by Lily Velez
“When I wake in the morning and still see the demon’s mark on my wrist, it’s what gets me up anyway. And when you look me in the eye and tell me we can beat this, that we can defy the gods themselves to change our fate, it’s what makes me believe you. My world was a dark and broken place before you came into it with your light, Scarlet. And I’ve come to realize that as long as you’re in my life, I’ll always feel it, this one thing above all others.”
“What is it?” I asked, hanging onto his every word.
He looked into my eyes with a soft smile as he answered. “Hope.”
A breathless pause as my eyes held onto his.
Then I kissed him.
It was the only way I could think to convey all that I felt, all that he’d stirred up in me. He pulled me closer, tilting his head and deepening the kiss, and I curled my arms around his neck and savored him.
So much passed between us in that one embrace. It wasn’t just about my overwhelming gratitude or Jack’s fond hope. It was the weariness of coming through a battle that left scars both seen and unseen on us but our feeling stronger for it. It was the weight of a curse hanging over our heads but the belief we could be victorious. It was a star-crossed destiny telling us we couldn’t be together but our hearts saying otherwise.
Jack was right. These spare moments we had before the coming war were ones to be treasured. This was one I particularly wanted to steal and tuck away into that imaginary hope chest of mine, so that during the trying times that lied ahead, I could take it out and look at it and find my strength in it.
Since I couldn’t do that, I committed as much of it to memory as possible instead. The feel of Jack’s silken hair between my fingers, the minty taste of his mouth, the way I always felt immeasurably safe in his arms, as if all the armies of the Otherworld couldn’t lay a single finger on me so long as he held me.
When we finally pulled away from each other, the emotion in his eyes nearly undid me. He took my face in his hands with the utmost tenderness and leaned forward to press a reverent kiss to my forehead.
I closed my eyes and rested the side of my face against his chest, nuzzling between the folds of his black coat to breathe in those ancient forests that made up his distinct smell.
How lucky I was that this was the beginning of my forever.
49
Rory
The dream progressed further than it ever had.
I was at the center of the ring of trees once more, Jinx already capering about the clearing in pursuit of those white butterflies, the carpet of dry leaves hissing every time he cut a blazing course through them. In the glow of the moonlight, I slogged through the shin-high layer of leaves and visited the surrounding trees one by one, placing my palms against their coarse, veined barks to connect with each one’s life force.
Whatever secrets the trees were keeping, however, they refused to share them with me.
I kept trying, moving on to a sixth tree. As our energies merged, there was a sudden rush of wind through the clearing. I twisted around to find the ground had been swept clean of the crisp autumn leaves and was covered by something else now.
A familiar sight. Dead animals. Raccoons, rabbits, squirrels…even cats and dogs, all with furrows in the earth near their feet, as if they’d been foraging for something.
A crash of thunder exploded overhead. I looked up, the darkness around me growing. By the time I returned my eyes to the animals, they were gone. In their place, Jinx sat with his eyes trained on me.
Beside him, something disturbed the earth from underneath, clumps of soil shifting as an animal pushed its way through.
No, not an animal. It was a plant. Its green stem rose taller and taller like a charmed snake, leaves unfurling to their full width.
When the plant reached Jinx’s height, its bud slowly bloomed to reveal an enormous flower head larger than my two hands combined. Its petals were creamy-white, each one long and thin and tapering to a point so that they looked like feathers. At the flower’s center, each filament was topped with a glittering, jewel-toned head, some amethyst, some sapphire, some emerald. The flower perfumed the air, and the fragrance was hypnotic.
I knelt before the flower, entranced. I had never seen anything like it.
What you seek.
My eyes swerved to Jinx, who steadily held my gaze. For a few long moments, we stared at each other.
Finally, I asked, “What do you mean?”
Jinx’s ears twitched, as if he were pleased by the question. Heal family.
