I crossed into my bedroom, not bothering to flick on the light even though the cloudy late afternoon was steadily dimming and my curtains were partially closed. My gaze immediately flicked to my tall bureau, as it had every evening since I’d originally found the rune that Aiden had carved into it. And the luminous magical black rose made especially for me — then eaten by Paisley.
The rune’s magic was currently dormant, and I had to tamp down on a swell of disappointment. As I did, idiotically, every time I entered the bedroom in the time since Aiden left. He’d been gone for almost five months. On his quest to somehow definitively prove that he wanted to be with me, build a relationship with me — but not only because he craved the magic in my veins.
Every few days, I would find a letter hovering over the rune, caught in a delicate spiral of dark-blue sorcerer magic. Through those letters, we had gotten to know each other. Or, rather, Aiden had shared his own life while occasionally managing to coax a similar response from me. He offered me stories of his childhood, his current travels, his new obsession with gemstone-housed spells — such as the spells the gems set into the hilts of my twin blades were currently lacking — and his ongoing pursuit of all magical knowledge, in all forms, including written spells, historical texts, runed languages, and artifacts.
I tugged his latest missive from my dress pocket. After much internal debate since receiving Aiden’s first letter, I allowed myself to carry his most recent note around with me through the day. But only until I’d replied. Then I tucked it in my top drawer along with the others. I wasn’t familiar or terribly comfortable with the emotions — or even, at times, the physical sensations — that came with being enamored of someone, as I was so obviously enamored with Aiden. So giving myself guidelines and assigning allowable behaviors made absorbing it all a little easier.
I traced the edges of the inactive rune etched into the corner of my wood bureau with the fingers of my left hand as I unfolded and reread the opening paragraph of Aiden’s most recent letter.
Emma. I see the forecast is calling for snow in your part of the world, and I find myself wishing that I was sitting by the fire watching the snow fall by your side. Instead, I’m heading to San Francisco in anticipation of finally tracking down the spellbook I’ve spent far too long in search of, away from you. At least I have confirmation now that the book isn’t just a myth. The collector in San Francisco is not known for his approachability. But I believe I’ve sourced another book he might take in trade. He also requires a blood tithe, of course. But there are few among the elder vampires who don’t.
I closed my eyes, seeing the next line as if it were printed on the back of my eyelids.
And, yes, before you ask, the spellbook is that important.
I folded the letter, tucking it back in my pocket. Then I opened the top drawer of the bureau, brushed my fingers across the sheaf of letters neatly tucked next to my panties and bras, and extracted my writing pad and pen.
Aiden’s notes were most often written on heavy linen paper, with a few dashed off on hotel stationery just to let me know where he was in the world. His lettering was substantial, inscribed with a thick-nib fountain pen and black ink.
I used a lined pad of paper and a blue ballpoint pen. It had taken me a week to answer the first letter. I’d found it waiting for me when I climbed into bed the evening after Aiden left. I’d spent those first seven days writing two or three lines, then critiquing my handwriting, my grammar, my inability to effectively convey my thoughts. On day five, I bought printed cards from Hannah’s shop, but then internally debated over what message each of the images on the separate cards conveyed.
In the end, I had answered his initial three carefully articulated paragraphs, in which he’d requested to communicate with me in written form, with a single line.
Aiden. I’m happy to hear from you. Emma.
Though he had indicated that he thought messaging by rune would be more reliable than email, he mentioned only later that communicating by way of a rune that only he could trigger was also as private as any ongoing conversation between two people could be. Two people who were continually concerned about revealing too much of themselves to their enemies. Or even to each other.
The conversations had ebbed and flowed after that. Longer letters interspersed with quick notes dashed off out of a need to simply check in with each other, but without anything substantial to report. I enjoyed those quick notes the most, as they often contained a single simple sentiment. Occasionally, I allowed myself to carry one of them in my pocket for more than twenty-four hours.
Aiden had offered to discuss his father and his past in his second letter. But not ready to do so myself, I hadn’t responded directly. Instead, I’d gone into detail about the research I was doing into magical transference and binding spells.
A week later, a spellbook had been delivered by courier, with Aiden indicating that he’d found it in a London bookshop. For me. He’d also included a book about magical husbandry for Christopher.
I was careful about what I mentioned after that, not wanting the sorcerer to think he had to buy me gifts or do things for me constantly. But after answering one or two of Aiden’s questions, a tea he’d sourced in India appeared, then cinnamon from Indonesia. So he was determined to send me gifts, presumably seeing the exchange as part of his plan to slowly woo me, court me.
But now, five months of long-distance wooing was starting to feel overly prolonged. Especially for someone who was accustomed to living her life through stolen moments — in between points of bloodshed and deadly conflict.
I uncapped the ballpoint pen, jotted seven words halfway down on the pad, tore the page away from the binding, folded it, and set it over the rune. It would remain there until Aiden remotely triggered the magic he’d somehow embedded into the corner of my bureau. The letters were always collected overnight, meaning that wherever Aiden was in the world, whatever time zone, he always checked, either sending or retrieving a note in the late evening my time.
This note simply read:
Your brother is here. Looking for you.
I thought about saying more, about detailing the conversation or mentioning Ruwa. But for the first time since we’d started writing, I was concerned that our letters might be intercepted somehow. And that idea made me feel vulnerable in a way that the uninvited sorcerer sitting in my front sitting room could never have accomplished on his own.
