by WB McKay
Was I about to have a sword fight with The Morrigan?
I am not about to fight The Morrigan.
My feet felt heavy, awkward. I wasn't matching her steps, I wasn't even there. I was in my head, fighting for a way out of this.
Her blade skewered my calf. Blinding pain radiated up my leg.
I managed to keep my feet through willpower and the weight of The Morrigan's gaze. If Clarissa was right about currying favor with The Morrigan through doing well in battle, which the texts would support, I'd hate to think of what The Morrigan would do when one's performance disappointed. Again. Some foolish part of me thought of her as family and hoped to see my pain reflected on her face. Instead, she watched impassively, as if in response to a mediocre television show. Rage made the pain easier to ignore.
I launched my own attack with a feint toward her legs. She took a slight hop back and parried my true attack aimed at her heart.
The fight was on.
Haiku parried blow after blow and Epic lashed out, occasionally biting flesh. We both bled from a half dozen wounds. A voice in the back of my mind was surprised to see The Morrigan bled red. Her grandiose entrance was impressive, but not surprising. I expected her to be too much to handle. I didn't expect the average parts of her, the real parts.
One of those unreal parts was what was going to get me though. As we fought, I grew tired. Sweaty. My breath came faster. The Morrigan did none of those things. She'd win, simply by outlasting me.
I'd disappointed her by not killing the loser when I'd beaten Clarissa.
I needed a new plan.
Three of the gravel geysers were still churning, but they were far away and our fight was leading us further. Still, they gave me an idea. I didn't have much time to look around—looking away from The Morrigan was a certain death sentence—but I spied a glyph to my right. It looked like a circle with a fuzzy drawing of a skull inside. Haiku parried The Morrigan's next attack, and I whipped Epic across the ground, creating an X that could have been crossbones to me. When nothing happened, I realized it was because I hadn't focused on the reaction enough. I pulled the same move, simply better defining one edge of the circle while picturing the "danger" signs I'd seen.
Lightning flashed over the glyph. The Morrigan whipped her head to the side to get a better look.
I ran for it.
Rocks bit into my side as I slid behind the bushes, with a clear slant to the left. Once safely out of sight, I jumped up and ran to the right under the cover of the brush. Owen had left me a few untouched glyphs in that direction.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," called The Morrigan. She hadn't left her place near the lightning glyph. We both knew she'd be able to find me if I didn't come back on my own. That wasn't a problem, as long as I had a few more seconds.
I paused halfway to my destination and pulled out the Pez dispenser. As before, I cranked back the head on the little witch, and felt the tugging sensation on my chest. My thumb let go, pulled it back a second time, and let go again. My doppelgänger looked as worried as I felt.
As I distanced myself from the image, she moved the same, doubling the distance. Once I was lined up with my target, and my image was roughly lined up with where The Morrigan stood out in the open, I ran out of the bushes.
At first The Morrigan only saw the image of myself before her, but the sound of my steps drew her attention to me. I kept one eye on her, but put most of my attention into running as fast as I could. She looked between the two of us, and I almost stumbled when she laughed.
"Well, that tickles, I'll give you credit for that," The Morrigan announced.
"Happy to be of service," I puffed out on ragged exhales.
The first glyph I came to looked like… I wasn't sure what, and I didn't want to overthink it, so I turned to the next one. A spider, missing some legs. I used the toe of my shoe to define the body and add the appropriate number of legs, and to my surprise, when I was done and had looked the design over with my second sight, I recognized the pulse of magic as a dark purple highlighting the lines. I backed away, confident it would work.
Oh, fae. It did. It definitely worked.
"Nice spider, big spider." Black widows were a lot scarier when their legs were longer than a human's. Once my shirt was off, my bra unhooked, and my swords sheathed, I shifted and flew with all my might up and over The Morrigan's head. I dropped down a good ten feet behind her, with two more glyphs I could ignite between us, and the spider on the other side of her. "There's more where that came from!" I promised.
