As soon as I rounded the corner, I saw them standing in a circle. They were quiet, but it wasn’t the reverent silence you would expect from a crowd in a graveyard. It was the tense, barely veiled excitement of a hound waiting for the fox to bolt. I could practically smell their base desire. My fingers pressed against my lips as I fought another wave of nausea. Mark spotted me at the edge of the circle. “Here she is. Destiny, we’ve got somebody you should meet. I think he wants to talk to some spirits. You could arrange that, right?”
Willow cackled and clawed at Mark’s sleeves with her manicured nails. He shot her a dark glare and shook her off. The other kids parted to let me join Mark, and for a second I contemplated turning on my heel. We weren’t supposed to expose our magic to humans. Officially, it was against the code, but in reality the Family turned a blind eye to a bit of harmless fun. It’s not like anybody ever believed the humans when they told people about the beautiful monsters that lurked behind the walls of Dublin’s most exclusive neighborhoods. And things rarely got out of hand. It was just a bit of fun. Mostly.
Mark covered the space between us in a flash and grabbed hold of my hand. I wondered had he seen the hesitation in my eyes, or if he could smell my loss of appetite. I shook my head. This was my life. This was fun. I took another swig of vodka and turned to get a better look at tonight’s prey. The bottle slipped from my fingers and smashed into a thousand pieces on the stone under my feet.
Usually when we found a human looking for our world they didn’t really believe we existed. That was the beauty of it. People casting spells, telling fortunes, masquerading as mediums between this plane and the next. They didn’t really believe the lies they were peddling. So when we showed them what was hidden in plain sight, their reaction was usually worthy of an award. They blubbered, and cried, and swore they would never come looking for magic or death again if we would only leave them in peace. But the boy sitting in the circle was nothing like that.
He was an ordinary looking kid, about the same age as most of us, fifteen or sixteen. Brown hair, fair skin, medium build. His hands were stained red from the blood he had used to create a protective circle around himself. I had never seen a human do that before. I might have thought it was a lucky guess, if it weren’t for his eyes. They were the color of the sky on a spring morning. Clear and pure. And they were staring straight at me as if they could see inside my soul.
I took a step back, and Willow howled as my boots connected with her toes. Open toe stilettos in a graveyard. She deserved it. Mark tugged at my hand. “Babe, we were just telling our friend here that you can help him talk to whatever spirit he’s looking for, right?”
My eyes narrowed on Mark’s face and then scanned the rest of the circle. I shook my head. They couldn’t sense it. They didn’t realize this guy was different. I let my eyes travel to the stranger’s face again. There was no trace of fear, no whitened knuckles or sweat on his brow. He met my gaze and gave me a curious once-over. The ghost of a smile flickered over his lips. Mark slipped his arm around my waist and tapped my stomach. “What do you say, Destiny, want to give him a little show?”
The boy’s eyes focused on Mark’s hand on my abdomen, and suddenly they widened. His stare flicked up to my face, and I stumbled backward. “No!”
Mark’s jaw tensed, and he tried to pull me back into his arms. His voice was lower now. “We talked about this, Destiny. Time to snap of it, babe. Show our friend what you can do.”
The tone of his voice was like barbed wire in my ears. Had he always spoken to me like that? Willow rolled her eyes and sashayed past Mark and toward the stranger. “Whatever, I’m tired of waiting. Destiny isn’t the only one who can put on a show.”
She threw a lingering glance back over her shoulder and then turned her focus on the boy in the circle. I watched his face. I was unable to see what Willow was showing him from this angle, but I could imagine. I had seen her shift a thousand times before. Watched her turn from a man’s fantasy into his worst nightmare in the blink of an eye. Seen her skin wither and her gums bleed. I waited for her latest victim to begin screaming and cowering in horror, but he barely even watched her show. I caught his eye again, and another jolt of unease burst through me.
Willow threw her hands up the air and turned her back to the blood circle. “Okay, what’s with this dude? Is he blind? Deaf? Mute? I can’t get any read on him. This is getting boring.”
