Page 4 of Tick Tock, Darling

Somewhere down the block a horn was working through a Christmas song, slow, the way they play it here. It made me smile. I love this time of year. People are a little nicer, and so are the supernaturals.

Then I looked up at St. Christopher’s and stopped smiling.

My mouth went dry. Then my magic pulled back, the whole of it, retreating into my chest and sitting there like something that had heard a noise in the dark. My feet wanted to go the other direction. I made them hold.

It had been a beautiful building once. Twin towers, a rose window over the doors, and every pane in it lit up on a Sunday morning. Now the towers were open to the sky and the window was a black hole with the lead still in it, bent and empty, holding nothing.

Katrina had taken most of the roof. What moved in afterward took the rest.

Angelo Santi had called me that morning. Peter Pan was out of the Hollows. Angelo was obsessed with protecting his daughter. I understood that. I would be too if I had a powerful daughter. Pan was a threat to everyone’s daughter young and old alike.

He’d caused a riot in the Hollows a couple of months ago. Along with Keir Rankin and Brynn Whitveil, I helped put him back in his cell. My spell was part of what held the door, and I’d slept better knowing it. Only black magic could have broken it — real black magic that would cost a witch something she would never get back.

Nothing from a book. The magic you let in. It roots, and it grows, and then there’s no telling where you stop and it starts. Something I had seen too many times and it never ends well.

A witch named Wendy Darling had done it. Come up out of the Elder Dimension and spent whatever it took to let him out.

My hands went cold and my magic drew back into my chest, the way it does when it already knows. Wendy and I would meet. My premonitions are never wrong.

I’d stood across from a witch like her before—Marsha Cadieux, out at the old Saint Louis Cathedral in Lumina Glade. Marsha didn’t want to be saved. That was the whole of it. Nothing I had could reach a woman who’d already agreed. I did what had to be done. I still see her face. It haunted me.

Gooseflesh broke out on my arm. I didn’t know one thing about Wendy Darling except that she’d opened a door for Peter Pan, and there’s no telling from the outside whether a woman like that is being held or being obliged.

That’s how these end. Somebody stands across from her, and somebody doesn’t walk away, and I’ve been given the job twice now.

I wanted to know what he’d promised her. I wanted to know what she’d paid. And underneath that, in a place I don’t say out loud, I wanted to get my hands on her — because my work had held and one woman had undone it, and she’d let that thing walk free to do it.

I rubbed my arms that were covered with goosebumps and entered St. Christopher’s Church. My boots crunched on the rubble. Broken glass, busted wood, plaster gone soft and gray. Reds and blues underfoot, and one shade of green that had been a saint’s robe. All of it filthy. All of it sharp. The shard of the Christmas Star was here somewhere. Over a hundred years ago a priest had carried it out of Bethlehem and had a glazier set it into a stained glass window.

The altar was gone. Somebody had taken it apart and stacked the pieces, and what they’d painted across the wall behind it was still legible after twenty years. Candle wax in the corners. Small bones in a ring on the floor, picked clean, arranged by somebody with time.

Whatever they’d called down, it had come. And it had stayed long enough to want the windows.

Nothing. Not by looking. Or digging.

Time was of the essence. Doing this manually wasn’t happening.

I closed my eyes and held out my palms.

Stella lucis, ostende te. Star of light, show yourself.

My heart quickened. The tips of my fingers tingled and the hair on my arms stood up. The air turned colder and I shivered. Something was fighting me. Darkness was pushing back, not wanting me to find the shard. But I pushed harder and my nose started to bleed. My palms shook. Power moved through me like a pulling thread.

I stood and opened my eyes and let the power lead me through the debris. I was drawn to the far dark corner where there were bricks piled together into what looked like a pyramid.

My magic recoiled so hard it hurt, and my mouth went dry.

Don’t get sick. Don’t get sick. Don’t get sick.

Those bricks weren’t there by accident. Someone or something had stacked those bricks. I didn’t want to touch them, but something was being hidden. I grabbed a brick. A shock shot through me and I gasped. My throat burned as my dinner of étouffée threatened to make a second appearance.

Footsteps in the rubble behind me. The hair on my neck rose and I turned with my hands already up.

Caspian Hook, leaning against what was left of the doorframe. Shirtless, jeans, black boots, and a look on him that said he’d been standing there a while.

I lowered my hands. Not all the way.

“Hello, Tinker Bell.” He smiled. I’d seen that handsome smile take witches apart who should have known better than to lose their heart to him. “Angelo Santi sends his greetings.”