After a long cry, I pulled myself together as best I could and cracked open my bedroom door to peek inside. Max was on her back, covered in a small, knitted throw I kept at the foot of my bed. She looked like a corpse, lying there, still as death.
I held a breath as I eased inside the dim room. The only light was my small bedside lamp, casting a warm, yellowy glow over the darkness. I stared unblinkingly at Max’s chest, waiting for it to rise and fall. I caught the faintest movement and finally released the air stifling my lungs.
I didn’t know what to do. So, I just stood near the closed door and waited. For what? I had no idea. To wake up from this nightmare? For someone to come and tell me everything will be alright?
The slight sound of moist, open flesh caught my attention, and I inched closer. A gash across Max’s chest was closing on its own, and I leaned forward in awe. The wound disappeared beneath the blanket, and my hand gravitated toward it.
“What the fuck are you doing, Quinn?” Max rasped, eyes still closed. Unmoving.
I fisted my hand and straightened, my heart racing from the fright. “Jesus, you’re terrifying in every sense of the word, you know.”
The corner of her mouth twitched as her dark eyes opened. Only a look of disdain stared at me. “Am I naked?”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Do you have any clothes?”
Without a word, I turned to my closet and fished out the first thing I touched–a red romper. It reminded me of her mother’s lipstick. “Your, uh, mom stopped me outside school.”
Her eyes widened as she slipped the spaghetti straps over her toned shoulders. She looked way better than I ever did in that thing. “What did you tell her?”
I shrugged. “Nothing. I mean, I had no idea where you were at the time.”
“Good.” She stood hovering in the middle of the room, seemingly unsure whether to stay or go.
“Max…what are you?”
“You know what I am.” She crossed her long arms.
“A Therian?” My brow arched in question. I’d never seen one before. Had no idea what to expect. “A shapeshifter?”
She tilted her head at the term. But her eyes were suddenly vacant. “Wolves.”
“Wolves.” The word came out in a breath, and I pressed my rear end against the dresser. When an awkward silence hung too long, I said, “I’m–”
“Fae,” she said curtly and then nodded. “Well, partly, anyway.”
“How did you know?”
Max feigned a shrug. No sign of her recent wounds. “I could tell. Not what, exactly. Not at first. But I knew there was something off with you.”
Off. Not different or special. Just off. It felt…appropriate.
I hugged myself tightly to ward off the chill that always came after an adrenaline rush. The evening had taken a drastic turn. “I’m also an Oracle of some kind.” Max’s eyes widened with a mix of panic and concern. “But not a very good one. I haven’t quite figured out how it all works. But I knew there was something wrong with you. I went to your apartment to check on you–”
“If my mother doesn’t already know that fun little fact, I’d keep it under wraps. Vivian Carmichael has a penchant for magical things.”
“Is she that bad?”
Max finished wrestling her thick curls into an elastic she plucked from my bedside table and looked me square in the eye. “My mother is the Alpha of the North American pack. Thousands of Therians are under her deployment, and many…others.”
I pushed off the dresser when she stepped toward the door. “Do you know anything about Therians and vampires working together to harvest Fae blood?”
She hesitated, her lips forming a line. “Just stay out of my mother’s affairs as much as possible. And…stay away from me. It’s for the best.”
“I thought we were friends?” She stared blankly at a spot on the floor, so I pressed. “Max, you have Fae blood in your apartment.”
She cringed and reached for the doorknob. “I bought that at the market.” She swung open my bedroom door.
“Wait,” I said, and Max glanced over her shoulder with those dark eyes. “Will you tell me what happened to you tonight?"
She sighed impatiently. "Some kind of fairy I’d never encountered before. She wreaked like death….” Her gaze glistened. “And made me beg for it.”
My mouth gaped with a hollow echo claiming my throat. “W-why?”
Max’s expression hardened. “Because of you. She pried me for information about you.”
She slipped away. It wasn’t until I heard the apartment door slam shut that I dared move. I slammed to the floor just as my stomach heaved its contents into the toilet. I lurched until my body slumped against the side of the cool bathtub.
Evaine was starting to come after people who knew me. Only luck had it that Max was otherworldly and could defend herself. But what if Evaine came for Tomas? Or Tess?
A chill possessed me, and I lay shaking on the bathroom floor as I thought only one thing. I had to master my abilities before she came for someone else.
***
When Cillian didn’t answer his phone, I jogged to Celadine’s house, the frosty sidewalk threatening to take me down. I slowed as I neared the short, iron gates and spotted her immediately.
She sat on the vast covered porch, staring at the moon as she sipped from a large wine glass. Her braids and dreads were in a tight beehive. White silk pooled around her feet from the oversized kimono she wore–every inch of tattoos covered–and the moonlight made it glow like stardust.
