39. Tasseomancy
thirty-nine
“Again!” Tobias barked, hauling her attention away from Lou and Darkly as he stumbled in the grass and teetered forward. “Enervate.”
“I can’t,” she gritted through her teeth. They had been at this for hours. No water, no break, no breakfast. Lou had kept to her word, waking Milla and Darkly at dawn and driving them to the casting range. Hours later, her fingers were cramping, the tendons in her ruined right palm screamed, and if she had to rot and renew a clump of flowers one more Horned God-damned time …
“You must.” He crouched in front of her, eyes spitting fire. “There is no way around this. You owe the ritual. You must control your Way.”
“What’s the point?” She slurred, swaying where she crouched. The cost of her Way had been slow to appear, which might be the only upside to Tobias’s relentless training. But after a full morning of teasing her magick, Milla was one hex away from falling over drunk in the grass. “They’re just gonna steal it an’ make the world all shitty.”
Tobis leaned close, each word sharp as a knife’s edge. “For weeks, I watched you fight in that cell. For weeks I watched you refuse to bend. Where is that witch now?”
“She’s tired.” Milla stood, listing to the side and barely keeping to her feet. “ Rozlo?it. ” A flick of her fingers splashed the decomposition hex against a cluster of flowers. Half of them dried and wilted, none of them rotting. Nausea sent her staggering, and she clutched onto the wooden post at the end of the court.
Across the field, Darkly threw a weak handful of Shades at his sister, and the whorling mass disintegrated three feet from their target. Lou thrust her hands on her hips and shouted something that had him dropping his head. Even from this distance, Milla saw how sharply he panted, pushed to the very edge of exhaustion. He shook his head at the grass, arms trembling, and collapsed onto his side.
Rai met them at the door with a cup of tea and Darkly’s vape pen, and the rest of the day passed in a drunken haze, only to begin anew at dawn. And again the next day, until the world blurred and Milla could not walk in a straight line, much less see one. Tobias demanded more and more of her Way to rot flowers and tree trunks, making Milla score black marks in the grass and reverse the damage until her magick sputtered and fizzled out.
And at night, plans were made around them; discussions about Beltane, the ritualists, attending covens, and the rites being performed, but Milla was too tea-drunk to absorb any of it. By Wednesday evening, she could barely keep her eyes open, much less move her body. She slumped against the sofa where she’d collapsed hours earlier, staring down at her teacup. The dregs clung to the side, clustered like ants at a picnic. An omen? She closed an eye, focusing on the latent magick in her veins. The vesticism no tea could drown. A cluster blurred into the shape of a bear, but before she could decipher the meaning, the cup was swept from her hand.
Diego crouched in front of her, brow wrinkled and eyes gleaming hard behind his glasses.
“Why are you doing this, bruja?” He swept hair from her face, gently tucking the scraggly bangs behind an ear. His gaze lifted, and though Milla did not have the energy to turn around, she knew he was frowning at Darkly, lifeless and grey on the sofa, shadestepping as he did each afternoon at Lou’s demand. To the Beltane grounds, to Tallahassee, Milla had no idea where he kept going, did not care, really, so long as he came back.
“Lou told me to,” Milla mumbled through numb lips. Her head dropped to the side, and her vision blurred. “Didn’t wanna make it ‘bout me.”
A bitter, angry sound left him, and he vanished from view.
On Thursday, Lou moved the meeting into the living room, presumably so Milla and Darkly could participate. She had made it to the couch this time, slumped against the pillows with her head resting on the Hygge blanket. Darkly filled the other end, his socked feet in her lap and higher than a kite on a breezy day.
“Check-ins will occur every thirty minutes, either in person at the landmarks I have noted on the grounds”—she pointed to the television screen, where a Beltane map was displayed. Different areas of the twisting, labyrinthine ritual grounds had been marked with tiny drawings of Roman statues, except for the monstrosity at the center: a three-faced, winged demon— “or by phone. Do not miss your check-in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Darkly drawled in an exaggerated Southern accent.