Whether or not it was actually true, Isa had already indicated that he’d traced the gifts Aiden sent. And I didn’t even need to see them side-by-side to compare the similar tenor of his and Aiden’s magic. They were both Azars, and had both obviously been educated by the same masters, the same father.
So I had no doubt that the complicated communication rune etched on my bureau — magic I had no idea how to construct or wield — was an Azar spell. Possibly passed down through generations.
I made a mental note that if I didn’t hear back from Aiden within twenty-four hours, I’d ask Christopher to email him. Though knowing the clairvoyant, he might have reached out to the sorcerer already.
Christopher was puttering around in the kitchen with something involving the mixer, eggs, and whole-wheat flour. I hoped it all might magically transform into the mushroom ravioli recipe he’d recently been trying to perfect.
“Do you want me to cast cards?” he asked, not looking up from reviewing the meticulous culinary notes he kept in a black leather-bound notebook.
I contemplated the question while crossing to the French-paned doors that looked out over the patio into the backyard. It was snowing. The flakes were small but plentiful. I didn’t like requesting readings from the oracle cards, forcing Christopher’s magic on command. But it was idiotic to not use all our resources when faced with an unknown sorcerer. Times two.
And honestly, Ruwa bothered me — and Jenni Raymond, apparently — more than Isa Azar had. I really hoped that my intense and immediate dislike of the female sorcerer had nothing to do with the fact that she’d once been Aiden’s lover — and was currently strikingly beautiful, as far as I understood such things. Jenni’s inherent dislike of her actually made me feel better about my own motivations. I’d never knowingly been jealous or envious of another person, and had actually shared Fish with the other three — the nullifier being the only one any of us could have sex with while avoiding magical ramifications. But unfortunately, there was always a first time.
“It’s snowing again,” I said.
“Just lightly.” Christopher scooped three cups of whole-wheat flour into the stainless steel mixing bowl, leveling each far more carefully than I ever did. Ginger snap cookies were always tasty, even with too little or slightly too much flour. And I never used flour to make anything else. “The main storm will hold off until Aiden gets here.”
A smile spread across my face before I could tamp down on my reaction. I kept my back to the clairvoyant and my voice steady. “Did you see him or email?”
“Email. But I doubt he’ll be more than twenty-four hours away. Less if he has access to any form of teleportation.”
Teleportation was risky. Not everyone had magic that made them receptive to being shoved through time and space, then showing up at their destination the same person — inside and out — as they had been before the spell had been triggered. In my experience, it took a minimum of three powerful witches to move one attuned Adept. And an entire coven was more reliable. The Collective had kept several covens on their payroll for such castings, and rumors circulated among our team members that magical artifacts capable of teleportation existed. But in order to trigger, such an object would have to borrow a chunk of magic from its wielder, so only the most powerful of Adepts could use such an object — safely, at least.
An alchemist capable of creating an artifact of that level would be practically as mythical as the device itself. Though if any Adept had access to such power, I wouldn’t doubt it would be an Azar sorcerer. Still, Aiden was a Myers, not an Azar. He had been so for many years, since trying and failing to kill the brother who’d just been sipping tea in my front sitting room.
“Emma? The cards?”
I sighed. “It would be prudent.”
“Yes. It would. But we don’t always agree to act on things, prudent or not.”
I turned to look at him, then dropped my gaze to the empty kitchen table. A small white box was set near the chair that Christopher usually occupied. “You’ve already cast cards, haven’t you?”
He chuckled. “Of course I have. But doing so with you in the room is always more interesting.”
He was trying to tease, to feign lightheartedness. “Your sight is obscured?” I asked.
He shrugged, dusting his hands on his jeans as he crossed to the table. He picked up the box, opened it, and tipped the deck into his left hand without offering further clarification.
“That could mean that nothing untoward lies behind Isa’s visit,” I said. “That he means what he says. He’s simply here to speak to Aiden.”
Christopher shuffled the deck, using a simple twist of his hands that grew more pronounced and dramatic as he locked his light-gray gaze to me. Grinning, showing off.
“Thinking of a new career?” I asked.
He laughed. “I could make us some good money if we had a local casino.”
“We don’t need money.”
He nodded, sobering. “I’m teasing, Emma. You provide for us. Thank you.”
“Thank Fish too.” The nullifier had left a large bag of cash behind after I’d driven him out of the house last September.
Christopher nodded, letting the conversation drop before I could get pissy. Or, rather, pissier.
The clairvoyant’s power spread through the cards as he shuffled, edging them with a glow that slowly brightened. “Tell me what you want to know, Fox in Socks.” Christopher’s tone became remote, formal, layered with magic. “Mind, body, spirit? Head, heart, soul? Past, present, future?”
He was suggesting a three-card reading, and the different possible ways to interpret the randomly pulled trio. “As you will, clairvoyant,” I said, speaking to his magic more than to Christopher himself.
He spread the deck in an arc across the table, facing down. Except the black-inked white cards weren’t actually on the table. Rather, they hovered about an inch from the worn wood. That was new. A further manifestation of Christopher’s clairvoyant power when connected to the oracle cards.
With a flick of his fingers, three cards separated, spun to face upward, then settled on the table.
The first revealed a black-ink botanical drawing of verbena, with the Upheaval intention printed below the plant.
The second card was a dandelion. Revelation.
Third, foxglove. Caution.
My heart rate picked up slightly. I ignored it, already trying to interpret the revealed cards. I had worked with the witch from whom I’d commissioned the deck, tying specific plants known for their magical properties to a basic Tarot card setup. Though in Christopher’s hands, the deck took on new layers of meaning — a conduit for his magic, communicating things he might not be seeing as fully articulated visions yet.