She sensed me approaching several feet away, I could tell from the way her peaceful expression became alert, and she craned her neck to where I stood on the lawn, breath burning in and out of my chest.
“He’s not here,” she said in a kind tone.
“Did you know?” I asked, my throat raw from the brisk jog. “What Max was.” When her dark eyebrows pinched together, I added. “You interviewed her. Did you know…could you tell she was a wolf?”
Celadine patted the spot next to her, and I dropped my ass on the step.
“Yes,” she finally said. “I could tell something was off, diff–otherworldly.” She grinned at my chosen word for all of them. I guess I was included in that group now. “But I couldn’t quite tell. At best, I figured she might have been half human, half wolf.”
My leg brushed against hers as I sighed. “I don’t think she’s half anything. She said her mother was the North American alpha or something.”
Celadine went ramrod straight at that. I gawked at that vast, violet stare. “Vivian Carmichael is the Therian alpha?”
I nodded, chewing at my lip. “How could you not know? She’s a benefactor at the gallery.”
“I’d never actually met her face to face. Only over the phone and through her people.” Celadine guffawed. “Who are clearly human. She hid it carefully. Which leaves me to believe she might have known what I was.”
“The Botwood guy,” I said. “He seemed awfully desperate to get you guys to join their council.”
She shook her head. “No, Botwood has his own reasons for us joining. He thinks we have…souls. He wants to create a race of vampires with souls, himself included. He thought I could change them all with magic.”
“But you can’t?”
“No, not without my mother’s grimoire, which was lost to our people hundreds of years ago.”
I thought about it all. What Celadine said as well as Max's words. She’d warned me to stay away from her mother when I told her about my Oracle abilities. And the Therians were believed to have eradicated all witches. Maybe they stole their magic for themselves.
“No, I don’t think it has anything to do with your vampirism. I think she wanted a line to you for your magic, the gifts from your mother.”
I couldn’t look away from the smile that spread across her face. “No one’s ever called them gifts before.”
“That’s what it is, though. A gift.”
“I would think the same of yours.”
I shrugged, suddenly fascinated with the grass beneath the toe of my boot. “I think mine’s more like a curse.”
“The power of the sun?” She raised her brows as she leaned into my view. “I should think not.”
“I’m worried I’ll hurt Cillian.” The words came out in a dry whisper. When she didn’t reply, I looked up, and awkward energy passed between us. I groaned. “He already told you.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “His pain shot through the bond. I asked him about it.” I flung my head to my lap, raking my fingers through my hair with a groan. Celadine put a hand on my back. “I assure you, the only part of Cillian that’s hurt is his pride. You have nothing to worry about. He’s a man. Just give him time to lick his wounds. You see, my brother left that world a long time ago. It’s hard for him to face it again.”
“What do you mean? Why?”
“After we were turned….” She wiggled her hand in the air with a shrug. “Give or take a few thousand years ago, our own people shunned us, and we were forced from our village. For centuries, we roamed the Earth, searching for our place. Humans were terrified of us, and vampires rejected us–whether from jealousy or something else, I’ll never know. And the Therians…” She heaved a sigh. “Well, they would reject anyone who’s not a wolf. We watched them fall from grace and get shoved into Ironworld. Watched how they fought for space alongside the vampires and the witches of this world. How they eradicated the entire witch community, what little there was of it…even my mother’s. All the while, Cillian and I were never welcome.”
I weighed the scope of that. Thousands of years. Cillian had told me just how old he and his sister were several times before. But it hadn’t truly sunk in until now. The grandness of it.
They were like gods.
“Are you happy now, after all this time?”
Something like sadness flickered in her deep, purple eyes behind the thick coal surrounding them. “Happy?” she questioned, and part of me wondered if she even knew the answer. “Perhaps that’s too strong a word. I can’t speak for Cillian, but after thousands of years roaming this planet, he’s still…restless. Myself, I’ve found comfort in the small stuff. But I’m tired, Avery.” Celadine sighed. “I’ll never have anything I truly want out of life, and I’ve yet to find the answer.”
“What answer?”
She waited a long moment to reply. “If the scraps of contentment I’ve been granted are enough.”
“Enough?’ A chill crept down my spine. “Celadine…what are you–”
My phone beeped, and I plucked it from my pocket. It was Julie.
Late-night training? =)
I put it away with a sigh. “I have to go.” I gave her a hug. “Will you be okay?”
She nodded and smiled. “Yes, of course. I’ve been okay for years.” When a laugh chuffed from her, I chuckled, too. “I’ll let him know you came.”
“Thanks.”
***
We trained for a couple hours. Julie was wisping–which she now did like a pro–and I learned the best ways to choose, hold, and wield knives of all sorts with the twins. Aya had her long, dark hair pulled into a tight bun as she had me practice with a set of small hand knives. For once, she wore something different than her sister.