“We leave first thing,” Lou ignored him. “It is a six-hour drive to Mobile and another forty-five to the swamp where Beltane is being held.”
Darkly raised his vape pen and pressed his index finger to his nose. “Dibs on ridin’ with Tobe.”
“Negative, Keir. I need you in the Neitherworld.”
“An’ I need you tae be less of a minge,” he replied, devolving into giggles.
“Goddess,” Lou sneered at her brother. “Get ahold of yourself.”
“You did this to him,” Milla said. No one responded, so maybe she thought it. Her lips had gone numb, and with every passing moment, her eyes grew heavier and heavier.
“—due at the center before sundown, make sure you aren’t late.”
“Aye, aye.” Darkly fired off a heavy-handed salute, jostling Milla as he did. She grumbled and burrowed her face into the blanket.
“And keep it brief. You have to feed the ritual, but no showboating.”
“Cannae promise anythin’ in this state,” he chuckled, and the gentle rolling sound lulled Milla into a heavy-limbed sleep.
The whispers woke her, teasing Milla to consciousness with their incessant demands in the pitch-black night. Not a seam of light bled through the curtains or under her door. Her heart thudded in her chest, struggling against an odd weight pressing down on her sternum, grinding her bones into a hard, unyielding surface.
“There she is,” a trio of voices whispered near her ear. “It has been some time, magissa. Did you forget about me?”
Milla whimpered, trying to force her body upright, and the pressure increased, pinning her to the floor like a bug. Her arms would not move, her legs only twitched, the limbs and extremities tingling like her blood had been pinched off and flow was just returning.
“Still some fight in you, good.” The voices hummed across her forehead and buzzed into her other ear. “You are going to need that.”
Tears pricked her eyes, refusing to fall. She could not move, could not scream. It was the cells all over again when that witch had held her at his mercy, taunting Milla in the dark. How was he here? Why was he here? He was a torment designed by C.R.O.W., and Milla was out; she was free to do what Lou demanded and lead a semblance of life. Why was he here?
“Just a bit longer, magissa.” The voices taunted, and the pressure increased, flattening Milla where she lay. “We almost have what we need.”
Millapet?
The pressure on her chest eased suddenly as if in surprise, and a thin stream of air entered her lungs. She whimpered again, this time in relief.
“Who did you call?” Did she imagine spittle crashing against her cheek? The stink of stale of garlic and lemon? “Who else is out there, magissa?”
They’re here, Milla. A new voice shouted. You have to wake up!
“No matter. He has wandered far enough, any moment now, and not even C.R.O.W. will be able to stop us.”
Cannae get to you. Wake up!
A door slammed open somewhere in her duplex—and another, another—door after door, cupboards and drawers. The pressure eased, the voices murmuring in surprise, and then they vanished altogether.
Milla lurched upright, gasping wildly as she spun onto her knees, legs tangled in blankets. Her head spun, heart pounding relentlessly like it had whenever that witch left her cells. When time returned to normal.
But nothing was normal about this. The dark teemed around her, chilled like a thick fog. It crashed against her arms, her thighs, pawing at Milla’s face and turning it to the left, the left, always to the left.
Cannae get to you .
She crawled forward, stumbling onto her feet and reaching out blindly for something to support her weight. Trinkets rattled on a shelf, and her fingertips brushed a row of books, their leather and paper spines grounding Milla in a time, a place. Every muscle protested, her limbs and bones heavy from the tea.
They’re here . The warning from that new voice echoed in her mind, the timbre and tone so similar to Darkly’s. And who else could it be calling to her when the Shades filled her room?
The Shades.
Milla whipped her head to the left, replaying the witch’s words.
He has wandered far enough .
“No.” Milla clawed along the bookshelf and reached for a doorknob that was not there. She swept blindly at the empty air, catching the faint groan of hinges before the Shades rushed in, crashing against Milla like a phantom wave and dragging her into their nothingness.