Christopher collected the remaining nineteen cards, stacking them and setting them to the side. The magic shimmering from the three face-up cards on the table slowly condensed into a soft glow around their edges.
“Same three?” I finally asked. “As you pulled earlier today?”
“Yes. Surprising.” He touched the verbena card with a gentle caress. “Inspiration, abundance, and positivity …” He tapped the intention printed on the bottom of the edge thoughtfully. “Upheaval. Sudden change, surprise …”
“And …”
He laughed quietly but his tone was remote, as if he were listening to something far away. “There is something almost … dual natured about this draw.”
“Both positive and negative, you mean?”
“Perhaps not as black and white as that.”
“Because magic wouldn’t want to be too clear,” I said wryly.
“You forget about free will, Socks. And specifically, your own ability to flip the future as you will in any given moment. All three of these cards are two sided.”
I gestured toward the middle card, its placement possibly suggesting or acting as a bridge between the two others. “And the dandelion? Revelation. That’s divination, yes? Could be you?”
Christopher grunted, noncommittal. “Also wishes and a release. Acceptance … but paired with the foxglove …” He trailed off.
I eyed the foxglove card with the Caution intention emblazoned across it. The flower traditionally represented protection. But the intention was as clear as any of the cards got — fear, misunderstanding, bewilderment.
“Perhaps that’s self evident.” Christopher tucked the three cards back into the deck. He shuffled, then offered the deck to me.
I had no idea what conclusion he’d already made based on the first draw. But I took the top card, flipping it over in my hand. Verbena. Again. I placed it on the table.
Christopher shuffled and offered the deck to me a second time. I drew. Dandelion.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered.
Christopher laughed quietly, offering me a third draw.
I pulled the foxglove. As I’d known I would. I shook my head, then unwillingly asked in a hushed whisper, “What do you see, oh clairvoyant?”
Christopher’s magic rose at my request, splashing over the cards, lapping up against my hands and bare arms. He spoke and his voice was no longer quite his own. “A dream. An … unvoiced request. Death … calling to darkness, unfettered. You, Emma, at the center, swallowed within.”
A shiver ran up my spine, but I tamped down the irrational reaction. Skipping over the references to a dream — I didn’t put much stock in such nebulous magic, nor did I usually remember my dreams — I sought clarification instead. “Death calling … meaning a necromancer?”
Christopher shook his head, shoving away his magic at the same time. He tucked his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and crossed back into the kitchen with his shoulders slumped, fighting through whatever glimpses of the future the magic had shown him. “I wouldn’t have thought it possible,” he murmured. “For any magic to overwhelm you.”
“You already know it’s possible. You’ve seen it happen.”
He shook his head. “We were all unconscious at that point, Socks.” He looked at me, pinning me with white-rimmed eyes. “And you don’t talk about it.”
I stiffened defensively. I’d been making an effort to communicate more effectively, but I still didn’t like being reminded that I often didn’t react in ways others might deem appropriate. “What would you like to discuss?”
Christopher sighed, shaking his head. “Nothing. I’m just saying that if implementing the Amplifier Protocol and saving all of our asses was overwhelming, I didn’t experience it. Didn’t see it, neither ahead of time nor during.”
“It didn’t. Overwhelm me, I mean. I … gave myself to it gladly. I allowed the magic to consume me.”
“But it didn’t.”
“Obviously.”
He snorted, returning his attention to making pasta. I glanced down at the three cards I’d set on the table, hovering my fingers over the foxglove card. Caution. “Is it connected to the Collective, then?”
“Not that I’ve seen.”
That was a very specific answer. I eyed the clairvoyant.
He shrugged. “Another Azar sorcerer. Two of them.”
“Yes.”
“The connection could be as it seems. Isa could be telling the truth.”
“Is it ever as it seems?”
“I don’t know, Fox in Socks.” Christopher stared at the far wall, magic flooding his eyes again. “I can see the future, yet you’re always ahead of me.” He reached a flour-and-egg-crusted hand forward. The sentiment was an echo of a belief, a feeling, he’d carried since we were children. The reason he’d adopted the name Knox and named me Fox in Socks. The clever one.
Except I never felt like the clever one. I just always put my head down and did my job, completed my mission. And my life mission, since he and Paisley had chosen to come with me almost eight years ago, was to protect Christopher.
“That’s only because you can’t see yourself next to me,” I said. “So it just seems like you’re always trailing behind.”
He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Perhaps.”
“And if it’s my death you see —”
“It isn’t.” He cut me off sharply. Then he softened his tone. “Not a death as I currently understand it. A glimpse of something. That’s all. It will resolve into whatever it’s going to be soon enough.”
“The cards lengthen your sight.”
“They do. But with the sorcerers on our doorstep, I’d assume we’re dealing with a tighter timeline.”
I nodded. “Okay. Now tell me where Paisley is.”
He grimaced.
Yes. I’d noticed the demon dog’s prolonged absence. “Did she try to steal another egg?”
“Of course. Daily. I got it back in the incubator pretty quickly. And she sulked, again. But that was this morning.”
“And then the sorcerers showed up.”
“Yes.”
I sighed. Paisley was stalking Isa and Ruwa.
“I tried to stop her,” Christopher said defensively.
I eyed him doubtfully. “Really?”
“I told her that the chicks might hatch in the next couple of hours.”