Brie was brown leather from head to toe and a charcoal blouse beneath her gear. But Aya donned a navy pair of slacks, held up with matching suspenders over an even darker blue long-sleeved shirt. She somehow made suspenders look badass. Especially when I realized just how stocked she was, even in a casual outfit.
Aya’s wrists were bound in cuffs of antique gold. And, while stylish, I soon learned the bracelets held metal spikes that shot out at the click of a button. A gold locket dangled from her chest, filled with poison. In her pocket was a small metal cylinder, no bigger than a lighter, but it transformed into a staff instantly.
She let me play with all her killer gear before Brie took over and showed me a few things with a long dagger. Primarily defensive stuff involving hiding behind trees and using the landscape to my advantage.
The three of us now lay on the grass under the stars outside Oliver’s cabin–with Lattie fluttering about–just as Julie and Moya made their last trip back from wherever they’d wisped.
Julie collapsed with a smile at my side and took a few deep breaths as she stared up at the stars. “I can wisp anywhere within Ironworld. And the same goes for here, in the In Between. But I can’t get from here to the apartment.”
“Have you tried in Faerie?”
A grin tugged at the corner of her mouth, and she turned to look at me. Those crystal blues sparkling in the moonlight. “Yeah, our magic is heightened the closer we are to Faerie, and everything comes easy. It’s almost intoxicating.”
“Ahem,” Brie purposely cleared her throat on my other side, and I laughed.
We’d been in a game of twenty questions, the twins nailing me with curiosity after curiosity about the mundane world.
“Right,” I said. “Where were we?”
Moya passed on the idea of lying on the ground and sprawled across the wooden bench swing with a cat-like smile. A glass of wine appeared from somewhere, and she balanced it with two fingers. Lattie perched close by as she wiped at her tiny mouth and licked the remains of her last kill from her fingers.
Aya said, “What’s a self-watering plant? Is it magic?”
“No, I mean, it’s science.”
“Alchemy?”
I sat up and wrestled my hair into a messy bun. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. Partly, anyway.”
“What’s a shoe horn?” Brie asked.
“It’s a curved stick to help get your shoes on.”
Aya propped herself up on an elbow. “What’s a yoga mat?”
“It’s for doing yoga,” I told them as Julie and Moya stifled a shared laugh. The twins were quiet for a moment.
“What’s yoga?” Aya followed up, and the rest of us roared in laughter.
A bright light formed in the distance, and a portal opened. Oliver stepped through, and we all sat upright as he neared, the portal closing behind him.
“What was that?” I asked.
Oliver’s clunky brown boots stopped just a few feet away, a weary look on his face. “A private portal,” he replied. “I didn’t want to wisp and risk being tracked by anyone who might be watching our circle.”
My heart warmed at the words. Our circle. A group of friends, a family I never knew I needed. Even though I didn’t live at Oliver’s cabin, it felt like home.
Julie pushed to her feet and wiped off her white jeans–not a grass stain in sight. “So, did you do it? Did you figure out the map in Avery’s blood?”
His warm brown eyes locked on mine. “I did. The Summer Lord recognized the marker immediately.”
I exchanged a wide-eyed look with my friends and gave Oliver a tense shrug. “So? Who did it?”
He inhaled deeply. “Me.” My heart sprang faster as I watched him walk inside the cabin with solemn, hunched shoulders.
The five of us rushed after him as Oliver headed over to a rickety, worn red china cabinet. He plucked a wooden box from the top and wiped the caked dust from the surface before placing it on the table. He flung the hinged lid open, filling the room with a warm glow, and my jaw hung.
A ball of pure fiery sunshine sat in a bed of emerald silk. Its light flooded the cabin and poured outside.
“Oliver, what is this?” Moya asked, her eyes fixated on the orb.
He sat down with a harumph. “I once stripped away every ounce of magic, of…Fae-ness from a newborn Summer elf. She couldn’t have been more than a few months old when a frantic hooded woman knocked at my door in the middle of the night. She begged me to do it and paid me well. I’d never heard desperation like that in all my years, and I lived through the Great War. So, I took all I could manage and put it in that orb. All except one drop.”
I stared at the ball, enthralled by the pulsating hum of fit, like a heartbeat that matched my own, calling to me. I yearned to reach out and touch it.
Oliver cleared his throat. “The woman who came to my door that fateful night was the Lady of Summer.” Gasps filled the room. “I helped her strip away the Fae from the baby to make her nearly human.”
Julie’s hand covered her mouth. “Wait…wasn’t her name….”
“Tessana,” Moya finished for her. But her tumultuous stare was on me. “Lady Tessana of Summer.”