A floorboard creaked under her weight, and a sandy substance dug into her soles. The Shades heaved and relinquished their hold, sending Milla careening into the hall, where more Shades teemed around her legs and hips, keeping her upright as they urged her down the hall and into a room as black as the Neitherworld itself.
She crashed against her couch, and they receded enough to let faint light into the room, showing her Darkly stretched across the cushions. Eyes closed, cheeks hollow, his chest utterly still. One arm had dripped onto the floor, and the vape pen lay tangled in his fingers.
Cold slivered up her arm, matching the chill dribbling down her spine.
She knew what this was, knew what had happened at a glance. But last time, Darkly had woken himself. He’d come back, lurching upright in that motel bed and wrapping his arms around her, clinging to Milla as if he needed the reminder that there was a world outside of the dark, with warmth and beating hearts.
Cannae get to you.
A Shade caressed her cheek in a silent plea, and Milla lurched into action.
“Help!” she bellowed, collapsing to her knees beside Darkly. “Diego, help!”
Another door slammed open; footsteps pounded down the stairs. Milla grabbed the vape pen and tossed it on the table, running her hands over Darkly’s face, his throat, his chest. Willing any warmth to bleed into her palms, any heat, anything resembling her Way.
“?Qué carajo?” Diego cursed from somewhere behind her. “Why is it so dark? And what is all over the floor?”
“I need Lou.” She tore Darkly’s shirt up and away from his body, trembling fingers chasing the triskelion. Even that was deadened, absent the green shimmer. “He’s not breathing, he needs his Shade. I need my Way; I need Lou!”
Diego ran, feet pounding down the hall. Milla pressed her ear to Darkly’s chest, listening for and catching just the barest thumping—distant, far away, and fading.
“No, you don’t.” She crawled onto the couch, straddling his waist and laying heavy hands over the triskelion. Goddess, if she had access to her Way, she could summon his Shade, but she was useless, and Milla was beyond tired of being useless.
“She’s not answering!” Diego called from somewhere deep in the house.
“Call Tobias,” she yelled back and took a deep, centering breath. There was always a dispellation. And another deep breath. Latent magick, intrinsic to her. Goddess, if this worked, it was going to hurt, but it was the only thing she could think to do.
The tea had tried to tell her—the ant-like dregs an omen, the warning of the wolf and the bear when she closed one eye. Even Ezra had been warning her in her dreams, and she had not listened. They knew the ritualists had access to the Neitherworld, but never did she think they would try this in her demesne. In her home .
“Come back to me.” Milla leaned over Darkly to repeat the demand in his ear. “Come back to me, Dark Witch.”
Shades teased her ankles and crawled up her legs, cradling Milla as she straightened and closed her eyes, focusing on the deepest innermost kernel of her .
The Soul Sigil was magick, and all magick could be dispelled. A witch just needed to know how to do it. Diego could unravel the threads of magick. Darkly did whatever a Dark Witch did with a flick of his fingers, and Milla … Milla was a Death Witch, so there was only one thing she could do.
Sound cut out. Her body went limp, listing to the side, and right at the cusp, that liminal point of no return, shouts filled the room. Someone grabbed Milla’s shoulders, tearing her hands away from Darkly and hauling her back to the present.
Foglamp eyes burned in front of her face, searching Milla, then dropping to the witch beneath her. “ó, mo Dhia.” Lou’s thumbs dug into her wrists, an allure rolling from her tongue without hesitation. “ Oscailte! ”
Heat roared through Milla’s veins, clawing out of her chest and tearing down her arms into her hands. She ripped free of Lou’s grip, not wasting a single second, and slammed her hands down on the triskelion, hissing her intent.
“ P?ijít .” Come.
Darkly’s skin warmed from her touch, and Milla repeated the allure, summoning the one damn Shade she cared about. It was a thin hope, but Milla had summoned the Shades of women stolen by a Loa, and spirits from beyond the Gates. She could summon one Horned God-damned Dark Witch.
“ P?ij? ke mně. ” Come to me.
