The silver threads had vanished from my hands, but my skin was streaked an oily black where they’d touched. When I turned my hands over, they ignited in dark indigo flames that licked the night air and cast the alley in a blue glow. The flames didn’t burn.
I gasped, turning to look at Bean. Silver mist poured from her mouth, shimmering in the night like the sheerest gossamer scarf.
Her soul.
On the pavement next to her, a raven appeared. It was more beast than bird, with opalescent black feathers and great golden eyes that held the wisdom of a creature a thousand times his age. I stared openmouthed, my body frozen in shock. I knew the raven wasn't a real bird—not one that I could feel with my hands—but a shadow creature that by all accounts I shouldn't be able to see.
He was a messenger. A ferrier of souls.
He was the most magnificent, terrifying creature I have ever seen.
But I couldn’t let him take her. She wasn’t ready. Wasn’t so far gone she couldn’t be helped.
Possessed by some ancient, unnamed knowledge, I raised my flaming hands, horrified as they caught the edge of Bean’s soul. But instead of igniting, the misty fabric of her essence recoiled, slithering back into his mouth.
The raven disappeared.
The flames in my hands died out.
The shield dropped away.
“Bean!” I knelt beside her, pressing a hand to her forehead. She was even colder now. Her eyes were still open, covered now with a sick, milky white, shot through with tiny blue veins.
The sound of new breath sucking into her lungs nearly stopped my heart.
Bean gasped and sputtered, her legs twitching. Then she sat bolt upright.
I shot to my feet and stumbled backward, slamming into the wall behind me. Didn’t matter. For once I was grateful for the pain. The bricks were reassuring against my shoulders, a piece of solid reality in a night that had just gone utterly sideways.
Bean moaned, her curdled-milk eyes staring right through me.
My heart dropped. Was she a zombie? A revenant? Whatever she was, I’d made her, and I’d done it with something dark. Other. Something festering inside me that I didn’t understand and absolutely didnotwant to fuck with.
Worse, I’d broken my only unbreakable rule. After nine-plus years of lying low—not even so much as a heat spell on my coffee or a money spell to help with rent—I’d just used my magic.
In a series of jerky, disjointed movements, the girl—creature—hauled herself up. She pinned me with those rheumy eyes, seething with an unspoken accusation.
You did this to me, witch.
I wanted to bolt—every instinct inside me shouted at me to get away—but I couldn’t. I let her approach, shuffling and awkward, my own body paralyzed with a mix of fear and morbid curiosity.
She tilted forward, face close to mine, and inhaled deeply.
But rather than attack, as I’d half-expected—or die again, as I’d half-wished—she simply turned away and shuffled down the alley, disappearing into the misty dark.
Instead of going after her, I did what I do best.
Ran like hell.
Four
Gray
Normally I liked to take the long way home after dropping off Waldrich’s van, strolling along the Bay’s narrow beach as neighboring Seattle blinked awake. It was a three-mile walk from Waldrich’s dock at the Hudson Marina to the house Sophie and I shared in South Bay, and a good way to unwind after a long shift.
But this morning, as sunrise turned the sky the same shade of milky pink as Bean’s eyes, I took the shortest route possible, zipping home to bolt myself inside.
A hot shower washed off the blood and grime, but standing in our cheery red-and-yellow kitchen an hour later, Sophie’s annoyingly loud fox clock ticking away above the stove, guilt and confusion lingered.