“She can smell it when you lie. Especially halfheartedly. You’d be out there with her if you thought you could have gotten off the property without me noticing.”
“Nah. It’s going to seriously snow tonight.” He grinned.
I didn’t really feel like smiling back, not with Paisley off stalking two sorcerers of power. Sorcerers who might find a demon dog far too interesting — as a creature worth kidnapping, perhaps, to study or experiment on.
Christopher shook his head, turning to rinse his hands in the sink. “I’ll text Jenni.”
“I don’t need to be rescuing the shifter either.” I stepped toward the laundry room. “That better be mushroom ravioli with the mushroom cream sauce.”
“It is.”
“Fine. I’ll collect Paisley.” I stepped through the doorway.
“You should take cookies for her,” Christopher called after me.
I paused, then spun to cross back into the kitchen with a glower. I pulled the Tupperware container of frozen cookies from the fridge freezer, opened the lid, and pulled out two.
“You’re going to need more,” Christopher said, magic gently laced through his words.
“You’re having visions about baked goods now?” I asked mockingly, taking three more ginger snaps.
The clairvoyant stole a cookie for himself before I could snap the lid back on the container. “I always see ginger snaps in your future, amplifier.”
“Hilarious.” I pulled a cloth napkin out of the drawer and wrapped the cookies in it.
“And the pink umbrella.”
“What about the umbrella?”
“You’re going to need it.” He cracked a grin. “And you’re going to look damn cute wandering around in the snow. Gumboots and umbrella.”
“Am I going to need my blades?”
Christopher sobered. “Not yet. You could just let Paisley come home on her own.”
“And if the sorcerers sense her?”
“She’s not stupid.”
“I’m not saying she is. I’m saying the sorcerers are an unknown quantity. Paisley doesn’t have the experience to get out of a scenario involving two magic users of their power. Also, it’s an exposure risk, even if the sorcerers League doesn’t have jurisdiction in this area.”
“There is no way that Isa Azar is a member of the League.”
I gave him a look.
Christopher sighed. “Go, then.”
I turned, wrapped cookies in hand.
“Say hi to Lani for me.”
I didn’t bother asking for clarification about how or where I’d be seeing the ex-air-force-tech-turned-local-mechanic. Lani Zachary had a habit of showing up where she was needed — a habit that was undoubtedly tied to her dormant witch magic. “I will.”
The snow was coming down in earnest, sticking to the road by the time I made it into town on foot. I hadn’t even considered pulling the Mustang out of the barn in the current weather. I had no experience driving in snow, and I wasn’t interested in ruining my pretty car on the heavily salted roads.
Though it was still a couple of hours away from sunset, the gray day provided plenty of shadowy recesses between storefronts and restaurants. The blue-gray coat of the demon dog in her regular pit bull aspect would stand out against the snow that was slowly coating every available surface, but she could cross through the shadows undetected. I found no evidence of her passing, though. Neither footprints nor any hint of her magic.
I skirted the edge of the swollen river, walking as quickly as possible while still appearing to be a regular human, with regular human abilities. I didn’t need to draw any more attention to myself as I made my way toward the Cowichan Lake Lodge. Carrying a bright pink umbrella was already bad enough, though it did keep the snow out of my face. Ice had formed on the smooth rocks all along the edges of the river, despite how swiftly the deep water flowed through the center of town.
I picked up the faint tenor of Jenni Raymond’s magic as I neared the RCMP station and considered popping in, just in case she’d seen Paisley. Except I knew that the demon dog wasn’t the shifter’s biggest fan, and it was highly doubtful that Paisley would have revealed herself to Jenni even if their paths had crossed.
A dark-blue pickup truck pulled up alongside me. I spun toward it, suddenly expecting to be attacked. Inside, Lani Zachary held up her hands. Her expression surprised, then concerned.
In that moment, I thought that Peter Grant had finally consumed just enough alcohol to build up the courage to confront me, though not so much to render him incapable of doing so. Not that Tyler Grant’s father had any hope of hurting me in the way he seemed so desperate to do. He was mundane through and through. He might have jumped the curb in the pickup and winged me, and I still could have snapped his neck and blamed it on the icy sidewalk.
It was the presence of the sorcerers, and Paisley’s disappearing act, that had me on edge.
Lani rolled down the passenger window, calling across to me. “All right, Emma?”
“Yes, thank you.”
She grinned. “Pretty umbrella.”
I couldn’t tell if she was joking. “Thank you.”
“I was just headed home, and thought …” She glanced out the windshield and didn’t finish her sentence. Lani Zachary was witch-born, but untrained. Her untapped magic appeared to simmer just on the periphery of her awareness, manifesting itself as some sort of intuition. Specifically, an intuition of things that needed to be fixed. As far as I’d been able to figure out without prying too hard and revealing too much about myself, Lani had no idea that magic even existed.
I did know, however, that she lived in the opposite direction she was presently driving. In a trailer on a piece of land she’d purchased about six months previously. She was planning to build a cabin.
So apparently, according to Lani’s magic, something about me being out in the snow required fixing, whether she’d known she was looking for me or not.
Lani shook off her contemplation, returning her attention to me. “What has you out in the snow?”
“Paisley.”
The mechanic frowned. “She’s wandered off?”
I nodded, not wanting to lie out loud — though I had a sense that Lani would pick up a half-truth just as easily.
“And you think she’d come into town?”