The Morrigan looked at me over her shoulder. I might have made it up, but I thought she winked before she disappeared in a cloud of black smoke and emerged half a second later as a crow the size of a small bus. It was the form she'd taken when I saw her in Faerie. Where she'd eaten a bunch of her worshipers.
The spider crawled toward her. She opened her massive beak and sat patiently until it walked directly into her mouth. With two clicks, she chomped it down. Two of its legs hung from her mouth when she turned to face me.
"Okay." I'd thought creating something that could leave the confines of the glyph was my best bet, but that hadn't gone exactly as planned. Swords weren't a winning option. I was fighting The Morrigan. Time to see what she makes of this. A death light hovered over both palms. I'd been practicing controlling them since I'd seen what I could do in Faerie.
The right light zipped straight for her chest, and she launched herself into the air. It followed her up, and the left one joined in pursuit.
Smoke surrounded her. She shifted in midair, taking her prior form of humanoid with wings. Unlike when I shifted in the air and began plummeting mid-shift, she hovered for a moment before hurtling down toward me, death lights hot on her trail.
I was zeroed in on my death lights, chasing her down with intent focus, and didn't consider her trajectory. Talons bit into my biceps. Breathing through gritted teeth, I struggled to free myself from her grip, but she stayed attached to my arms.
"Let me go."
"What are these lights?" She didn't let me go. "They smell of death."
I brought them around in front of me, and again, said, "Let me go."
She did it this time, but I wasn't convinced my request had anything to do with it. She crept around me, talons pointed toward the floating lights.
"It's pretty isn't it? Makes you want to reach out and touch it?" I raised and lowered the light, watching her eyes track it. "Go ahead, give it a try." My mouth turned up in a wry smile when The Morrigan took a step back. "No? It probably won't hurt you, being a death goddess and all. I mean, maybe. But to everyone else, it's certain, instant death."
"Hmm." She leaned her face in, unafraid that I might move the light to hit her.
"Have you seen this before?"
"No." She sounded honest, but I didn't trust her. Did rules about lying apply to someone like The Morrigan? I doubted it.
"Not even, say, with my father?"
"No."
"Who is he?" Maybe he'd have answers.
"Oh, who knows! I'm in and out of Faerie, crossing timelines confuses all manner of things. I may enter Earth this year or a thousand past. You could have been conceived a thousand years ago! No way to know really."
"What? I went to Faerie and came back and nothing like that happened to me."
"Do not mistake your passage from Faerie for my own. Faerie and I have a relationship beyond anything you know of time or land."
It didn't escape my notice that she'd become downright chatty once my father was mentioned. "You could venture a guess on my father."
"I see no point in that," she said. "You are my daughter, not his."
"I'm not exactly your daughter, either."
"That is untrue." She pulled her face away from my light. "Look at what you can do. You are a piece of my magic. Transformed, yes, but of me, for certain. We are alike, you and I."
"Alike?" I stalked over to Clarissa, staying clear of her flailing arms. She was stil
l under the influence of my fear magic. I'd like to say that keeping her under my fear magic while doing everything else I'd accomplished fighting The Morrigan was a sign of my skill, as many fae complain about keeping up their use of magic for a long time, but the truth was I worked to keep my magic from flaring up. Letting my fear magic do its work made the rest of what I had to do that much easier. "I could have ended this battle before it started. Just one flick of my wrist and I could have snuffed out her life, but I chose not to because I'm not like you. I'm like my mom, Belinda."
The Morrigan's face twisted with disapproval. "Belinda is a banshee. I am The Morrigan. I am your mother."
I spat at The Morrigan's feet. "Unfortunately, yes, you are my mother, but she is my mom. She's the one who raised me, cared for me. She taught me how to fight and take care of myself. You gave birth to me and dumped me off. The only thing I ever thought I needed you for was figuring out this little light here, and it's even more of a mystery to you than it is to me. You have nothing of value to offer."
A look somewhere between a grin and a grimace slid into place on her face. "I knew Belinda would raise you to be a fighter. You'll need that."
"Oh, so now you remember me?" I scoffed. "I don't for one minute believe you know what I need."
