Witches weren’t given the option of walking away from the wyrding they stood guard against. If they tried, they were inevitably tracked down and their magic stolen from them by order of the Council. It wasn’t fair to lose your sense of self like that, but letting the wyrding spread was far worse. Bran didn’t want to ever know what it would be like to live without the heat of magic he could call up from the elements. The iron beads on his bracelet felt heavy, but what they helped protect against made it easy to answer. “Yes.”
Aisling’s bottom lip trembled, and her next question had Bran getting up from his chair so he could hug her.Will you die like her?
“No one else is dying,” Bran said fiercely, holding her tight. “I won’t let it happen.”
Three people were dead already, and he’d named them all. Bran vowed those would be the only names he’d have to speak for the ritual this summer. Aisling sniffled a little but only scrubbed at her eyes rather than fall apart crying. Both of them had experienced their fair share of crying jags over the last few days. Bran tried to do his where she couldn’t see, but the apartment was small, and Aisling seemed not to want to leave his side, even here in their new home.
He rubbed at her back before straightening. “Come on. If you’re finished, let’s put everything away. I think there’s a berry pie someone brought that we can eat.”
Aisling nodded and put away her phone before helping him clean up. The apartment didn’t have a dishwasher, so Bran hand-washed them, and Aisling dried. Afterward, he pulled a whole pie from the fridge, its lattice-work top sprinkled liberally with sugar. He didn’t bother with plates, carrying it and two forks back to the couch. They sat and ate the pie from the middle out to the crust while watching a show he’d never seen before but which Aisling was invested in, and that was all that mattered.
Summer meant no school for her, and Bran didn’t need to work atthe moment, so they both stayed up until almost midnight before he turned off the television. Aisling went into his old room that was now hers to get ready for bed. At some point, they’d need to redecorate it, but it could wait until he moved stuff from her room in the house to the Shoppe.
Bran went into the bedroom that had once been their mother’s. He turned on the light and closed the door to get ready for bed. Nothing about the room had been changed since their arrival, and all of it reminded him of his mother. Gritting his teeth against the lump in his throat, Bran pulled off his jeans and got into bed in his boxers and T-shirt after turning off the light. Light from the full moon shined through the top portion of the bedroom window, the air-conditioning unit humming along steadily.
Bran curled up on his side, staring at the wall and willing sleep to take him. As stressed-out and tired as he was, sleep was difficult to come by. At some point, though, he slipped into restless dreams, but even those weren’t enough to keep him under. He jerked awake however long later, blinking blearily through the shadows of the room, surprised to see Aisling standing by his bed.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she put her hand over his mouth and frantically shook her head. The moonlight had shifted over the hours, but it was still bright enough to see how big her eyes were, the way her bottom lip trembled, and how her shoulders and chest moved like a hummingbird’s wings as she breathed. Terror had a look, and it was his little sister as she twisted to point at the window, stabbing her finger in that direction over and over again.
Bran pried her hand off his mouth and sat up, staring at the window. Nothing had blocked the light coming through over the air-conditioning unit, and they were upstairs from the Shoppe, which didn’t have any security system because it didn’t need any when the entire building was covered in witchmarks. But then he heard it—the heavy, harsh breathing ofsomethingoutside their home.
Bran scrambled out of bed as quietly as he could and grabbed his jeans off the floor, yanking them on in a matter of seconds. He shoved his feet into his sneakers and hastily tied them, glancing at Aisling, glad to see she wore a pair of sneakers as well, even if she was only wearingshorts and a tank top. The air-conditioning units weren’t the best, and it was still warm in the apartment despite the early morning hour. Bran reached for his awareness of Jupiter and couldn’t sense his familiar anywhere nearby. He still tugged on their bond, sending a burst of desperate emotion best translated ashelpdown that magical connection.
He crept toward the window, ignoring the frantic tugging on his shirt and arm by Aisling. He made a shushing gesture at her, stayed low, and put his back up against the wall. The bedroom looked out onto the back of the property, facing the forest instead of the local road. He angled his head to look out the glass, and in the moonlit forest, floating gently through the trees and coming closer, were small glowing lights. Bran jerked back, horror washing through him like ice water, making his skin prickle. He reached for Aisling without looking, her hand sliding into his as she pressed close.