The stranger gave no reaction at all to her little speech. Mark narrowed his own eyes and looked from the stranger to me. He pushed his shoulders back and cracked his knuckles. “I’m pretty certain I can make him talk.” Mark nudged the blood circle with his toe and grinned. “Blood circle. Somebody gave you good advice, kid. But not good enough to keep a Red Witch out.”
I wrapped my arms around my body as I watched Mark eyeball his prey. Physical violence against humans for sport was strictly forbidden for the uninitiated, but there was something lurking in Mark’s eyes that I had never noticed before. Mark’s grin was savage as he lunged for the boy, and I felt my heart leap in my chest. There was a sickening crack, and Mark shot backward, repelled by an unseen barrier. He scrambled to his feet and wiped away the blood trickling from his nose. Oh, Gods. This was bad. Mark’s eyes were like pools of tar. “You sneaky little creep. How did you know about the salt? Who the hell are you? I’m going to kill you, you little piece of dirt. Is that what you came to the cemetery for? To pick your own grave? Because I’m going to make you dig it yourself.”
I put my hand on Mark’s arm, but he flung it off. The boy in the circle stood up slowly. He was wearing black jeans, trainers, and a plain black sweater. There was nothing about him that was out of the ordinary. He let his arms fall down by his sides. For the longest moment I thought he wasn’t going to speak, but when he did his voice was calm. “I didn’t come here looking for trouble, brother. I had no intention of crossing paths with the living tonight. My business isn’t with you.”
Mark’s face twitched. He looked around at his cronies and tilted his head to the side. “Do you hear this joker? His business isn’t with me.” Mark’s lip curled back over his teeth as he faced the boy in black. “This is our city, kid. No, scratch that, this is our country- this is our goddamn world. Everywhere you go, you have business with us, but little turds like you don’t realize it.”
The boy shrugged his shoulders at Mark. “I have no business with you, friend.”
My spine was tight enough to crack as the tension hardened between my vertebrae. I wanted to scream at the boy with the beautiful eyes to shut his fool mouth before it was too late, but I kept silent. Mark nodded at a few of his friends, and they drew closer to him. My heart sank as Willow joined the little group. Red, Silver, Blue, Gold. They were going to break the circle. Willow licked her lips and took a greedy breath, savoring the growing excitement in the air. Mark ground his heel into the soil under his feet. “Any last words, kid. At least you came to the right place to meet your end.”
“Anyplace can be an end. Or a beginning.” I froze to the spot as his bright blue eyes met my violet stare and turned my soul inside out. I knew those words as well as my own name. Carried inside the deepest corners of my soul since my aunt Aoife had disappeared four years ago, searching for the Free Witches, leaving me nothing behind but a promise that she would return for me.
Willow threw her eyes to the heavens and groaned. “Oh, please. What does that even mean? This guy is a total crapbag.”
Crapbag. Mark’s favorite new word. The one he got from watching a Z-list movie last night. Alone. My blood began to simmer as I let my glare run from Mark to Willow and back again. Mark kept his shoulders low and gave me a slow smile, the one he knew made my knees weak, but I saw through it to the pulse beating in his neck, and the film of lies that he wore like a mask. “You cheating mother—”
Ten things seemed to happen at once. Mark gave the nod and his pack burst forward, tearing through the circle like wild beasts. The rest of our classmates rose up f
or the hunt and released their own magic. The air around me filled with every form of poison and beauty that the world contained, and it whirled and ensnared the form of the stranger. I had a split second to make my decision. This life or another. My fingers grazed the plastic in my pocket, and I unleashed my darkness.
All of the witches were frozen to the spot. Suspended in the space between life and death, at the mercy of my whim. I half expected the boy with the blue eyes to be frozen too, but he stepped out of the circle and started running for the gate. My mouth dropped open as I watched him sprint by. When I caught up, he was standing by the bonfire in front of the crypts. I dug my hands into my pockets. “What are you doing hanging around? I’m going to get a serious amount of hassle for letting you go. Tomorrow is going to be brutal for me, thanks to you, cemetery boy. The least you can do is actually escape before my spell fades.”