I quashed the death light and lowered my head. I hated her more than anything, but I couldn't hold onto that any more if I wanted to live my own life. I had Belinda. I had Ava, and Art, and Phoebe—annoying as she was—and, I thought, maybe, I had Owen. I had more than I'd ever thought I would. As that thought sunk in, I didn't really care what happened to The Morrigan.
"Many have believed in me. They cling to belief with the pitiful bindings of their immature lives. They think that belief matters, just as you feel your disbelief makes a difference. It does not. When your mind and magic have ripened, I shall bring you to Faerie to develop you further."
I raised my head, ready to tell her what I thought of that, but found only a flurry of feathers. The Morrigan was nowhere to be seen. With the violence over, there was nothing more to hold her interest.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Clarissa's screams of terror cut off and a sudden hush descended. Dropping my fear aura could be as bad as the fear itself, especially when I didn't offer a gradual descent. I'd feel bad, but Clarissa deserved no better.
Her handcuffs laid on the ground where they'd been left, and I locked them on her without issue. I didn't worry about her escaping this time. Clarissa was wrung out and ready for imprisonment. The scythe was safe in my hand. I was done.
I called Art. I didn't even mention The Morrigan, because I didn't know how. "I have Clarissa." He said he'd send a team and be there soon.
I texted Owen, but when I looked up from my phone, he already stood in front of me. Patricia had gone for them. Ava took a seat next to me on the rough ground, and Owen crouched by both of us. They didn't ask what happened. I didn't volunteer.
Cars burst onto the scene too soon, lights blazing and voices ringing out all over the place. Art calling my name and having me release Clarissa to their custody effectively shook me back to myself. When I was done, Ava was talking to her friends, and Owen was kicking at rocks where glyphs had burned earlier in the night.
I approached him dead on, but he didn't look up. "Hey," I said. Yep, I'm really good with words. "I have to say: I told you so."
His head popped right up. "Huh?"
"I told you that you'd be able to figure out how to wield the glyphs. And you did! And you did very well. Plus, now we know your wheelhouse." He looked at me like he didn't know, so I added, "Destruction."
He cringed.
"Oh, like death is so much cheerier. Buck up. You did amazing things with that magic of yours."
"Thanks." He raked his hand over his hair. "So, you took on The Morrigan?"
"I didn't, like, win or anything."
"You survived. I think that's what winning looks like in this situation. Remind me never to mess with you. Those little lights of yours are downright scary."
"Like fire is so friendly."
"Yeah, no, it's not."
"I guess we're a couple of scary bastards, eh? Good for us."
He smiled hesitantly, like he wasn't sure if I was kidding, and after looking me over his grin came into full bloom. "Good for us," he agreed.
"Listen, I wanted to say something." I took a deep breath. "Thank you." In truth, I owed Owen several times over. I trusted him not to abuse that.
"For what?"
I scoffed, and when he still looked serious, I elaborated. "For leaving when I told you to, like you promised you would."
"I promised."
"I know, and that was a hard one to keep. So thank you for doing it. And for listening to me when I had been a total asshole to you. For burning the witch's glyphs. For agreeing to stay back and let me fight it out in the first place." I had one more thing to say, but I hesitated until I got a mental image of Belinda giving me a stern look. "For being my friend. Take your pick."
"Well, when you put it like that, I guess you do owe me quite a lot," he said, his cocky grin stretching across his lips.
"Yeah, but to be clear, I'm only agreeing to the one favor," I said, holding up a finger. "One."
"Then I'll cash it in right now," he said, reaching out and taking my outstretched hand. He gently curled my pointer finger until I made a closed fist. He stared down at my hand, cupped in his and took a deep breath. "You've got to listen to what I have to say and not interrupt, no matter how badly you want to. You have to pay attention and not think about your rebuttal. Just listen to what I'm saying."
That was a whole lot of me having to keep my mouth shut. I was terrible at that, but I did owe him. I had no idea what he had to say, but I would listen. "Fine," I said.