Whatever was out there, he knew why they had come—they wanted Aisling.
He leaned down and whispered into her ear so softly it was barely sound. “We need to get into the circle.”
The Shoppe was surrounded by witchmarks, the same way their other home had been. The magic embedded in the walls should have been enough to keep out what was hunting them, but the nightmare outside had broken through their mother’s defenses. Whatever was out there was more powerful than what typically haunted the forest.
Witchmarks should have been enough to keep them safe.
That they hadn’t been meant the only thing Bran trusted right then was the coven’s circle, a barrier of magic stronger than any combination of witchmarks. Reaching it meant getting downstairs on creaking steps and into the basement, all while something hunted them from outside.
Aisling nodded agreement, her breathing ragged. Bran tugged on her ponytail, wishing he had time to comfort her, but they had to survive this night first. He gripped her hand tight in his and bent low, pulling her with him as they passed the window, hoping nothing outside would see them. Bran led her out of the bedroom and down the hallway, heartbeat thrumming in his ears like a drum. Panic was a band around his ribs, making it difficult to breathe, and the only thing that quieted it was the memory of his mother’s voice.
Never let them see fear. Your magic can hurt them just as surely as iron can.
Bran had walked the forest plenty of times before and set witchmarks into the trees to guard the paths that led to the cabins made of ash wood. He’d only seen the lights a handful of times over the years, the first when he was newly thirteen and foraging during the light of the harvest moon with his mother. He’d frozen back then, fear anchoring his body to the earth, and Bran knew he couldn’t freeze now. Aisling would die if he did.
He led her to the stairs and gestured at her to look at where he stepped, a lifetime of knowing where the steps creaked from pressure enabling him to descend without making a sound. Aisling literally followed in his footsteps, fingers of her other hand clenched tightly around the fabric of his T-shirt. They reached the bottom landing, and Bran wrapped his free hand around the doorknob, turning it slowly. He held his breath at the faint squeak of metal as the latch retracted and carefully pushed it open.
Through the crack, he could see the Shoppe was dark, nothing seemingly out of place. But the urgent need to run still clawed at the back of his mind, and for all that the Shoppe appeared safe, he couldn’t trust the emptiness, not when he knew what hunted beyond the walls.
He flexed his fingers around Aisling’s hand and carefully pushed the door open wider. The hinges squeaked from the motion, and he froze, Aisling whimpering at his back. Bran gritted his teeth and opened the door wider, stepping into the Shoppe and tugging Aisling along with him. He didn’t turn on the lights because they couldn’t risk whatever was outside knowing they were awake.
But then a shadow blocked the moonlight streaming through the trifecta stained-glass window, and Bran knew he shouldn’t look—heknew—but he did so anyway.
What stared back was a horror from the depths of a hellish nightmare.
The gray face was eyeless, mouth a slit full of teeth in a Cheshire cat grin. Large horns grew from its skull on either side, arcing overhead into tapering points that almost touched, giving the illusion of a crescent moon crown. Narrow palms with elongated fingers were splayedagainst the stained-glass window. When it curled its fingers, the claws at the tips made a terrible sound against the glass. Then it opened its mouth, its head nearly splitting in two, and the animalistic scream it let out was a sound Bran would never be able to forget. It slammed its horned head against the window, the blow rattling the stained-glass in the frame but not breaking it.
The creature screamed again, and when it lifted its head, Bran saw burns on its face from the welded iron connecting the stained-glass panels to each other and the frame. Witchmarks sizzled into being across every stained-glass panel, magic keeping what had come from the forest at bay.
For now.
Aisling crashed into him, arms wrapping around his body as she buried her face against his back while hyperventilating. The creature screamed again, and all the witchmarks their coven had etched into the wood of the walls and floor and ceiling of the Shoppe burned to life in the wake of that sound.