Right. That was presumably odd behavior for a regular dog, especially when the properties around ours were filled with domesticated animals. “I think she’s following someone,” I said awkwardly. “Someone who came to the property this afternoon. She’s … um … bored.”
Lani laughed, shaking her head. “Climb in.”
I shook my umbrella, which had accumulated a solid layer of snow. Then I hopped into the passenger seat, carefully knocking off my boots before climbing all the way in and shutting the door. Lani had the heat blasting. The interior of her pickup truck was pristinely clean.
“So …” Lani eyed me for a moment. “Did your visitors head out of town?”
“Cowichan Lake Lodge.”
She nodded. Without further prompting, she pulled away from the curb. “I’m glad you didn’t take the Mustang out, but maybe you should think about getting another vehicle. I could find Christopher a cheap, reliable pickup.”
I nodded, gazing out the window. “I really didn’t expect it to snow so much. It didn’t last year. And it’s really late in the season, isn’t it?”
“It is. But I don’t think there’s anything nefarious going on, Emma.”
I glanced at Lani, confused.
She laughed. “Sorry. You just sounded really concerned. Snow usually melts by the next afternoon around here. Though that’s not what the current forecast is calling for.”
Lani took a right turn onto the long curve of Cowichan Lake Road, heading out of town.
“No. I’m not concerned. About the weather. We have a generator. Christopher is hatching chicks. You could stop by and talk to him about the pickup truck idea, if you like.”
“I will. So. Why is Paisley following visitors from out of town? And why are they staying in a hotel rather than at your place?”
I glanced at her. “That’s unusual?”
She shrugged. “Not if you just don’t want them under your roof.”
“I don’t.”
Lani turned left and pulled into the front parking lot of the lodge. The lot was mostly empty, except for the hulking SUV that Isa Azar had been driving and a minivan parked right by the front entrance. Both vehicles were slowly accumulating snow. Cowichan Lake Lodge looked like a large house from the front, two levels, with white-painted siding occasionally interrupted by small side-by-side balconies with white metal railings. The signage declared it to be ‘A Suite Place to Stay.’
Lani slowly backed into a parking spot across from the hotel, leaving the truck running while she eyed the SUV. “Nice car,” she murmured. “Not a rental.”
“How can you tell?”
“No branding on the frame around the plate. No sticker in the windows or bumper. A new or nearly new Mercedes G550. No one rents those, not around here. One hundred and twenty grand, even without all the bells and whistles.” She looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “Trouble?”
I quashed my sudden need to jump out of the truck and walk away without exchanging another word with Lani. We were friends. Or at least the mechanic was trying to be a friend. And I was trying to not be what the Collective had raised me to be — a sociopath without any concept of positive relationships or the ability to connect with another human being.
“Aiden’s brother,” I said, knowing that Lani would pick up the connection the instant she laid eyes on Isa Azar. Based on his choice of vehicle alone, the sorcerer was sure to have drawn her attention. That was one of the drawbacks of living in a tiny town.
Lani laughed, deep in her throat but not at all amused. “I see. I take it he just dropped in, demanding … what? An accounting of Aiden’s whereabouts? Or …” She trailed off, pausing to carefully piece together her next thought. “Unless Aiden’s in trouble? Did he relapse?”
Lani thought Aiden was an addict. She wasn’t wrong, except it was magic he was addicted to, not drugs. “Not that I know of. I heard from him yesterday.”
“Okay.” She turned off the truck. “Let’s get the brother’s room number from reception and knock on his door.”
“Just a second.” I opened my door, letting in a gust of chilled air and snow. I reached out, seeking the hum of Paisley’s magic and instantly picking up the power that resided almost dormant in Lani’s blood. Embedded in her DNA, whether or not she knew how to use it — or knew it was even there.
I stepped out into the snow, pausing when I felt Paisley nearby. I glanced around, not picking up any visual hint of the demon dog, not even tracks in the snow.
“Paisley,” I called softly.
Nothing happened.
I snorted, pulling the ginger snaps out of my jacket pocket. I unwrapped the cookies, lining them up on the side of the cargo bed of Lani’s pickup truck one at a time, deliberately pausing between each one.
Magic shifted as I set down the third cookie. “Paisley,” I said, quietly but firmly. “Time to come home.”
Paisley — blue-furred and the size of a massive pit bull — landed in the back of Lani’s pickup, rocking the entire vehicle.
“Jesus Christ!” Lani shouted, whirling around to look through the back window.
“That was unnecessary,” I said chidingly.
Paisley snorted, her breath coming out in a huff of white. Then she padded over to press her nose into the crook of my neck, chortling slobber all over me. I stepped away, shaking my head at her. She inhaled the ginger snaps — literally — as I pivoted to climb back into the vehicle.
“Are you okay with Paisley riding in the back?”
“As long as you can talk Jenni out of slapping us with a ticket,” Lani said teasingly, then instantly sobered. “I’ll drive slowly. And I doubt there will be many other vehicles out in this snow.”
Paisley prowled back into the center of the cargo bed, lifting her gaze to the second floor of the hotel. Ruwa was standing in a window to the right of one of the balconies directly above the SUV, curtain pulled back in one hand. A smile slowly curled over her face as she swept her gaze over me.
I paused, one foot in the pickup truck, standing out against the snow in my black Gore-Tex jacket and yellow gumboots. At least I wasn’t currently carrying the pink umbrella. The smirking sorcerer raised her free hand, wiggling her fingers. It might have been a wave, but it looked a lot like she was dismissing me.