He locked his dark green eyes on mine and I was immediately uncomfortable. "I'm sorry I pulled away from our kiss when we were on our way out of Faerie." Everything in me wanted to pull my hand out of his and turn away. Only the sacred nature of a favor owed kept me standing there. I gritted my teeth and let him continue. "I know you felt embarrassed and rejected, but I wasn't trying to reject you. I was trying to save us both a lot of pain."
"But—" I started, and stopped myself, remembering my promise. I expected him to smile or laugh at my little slip, but he remained serious.
"I wanted to kiss you. I still do. Every time I see you. I don't because I'm a mess. I have a lot about myself I need to figure out. I… for a long time, I have written off the idea of being in a relationship. I didn't need to think about it, it was just fact. I'm broken. I'm not worth it. It was fine. And then, I don't know, we went through a lot in Faerie. And somewhere after that, none of the things that felt like fact before were true anymore. All of a sudden, I wanted to get better. I wanted to be this better version of myself. And I guess I didn't want to kiss you when I hadn't made those changes yet. I wanted to kiss you… but as that better version of myself. That's why I said I wanted to be friends. Not because that's all I want, but because I still wanted to be close to you."
"Can I ask a question now?"
"Yes."
"So you wanted to be my friend, in that, you wanted to keep me around to make sure I'd be ready and available once you decided you were ready to date me?"
"I, well, yes. That's awful. But I guess that's what I did. I'm sorry I did that to you. It's not like I didn't want to be your friend, if that makes it any better. If all we ever were was friends, I would have been good with that."
"I don't know. I'm not great at friends."
"You say that, but no one has a rule book. Just try your best with people, apologize when you mess up, and be there."
"That sounds like a rule book."
"A really short one."
I laughed. And then no one was talking, and I didn't know if it was my turn or what I was supposed to do with all he'd said.
The last few weeks replayed through my head. Owen had been there for me. He'd tried his best
. He'd been a good friend. I'd treated him like I wasn't sure I wanted him around at all, because I hadn't. "I'm sorry I tried to push you away."
"That's okay. I think we've both been struggling with how to be friends when we both wanted something else from this relationship."
"This relationship," I repeated. "You sound awfully confident that I want to date you, Owen Kinney."
The cockiest grin of all the cocky grins beamed down at me. "You want to date me, Sophie Morrigan. You want to date me so bad."
I bit my lip.
"Oh, come on, Sophie."
"Okay, yes. It's true."
"I know."
"If ever a cocky man there was."
He leaned in and kissed my forehead, stopping my heart. "I want to do this right. Take it slow."
"Slow. Yes. Right. Slow sounds good."
His smile when he pulled away tied my tongue in even more knots. "I'll be calling you about a date when you've had some sleep and time to think about this." He took a step back. "I should be checking on Ava."
I waved at his back as he walked away, officially out of witty comments. How I was supposed to sleep with the butterflies in my belly, I didn't know, but in the time it took me to climb into the back of Art's borrowed car and lay my head down, I figured it out. When I woke to Phoebe pulling a blanket over me on the couch in my apartment, I didn't bother asking how I'd gotten there. The scythe rested safely against the wall with my swords. The job was over. I rolled over and slept for the next twenty-four hours.
EPILOGUE
Daphne's funeral was a few days later.
I'd never attended a funeral before. Belinda told me to bring an item or write down a story that reminded me of Daphne's mind, heart, or body, and bring it with me. I chose a photo of the three of us sitting on Belinda's couch, our heads thrown back in laughter. I was very young, and I couldn't remember the story Daphne had told, but it always reminded me of her joyous heart.
The funeral took place at Three Finger Lake, thankfully in a different area than the beach where Daphne died. As the sun began to set, I took Belinda's hand and joined the crowd of banshees as they walked a winding path toward a beach I'd never been to. Along the way, each of us stopped at one of the three shrines dedicated to Daphne's different aspects and shared our memories. Even though it was an intimate affair, only those closest to Daphne attending, it was completely dark by the time we spilled onto the sandy beach, our faces stained with tears.
