Chapter Eleven
Sylvia Page was sixteen, and she was finally free.
Sylvia stretched her arms over the back of the bench she’d snagged in the center of Times Square, not worried about the sun beating down on her pale skin. She didn’t have to worry about anything anymore. Consequences were no longer her concern.
Two days ago, she’d been staring down the barrel of a life in Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania, working at the same shitty convenience store her dad had been working at his whole life, wearing the too-big hand-me-downs her mom threw her way in one of the rare moments where she remembered that she did, in fact, have a daughter she was legally obligated to take care of.
Living in the same dirty, undecorated room she’d always lived in, dragging herself to the same shitty school, waking up every morning to the same, the same, the same …
And then it happened—hope. Hope, starting low in her belly, burning up her arms, through her hands, until it found her bed—the same bed she’d been sleeping in from age five, when it was too big, to now, when it was too small—and lit it on fire.
It burned to ash beneath her, and as the rest of her house started to burn as well, she realized she had a way out.
She didn’t hesitate. It felt like she’d been pushed off a cliff, and damn if she wasn’t going to fly.
She left her burning home behind her, not bothering to check if her parents made it outside because she knew they wouldn’t check for her.
She got on a bus, then a train, and then she found herself here, in the city that had always been so close and yet felt so far.
A city of millions of people, a city where she could disappear.
But Sylvia didn’t want to disappear. For the first time in her life, she was strong. She was powerful. She wouldn’t be ignored anymore.
She looked around, surveying her new kingdom. New York City teemed with people, and that made whatever it was that now flowed through her sing. She let it suffuse her, the soundtrack of a new life.
She stared off at a billboard in the distance, a makeup ad featuring a pretty girl with cherry-red lips and bright blue eyeshadow.
Just to see if she could, she imagined that blue eyeshadow turning pink—and then it did.
She let out a whoop of excitement, earning her strange glances from the family of tourists standing to her left.
Her focus dropped and the eyeshadow flicked back to blue, but Sylvia still grinned—she knew what she’d seen.
The family groused as they turned back away from her.
Sylvia caught the words “unwashed” and “possibly destitute,” and her eyes, completely of their own volition, locked in on the father’s wallet in his back pocket.
She didn’t need money, per se—she could steal anything she wanted—but if this family thought she was so impoverished, they should do their civic duty of supporting her on her new path of upward mobility.
Logic secured, she stared at the wallet, focusing her want on it, until it floated out of the man’s pocket and toward her hands.
She was reaching out to grab it when a thick hand wrapped around her wrist. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Sylvia put her other hand over her eyes, forming a visor against the sun so she could properly investigate her captor.
He was very tall, with dark brown skin and arched eyebrows pressed down tight in annoyance.
He was probably a few years older than her, although the suit and slicked-back hair suggested he was trying quite hard to pass as a full-fledged, tremendously serious adult.
He’d be cute if he smiled, but his face was fixed in a sneer that she imagined was permanent.
“Just enjoying a nice summer day,” she said, giving him her most innocent smile.
“No. You’re doing magic. In front of hundreds of ordinaries.”
Magic. This power that she had was magic.
The song inside her grew louder at the word, and she knew it was true. Knew, then, that there was nothing else it could be.
Magic was real, and it was hers. And this stranger knew something about it.
“Do you know how to hold the magic for longer?” Sylvia blurted. She looked back to the billboard, flicking the eyeshadow to pink again. She focused on getting it to stay, but it still reverted back after a couple seconds.
The man’s jaw dropped. “What are you—Wait. You didn’t cut yourself.”
Sylvia rolled her eyes. He was dense, this one. “No,” she said—slowly, as if talking to a child. “I’m not suicidal, I’m just trying to figure this thing out.”
“Not what I mean. Tell me, do either of your parents have magic?”
Sylvia chuckled. “No, definitely not.”
“You’re unsettled.” He stared at Sylvia with curiosity—and something she thought might be disdain. She wondered if her magic could wipe that look off his face.
“No, I’m pretty settled right here.” Sylvia patted the bench beneath her. “Comfy and everything. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll keep my magic more on the DL from now on.”
“I’m not leaving you here. You’ll snap. You’ll kill everyone.”
