot.

  Because there was nothing sweet about the man who stood before us now, accusing us of negligence in front of the people who held power over witches everywhere.

  “We’re not to blame,” Rowan said, taking a small step forward.

  I was surprised she didn’t throw an arm out to shield me. A smile ticked up the corners of my mouth. Apparently she still had plenty of protective instincts when it came to Brandon Cassidy.

  “Before anyone so much as suggests that you are to blame,” he said. “I’ll remind you that records of your protective magic are accessible to the Council, as per our agreement. As well as any contact between you three and the Council, and any comings and goings from the property. No reasonable witch or mage would suggest that you arranged the attack on your home, the theft of the Book of Sindal, or the kidnapping of your sister. I’m simply concerned that not a single one of us standing here today seems to have seen this coming.”

  Any time the Small Council or the Protective Force wanted to look into the most intimate aspects of our lives, they had a right to do so. We’d agreed to it. For all we knew, they’d been doing so without our knowledge.

  Lucia cleared her throat, her own voice now amplified by her spell. “Small Council, I call on you. If anyone has any information about this tragic event—what may have caused it, how it may have been done, who the perpetrators could be—speak now.”

  Lucia managed to sound calm and commanding at once. I wished I had her cool.

  She didn’t have to say what we all knew—that it was impossible to hide anything from her since she could peer into our minds via our auras. It wasn’t exactly mind reading, but some aura readers were so talented that they could sense every minute change in someone’s moods and feelings. Despite that, the thirty-one members of the Small Council in the room stayed silent. The most powerful group of witches and mages in North America had lost one of its most dangerous possessions, and apparently not a single one of us had the slightest clue where it might be. It was hard to believe. They were the only ones who knew where it was hidden. One of them had to know something.

  After a few moments of still, almost unbearable silence, Lucia tilted her head to the side. “There’s more. What have you not told us?”

  “We were attacked on our way here,” Rowan said, her voice defeated. A low, shocked murmur bubbled up in the room.

  I had hoped to keep the fact that I’d killed five of our own kind secret from the Council. It was clear that some Council members suspected us of planning the theft of the Book of Sindal, and it wouldn’t help our case to hear that I had fresh blood on my hands. I’d done my best to tamp down the memory of it, but it didn’t matter. Lucia must have been able to see something about it anyway. With her reading our auras, there was no way around it.

  “Our car is a mess,” I added. “They tried to run us off the road with their SUVs, and smashed into us on all sides, not to mention they shot at Rowan’s car multiple times. Bullet holes are probably still warm.”

  Brandon’s eyes switched from cool and calm to fiery in an instant. He took several short, urgent steps toward me, and it felt as if his movements pulled every sinew in my body tight. “This attack on the road, can you describe the men in the cars?”

  Brandon took another step closer to us, and the Small Council looked on almost deferentially. Clearly, he was an important mage.

  “Men and women,” I corrected.

  “Pardon me?” he said as he stepped even closer and caught my eye.

  “There were two vehicles—one in front and one behind. There were four in one vehicle, and two in another. All wearing black cloaks. At least one of them was a woman.”

  I held out my hand and Rowan handed me her unlocked phone. I held up the picture I’d snapped of the design stitched into the hood of the surviving witch. With a simple enlargement charm, the image floated, transparent, above our heads for all to see. More murmurs filled the room. Clearly, this did nothing to diffuse the confusion.

  “And you said this occurred on the way here. So it could have just been some kids driving recklessly down a dark, narrow country road?” Brandon asked with a sardonic look.
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  “Did they shoot at us accidentally too?” I asked, gritting my teeth, angrier by the second. At my side, I could sense Rowan’s Serenity Mode wearing thin, as well. When she broke down, she would need my support, but neither of us could afford to show any weakness now. Too many of them wanted to blame us for this breach.

  It didn’t help that this asshole was questioning me like I was a child whom he suspected of stealing a cookie from the cookie jar.

  “No,” I said more assertively, “it was definitely not just some kids. Look at the symbol on their cloaks. Look at our car.”

  “You still drove it all the way here,” he countered.

  “Protocol Thirteen barely left us a choice,” I ground out, stepping toward him and raising my eyes to his in a challenge I could neither explain nor deny.

  “Everyone knows the Whelan family has served this Council and the magical community at large with honor, skill, and dedication for centuries,” piped up a voice from near the back of the assembly.

  Relief filled me as I turned to see a witch with a wild mess of dark, curly hair and perfectly painted blood-red lips. I would have recognized those high, round cheekbones and deep moss-green eyes anywhere. Xenya. Her parents had held a coven bond with my mother’s parents when they were children, and though we rarely saw her or even spoke with her, she felt like an aunt. I felt her love and care despite the distance between us. Tears welled in my eyes, but I blinked them back as I nodded my thanks.

  “Quite right,” Brandon said, closing his eyes, pressing his palm to his chest, and executing a bow from the waist to Xenya.