I didn’t understand, but I reached for the flower anyway, its beauty luring me in. I grabbed the base of the stem and pulled until a clump of earth broke free, countless roots wrapped around it like a ball of yarn.
I breathed in the flower’s aroma again, my eyes drifting shut as the scent flooded my nose. Suddenly, I was falling back, but the ground wasn’t there to catch me. I kept falling and falling and falling, with no end in sight…
I woke with a gasp.
Cold sweat pasted my hair to my forehead. I bolted upright. At the foot of the bed, Jinx sat, honey eyes fastened to me. As my racing heart calmed, I waited for an explanation from him. None came.
“I need you to tell me more,” I said.
His white-tipped tail simply flicked back and forth, and he slightly cocked his head, as if he were puzzled by my behavior.
Resigned to having to figure the dream out on my own, I rushed out of bed while it was still fresh in my mind and sank into my desk chair, already flipping my sketchpad to the next available blank page. I drew the flower as quickly as possible, the point of my charcoal pencil making quirk work of the rough lines before my memory began to recede.
Once I had the flower down on paper, I hurried to the greenhouse, glass shards crunching under my shoes as I crossed over to a bookcase with sagging shelves that overflowed with grimoires. I pored over every last one, comparing my sketch to countless diagrams of plants in hopes of finding a match.
After two hours, I was no closer to identifying the mysterious flower from my dream.
I was going to have to go to Crowmarsh, where our collection of grimoires and other ancient texts was far larger than what we’d brought with us to St. Andrew’s.
Being that it was a Saturday morning, the campus was practically a ghost town, eerily silent save for the hum of a distant lawn tractor as a groundskeeper maintained the school’s landscape. In keeping with the quiet, I moved soundlessly as I gathered a few things from my room back in Seymour House, closing the door with a gentle click as I exited.
Lucas had already left for the day, most likely on his way to Galway with friends, which meant my only mode of transportation would be Liam. I could only hope he was already awake.
In the hallway, I paused at the next door down. Jack and Connor shared the adjacent room, which was attached to ours by an interior door that we tended to leave open. It’d been closed when I’d woken up.
I hesitated.
Connor had made a plea for honesty between us, issuing a moratorium on secrets and lies. What’s more, he’d promised to help me control my magic. Thinking on it, I rubbed the back of my neck. Going to Crowmarsh with Liam was perfectly harmless, but then why did it feel like I was letting Connor down by not going to him first?
I groaned and knocked on Jack and Connor’s door before I had a chance to change my mind.
No answer.
I knocked harder, waited a few seconds, and then knocked again.
Finally, I turned the knob and peeked in. Connor was sitting at his desk with earbuds in, listening to a playlist off his phone as he tapped a pen against the blank page of a notebook. His eyes drifted upward, and seeing me, he paused the music and pulled the earbuds out.
“Are you sleepwalking?” he greeted, arching an eyebrow at my wardrobe.
I looked down at myself. Though in shoes with my backpack hanging off one shoulder, I was still wearing what I’d slept in. My hair probably looked a mess as well. I’d been too caught u
p in the matter of the dream.
I stepped forward and extended my sketch of the flower to Connor, saying nothing.
He took it and barely glimpsed at it before asking, “Is there a reason I’m looking at a drawing of Night Angel?”
My pulse stuttered. “You know what it is?”
“I’ve heard stories. And when I say stories, I mean cautionary tales. Night Angel is extremely rare. It blooms only one night a year, on the evening of the winter solstice. Its essence is believed to be a key ingredient in at least one of the Forbidden Spells.”
My eyes fell to the sketch as my thoughts raced. “It must be powerful,” I murmured, meaning to speak to myself, but Connor heard.
“I would think so, but it doesn’t grow in this world, only Elsewhere. Seeing as how it’s banned, however, you’d have to shop for it in the shadow markets and hope that the smugglers and traffickers you purchase from are selling you the authentic stuff.”
