Chapter 23 – MICAH
Chapter
Twenty-Three
MICAH
" A bsolutely not ," Sadie declares, tossing another bottle into her oversized mesh bag. The glass clinks ominously against what appears to be a mummified bat wing. "I don't need a babysitter."
I lean against the doorframe of her apartment, trying not to fidget. The whole place reeks of burnt sage and something vaguely medicinal and stinky that makes my nose twitch.
"It's not babysitting," I argue. "It's... security detail."
She snorts, dark-lined eyes rolling heavenward. "Security detail? For what? In case the hemlock tries to mug me?"
"You're going to Twilight Market," I remind her, pushing my glasses up my nose. "Last time you went alone, you came back with a hex that made you speak backwards for three days."
"Which was hilarious," she mutters.
“For you, maybe. I’m the one who had to translate your backwards bullshit to everyone else.”
Her apartment is exactly what you'd expect from my stepsister. Organized chaos with a heavy dose of gothic drama. Black candles drip wax on every surface. Crystals wrapped in twine and netting hang from every surface they could possibly hang from. The bookcases are stuffed with grimoires, jars of unidentifiable substances that definitely don’t smell good, and skulls from every species imaginable.
Shifters and humans included.
Sadie sighs dramatically, shoving a final packet of what looks suspiciously like dried blood into her bag.
"Fine. Whatever. You can come." She jabs a finger at my chest. "But you follow my lead.
No alpha wolf posturing, no growling at the vendors, and for fuck's sake, don't sniff anything.
Twilight Market has rules about shifters. "
"I know how to behave in witch spaces," I protest, though we both know I've never set foot in Twilight Market. Few non-witches have.
"Sure you do." She shoulders her bag, the contents clinking ominously. "Remember when you wolfed out at that coven mixer because someone offered you chocolate with lavender?"
"I'm allergic to lavender," I mutter. "And I didn't wolf out. I just... sneezed. A lot."
"Your eyes turned amber and you grew claws, Micah."
"Minor details."
She heads for the door, black combat boots thudding against the hardwood. I follow, ducking to avoid a hanging bundle of dried, skunky herbs I’m pretty sure is just weed.
"So," she says as we descend the stairs from her third-floor walkup, "this bonding ritual. You're really going through with it?"
"We are," I confirm, emphasizing the plural. "All five of us."
"Regina seems... different than I expected." Sadie's tone shifts, becoming less sarcastic, more thoughtful. "When you guys said you found your mate, I pictured some doe-eyed ingenue who'd swoon at your collective muscle mass."
I laugh, the sound echoing in the stairwell. "Regina is about as likely to swoon as you are to wear pink."
"Exactly." A hint of approval colors her voice. "She's got backbone. And brains. I like her."
This feels like dangerous territory. Sadie rarely approves of anyone, especially anyone connected to the pack. Her relationship with wolves is... complicated at best. Having a shifter stepbrother was definitely not in her goth witch life plan.
"You do?" I ask, surprised.
"Don't sound so shocked." She pushes through the building's front door into the crisp evening air. "I'm capable of liking people. Occasionally. Under specific astronomical conditions."
"When Mercury is in retrograde and the moon is blue?"
"Precisely." She flashes me a rare smile, one that reminds me we're family, despite everything. Despite the fact that I'm pretty sure she'd rather not be sometimes. "But seriously, she's cool. You guys don't deserve her, but you might not completely fuck this up."
From Sadie, that's practically a blessing.
"Your confidence is overwhelming," I deadpan.
“You’re welcome.”
We walk in companionable silence for a few blocks, heading toward the older part of town where historic buildings crowd narrow streets.
Stormvale at twilight has a certain magic to it, and I don't mean that figuratively.
Actual magic. The liminal space between day and night makes the air practically shimmer with potential energy.
Sadie stops abruptly at an unremarkable alley between a bookstore and a vintage clothing shop. To ordinary eyes, it's just a dead end filled with dumpsters and broken bottles. But even my wolf senses can detect the faint shimmer of magic. A veil separating the mundane world from something else.
"Ground rules," Sadie says, turning to face me. "Stay close. Don't touch anything unless I say it's okay. Don't make eye contact with anything that has more than two eyes. And if someone asks if you want to see something amazing, the answer is always no."
"Anything else?" I ask dryly.
"Yeah. If I tell you to run, fucking run."
