Chapter 1 #2
I didn’t wait for her response. I slammed into my basement suite, heart pounding, and nearly tripped over a pile of laundry I’d been pretending didn’t exist.
I yanked open my dresser.
Pants. Shirt. Jacket. Anything that didn’t scream helpless.
My phone buzzed again, and I almost dropped it.
A text from Faith.
Picking you up. Five minutes.
I stared at the message, then exhaled as if I’d been holding my breath since the first scream.
Faith might have the emotional warmth of a snowbank, but she showed up when it mattered. And she came armed.
I stripped off the robe and yanked on jeans, my fingers clumsy with adrenaline. I shoved my feet into boots without bothering to lace them properly. A black, long-sleeved shirt went over my head, the fabric catching on the spikes of my hair.
I grabbed my hoodie, then hesitated.
No. Hoodie was too casual for the council chambers. They’d tear me apart with their eyes and call it procedure.
I grabbed my leather jacket instead. It smelled of smoke and herbs, which was basically my entire personality.
I moved to the small cabinet where I kept my supplies.
And, tucked behind them, a blade.
I didn’t prefer knives. I didn’t like anything that implied I might have to use it. But I liked being eaten even less.
I slid it into my boot, checked the fit, then grabbed my phone charger out of habit. If the world was ending, at least my battery could be full.
At the last second, my gaze landed on the small tattoo of a sleeping cat on my wrist.
Mica.
My chest tightened. I pushed the thought away before it could turn into something ugly.
I was halfway out the door when another scream sounded down the street, cut short too quickly.
I froze.
Then I forced myself to move.
Outside, the air had shifted. Like the town itself was holding its breath. The street was quieter now, but not in a good way. Quiet meant the running had stopped. Quiet meant whatever people were afraid of had caught up.
A car engine roared around the corner and skidded to a stop in front of my yard.
Faith’s black SUV. The one with the license plate that made me want to scrub my eyes with bleach. LIK2FUK.
She leaned across the passenger seat and shoved the door open from inside.
“Get in,” she barked.
I didn’t argue. I vaulted into the seat and slammed the door.
Faith’s sea-green eyes flicked over me, taking in the messy hair, the half-laced boots, the fact that I still looked like I’d been ripped out of sleep.
“You see one?” she asked, already peeling away from the curb.
“Yeah,” I said. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. “In the street. I used my power, but it didn’t go down.”
Faith’s jaw clenched. She drove as if the town owed her money, tires spitting gravel as she took the next corner.
“We’re not driving through the main streets,” she said. “Too many bodies, too many idiots. Portal’s faster.”
“Magnetic Boutique?” I asked.
“Unless you know a better doorway to hell,” she shot back.
I almost laughed, but it came out as a breath.
We barreled through side roads, cutting past sleepy houses and dark storefronts. Every so often I saw movement at the edge of the street. A figure swaying. A person running. A flash of something pale under a streetlight.
My fingers tightened on the door handle.
I kept expecting to feel the necromancy now that I was awake and moving. To sense the shape of it, the direction of the pull.
Still nothing.
That blankness scared me more than the zombie. Magic didn’t just vanish. It was always there. In the air. In the bones of the ground. In the breath between words.
Someone was hiding it.
Faith whipped onto Raven Street, and there it was. Magnetic Boutique, painted too bright for this hour, its big windows dark. Even closed, the place looked like Lucinda had picked it out herself and then doubled down on the smug.
Faith parked half on the curb.
“Come on,” she said, already moving.
We sprinted to the door. Faith produced a key card as if she’d been born with it and swiped it through the reader installed beside the frame. The lock clicked.
Inside, the air smelled like perfume and money. Soft pink walls. Perfect racks. A small shoe section with sparkly heels that had no business existing in a town currently sprouting zombies.
Faith didn’t slow down. She cut straight to the right side of the counter where three changing room doors sat in a neat row.
“One and two are normal,” she said, grabbing the handle of door number three. “Three is the magic gut punch.”
“You’re really selling it,” I muttered.
She shot me a look. “Do you want to puke in Nancy’s boutique or mine?”
“Neither.”
“Then move.”
She yanked open the door to changing room three.
The space looked ordinary for half a second. A small bench. A mirror. A hook on the wall.
Then I stepped in and the world tilted.
Portal travel always felt like being pulled through a keyhole by your ribs. I could wield magic, so it didn’t fight me the way it fought mundanes. Still, my stomach did a slow, unhappy roll as space folded.
Faith swore under her breath. She looked unaffected, but I’d seen her after portal trips before. Her body might handle weapons as if they were extensions of her arms, but magic made her temper shorter than usual.
We stumbled out into the chambers.
The scent hit first as we stepped inside.
Night-blooming jasmine.
It didn’t match the panic in my veins. It didn’t match the thought of bodies walking in the street. It smelled like a summer evening pretending the world wasn’t falling apart.
The interior was all marble and columns, the ceiling soaring four stories above us. Torches lined the sides, casting flickering light down a wide aisle leading to a dais.
A long slab of wood that looked like someone had cut a tree trunk in half and decided it was now furniture for gods. Live edge, gorgeous in a way that made me irrationally angry.
Because of course the council had taste.
One entire wall was a screen, the magic board lit up in angry pulses. Flares marked the map of Ravenholde as if the town had broken out in hives.
They were already there.
Alex stood near the table, tall and solid, his lavender eyes catching torchlight as if it were made for him. White hair, copper skin, posture too relaxed for the situation. He looked like he should be holding a craft beer instead of staring at a crisis.
Nishi was beside him. Shorter, slender, long black hair pulled back, boots that looked like she could kick down a door and then go to brunch. Her fingers twisted the ring on her right middle finger, the nervous habit making her seem more human than the rest of us.