He handed the drawing back, his eyes heavy on me. “This goes without saying, but having one brother tangled up in dark magic is enough for me. Whatever you’re trying to get tied up in—”
“It isn’t dark magic,” I said quickly. I told him about the recurring dreams, about Jinx speaking to me, about how I’d been led to the solitary Night Angel in the woods behind Elizabeth’s cottage.
Connor shook his head. “I’m not following. What exactly is the flower supposed to do?”
I looked him straight in the eye. “I think this is the key to waking up our mother.”
50
Gallagher
I hurled the whiskey bottle at the far wall. It shattered on impact, the near-black pieces clattering against the floorboards. Callahan and Moriarty whooped in victory. When you were as pissed as we were, every little diversion was entertaining as hell.
“Check this out,” Callahan said, staring down at the floor a few paces from us.
In the glow of his cell phone’s flashlight, a symbol stood out, a massive circle filled with Irish words and strange-looking characters. Candles surrounded the symbol, lines of dried wax streaking down their sides and pooling onto the ground.
We’d overheard stories about this cottage in the woods. The locals were apparently convinced it was haunted, their suspicions confirmed when a group of teens had tried to spend the night here not too long ago only to run out screaming mere hours later, going on about restless spirits.
This had to be a remnant from that night. If we looked hard enough, we’d probably find a Ouija board too. I guessed this was the sort of thing people did for fun on the weekends when they grew up in dead-end towns like Rosalyn Bay.
I opened another whiskey bottle and poured the amber liquid over the lines of the symbol. The whiskey splashed across the ground, seeping into the floorboards and darkening them. Tossing the bottle aside, I pulled out a box of matches I’d swiped from the pub we’d just come from.
“Are you mad?” Moriarty roughly grabbed my elbow to stop me.
I yanked my arm away. “Relax. It’s not like I’m going to burn the dump down.” What I didn’t say was that I knew exactly who owned this run-down shack, and so if the fire got a little out of hand, all the better.
I looked a right moron because of Connor Connelly. Not only was there packing shoved up my nose and dressing on the outside that practically took up my whole face, but the bruises around my eyes had darkened to a deep purple. At St. Andrew’s, I couldn’t walk down a single damn hallway without people pointing and sneering behind their hands.
I tossed a lit match onto the whiskey, taking a sick pleasure in the flames that blazed to life and illuminated the entire room.
Except a second later, the flames abated.
I furrowed my brow. “What the hell?”
I fed the alcohol another lit match, but the same thing happened. The flames roared to life only to die out almost instantly. I threw three more matches onto the soaked floor, one after another, but what little fire snapped to life wouldn’t stay burning more than a second or two.
I snatched another whiskey bottle from our supply, figuring there just wasn’t enough alcohol to sustain the flames, but the moment my fingers curled around the bottle’s thin, glass neck, the cottage’s floorboards began to tremble.
“What’s happening?” Moriarty asked, backing up against a wall, then jerking away when the walls started to shudder as well.
Callahan pivoted around, aiming his phone’s flashlight toward one of the back rooms. “Did you hear that? It sounded like…”
Laughter. The laughter of a girl who couldn’t be no more than five or six.
Her nonstop giggling surrounded us, everywhere and nowhere at once. Before we could make sense of it, the invisible girl began to sing:
“The fire kisses the skies
The maidens kneel down and cry
Have mercy, they plead
But done is the deed
And at last, our mother will rise.”
“We should get the hell out of here,” Moriarty said, the beam of his flashlight quivering in time with his shaking hand.
The entire cottage was convulsing, the window panes rattling in their frames, dust raining down on us from the ceiling beams above.
“She’s coming, she’s coming, she’s coming,” sang the little girl’s, high-pitched voice.
“Who’s coming?” I shouted into the room.
On the wall opposite me, an invisible hand began carving lines into the surface, as if with a knife.
No, not lines. Letters, I realized. More and more appeared as a single name was spelled out before me to answer my question.
ELIZABETH.
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