by D. N. Hoxa
My hands were still shaking. My muscles ached and I could barely move. My nose had bled, but just the thought of getting up and going to the bathroom made me nauseous. I could clean myself up later.
As promised, Mal brought me the feel-good potion. It smelled like peppermint, but the taste was different, like watered-down grass. I was used to it, and there were brownies to get the bad taste away when I drank it.
In less than an hour, I was mostly back to myself, and I could get up without help. I went to the bathroom, cleaned myself up, and when I came out, the girls had put on music—loud music, and they were dancing. Even I joined them, and I wasn’t big on dancing. No better cause to celebrate than right now.
“I love you guys! So much!” Malin said, hugging us while we danced. She was also crying again, but she was on her third drink, so she was already drunk.
Then, Jamie stopped dancing abruptly. “What was that?” she asked, looking at Malin’s kitchen. She wasn’t smiling anymore as she looked right at the window.
My heart skipped a beat. “What was what?”
She pulled away from Mal and ran to the kitchen window. For a second, I thought she’d seen the Guild. Officers were coming for us. When enough magic was used in the Shade, they could feel it. Though wards—and the Shade—could hide it from them, there was still a chance that they’d picked it up.
But when I got to the window and saw outside, I was convinced that that wasn’t the case at all.
“By the goddess,” Mal said, pulling the window open, suddenly completely sober.
Outside, bright balls of pink light passed us by and shot down the street, some of them continuing straight ahead, some of them turning the corners of the buildings on Malin’s street. Magic sizzled in the air, surrounding them, and they moved so incredibly fast, it was impossible to tell if they were just balls of light or something more. There were all kinds of creatures in the worlds, and it wouldn’t surprise me if these things were alive. They seemed to know exactly where they wanted to go. Some of them flew high, reaching up to Malin’s floor, and some of them low, among the people, but not one of the lights hit them. They moved away, around passers-by, who looked just as stunned as we were.
“What the hell is going on?” Jamie asked in a whisper.
Neither of us had any answer.
A minute later, the lights stopped coming. We stayed by the window just like everybody else, looking at the sky, at the buildings, expecting something to explode. At least I was.
“That looked bad,” Mal said when we were convinced nothing else was going to happen and got back to the living room. “Like really bad.”
“Maybe somebody was celebrating? They could be fireworks. Like a special kind of magical fireworks,” Jamie said.
“I don’t know—they seemed to know exactly where they were going.”
“But they were just lights,” Mal said.
The vibration of the phone in my pocket distracted me. It was Lucas Cook—my new partner.
“Hello?”
“Did you see it?”
Thank God he’d seen it, too. Pulling the phone from my ear, I put him on speaker so the girls could hear, too.
“Yeah. What’s going on? What were those things?” I asked.
“Spells. They were targeting humans,” Lucas said.
“What? What do you mean?” Nobody did spells that target humans.
“I don’t know, but we’ve been called by the Guild to assist with crowd control, and we need to get out of the Shade right now. Our team was assigned to the south entrance.”
“Wait, wait, what do you mean, crowd control? What’s going on, Lucas?”
“Look, all they told me is that somehow a big group of humans were touched by those spells and they saw the Shade. Where are you? How fast can you get to the south entrance?”
It didn’t make any sense. Humans seeing the Shade? It wasn’t possible.
“Sin, you with me?”
“Two minutes,” I said. “I’ll be there in two minutes.” I hung up the phone and turned to Malin. “I need you to take me to the south entrance. Can you do that?”
The Shade no longer listened to me, but it listened to Malin. She could persuade the Shade to take us to the entrance in a heartbeat.
“Of course,” she said.
“Humans seeing the Shade? What…how?” Jamie said, shaking her head.
“I have no idea, but I really need to get going. I’ll call you later,” I said and shot for the door.
“Stay here,” Mal told Jamie and came after me. I tapped my thigh to get Kit to come with me. He’d lost interest in us a long time ago and had gone to search for food somewhere in the apartment—probably. He found me before we got down the stairs.
Then, Malin took us to the south entrance of the Shade.
Chapter Six
“I don’t remember most of it,” the woman said, looking down at her hands on her lap. “I just…I was coming back from work, talking to my friend about Pig Nose and—” Her cheeks burned bright scarlet all of the sudden. “Sorry, I mean, I was talking to my friend, and there were screams, and then I turned, and…and…I don’t know, I guess I just passed out.”
Her name was Elizabeth Porter. She was one of the approximately one thousand humans who’d been in Manhattan, around the Shade, and who’d been hit by the spell. They’d seen the Shade open up to them, and they’d also seen the first Guild responders, who were ordered to conjure very powerful spells of confusion. Most of the humans had passed out on contact, and the others couldn’t even remember their own names yet. It had been four hours since the spell, and though its effect had only been for about five minutes, according to the Guild, we still hadn’t spoken to everyone who’d been affected.
“Is that your phone, Ms. Porter?” I nodded at the phone peeking out of the pocket of her jacket. She nodded. “May I see it? Just in case you took a picture that might help us.”