The Shades kicked up in a frenzy, tearing at her hair and clothes. Lou backed away, shouting at someone as a sepulchral howl rose in the wind.
Darkly twitched once, twice, and shot upright, sending Milla crashing to the floor. She curled her hands into fists, clutching them against her chest and pressing her heels against the floor to shoot further away from him. He gripped the back of the couch and a knee, gasping like a swimmer at the end of a sprint. Shades siphoned back into Darkly, and soon the warm flicker of the candlelight brightened the space.
His black eyes fell on her, and Darkly let out a sob, spilling off the couch, reaching for her. “Milla.”
“Keir, don’t!” Lou shouted while Milla rushed out, “Don’t touch me.” She curled into a ball, fisting her hands in her shirt. Cotton disintegrated at her touch, and her eyes pricked with tears. Goddess be damned ; she was so fucking tired of the crying .
Lou moved closer, and Darkly shot out an arm, snarling at his sister. “Give her a minute.”
“What’s happened?” Tobias burst into the room in flannel bottoms and a white shirt, followed by Rai in a silk robe, her face covered in a green mask.
“Fell in,” Darkly said. He knelt beside Milla, hands hovering over her. “Give me your gloves.”
“My gloves?”
“Now, Toby.” Darkly snapped his fingers, and a second later, Tobias tossed a pair of gloves at him. Pulling them on, he whipped the Hygge blanket from the couch, dropping it around Milla’s shoulders and pulling her into his arms.
“I could just bind her again,” Lou scoffed.
“No.” Darkly glared at her and rose, not even struggling under Milla’s weight. “Give her a chance, Lou.”
When she did not argue, Darkly nodded and sat on the couch with Milla cradled in his arms.
“Someone had better start explaining what happened,” Lou demanded after a far too brief moment. “And what is all over your floor?”
Milla lifted her head, seeing for the first time the sand-like substance she had stepped in. It surrounded her couch, and a line stretched the length of her hallway into her bedroom. “Black salt.” Each witch looked down, and Tobias danced as far away from the salt as he could get. “Someone was here. There was this witch at my arrest and in the cells. He tormented me, and he was in my house tonight.”
“Explains why all the doors are open,” said Rai.
“There was no one in the cell with you,” Tobias argued from where he had crammed himself in the furthest corner of the room. “It was my task to ensure that you were safe and alone.”
“Bully job, there, buddy,” Milla muttered. She wriggled against Darkly, ensuring the blanket covered her hands as she pressed herself upright. He did not yield as much as she would have liked, so she glared at him, halting when his weary eyes dropped to her chest. He pinched his lips together, raised his brows, and widened his eyes.
Milla looked down and quickly banded her arms tight over her chest. The straps of her tank top had rotted through, and the front fit like a stretched-out tube top. She cleared her throat, choosing to keep talking rather than flash the group.
“They know where we are, and they got into my house. We aren’t safe, and your plan isn’t working.”
“Perhaps if you did not leave the doors unlocked,” Lou replied, “they would not have been able to get in.”
“Diego locked up,” Darkly said. “Last thing I saw before passing out.”
“From the weed you keep making him smoke,” Milla added. Lou straightened, widening her stance. Her eyes began to gleam and Milla was having none of that. “You’ve kept Darkly too stoned to be useful and had me drinking enough poison to murder a royal family, and they got into my home.”
“What are you implying, Ludmilla?”
She clutched the blanket and wriggled off of Darkly’s lap. This time, he let her, reaching around Milla to lay a hand on her hip. In support, a shared show of strength, whatever it was, it bolstered her enough to keep going.
Because he was with her, he agreed with her.
“I think the ritualists are closer to us than we first thought,” she said.
Lou scoffed. “Anyone could have broken in here and—”
“The wards are sound,” said Tobias. Milla blinked in surprise at his weird show of support. “She learned them from the Morgenhexe; I would not expect anything less. I checked them on Sunday, and they are impregnable, just as they were at her hut in the woods.”
