Chapter 49
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The next morning begins ordinarily enough. My nemesis, the alarm. Flint with the lifesaving gift that is coffee. Bickering with Calida as she demands bacon for breakfast. Flint promising to find her something at the shop as he leads the way for the two of them to start the day at Wanderlust.
They leave me mindlessly scrolling on my phone, trying to find the active brain cells I need to work on my story. A small orb of light hovers over the table, a little magickal construct I’ve been working on. It flickers, then dims as my focus wavers.
“Damn it,” I mutter. The orb sputters out entirely, leaving only the faint smell of ozone in its wake. “Focus, Casie. Focus.”
But my focus is a fragile thing and I can’t shake the unease that’s been lurking over me since last night.
By mid-morning, clouds are darkening the sky and the sense of being watched has returned. It was subtle at first, like a pressure, or a scratching at the back of my skull. That feeling you get when someone is staring at you for too long from across the room. Gradually, it thickens.
I ignore it. It has to be my imagination.
I put on my headphones and try to lose myself in the magick of Goira, but the itch between my shoulder blades continues.
A thunderstorm is lashing against the windows, the wind howling outside. Rain runs down the glass, mimicking veins. The lights are flickering. I close my laptop, my cursor blinking in the middle of an unfinished sentence.
My breaths quicken. The air tastes like… iron?
There’s a thrum inside me as I make my way to the window. I think someone is messing with the wars.
I reach for my phone, thumb hovering over Flint’s number, but I stop. No. Not yet. I can handle this. Whatever this is, I have to handle it. I am not some terrified little girl.
I have power now. Real power. I am not helpless.
There’s a knock at the door. Not tentative. Sharp. Measured.
I freeze.
Flint is still at work. Betsy is more likely to let herself in. Calida would’ve tapped on the window and laughed uproariously when she scared the shit out of me—
Another knock. Louder this time. More insistent.
I creep towards the door, feeling my heart hammering in my throat. Trying to keep as far away as possible while still being able to check, I struggle to focus my energy towards the stranger, trying to get a read.
Fucking.
Brett.
“Caaaaasie,” he sings softly, voice lilting, almost playful. “Did you miss me?”
How the fuck does he even know where I live? Oh, right. He was fucking stalking me. Of course he knows where I live.
His hair is wet, face pale and twisted. His eyes are bloodshot. Something about him is even more off than usual.
Does he seriously think I’m going to open this door?
“You need to go,” I yell. “I’m calling the police.” I’m trying to infuse my voice with magick, hoping it’s enough to put him off whatever his current plan is.
Silence.
Then, he laughs. A broken, hiccupping sound. “They won’t help you,” he says. “Not after what you did to me.”
More silence.
CRASH.
His shoulder slams into the door. The wood groans, owing under his weight. I stumble back, reaching for my phone, but it slips from my fingers and clatters under the couch.
His voice warps, warbled, like there’s more than one voice saying the same words. “Funny thing about wards,” he snarls. “They keep out what you think you understand. But what if the threat is already inside?”
Before I can react, the air around me seems to crack.
The faint hum of protection breaks around me like shattered glass and I gasp as a wave of Brett’s emotions hit me, raw, jagged and stronger than I was prepared for.
Waves of obsession, hunger, hatred, rage.
Terror. It’s like being smothered in dark foulness.
The door gives on the third hit from his shoulder. Mentally, I scream for Calida, for Flint.
He steps inside, water dropping from his face and hair, chest heaving. A knife glints in his hand.
My own terror whips out of my body, meeting his invading energy like two storms colliding and the air goes white.
When it’s cleared, the air stinks of smoke and ozone. Brett is still there, at the threshold, smiling. A voice that isn’t his sneers, “You’re stronger than you were. But still sloppy.”
As I scramble away from him, he moves further inside, stalking me every move.
“Witch,” he hisses, his voice his own again.
“I knew it. You smiled at me, danced for me, and then cursed me. You ruined everything. My job, my life.” He laughs, the sound edging on hysteria.
“I can’t even sleep anymore.” His voice trails off to a whisper.
“I try… I try, but they come back. Every night. The crows come and they eat my face and they talk to me, and they…” I don’t think he even knows he’s weeping.
I back away, as slowly as I dare. “You don’t get to do this anymore. You don’t get to invade my life!”
That strange tenor enters his voice again. “Oh, I think I do. You invited me, remember? All that time you’ve spent thinking about me, dreaming about me. Magick answers attention, Ash. You fed me.”
My heart slams against my ribs. He isn’t wrong. All those nights I had lain awake, terrified and worried, I had been thinking of him, imagining what he might do next… every thought was a tether; every fear, an opening.
