Mara
The goo coats me from my hair to the ends of my claws, gray and thick, reeking of rot.
My lion rakes at the inside of my skin, desperate to be out of it, so I give her what she wants.
I set my feet and shake hard, the motion rolling down from my shoulders, out through the end of my tail. The goo comes off me in ropes.
“Damn.” Aaron gets his arm up too late. The goo slaps across his chest, his cheek. He drags the back of his hand down his face, only working it in deeper. “I was already wearing most of it, baby. Thanks for that.”
“Sorry.” I don’t mean it, and the laugh I’m swallowing gives me away. My lion’s smug about it. I’m not clean, but I’m better than I was.
Josiah’s head cocks, his red eyes bright on me. He’s got gore down a sleeve and doesn’t pay it any mind. “A lioness who shakes the filth right off herself.” His grin comes slow. “I didn’t know you could do that. Marvelous.” My lion preens at the attention, and I make her settle.
Kade isn’t watching any of it. She’s turned to face the way we came, her weight already shifted to bolt. “We need to move. Before more of them come looking for what’s left of this one.”
Aaron grimaces down at himself, then at me, gray muck dripping off us. “It’d be good to clean up first. Before we do anything else.”
“There’s bound to be clothes at Eric’s.” Kade waves us after her, already moving.
“Vainest man I’ve ever met. His closets’ll be stuffed to the doors.
” She rolls her shoulders, something close to a grin tugging at her mouth.
“Been a long time since I had to get anywhere on my own feet. Try to keep up.” She breaks into a run.
Josiah looks down at the gore pooled across the road and pushes his lower lip out. “What a pity. I was only just getting comfortable.”
“Jo. Come on.” Aaron’s already pulling me after Kade. “Let’s go.”
We run deeper in. I’ve never set foot in the Witching Glen before today, and already I want out of it.
I stay tight against Aaron, letting my nose lead where my eyes can’t.
What it finds first is rot, thick and close.
Under it, something older—cold, mineral, a smell that crawls into the back of my throat to stay.
My lion is awake under my skin, hackles up, prowling for the threat she can feel but can’t find.
We come up on a set of iron gates, tall and black, worked into shapes I can’t make out in the flat gray light. Kade slows. Past them, a path runs up to a house so big it blots out everything behind it.
The house was built to make people feel small.
It still does, even in ruin. Spires claw up off the roofline.
The porch runs wide across the front, the windows climbing above it row on row, all of them gone dark.
The grand face of it has grayed over, the surface streaked and peeling, like something beautiful that got walked out on and left to fall in on itself.
The quiet here presses on me, worse than anything I’ve felt yet.
Nothing moves. And under it, I can feel eyes on us—too many to place, watching from somewhere I can’t find.
My lion’s hackles go up. She paces hard inside me, hunting the watchers she can feel but can’t see, ready to put her claws in the first one that shows itself.
Aaron’s hand finds mine and closes around it. “Stay with me.” He pulls me through as Kade sets both hands to the gates and shoves them wide, the hinges shrieking into the still air. Her eyes never stop moving.
Josiah comes through behind us, in no hurry, his head turning slow. “I can feel them.” He’s not playing now. “So many lost souls.”
Aaron’s looking up at the dead house, and there’s something sick working in his face. “After that thing in the street, I keep waiting for the next one to come out of a doorway.”
“It will, if we’re slow.” Kade steps over a chunk of broken pavement without looking down. “I told you what’s left of these people. You balance the power you’re born with, or it eats you down to the monster underneath. Every one of them chose to be eaten.”
Josiah strolls up the path ahead of us, taking the ruin in like it’s something to savor. “What a lovely home.”
“The memories in it aren’t.” Aaron’s voice goes flat. Josiah doesn’t slow, just keeps walking and smiling at the rot.
I drag a hand down my arm. The goo’s drying to a film on my skin, tacky and foul.
My lion hates it as much as I do, prowling restless under my skin until it’s gone.
Aaron catches the movement and his face softens.
“I’ll get us cleaned up. I promise.” That he noticed, with all of this pressing in around us, pulls a smile out of me.
When he reaches for my hand again, I lace my fingers through his and let him hold on. We go up to the house together.
Aaron leads us up to the doors, watching Kade’s back. She gets there first and eases one open, careful, reading the dark on the other side. Whatever she finds, she decides it’s safe enough, and slips inside. Josiah goes after her. Aaron pulls me in last.