The boy gave me a grim smile and pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his jeans. The breath caught in my throat at the sight of my name written in my aunt’s familiar scrawl. I grasped the letter from the boy’s fingers without a word and stared at it greedily.
“There’s an address inside. If you care about Aoife, you should either use it or burn it. If you tell your father or anyone in the Family that she is with the Free Witches, she will be in even greater danger.” The boy nodded once, and then he was gone, merging into the darkness of the night.
I tugged the plastic stick from my pocket and stared at the two blue lines. Positive. A hundred different tests and they all said the same thing. Positive. Pregnant. Mark’s baby. One crazy, drunken moment that I couldn’t undo, and I didn’t even know if I wanted to. But what life could I offer a child? A cheating father and a lying mother. I was the first Black Witch that had been born to the Family in centuries. Morrigan’s hope. I gave a bitter laugh. Hope. There was no hope in this life for me. If they had their way, I would be a weapon of destruction, nothing more.
I wrapped the test inside the unopened letter from my aunt and held them over the fire. The flames screamed for the contents of my fist. My heart began to beat harder, and a chant echoed inside my cranium, like a swarm of bees. Wake the dead. Wake the dead. Wake the dead. A Black Witch was a wicked witch, nine times out of ten. That’s what they said. That was my fate. My fingers began to uncurl, and the pregnancy test slipped from my grasp and began to tumble toward the fire. The memory of my aunt’s voice stirred inside my mind. Be the exception, Destiny.
My cry tore the silence of the night, and I snatched the letter and the test from the flames and cradled them in my hands. There was always hope. Any place can be an end. Or a beginning.
The strength of my spell began to ease as I thundered towards the gate, away from Mark and Willow, away from the stench of death and greed. I felt the others begin to return to life behind me. I pushed myself harder as I bolted past the stirring body of the security guard and skidded through the gate that the boy with the blue eyes had left unlocked. Mark’s voice echoed through the rows of tombstones, calling my name. I didn’t look back.
I followed the trail of life left behind by the stranger as only a Black Witch could, searching for the Free Witches. Searching for Neverland. Second star to the left and on until morning. Screw the Family and raising the dead, I chose to raise the living.
The End
About L.C.
L.C. Hibbett lives in Ireland with her husband, two daughters, and two dogs. When she isn’t trying to protect the general public from the mayhem and mischief her children wreak you can find her curled up with her Kindle and a cup of tea. L.C.’s Demon-Born Trilogy on Amazon right now and her Wicked Witch series is scheduled for release in 2017.
www.lchibbett.com
More from L.C.
Everything you know is a lie…
Eighteen-year-old Grace is sick of running. For over two thousand years the Angels have hunted the Half-Born, determined to maintain the barrier that conceals the magical world from Human eyes. Grace and her foster family have survived capture by living amongst humans, but the noose is tightening as the spell binding their magic begins to fail.
When unexpected allies send Grace and her family crashing into the world of The Shadow Children, she finds herself at the epicentre of a battle to save those she loves.
But who can she trust when everyone has the face of an angel?
The Shadow Children is the first book in The Demon-Born Trilogy, an exhilarating series of Urban Fantasy novels. If you like action-packed fantasy that tugs at the heartstrings, then you’ll love L.C. Hibbett’s debut.
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Journal of Abigail DiAngelo
Megan J. Parker & Nathan Squiers
1
“Dad? I’m home!”
“Hey, sweetheart, I’m in my office. Have a good day? How’d cheerleading tryouts go?”
“Abysmal,” I tried to hide the shame and irritation in my voice.
It was a wasted effort, as it in no way motivated my father to hide the joy and excitement from his as he said “Good. Great!” and spun in his chair to meet my not-quite entrance as I rounded the corner and came to lean against the doorframe to the dojo-slash-gym-slash-weapons locker (slash whatever else he deemed fit to use the too-large space for).