His normal voice takes control. “You didn’t have to.
You whispered it, didn’t you? Told the little birdies the names of all my playmates.
Maybe you wrote it. You’re always writing things.
You and your creepy little book friends.
But now you’re all alone, aren’t you?” His voice rises.
“You’re all the same. Think you can smile and then destroy someone for wanting you. ”
My back hits the wall and my vision tunnels as he comes closer and closer.
My throat won’t work to scream. I can hear myself screaming in my head and desperately hope that Calida can hear me as the air backs up in my lungs.
Brett has a knife pressed against my cheek.
I know I should use my magick, but every thought has fled.
Even as I reach for power, I notice the fog beginning to dance across the floor.
“You think you’re better than me?” he whispers, his breath hot and rotten against my ear.
I fight back a gag as he licks the side of my face, then freeze as he increases the pressure where the blade meets my skin.
I feel the sharp pain, followed by the flow of warm blood down my face.
Worse, somehow, is that I can feel how hard he is as he presses his body against mine.
For a moment, for eternity, there’s only the sound of his harsh breathing filling the space, battling the roar of blood and the rage of my heart.
And then, something breaks open.
Not outside. Not in the storm.
Inside me.
I try to focus, but a pressure in my chest erupts with an explosion of light.
A gust of wind howls through the room, from nowhere, knocking Brett back against the bookshelf.
Books fly by like birds. The air seems to shriek with emotion.
The walls flicker with shadows dancing, along with the fog that’s continuing to grow.
Crows.
They perch along the windows, appearing from nothing. As substantial as smoke. Dozens, maybe more. Their eyes glow. They line the bookshelves, the counter, my computer. They’re everywhere.
And they speak - in words, in voices. Women’s voices. Dozens. Hundreds. Layered, one upon another, over and over, flowing like silk over stone.
You were warned.
You will not touch her again.
You will never be allowed another soul to ruin.
Brett screams. He drops the knife, tries to run—
But the window shatters outward, shards of glass flying into the night to fall to the ground like diamonds. Brett falls to the floor as the crows rush him, hands over his face, weeping, choking, clawing at something that only he can feel.
I stare, trembling, tears running down my face, mingling with the blood from my cut cheek as it drips. I don’t look away.
This time, I don’t freeze.
Just as suddenly as it began, there is silence.
The crows are gone. Brett is unconscious. The knife he used against me lies near him. I sag to the floor. I know I should get the knife and move it farther from him, but my limbs don’t appear to be following orders anymore today.
The door is hanging off its hinges when I get home.
Rain pours in from the broken window. Brett lies crumpled on the ground—unmoving, but alive. The air is heavy with static and something else… grief, rage, power.
Old magic.
The kind that tastes like blood and memory.
Ash sits against the wall, knees to her chest, trembling—but not crying. Her eyes are wide. Golden light pulses faintly behind them.
And that’s the first thing I see when I storm through the door — her eyes. I’m across the room in two strides, kneeling before her.
“Casie.”
She blinks, slowly. Her lips part, but no words come out. Her entire body is shaking.
I brush a hand down her arm - gentle, reverent. She looks so fragile right now, I’m afraid she’ll shatter. “You’re safe now. I’ve got you.”
Her voice is barely audible. “He had a knife.”
“I know.”
“...And then there were crows.”
My breath catches.
Crows.
“Did they… speak?” I ask softly.
Her nod is almost imperceptible. “They said… I’d never be hurt again. That I’d been warned. No. That he’d been warned.”
She looks down at her hands. They’re still glowing faintly at the fingertips. She flexes them like she’s never seen them before. Like they belong to someone else.
“I didn’t mean to do anything,” she whispers. “But something happened. Inside me. Like something woke up. Or broke free. Or…” Her throat works. “I tried to reach for my power, but I couldn’t through the fear. Then something felt like it exploded.”
I exhale shakily, voice low. “That wasn’t just something. That was you.”
Her eyes flick up to mine, sharp and searching.
My jaw tightens. If even this isn’t enough to unlock her mind, what is it going to fucking take? I do my best to keep my face neutral, stamping down on the pain that threatens to rear up and strangle me. I reach out, tucking a damp strand of hair behind her ear.
“You don’t have to worry about it now. Just believe me when I say… you are not weak. And you are not alone.”
She nods, eyes glassy.
And then, without even meaning to, she leans forward and presses her forehead against my chest, my arms banding around her.
“I’m seeing things. I’m hearing things.”
A warmth I recognize as hope winds its way around my heart.
Outside, the thunder rolls away into silence.