As bad as it sounds, we were ordered to make the humans believe that they’d passed out due to a chemical leak in a nearby factory, never mind that there were no nearby factories. But they all believed us because the confusion spells had been very powerful. The humans wouldn’t be able to even remember what they’d seen, let alone make sense of it. It was very illegal to mess with a human’s memories on that scale, but this was an emergency.
And the humans who’d seen were better off forgetting.
Elizabeth handed me her phone, her hand shaking. I went to her photos to see if she’d taken pictures of the Shade entrance. Even if she had, all she’d be able to see in it would be a wall because the spell had long faded, but we didn’t need a bunch of pictures shared online about a wall in Manhattan. It would raise questions, and the Guild was already having big trouble dealing with the human authorities. I had no idea how they were even letting us handle the people who’d been spelled, but I suspected there was magic involved. Lots of it.
There were no pictures on the phone, and no texts she’d sent to anyone about what she’d seen. I returned the phone.
“Thank you, Ms. Porter. If you want to get checked, the ambulances are over there.” I pointed at the end of the street, where human ambulances were lined up, blocking the street, and tending to people who’d fallen down and hurt themselves.
“No, I’m fine. I just want to go home and sleep.” She stepped away. She looked behind her, then ahead, a look of pure confusion on her face. “Do you happen to know where home is?”
Goddamn it. “Of course. It’s right down there, take a right, and then a left,” I said. I’d seen her ID and her address. She lived barely five minutes away. It still didn’t make it any easier to see the look on her face.
“Thank you,” she whispered and turned around to leave.
As she walked away, I whispered a quick spell of good fortune. It wasn’t going to heal her mind, but it was going to make sure she slept well and didn’t dream at all. She was going to need it after what she’d been through.
I turned to th
e other side of the sidewalk to see Kyle and Lucas speaking to an old man, and Carter was waving at a woman next to them.
The entire thing felt like a dream. What kind of spell would let humans see magic? And how the hell had the Guild not stopped it in time?
“Last one,” Carter said as he walked over to me. He looked tired, too. As tired as I felt. It was almost two in the morning, but the street was almost empty now.
With a sigh, I sat down on the sidewalk. Kit, who’d been sleeping on the ground next to the building behind me, came to me with a squeak of complaint. He didn’t want to be here anymore than I did.
“This is messed up,” I said when Carter sat beside me. It didn’t matter how fast we’d been able to talk to and spell the humans affected—this was bound to make an impact on their lives, even if they didn’t know it yet. The Guild had called everyone—officers, office employees, mercenaries and every other team on their payroll to handle it.
“Could have been worse. I say it went as well as it could have,” Carter said.
“Who the hell would want the humans to see the Shade?” It didn’t make any sense. No supernatural would want that, not for any reason.
At first, I thought it was the Uprising. They were the only ones who might have resources to even find a spell like this, but why? The Uprising was after the Guild, not the humans.
“Whoever it was, they did a damn good job. But don’t worry. The Guild will find them eventually.”
Yeah, I liked to believe that, too, so I could go home and get some sleep. I was literally spent. After using my Talent and chanting a twenty-minute long ritual for Malin then spending almost four hours talking to people and spelling those who remembered more than they should, I was ready to call it a night.
When Lucas and Kyle were done, they spoke to the Guild officers to make sure there wasn’t anybody else, and we were free to go.
I walked home and barely had the energy to shower before I fell on the bed. Sleep took me within seconds.
The phone rang and it was like somebody was slamming a hammer on the back of my skull. I opened my eyes to see where the hell I was. My bedroom. I sighed. Rolling around on the bed, I searched for the phone that just wouldn’t stop ringing. When I saw the name—Jamie—and the time—nine fifteen am—I thought it must have been a dream. Jamie never woke up before noon.
“This better be good,” I said when I answered, but I’m not sure if she understood my slurred words.
“Where the hell are you?” Jamie said, way too loudly for that time of morning.
“Home. In bed. I worked until—”
“Mal’s not picking up her phone. I think something’s wrong,” Jamie said.
My eyes popped open and the fog in my brain cleared up instantly. “It’s nine in the morning. She’s at work.”
“She’s not at work. She took the week off, remember? For the thing?”
The thing—which would be my taking away her Nulling and giving her her Talent back. Which I’d done the night before. Of course. And Jamie had taken a couple days off, too, which was why she was up at nine in the morning.
“How many times have you called? Have you texted her? Maybe she’s asleep?” I pulled off the covers and stood up, rushing to the bathroom.
“I don’t know, Sin. I’m going over. Can you come?”
“I’m on my way.”
Ten minutes later, I entered the Shade with Kit on my shoulder. For once he hadn’t complained that he had to go with me to the Shade because I told him Malin might be in trouble. He loved Malin too much.
It took me another five minutes to get to the apartment building because the Shade couldn’t be bothered to offer me a shortcut. By the time I was in front of the door, my heart was ready to soar out of my chest. I didn’t knock—I just tried the handle, and it was open.
As soon as I saw the living room, I knew something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
Malin had put her furniture back in place after I’d left the night before, and now most of it was broken. The coffee table, the stand, half the orange couch torn, yellow pieces of sponge peeking out from the torn fabric below Malin’s feet.