I climbed all the way into the truck, closing the door and holding the last two ginger snaps in the napkin out to Lani. She took one, biting down on it as she started the truck. Her gaze was also glued to the second floor of the hotel. She touched the gas lightly and without comment, though.
Isa Azar opened the sliding door of the neighboring suite, stepping out onto the tiny patio with his hand raised and his gaze on us.
Lani took her foot off the gas.
“Go,” I said quietly. “Please.”
She pulled out of the spot, then exited the parking lot, heading back through town. The windshield wipers were working overtime to keep the snow cleared from the window.
“The woman?” Lani finally asked. “Is she here for Aiden as well?”
“I don’t know. She might be with Isa.”
“Separate rooms, though.”
I nodded. I had noticed that as well. I glanced back at Paisley in the bed of the truck. The demon dog had tucked herself up against the window, looking back the way we’d come.
“Could be that this Isa guy just likes his space, or she does,” Lani continued, musing over the puzzle she’d just been presented. “Could be she’s someone who his brother thinks Aiden might listen to. If they’re concerned about him. Relapsing or whatnot.”
“Could be.”
She glanced at me but quickly returned her attention to the road. The traffic was lessening as the storm took hold of the town. The roads were actually just tire tracks through the snow now, despite the liberal layers of salt and sand that the district had dumped on them. “She’s something to look at. But she can’t hold a candle to you.”
“I don’t know what that means,” I said quietly.
“Right … I just mean … she’s gorgeous. Ironically in the same way that Aiden is. Deadly gorgeous, soul-sucking gorgeous. But I don’t even have to exchange a single word with her to know who she is, what she is. Nasty business.”
“We’re not all just composed of our exterior layers.”
“Please,” Lani snorted. “I mean, that demeaning wave? Ridiculous opinion of herself. And though I haven’t really seen you and Aiden together very much, he came to you when he needed someone the most. He chose you.”
Aiden hadn’t, though. Not in the way Lani was suggesting, but I understood what she meant. “It’s not a competition, Lani.”
“Of course not. But if it was, you’d win hands down.”
“I also don’t know what that means.”
She threw her head back and laughed.
Paisley raised her snout and howled into the thick flurries currently attempting to obscure the sky and all the surrounding buildings.
Lani flinched. But then she laughed again.
I was dreaming.
I knew that without question the moment I opened my eyes, the moment I felt the intensity of the spell pinning me in place. I heard chanting. As I had once before. Multiple voices in a range of pitches.
Sorcerers.
I’d been in this situation before, had felt this magic. Then I’d destroyed this magic, turning it against its casters. But not … yet.
I blinked. The skin of my face felt tight. Something had been painted across my forehead and cheeks.
Runes. Written in blood. But I hadn’t known that, not the first time I’d awoken under the spell that felt once again as if it was crawling over my limbs and torso.
The series of wooden beams crisscrossing high overhead and the concrete under my bare back indicated I was in a warehouse. On the floor, naked.
Again, I didn’t need to piece that together in my current dream state. The information had already been gathered. The situation already experienced.
Power writhed over me, pulling, tugging, trying to grab hold. I flexed against it, testing it. As I had already done once before.
Yes.
I’d been in that warehouse, caught in that spell — contained within a blood-inked pentagram fueled by five chanting sorcerers. Black robed, faces hidden, as those hungry for power always seemed to prefer. Others stood at the very edges of my peripheral vision — apprentices. Those who couldn’t contribute enough power to a spell designed to hold me. Those others were just shadows in the background.
A memory.
That was also somehow a dream.
If I concentrated, I could feel a bed underneath me instead of concrete. Soft cotton sheets and the weight of the doubled-up quilt pressed against me, rather than the magic scouring my bare skin.
Sorcery. Trying to hold me, to use me, to drain me, forcing a mass amplification.
I tested the binding again. I could break free easily. Wake myself up. Just as I could have broken free that evening in San Francisco.
Except.
Except the girl.
I turned my head, and the movement hurt with an echo of the wound I’d sustained that night. I was experiencing magic intense enough to make me feel echoed pain, to make me believe I was somewhere I wasn’t. But the spell currently invading my mind wasn’t as expertly wielded as the spell that had held me that night. Only a powerful telepath could have possibly fooled me into believing I was actually in the warehouse, in San Francisco, and under magical attack. And only the magic embedded into my spinal cord could have allowed that telepath access to me. Bee, aka Tel5. One of the Five.
But this wasn’t one of Bee’s psychic manifestations.
A girl was laid out on the concrete floor to my right. Her body was deliberately placed between two points of the pentagram holding me. Her carefully slashed wrists were bound with ropes of dark-blue energy, shackling her to the edge of the boundary. Her witch blood was feeding the spell holding me, the casting that was trying to drain my magic.
I could break free. I could have broken free that night. But I knew — as I’d known the moment I’d seen her for the first time — that doing so would kill the girl.
I hesitated. Then and now.
Almost a year and a half ago now, the sorcerers had had their way with me while I assessed the situation. I wasn’t an idiot. I wasn’t going to sacrifice my life for that of an unknown witch child’s. But my magical reserves were vast enough to allow me a moment of consideration.
Before I could come to a decision, though, Paisley had ripped through the darkness with Christopher just behind her. Their sudden assault broke the sorcerers’ focus and disrupted the siphoning spell enough that I was able to grab the nearest caster and claim the magic he wielded for myself. Unaware that one of their number had been instantly compromised, the sorcerers and their apprentices turned to counter Paisley and Christopher. I knelt beside the girl, pumping her full of my magic even as I could feel her dying under my hands.