“Someone would have to know where this house was to find it,” Darkly said. “Walked right by that hut when she first brought me there.”
“Where’s Donmar?” Milla asked. Goddess, she hoped she was wrong because how could a witch get blindsided in the same way twice ? And why was it always the friendly ones?
“With Diego,” Lou answered. “They’re scanning the house for signatures. Are you suggesting—” She blanched and backed up a step. “You’re suggesting it’s one of us?”
“What were you doing next door?” Milla fired back.
“Preparing for Beltane with Donmar.” She checked her watch and frowned. “I had hoped to get a few hours rest before we left, but I suppose that is out of the question.”
“We might as well try.” Donmar entered through the front door with Diego right behind him. He flashed his phone at the group. “The wards are undisturbed, and the polevik claims no one new has been here.”
“And the E.R.I.E.?” Lou pressed.
“If I read it correctly?” Donmar shrugged and sent his wife an exaggerated frown.
“No trace of anyone or Way not accounted for in this room,” Diego answered. “Cyrus would be able to tell us more, but …”
A mournful beat passed, each of the witches looking away and honoring his absence. So, of course, Milla had to go and open her mouth.
“Really dicked us over by taking our technomantic.”
Diego squinted at her, and Lou sent her a curious look, asking, “Technomantic?”
“Cut us off at the knees so we can’t find them with the E.R.I.E.” She gestured at Donmar’s phone with a blanket-covered hand. “A simple plan. Effective.” At the confused looks she received, Milla kept on. “I mean, it’s not like they would need a technomantic to mimic my Way; why else would they take him if not to slow us down?”
“ Leannán .” Darkly squeezed her hip twice to gain her attention. He leaned closer and murmured, “Cyrus is a chronomantic.”
Milla froze, her brain struggling to process this new information.
Chronomantic .
That couldn’t be right. Cyrus was obsessed with technology, constantly fiddling with the E.R.I.E. and hyper-fixating on reports and data, creating overlays, and tracking the times of the rituals. He was so obsessed with the latter that he had gotten defensive when Milla asked about it.
“Of course I have,” he had snapped. “What good would I be if I wasn’t?”
But, Horned God, did a chronomantic make sense if they were attempting her ritual from the lake. Milla could summon the Shades and hold the tear between worlds open; it was a specialty of her Way and one of the many reasons C.R.O.W. labeled her Forbidden and Foule. Couldn’t a chronomantic achieve the same? The one in her cell and at her arrest certainly had. He’d held Milla in stasis time after time and again less than an hour ago. Her stomach flipped, reliving the sickening lurch she felt every time he removed the hex, the prickling in her fingers and toes whenever she returned to the natural progression of time.
The ritualists burned through hippocromantics and vinefica, but there was at least one missing chronomantic. It stood to reason they had some means of tracking Ways, considering they had been tracking hers. They could have easily seen a chronomantic was with them in Tallahassee and grabbed Cyrus when the rest of the coven and cultists were distracted by the burnout.
But the polevik said no one new had been on the property, and the polevik was desecrant, and desecrants rarely lied.
She pressed her lips together, careful to keep her face blank. Darkly moved his hand to the middle of her back, and a kiss of cold followed, the witch preempting her panic and steadying her with his Shades.
“So, no one entered, no one left.” Lou glanced from witch to witch, but none argued. She sighed and tipped her head at Milla. “Perhaps you are right about the tea,” she conceded. “Rai’s blends have been known to carry side effects.”
“Hardly my fault,” Rai replied. She pulled her silk robe tighter and cinched the ties. “If we’re finished, I’m going to catch what sleep I can before someone tries to pin global warming on me as well.”
“We have an early start,” Lou said after Rai left. “Sleep, if you can. Donny?”
“On it.” He waved his hand, and a wind tore through the house, gathering the black salt into a pile in the center of Milla’s living room.