Inside, it’s all scale and shadow—a ceiling I can’t find, a hall running off into the dark, a staircase sweeping up into more of it. Eric built himself a palace. My lion paces inside me, sure something’s wrong with a place this grand standing this empty.
Kade turns a slow circle in the middle of the entry. “Okay. So what the hell do we think we’re going to find in here?”
“I don’t know.” Aaron looks down at himself and grimaces at the gray film drying on his shirt. “Can I please clean up first?”
I take the room in while they talk. Josiah’s already got his hands on something—an old book, the cover cracked and dark. Kade crosses and pulls it out of his grip. “Put that down.” Josiah lets her have it without a fight.
“The Witching Glen is spectacular.” He says it to the room, his gaze traveling the high ceiling.
“It’s a wasteland,” Aaron mutters.
“Is it?” Josiah turns those eyes on him, slow and interested. “And I wonder what a Blackwood could do with such a wasteland. Make it a paradise, perhaps.” He lifts a brow. “‘There is no wasteland. Only a garden that’s forgotten it was ever planted.’”
Aaron groans. “I don’t even know how well my magic works in here.”
“I could clean the two of you myself, if you’d let me.” Josiah spreads his hands, gracious. “It would take no time at all.”
“I’ll find a bathroom,” Aaron says. Josiah snaps his fingers.
The sound cracks through the dead room and my whole body jerks, my lion lunging up hard, because I know that snap. The last time I heard it, it ended with a warlock bursting apart all over us. I flinch back, half-braced for the spray of it.
Then I feel it leave me. The goo lifts off my skin all at once, every drop drawing up off my arms, my hair, my clothes in a fine gray dust. It breaks into smaller and smaller flecks, thinning into the air until it’s simply gone.
I let go of Aaron’s hand without meaning to and stretch my arms out, turning them over, watching the last of it sparkle off my skin and vanish.
I’m clean, not a trace of it left on me.
I look over and watch the same thing happen to Aaron, the gray lifting off him in the same shimmer. He isn’t marveling at it the way I am. He’s watching me. It’s like I was never drowned in warlock glue at all, and when I lift my eyes to his, he’s grinning.
“I feel clean,” I tell him. “I still want a shower.”
Kade snorts from across the room, flipping through the book she took off Josiah. “There’s nothing in here but pretty boy Eric’s treasures.”
“Did my mother have contact with him?” Aaron asks. “When she came here?”
Kade doesn’t answer right away. She turns a page she isn’t reading. “Yeah,” she says. “Here and there. Not a lot. She did her best to stay clear of him. The council, too.”
“Council?” Aaron’s brows pull together.
Kade huffs. “I don’t get why your mother never sat you down about any of this.
She had her reasons for keeping you out, sure—but you should at least know how the place was run.
” She taps the book shut against her palm.
“A council ran the Glen. The oldest, strongest witches in the realm, generations of them holding it together. Then the dark magic drained away, and with nothing left to rule, they turned on each other. The whole realm went to war with itself, and the council didn’t survive it. ”
Aaron takes a step toward her. “Who runs it now?”
“Nobody.” Kade meets his eyes. “Which is why they wanted your mother so badly. A realm with no one left to lead it, and Angie the only one who ever made it better. You heard the rest from me already—they wanted all of her, or nothing.”
Aaron’s hands curl at his sides. “I don’t understand why she didn’t take it.”
Kade gives him a hard, flat look. “Because your mother chose Seth. To lead the Glen, you have to live in the Glen. All of it, all the time. You don’t get to keep a foot on each side and call it a life. She wasn’t giving up Wintermoon, and she wasn’t giving up him.”
I cross to Aaron and lay a hand on his arm. He looks down at me, and I can see what it’s doing to him—a whole side of his mother he never knew, dropped on him at once. He drags his clean hands down his face, slow. He’s got too much in his head and nowhere to set it down.
“You’re welcome, brother.” Josiah drops it into the silence, and we all turn to look at him. He’s propped against the wall, far too pleased with himself over something the rest of us aren’t in on.
I let out a breath, and my lion eases—the first time she’s let her hackles down since we crossed into this place.
With a vampire standing this close, it’s the last thing I’d expect.
But this one’s different. He shoved himself into this with us, and he’s done nothing since but help—even if he enjoys it a little too much.
In my pride, what a man does counts for more than what he says.
It surprises everyone, me most of all, when I dip my head to him. “Thank you, Josiah. For everything.”