Then I’d risen, leaving her behind to survive or not survive. I exacted my revenge on those who thought they could hold me. On those who had decided to sacrifice a witch child in the attempt. Those who had chosen to darken my soul further with her death.
Except she hadn’t died.
Not that night, at least.
I blinked, focusing on the girl’s face as it appeared in the dream — the magic attempting to pull forth my memory. She opened her sky-blue eyes, near enough to me — then and now — that I could see brown flecks the same shade as her skin within. Her dark-brown hair had been streaked by the sun, kinky curls now soaked in the blood on the concrete.
That night, after meeting my gaze, she had opened her mouth, trying to speak but panting in disoriented pain instead. Her eye teeth were crooked, which was unusual for a child of witches. She’d been stripped down to a ragged tank top and cotton panties.
She looked to be around nine years old. Underfed. Slowly dying, drip by drip. The magic in her blood taken without permission, sacrificed to quell me. To steal my power.
Rage rolled through me in the present dream — as it had done that night. I’d held it in check then, worried that I would tear through the magic holding me, magic fueled by the child. Worried that in doing so, I would also take her life, absorb her power.
I didn’t want her magic in my veins. Or her death on my dark tally.
Now, though, that rage was different. Directed toward whoever thought they could walk through my dreams, toward whoever thought they had the right to rampage through my memories and pull this particular moment to the forefront.
“Emma …” the girl whispered in the dream.
A girl who had never known my name. A girl who hadn’t spoken a single word that night. A child witch who I handed over to Ember Pine’s extraction team after she’d watched me drain and slaughter every sorcerer who’d thought they could kill her without retribution. Sorcerers who had thought the witch magic in her veins useless, except to help hold me.
The young witch had seen Christopher and Paisley by my side. Her gaze never left me as I carried her from the warehouse, amplifying her magic even as I walked, bathed in the blood of her would-be murderers. In the parking lot, the salt breeze crusted that blood on my skin, and I passed her wordlessly to the first sorcerer in tactical gear who reached for her. His light-blue eyes above his face mask had been wide but resolute as he told me he’d been sent by Ember Pine, as per our contract. The others in his team had streamed past us into the warehouse — where they discovered they were suddenly a cleanup crew, rather than an extraction team sent to rescue me.
I had walked away, climbing into the Mustang where Christopher had left it, forced to drive because his sight was compromised by his magic. Paisley was tucked in the back seat. We left the city, carrying only what the clairvoyant had shoved into the trunk before coming to rescue me.
I’d been flushed and heady with the magic from the sorcerers I’d slaughtered, and was shaking by the time Christopher forced me to pull into a rest stop. Forced me to bathe as best I could with cold water in the tiny sink, to wash the blood out of my hair, to put on some clothing.
I remembered it now as if it had happened only hours before. Remembered the runes that had been inked in blood — the witch child’s blood — on my forehead and cheeks. Remembered the freezing water running over my head, remembered mopping up the mess with all the paper towels in the rest stop bathroom.
And there, bare feet on cold tile, all powered up with no one left to fight, I realized that I should have killed the girl. She’d seen enough to expose us. Christopher, Paisley, and me. She could have been used to confirm our continued existence to the Collective.
Instead, I had left the young witch alive, not even contemplating murdering her to protect myself. I had amplified her magic, hoping it was enough to heal her, then walked away.
As the sun rose on the West Coast, I had emailed Ember Pine to make certain that the girl would be cared for, receiving an almost immediate response indicating that the child’s needs would be covered through the damages clause in my contract. A clause that my would-be captors had agreed to in order to get me to willingly walk into the warehouse in the first place.
I had never asked after the little witch with the brown-flecked blue eyes again. Never wanted to tie her to me too tightly, not even in my lawyer’s mind.
And now someone was using her — the memory of her — against me.
“I’m not so easily fooled,” I said. “So easily manipulated.”
The girl frowned, her brow creasing in confusion or frustration as it hadn’t that night in San Francisco.
Letting my power loose, I allowed my rage to tear through the magic that had slipped into my dream. I tore through the memory.
Then I was sitting up in my bed, in the dark. Heart beating fast — but in anger, not fear. The house was quiet. Still. My fists were clenched. My magic raged around me, spilling everywhere.
My bedroom door crashed open and Christopher charged into the room, clad only in boxers, with his steel short sword in hand, and eyes glowing bright white.
“Just a dream.” I inhaled deeply, reining in my power.
“A dream?” he echoed, striding forward, then lunging left into the bathroom. The metal rings of the shower curtain scraped along the bar. Then he returned before I could elaborate, circling the bedroom, looking for enemies in the dark.
I tamped down on my anger and my frustration, drawing my power as deep inside me as possible. I didn’t want to trigger the clairvoyant, not unintentionally. Not any more than I already had.
“A telepathic attack?” he asked, pausing at the foot of my bed and slowly scanning left to right. But he was looking beyond the four walls of the bedroom, feeling for foreign magic.
“I thought so. But it didn’t feel malicious.”
“San Francisco?”
That had me moving, up and out of the bed, barefoot on the fir floor as I also reached out with my senses, seeking the magic that had tried to invade my mind. It took a powerful telepath to manipulate two people at once. “You were dreaming as well?”
He shook his head. “Reading. In bed. I felt a flood of your power and thought you were gearing up for something big. But I’m getting echoes now. Glimmers of that night.”