“If it’s alright with you, we’ll ring that in sea salt, and I’ll have a team come by to package the sample.” Lou cocked her brow, and Milla nodded, chewing her lower lip to keep from saying anything more. “Good. Sleep.” Lou pointed to her brother, then Milla. “You’re needed in, well, not top form tomorrow, but able to perform. Give me your wrists.”
Only after the witches left, and they were safely in Milla’s bedroom with their Ways both bound, did she open her mouth. “I know I sound paranoid.”
“Not at all.” Darkly stretched out on her bed, reached across the mattress, and flashed his fingers at her to join him.
“What.”
“I learned my lesson in February. If you are suspicious, it is likely because something suspicious is happening.”
“Again.” She stepped up to the mattress, thighs pressing against the edge. “What.”
Darkly rolled onto his side and propped his head in a hand. “Someone was in here, Milla, and they knew to wait until I fell in to try anything. They salted your threshold.” He jerked his chin at her door. “And they ringed the sofa. You have every reason to suspect the culprit is someone close to us. Personally, my money is on the cultists.”
“You are taking this far too well.”
“It’s been a strange year,” he said with a shrug, “and I’m loused. Forgive me for not being clever.” Dropping onto his back, he folded an arm under his head and again gestured for Milla. She crawled onto the bed, pressing in close and relishing his slow breathing and steady heartbeat. He cupped the back of her head, toying with her hair and lightly scratching her scalp, soothing his Death Witch in the best way. “Missed this.”
“Mm.” Milla let her eyes drift closed, losing herself in the moment, the touch. Thanks to the tea and the weed and Lou running them ragged, he had not been in her bed since the night after Tallahassee. She wanted to capture this moment of peace and bottle it for later use.
That had been close—terrifyingly close. If his sister had not been able to get to Milla in time, she did not know if she would have been able to call his Shade back. What she had been about to do was … a dispellation like that … it was desperate, and there was never any guarantee she would recover in time to act.
Darkly had survived having his Shade severed by luck alone. Luck and coincidence.
Milla popped her head up.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
He wound her hair around his finger and tugged to get her attention. Milla hissed at the sharp bloom of pain, jerking her gaze to Darkly. He waited, patient as ever.
“I was just thinking.”
“About?” He stretched out the word.
About Lou and Donmar being next door and not answering their phones. About Rai and the tea, the weed, and her dreams. About Tobias, who knew too much about her Way and had been in the cells with her. How he had denied any other witch had joined them. About Cyrus being a chronomantic, and the cultists and the polevik claiming no one new had been through.
How would a desecrant define “new”? Trav had stayed in her home, Josh, and the woman, Cicerhoe, had slept next door. Was Milla willing to believe they had actually left? Three mortals addicted to magick with access to a house full of witches?
“About tomorrow,” she half-lied. “And Lou’s plan.”
“You hate it.” He slid his hand down her back, resting it on the curve of her rear. “Please tell me you hate it.”
“Oh, so much,” Milla admitted. That earned a chuckle and a gentle squeeze.
“And what, my wee disaster, is your plan?”
Milla could not help but grin at that. It was still more of an idea than a plan, but she needed Darkly on board if they were going to stand any chance of it working.
She grabbed her phone from the bedside table, pulling up a map of the festival grounds and zooming in on the center. “These witches want to steal magick, and they want to use my Way.” She showed Darly the screen and the landmark she had focused on. His eyes light with interest, and he glanced at her, lovely lips parting with a question. “Lou wants me to present as weak. To pay as little as I can of my ritual dues and make it hard for anyone to steal anything. I disagree.”
“Milla …” Though his tone was a warning, she did not miss the dimple driving into his cheek.
“I say we ”—she pointed the phone at him, herself—“feed the ritual. Give everyone what they want. We went in blind against Anaisa, and she nearly outsmarted us turn after turn. We have an opportunity here to avoid making the same mistake.”
Darkly blinked, and his lips parted as he laughed in disbelief. “You want to bait the ritualists?”
“I want to bait the ritualists,” she agreed.
“After all that with the raw-head …” He shook his head. “Bampot.”