With that cheerful advice, she turns and walks straight into what appears to be a solid brick wall—and disappears. I steel myself and follow, suppressing the instinctive wolf growl as magic washes over me, cold and prickly, like walking through electrified cobwebs.
One moment I'm in a grimy alley, the next I'm... elsewhere.
Twilight Market unfolds before me like someone's fever dream of a medieval bazaar collided with every supernatural trope in existence. Tents and stalls of impossible colors stretch as far as I can see, some floating several feet off the ground, others seeming to phase in and out of reality. Vendors of every conceivable species hawk their wares—vampires with merchandise suspended in blood globules, beings I can't even identify, witches with skin in impossible hues my shifter eyes can’t even fully register because I’m not a fucking mantis shrimp.
The scents all hit me one after another like a chain of slaps right to the face. Exotic incense, cooking meat of questionable origin, herbs both medicinal and poisonous, the metallic tang of fresh blood, and under it all, the electric buzz of pure, undiluted magic.
"Close your mouth," Sadie mutters, grabbing my wrist. "You look like a tourist."
I snap my jaw shut, not even realizing it had been hanging open. "This is... not what I expected."
"What did you expect? A witch-themed farmers market?"
"Kinda, yeah."
She snorts, tugging me deeper into the labyrinth of stalls. "The last ingredient we need is lunar venom. It's tricky to source because the merchant only comes out after the waxing crescent, and we're cutting it close."
I follow obediently, trying not to stare at a woman plucking eyeballs from a bubbling cauldron, testing them for firmness like picking out the perfect avocado.
Gods, I hope those aren’t human eyeballs.
"What exactly is lunar venom?" I ask, stepping carefully around a small creature that looks like a bipedal toad waving a paper fan twice the size of their body.
"Concentrated essence of moonlight, collected during an eclipse and filtered through basilisk fangs," Sadie explains. "It helps stabilize competing energies. And FYI, siphon energy and shifter energy is as competing as it gets."
"And I thought our biology homework was complicated."
We weave through increasingly bizarre stalls. One offers "Memories of Your Future Self" in tiny bottles, another sells timepieces that apparently run backwards, and a particularly disturbing booth displays organs that are… inching and flopping around on a huge stone slab.
I try not to look too closely at any of it.
"Fifteen minutes to the lunar vendor," Sadie says, checking a pocketwatch that shows warping phases of the moon instead of numbers. "Want to look around? Just don't wander off."
I'm about to decline when something catches my eye. It’s a small stall tucked between two larger ones, its wares displayed on midnight blue velvet. The merchant, a wizened woman with skin like aged parchment, meets my gaze with milky eyes that somehow see right through me.
"For your mate," she says, her voice like dry leaves rustling.
I approach cautiously, Sadie trailing behind me. “Aaaand here we go,” she grumbles.
The old woman's gnarled fingers hover over her merchandise, an assortment of glittering objects that seem to change form when not directly observed. But it's one item in particular that draws me. A pendant, small and delicate, hanging from a silver chain so fine it looks like spun moonlight.
"What is it?" I ask, unable to look away.
"A starlight compass," the merchant replies. "For those who have lost their way. Or those who have found it but need reassurance."
The pendant itself is a small circular disc with intricate etchings, suspended within what looks like a drop of liquid glass. Inside, tiny points of light shift and move like actual stars.
"It’s… beautiful," I murmur.
"It's also expensive," Sadie warns. "Luna merchants don't take Visa."
The old woman cackles. "For the wolf whose mate bears scars from his kind, I might be willing to cut a deal."
My head snaps up. "How did you?—"
"I know many things, young wolf. Throw in a lock of your fur, and I'll let you have it for half off."
I blink. "My fur? What are you going to do with that?"
"Wolf magic," she says flatly, as if it should be obvious. And I guess it kind of should.
Sadie groans beside me. "Bad idea, Micah."
"It's just fur," I protest.
The merchant is already coming around, like she wants to act fast before I change my mind. That gives me more pause than Sadie's concerns, but then I think about giving the pendant to Regina and all my reservations flee.
I shed my clothes behind the counter and shift into my wolf form, and I can tell from the way the merchant's eyes widen she wasn't expecting it to be so big. Most people aren't expecting the size difference between an alpha and a normal non-shifter wolf.
She’d really shit a brick if she saw Sean.
My tail sinks between my legs as the old woman pulls out a pair of black shears, and Sadie gives me a "you fucking idiot" look as the merchant examines a patch of fur by my neck.