“That’s unusual. Isn’t it?”
He shrugged, crossing to pull the curtains slightly back from the east-facing window, then from the window to the south. “I can’t feel anyone on the property. Can you?”
I shook my head, but I knew I would have to walk the perimeter of the property to be sure. I pivoted slowly once more, spotting a folded piece of paper sitting on the corner of my bureau. It was resting over the rune carved into the wood. I picked it up, unfolding it to reveal a simple, scrawled note.
I’m already heading your way. — A.
An odd heat bloomed in the middle of my chest, flooding swiftly through my limbs. I ignored the feeling, passing the note to Christopher. The clairvoyant nodded after reading it, setting it back on the bureau.
I opened the second drawer and pulled on socks, then grabbed my robe from the hook on the back of the bathroom door. “Where’s Paisley?”
“Guarding the incubator in the barn.”
“I doubt anyone is getting on the property without her knowing.”
Christopher smiled wryly. “I doubt anyone is casting that level of magic on the property without you knowing.”
“Or you.”
He nodded, heading toward the hall.
“Maybe it was just a dream.”
He glanced back at me, his expression grim. “Or one hell of a powerful telepath, to cast from that far away. Let me get some pants and I’ll join you. It’s still snowing.”
I nodded, reluctantly tugging on leggings myself. I had never met a telepath capable of invading someone’s mind and pulling forth a dream without actually being in the same room, or at least the same building, as their target. I’d never met a telepath capable of invading my mind at all, not without me feeling it and thwarting their attempt.
Except for Bee.
I reached over my shoulder, brushing my fingers across the blood tattoo on my T2 vertebra where Bee’s blood and magic were tied to me. But that magic was dormant, as expected. As it had been for almost eight years now. Even if Bee had somehow been compromised and forced to send the vision, I would have recognized her magic.
For the briefest moment, I allowed myself to miss the yellow-haired, quick-to-smile Tel5. Bee, so nicknamed by Christopher because of how her magic felt in his head. Then I shoved the thought and the emotional response away. None of the Five would ever attack another, not unprovoked, not in the thick of the night.
No. The dream was something else altogether.
Instead of joining Christopher in the hall, I flicked on the bedroom light, momentarily blinking at the sudden brightness. Starting at the doorway, I systematically scoured every inch of the room, tracing my fingers over the baseboards and bed sheets, lifting and moving the bed, examining the windows and the curtains.
I found nothing out of the ordinary.
No runes, no magic. Nothing that didn’t belong to me.
I tucked Aiden’s note into the pocket in the waistband of my leggings, no matter that it was idiotic to carry his words with me since I’d already read the note. I was past fretting about my reaction to the sorcerer, past the idea that I would eventually develop an immunity to everything he made me feel, even just by jotting a few simple words on a piece of paper.
I would see him soon. And then we would figure out if his brother was a threat … Isa.
Another Azar sorcerer.
I brushed my fingers over the rune Aiden had etched into the corner of my bureau, staring at it with a sinking feeling.
The tension that had taken up residence in my chest while I searched the room had eased. The thought that someone had invaded my home, planting a device that allowed them to access my mind, had been slowly suffocating me.
But as I pressed my palm over the rune, seeking out the magic that fueled it — and feeling nothing — that tension ramped up again, this time twisting and souring in my stomach.
I glanced at Christopher as he stepped back into the doorway. His gaze was on my hand, already knowing the conclusion I was loath to draw.
“I checked the other rooms on this floor,” he said, lifting his gaze to meet mine.
I nodded. The clairvoyant was more sensitive to magic than I was. I could have had him check my room far more quickly than it had taken me. But I had to see for myself, know for myself. It had always been that way.
I lifted my hand from the carved rune. Christopher stepped forward unbidden, brushing his fingers against it.
“Dormant,” he murmured.
“But it always is when Aiden hasn’t triggered it from his end.”
“You said that you thought the black rose, the one Paisley ate, was witch magic. Magic learned from his mother.”
“Yes. But that was set here, triggered by my touch. The letters are some sort of teleportation spell, aren’t they?”
Christopher twisted his lips grimly. “Rune based, with a very narrow aperture. One that Aiden wouldn’t have left open if he thought it could be used to harm you in any way.”
“Except runes like this one …” I tapped the carving, trying to address the issue rationally. “These are passed through families. And Aiden’s brother is in town.”
“He never came upstairs.”
“What are the chances he could have felt it? Say, from the kitchen?”
Christopher nodded, just once.
I held out my hand, silently asking for his weapon. He gave it to me, then turned away into the hall, heading downstairs. I laid the edge of the sword across the rune. Then, forcing myself to act, to remain rational, to ignore the clump of mixed emotions that had settled deeply in my stomach, I dragged the sharp blade across the rune, scoring the wood bureau deeply. Then I changed the angle and ran it across again.
Destroying the rune. Breaking the tiny point of connection that Aiden had cast while hoping we could forge a deeper connection through it.
I shoved the irrational thought away. I’d be seeing the sorcerer soon enough, and then we’d have no need to exchange letters. Discussions about his brother — and if the rune could have been accessed by him, or even Ruwa — would be had in person.
I grabbed a sweater, swapping my robe for it and flicking off the light as I followed Christopher downstairs. Triggered by the sudden darkness, perhaps, the image of the witch girl — bleeding, dying on the floor of the warehouse — hovered before me. I blinked it away.
I didn’t even know her name.