“It’s a pretty big jump from stealing a tourist’s wallet to committing murder. It’d take me at least a few years on my path of juvenile delinquency to make it that far.”
“You don’t underst—”
“Yes, I do,” Sylvia interrupted. “You’re some kind of magical cop or something and you’re here to make sure I don’t spill your little secret to all of these fine people. Well, I promise I won’t. And I pinky-swear I will not kill anyone. Okay? Can you move now?”
“No.” He took Sylvia by the hand, forcing her to stand up. “Come on, you’re coming with me.”
Sylvia tried to wrench her arm back, but his grip was too strong. “Uh, no, I’m not, man whose name I don’t even know.”
“My name is Vikrant Khatri. I’m taking you to Noctis Coven.”
Vikrant Khatri started pulling her down the sidewalk. Sylvia stumbled as she followed him. Her magic swirled in her belly, a warm reminder that no matter what Vikrant thought, he was not in charge of this situation. If she wanted to be free again, she’d be free.
But for the moment, she was curious. Curious about this magic she had, about what it meant that she was unsettled. About what this coven might be able to offer her.
If she didn’t like it there, she’d leave. For the first time in her life, Sylvia was strong. Strong enough to take on anyone who even thought to cross her.
Her magic surged, buoyed by the promise of something more.
Present Day
Sylvia Page was fifty-one, and she was surrounded by monsters.
The slap of her shoes against the tile cracked like a whip, drowning out every other sound in the mall’s crowded hallway as she ran.
She needed to get away, needed to find somewhere she could process what had just happened, but instead of salvation, every step brought her face-to-face with a new horror.
Halloween costumes, she reminded herself.
Not real threats. Just kids, cups of alcohol in their hands and happy shouts on their lips.
Except it was hard to remember that when they were staring at her with eyes obscured by masks, reaching for her with hands made alien by gloves and claws and prosthetics.
She felt like she had a target on her back. Like all signs pointed to the spectacle of her, to the desperation of her flight and the relentless pounding of her shoes.
Her flats were stained with red.
Her whole body was stained with red.
It was under her nails. In her hair. Crusting on her cheek. Lily’s blood had to be in her eyes too, because the world was tinged with it, a thick haze painting the walls of Hollywood and Highland cherry.
What had she done?
More red overtook her vision as she bolted around a corner, a sudden solid wall of it. She balked at the sight of horns, heart pounding as Hell crystallized in front of her.
Just a devil costume, she knew, except all her mind could focus on was the sudden thought of fire.
The woman flipped a strand of blond hair behind her ear, and the flames in Sylvia’s head coalesced around that image, matching it with another strand of blond, a scream in the air and Lily’s body on the floor.
The woman said something, but the words didn’t process. Nothing could get past the blood pulsing through Sylvia’s skull, through the river of heat screaming at her to get out now, to put as much distance as possible between herself and what happened.
Sylvia ran. She kept running, forcing herself forward, pushing past the groups of people to get down the stairs.
She felt like she must be leaving a trail of ash in her wake, her body burning the floor beneath her.
Sweat exploded out of every pore, rewetting the blood that had dried on her, until she was covered in rivers of iron.
If she could just get outside, she could cool down.
Let the fresh air clear her head, so she could finally think around the heat in her bones long enough to figure out what to do.
But there were too many people blocking her way to the exit, people who smelled like latex and vodka and perfume, people who seemed to be intentionally standing in her way, people who were trying to block her in here, when she just needed to find a way to get out, out, out …
The fire inside her decided to handle the problem itself.
It started with a crack in the tile, just one fine line stemming from her stained flats, running along the floor until it split, deepened, branched off again and again and again so the room spun on its axis.
Except no, that was her, falling, collapsing to the ground with the strength of this thing bursting from her chest.
Distantly, she realized that this was what a snap felt like. This had never happened to her before.
Things had been different, the last time she had unsettled magic.
Less distantly, she felt herself cracking apart, splitting just like the floor beneath her. She had to get up. She had to run. Everyone else was running. Screaming, crying as the building crumbled around them.
Bones snapped. Bodies fell.
Sylvia stumbled to her feet, blinked the red out of her vision, and bolted, leaving the aftermath of all that had happened to shatter in her wake.