Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Antimony shifted on her pad in her most-loved sunny morning perch in the big bay window.
I could hear her chirrup as she disappeared.
The shade of mossy green paint Mom and I had agonized over had rooted our turn-of-the-century cottage into my soul.
It was home, not because it was a house that sheltered, but because of the love that made it a place to feel safe.
Mom might be gone, but her love had never left me.
Turning the copper key in the front door lock was the final connection to home.
I breathed in the sage and rue as Antimony chirruped and bounded toward me.
She dropped, then draped herself over my boot.
I crouched down to run my fingers over her warm velvety belly fur.
“Who’s a toasty kitten?” Her insta-purrs soothed away more of the morning’s awfulness.
I was lighter as I walked through the living room to the back of the house.
I dropped my stuff onto the kitchen counter, grabbed a salad, then Ant and I walked out back into the walled garden.
She twined around my ankles before setting off to hunt.
As a kitten, she’d been scrawny with gray fur almost as dark as kohl.
Her fur had lightened as she filled out, and now she was the gray of a daylight shadow with golden eyes like a full moon clearing the horizon.
Still jittery, I closed my eyes against the early spring sun, inhaling the freshness of yesterday’s rain.
Each crunch of salad leaves bounced positive energy through me, and I sent quiet thanks out to the universe that Brenda was alive.
The sun’s radiance, and the boost from the lettuce leaves, pulled more of the tension from my shoulders.
I chewed, musing the sanctity of this place, this life.
My garden was magical but way different from my childhood home, which had been nestled in almost a hundred acres of farmland bordering on forest. Mom’s years of training with her mother as a wildcrafter had steeped me in a primal love for nature.
When my abilities had surfaced and we’d begun to research my uniqueness, we’d discovered that more portals open in populated areas.
Like me, cities were demon magnets. We’d decided if I was going to reach my full potential we’d have to move.
Back then, we decided things together. Now I was alone in making the best choices.
I fiddled with the slippery gold bracelet. The gold was smooth like serpent scales. The damned bracelet needed to come off, but first, I had to get some focus back.
Sitting on the back steps, I pulled off my boots and socks. Then, undoing my ponytail, I fanned out the silky silver gray around my shoulders and breathed in.
When Mom had been taken, the spells I’d tried to get her back had almost killed me and stripped the color from my hair.
After I’d crashed and picked myself up, I’d embraced being alive and savoring every moment of that life.
But I’d never stopped trying to find a way to get to her.
If portals existed for demons to come through, then there must be a way for someone like me to go through them and return with her.
Save her from whoever or whatever had stolen her from me.
I walked down the stairs and onto the stones, my toes curling in the damp grass. Birds twittered happily in the persimmon tree. The breeze dusted across my face. I lifted my nose to the wind, inhaling chamomile, mallow, daisy, creeping thyme, and memories of sunny days watching clouds.
The birds stopped singing.
I stilled, tingling, while sunlight glinted off the bracelet.
Ant tore across the garden in a gray streak, clawing up and over the fence.
My insides knotted.
Sulfur clouded the air and the telltale sucking sound froze my bones before my brain could catch up.
Pop.
Oh hellebore, no.
Mom and I had dug deep salt pillars at the four corners of the property, creating a field that deterred most non-human interlopers. A portal couldn’t open here—but it was.
I took the back steps three-at-a-time, leaping through the door and dropping the ward bar into place before tearing to the herb cabinet.
A keening in my head turned my thoughts to mush as the door opened.
Flipping Foxgloves.
Whatever it was, was coming for me through the wards. I glanced out the window and two massive reddish-purple demon dogs, with horns and wings hovered between the shimmer of a portal and my back door. They weren’t the same as the one that attacked Brenda, but they were similar.
My heart was beating so fast I thought it might jump out and fight with me—but fighting wasn’t the smart thing to do when I was still depleted.
Demons always hunted for life-force. If they’d come for me, they would leave when they didn’t find me.
They shouldn’t be able to enter the house—but they’d come inside Brenda’s house.
It wasn’t worth the risk.
Adrenaline fueled, I sprinted upstairs to my bedroom, the snarling behind me gaining like a runaway streetcar.
I slammed the bedroom door and slid the charmed bolts, hoping they would hold.
Sweat veiled my skin as I sucked in shallow breaths.
My bedroom was triple-warded and had its own pillar system of infused salt to bind the wards together.
With the salt in the wall paint and along the baseboard, whatever came through shouldn’t even be able to see me.
But the wards hadn’t stopped the portal…
The shrieking was getting closer. I dashed into the closet-sized bathroom and locked the door.
It was my safe room, lined with sage paper and a layer of plaster containing salt, quartz, and iron, but I wasn’t supposed to need it.
Two new demon types in one day could not be a coincidence.
Something was very, very wrong. But demons can only exist on the Earth plane for a short time.
All I had to do was survive until they left.
Every cell in me vibrated as I waited for the crash of the bedroom door.
Total silence.
Trembling with something—maybe relief—I slid to the floor, quickly pulling my hair into two messy braids.
Straining to listen for sounds, I wrapped my arms around my knees.
Brenda’s bloody face flashed in my head.
Tears came out of nowhere. I swiped an arm across my face, smearing snot on the gold encircling my wrist.
“You should stop crying.”
The words were deep and velvety, creeping over my skin like an icy breeze. Fear cut into me deeper than a ritual knife. I covered my eyes, and the bracelet slid down my wrist.
Holy hellebore.
My thoughts swam through my lexicon of demons and spirits.
A demon would have attacked. It had to be a spirit.
I staggered up and yanked open the supply cabinet above the toilet.
Pulling the stopper out of one of my custom vials, I doused myself with a hydrosol of St. John’s Wort for protection from negative energy.
“I banish thee, spirit,” I chanted.
“Intriguing. But that’s not going to work on me.” The spirit spoke English, and I was pretty sure the voice was in the room with me, not in my head.
Terror sank its freezing teeth into my chest. I could barely breathe. There was no place to go—this was the safe place. My image blurred in the mirror as a purple cloud formed around me.