She was lying there, eyes closed, completely still, almost like she was dead.
“She’s okay,” Jamie whispered, and I only saw her then. She was kneeling in front of the couch next to Malin, tears wetting her cheeks, her hand over Malin’s chest. Uma was standing by the couch, too, her big eyes perfectly alert.
Kit was already on her, squeaking, trying to get her to open her eyes, while I walked over to them like a robot, too scared to feel anything else yet.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Jamie said. “The door was open and she was lying here. I think she’s asleep.”
I touched Malin’s hand. Ice cold. She was still wearing the red dress from last night, and her makeup was smeared all around her eyes. Like she’d cried.
“Mal, wake up,” I said in a whisper, almost afraid to talk out loud. Kit squeaked louder, but she didn’t budge.
“She used her Talent. Goddamn it, I knew she would. I should have just spent the night!” Jamie said, wiping the tears from her face.
“She wouldn’t do that. She knew she’d need at least a couple weeks for her magic to settle. She said so herself.” Her Talent was foreign to Malin’s body, and it was going to take some time for them to get used to one another. That’s what she’d told us the night before.
“She did! Look at this,” Jamie said and pulled up the corner of the carpet to reveal chalk markings and remains of dried leaves on the floor.
“That’s from last night, isn’t it?”
“We cleaned everything up together. These were done after I left,” Jamie said. “Do you think we should call someone? What should we do?”
“No, we can’t call anyone. The Guild can’t find out, Jamie.” If they did, they’d put Malin in jail—and that wasn’t even the worst case scenario. And me? I’d be dead before nightfall. Pushing Kit away from Malin’s chest, I grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Wake up, Mal!” I shouted. “Wake up!” I slapped her. It seemed to work with me. Every time I was unconscious, somebody slapped me and I’d wake up.
It worked.
Malin’s eyes popped open and she drew in a deep breath, making my heart skip a beat. She grabbed my hands and squeezed tightly, eyes wide and full of panic.
“You’re okay, Mal. You’re okay, just breathe,” I told her, but she didn’t seem to even realize where she was.
Jamie went and got some water, and we sat Malin up. She still looked around like the entire apartment was on fire, and she jumped away from us every few seconds.
It took her a good ten minutes to calm down, drink water, and finally breathe normally. I don’t know what had happened to get her like that, but I told myself it didn’t matter.
“What the hell happened, Mal? Please tell me you didn’t do any spells,” Jamie said. She was no longer crying, but she was angry.
“I did,” Malin said, shaking her head.
“Why the hell would you do that?!” Jamie shouted before I could. We’d agreed that she was going to give it a month before trying. A month.
“I didn’t have any choice, okay?” Malin cried. “They made me!”
The blood in my veins turned ice cold.
“Who made you?”
“I don’t know.” Mal began to cry. “They came before four in the morning. I was talking to my mom and they just banged on the door until I opened it. There were four of them—a woman, she was a vampire, and three men. One of them was a ghoul, and he said my apartment reeked of necromantic magic. They demanded I do a spell for them.”
“What kind of a spell?” Jamie whispered, no longer angry but terrified, just like I was.
“Soul summoning.” Her voice broke.
“A what?”
“A spell to summon a soul beyond the grave!” Mal shouted, tears slipping out of her eyes without stop.
“A
nd you did it?” Jamie asked.
“I didn’t have a choice. They knew, guys! I told them I was Nulled, but the ghoul said he could smell the magic in my apartment and that he could smell it on me,” she said. “They said if I didn’t do the spell, they’d kill me. I wanted to fight back, but I couldn’t take them, not all four of them. The vampire was constantly behind me, and she would have killed me before I had the chance to complete a spell.”
I grabbed her ice-cold hand in mine. “It’s fine, Mal. You did the right thing. It’s okay.”
Jamie shook her head, looking at the floor but not seeing anything. “Who was it? Who did you summon?”
“I didn’t summon anyone. They had a Moon Chalice,” Mal breathed.
Shit. A Moon Chalice was a very powerful weapon, designed especially for witch and wizard magic. It could hold spells for any amount of time exactly as they were, preserving the magic and the strength like it was in a supernatural’s body. Those things were rare but also expensive. Very expensive. “They made me put the spell in the Chalice. It almost killed me.”
“Sin’s right. It’s fine, Mal. You don’t need to worry about it. It’s over. They probably just wanted to talk to someone who died or something. It’s not a big deal, right?” said Jamie, but it didn’t sound like she even believed herself.
“No, not okay. It’s a very big deal!” Mal said. “They didn’t make me do a reverse spell. When you summon a soul, you have to take them back. Otherwise there’s no telling what they can do. They’re so dangerous, Jamie.”
“Goddamn it,” I whispered under my breath.
“But it’s a ghost, right?” Jamie said.
“No, it’s a soul. It’s neither a body nor a ghost—something in between. They have consciousness and they can do things that ghosts can’t. They can get through almost anything—except their graves. Even weak wards. All the books say that souls are evil, and it’s impossible to catch them if they escape. Whatever they see on the other side, it turns even the best ones pure evil.”