An awkward silence followed as we took each other in from the gaping distance that divided us. Though it wasn’t uncommon for Daddy to have new charts or graphs or maps hanging over his desk, one sheet in particular caught my eye. Even across the distance, it was easy to make out the large symbol, which took up nearly the entire page, sketched in a series of dark, overlapping lines that had me convinced it had been repeatedly traced over and over upon itself for some time.
The symbol itself was simple, almost like one of those geometric shapes my classmates would doodle on page corners when they were bored: a triangle, point-down, encased around a semicircle—or perhaps a sideways crescent moon?—and, below that, another triangle with three spirals that extended from each corner, the two top-end spirals meeting ends of the semicircle while the bottom third spiral merged with the bottom corner of the all-encompassing triangle. Though it looked like nothing I’d ever seen before, something about the otherwise nonsensical design, and the fact that it was obviously important enough to have a place over my father’s desk, struck me as not only relevant but potentially dangerous.
Catching the direction of my stare, Daddy glanced back at the symbol and made a face. At that moment, despite how clearly I could see the symbol, I was suddenly uncertain of the nature of his expression.
Was that a grimace… or a grin?
I considered the sort of distance that most girls my age would be staring across if they were in their own father’s office and figured—what?—a couple of meters? Tops, right? Then I realized that most girls my age wouldn’t even consider a distance in terms of meters. Or consider the crack between the open door for a potential attacker in the blind spot. Not that there would have been a potential attacker there—my father would’ve made short work of them if there had been. That, or there would have been someone there waiting to attack me but as they’d be an employ of my father and therefore no actual danger there’d be no real reason to worry.
Not like I wouldn’t be getting bruised or bloodied soon enough anyway.
And I couldn’t even be normal enough to say that those soon-to-be injuries were a product of abuse or bad parenting. I mean, sure, the counselors would say just that. The counselors probably had pamphlets for just this sort of thing—well, maybe not this sort of thing—with all manner of checklists to make just about every kid who went through any kind of training with their parents think they had some claim to the Abused Teen Clubhouse. But this wasn’t a muscle-head father slapping around a hopeful athlete or an old prom queen ridiculing her daughter for not knowing how to properly apply her makeup while body shaming her from head-to-toe. As unconventional as it all was, Daddy was keeping me alive. And wasn’t that what it was all about?
Still,
it would have been nice if I could put some of that training toward, like, having a life…
Or something.
“Yup,” I swallowed the sigh that my rebellious inner teenager wanted to respond with and gave a single nod. “Good. Great. Tee-riffic.”
That, I realized too late, was sarcasm. I’d have been better off sighing.
Dad leaned forward in his chair, an eyebrow pulling up like a cannonball’s arc as his fingers wove together. He always did that when he wanted to keep his hands preoccupied from things like angry gestures or pulling triggers.
“You…” he stretched the word so that he could choose the next ones without the roar of silence, “… don’t sound pleased about that. I thought that we agreed it was for the best.”
No, Daddy-dearest, my inner-teenager screamed in my head, you agreed for the both of us. You had a bound, alphabetized, and multipage index waiting on the table beside my plain egg white omelet and pureed salmon protein shake: REASONS TO BOTCH CHEERLEADING TRYOUTS (by Bob DiAngelo)—as if I’d wonder whether or not you went so far as to hire a ghost writer for that Pulitzer Prize winner. I was just a good little soldier, as you always put it, and did as I was told… then I surprised even myself with the level of sarcasm I was capable of with an added, just… like… ALWAYS.
It was an impressive speech, albeit dramatic and a tad on the queeny side, but what I said instead was, “I know, it just sorta, y’know, stunk to embarrass myself like that in front of everyone.”
And not just everyone. Jason Menkin had been there, too. That detail, however, was a mystery until after I’d taken the fall to end all falls.
Not Just Voodoo Page 13
