Chapter 7
Morgan had sent another note.
Frowning, Analise flopped into the armchair.
No work. What did that mean?
She stared at the note until the words blurred on the page. Sighing, she scrunched it up and tossed it away, reaching for the bottle resting at her feet. She hadn’t eaten all day, so the wine was it and hopefully, dreamless sleep would follow.
One dream in particular had lived in her head for as long as she could remember.
A graveyard under a pale moon. Hands thrusting through the earth, clawing their way free.
And a man with a smile belonging to a face she’d never seen anywhere else, a face both beguiling and harrowing in its beauty.
He always spoke to her, always the same words—‘use it.’
He would curl a length of her hair around his slender finger.
Honey, she’d decided the first morning she’d woken, sweaty and shaken.
That was what his voice sounded like. Smooth and rich and decadent.
The most frightening thing about the dream was the man knew what she was.
Sometimes he called her ‘my beautiful death witch.’
The first time he called her that she’d been thirteen, her magic newly awoken.
Then, at fifteen, Analise discovered the wine, and once she realised it numbed her senses and kept the dreams from her head, she continued to drink.
The nuns must have known, but they turned a blind eye, perhaps realising, like Analise did, that there was no other way to stop what was happening.
The girl who once devoured books and spent hours watching butterflies in the garden became a slave to a bottle to avoid being a slave to a magic she didn’t understand.
It was late when Analise finally peeled herself out of the armchair, the wine bottle drained.
She yanked her boots on and found her coat, shoving her arms into the sleeves angrily.
Morgan would have gone home, so she could snoop around a bit.
Maybe take another look at the man with the mark on his skin, the woman as well.
There was something about that mark that was vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t put her finger on it.
And if Morgan was there … if he was going to fire her, he’d have to do it to her face.
Analise hurried out. Noise from the pubs on Blackcoln Road filtered through the darkness.
She paused, then headed in the opposite direction, towards the morgue.
There was no sign of the Familiar, but she kept glancing over her shoulder, wondering where he was.
On one such glance, her heartbeat surged.
Two men, walking quickly. Analise darted across the street, passing beneath a stuttering street lamp wreathed in fog.
The men stayed on her heels, her skin puckering as dread lodged itself in her throat.
She patted her hip, realising too late she’d left her blade behind.
Her magic stirred, as if it could sense the threat.
Analise hurried into the alley, flinging herself into the shadows and pressing her body against a wall.
She was drunk, weaponless, and fucking terrified.
When the men entered the alley, Analise didn’t dare move. She didn’t even breathe, but somehow, they knew where she was. One of them wrapped thick fingers around her throat and hauled her away from the wall.
‘I don’t have any money,’ she managed.
A flash of teeth in the darkness. ‘We ain’t after money, sweetheart.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ she muttered. The man gave her a small shake, laughing when she gasped.
Every muscle in her body was screaming, and she was suddenly sober.
Against one of them, she might have stood a chance, but against two men much bigger and stronger than her—she could only hope they didn’t kill her.
Her magic pushed against her skin, a living thing wanting to escape its cage. The men mistook her gasp for distress and laughed again.
‘Pretty,’ the one holding her said. ‘Drunk, as well.’
‘Look at those lips,’ murmured the other. ‘She looks fresh enough to eat.’
‘I don’t want to hurt you,’ Analise told them.
She clawed at the fingers around her throat.
The man laughed and struck her across the face so hard it made her ears ring.
He released her, and she fell to her knees.
When his hand tangled in her hair and he hauled her upright, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist, grit her teeth, and unleashed her magic.
She pushed her way into his body, ripping through muscle and vein and tendon.
She knew what the inside of a body looked like.
She wasn’t gentle. The man’s mouth opened in a silent plea as Analise’s death magic plunged into his heart, tearing the life from his body.
The hand gripping her head slackened, and the man slumped to the ground.
On her hands and knees, Analise gasped. Life flowed through her, as warm as sunshine and as powerful as a bolt of lightning. It fizzed and thrummed through her veins. Slowly, she stood, finding the other man staring at her in horror.
‘He’s dead!’
‘I know,’ she managed. ‘Fuck off or join him.’
The man stared at her a moment, then turned and ran, his footsteps echoing off the pavement.
Analise didn’t spare the dead man a second glance. She hurried towards the morgue, needing to get inside and off the street.
There had only ever been one other time—a bird.
She found it in the jaws of the convent cat and pulled its tiny, feathery body free.
She wanted to help it, and had held it between her hands, staring into its liquid eyes.
One of the nuns had been with her. The woman put her hand on young Analise’s shoulder and told her the bird would not survive, that it was better God took it now than let it suffer.
Analise had seen death approaching, a shadow that crept along the grass, and the magic that was so new to her had stirred.
She felt death in her hands, and not wanting the bird to suffer, she’d instinctively pulled what little life was left from its fragile body.
The bird's tiny heart fluttered beneath her fingertips, and then, it was still.
She told no one what she did, or what it had felt like, and she’d never done it again—until tonight.
Analise unlocked the morgue with shaking hands, glancing fearfully over her shoulder. It was obvious, even to a half-drunk lout, that she was a death witch. The Gendarme would be here soon.
She threw open the door to the cold box and pulled out the metal tray with the dead woman on it. Quickly, Analise unwrapped her face. A noise in the alley made her jump; she paused, hands hovering over the woman, heart in her throat, but no one came charging through the door.
‘I’m sorry, I need to see,’ she whispered.
The experience always started the same—heat, the sound of blood pumping in her ears, fast, furious, a heartbeat fading from existence. Sometimes, they died slowly. Other times, death was swift, the threads that held a body to the world of the living cut abruptly.
There was a moment between life and death where the human soul paused, waiting to be collected and guided on.
By the time Analise put her hands on the dead, the soul was gone, but there was enough of who that person had been for her to glimpse their last moments.
Sometimes, it was the faces of friends and family, a quiet peaceful death, but more often than not, death was anything but peaceful.
It was terror and confusion, pain, remorse, a whirlwind of regrets and what-ifs slamming through a mind now irreversibly faced with its own mortality.
With nowhere else to go, those emotions hurtled towards Analise like the ocean against the shore.
It wasn’t the emotions she wanted to see tonight, so she pushed them aside when they came, let them slide past her until a flash of a face appeared in the darkness. Pale skin, black, fathomless eyes, elongated canines, claws, membranous wings, and a screech that made her want to cover her ears.
In a dead woman’s memory, black eyes bored into hers.
Analise tore her hands free, leaving them hovering above the corpse, her heartbeat threatening to drown her. Terror seized her limbs and she couldn’t move, eyes staring at nothing, seeing nothing except that face. Her stomach churned. She wanted to vomit, but couldn’t move to find the bucket.
There had to be more to see. There had to be.
Swallowing, Analise laid her hands on the woman once more.