Florescentia and the Otherside

Chapter One The Nova

Chapter One

The Nova

The best time to harvest luck was none other than the witching hour.

As my husband lay beside me, tucked away in the night’s hold, the dangling dreams behind his eyelids presented the opportunity to take my leave.

Not even the rustling of the brocade sheets disturbed him, allowing me to slip away into the dark, barefoot and lightly covered in my night slip.

Even when painted by moonlight alone, our home remained warm.

Cedar and cherry-hued walnut framed every room, drawing the eye to each intricate detail—as was deserved, since I’d spent most of my time designing it myself.

I’d often lost track of time while seeing each project executed to perfection.

The interior was custom built by the best craftsmen, all three floors exactly how I wanted them, from the bedroom on the top floor to the parlor on the first. The bones were old, but the skin was entirely mine.

A few haphazard scruffs and pleased chirps from the hallway. One cat, then two, then three, all purring in anticipation of my arrival. They rubbed against the grooves of the banister, small flurries of hair puffing into the air as they followed. Strays we allowed to come and go as they pleased.

“What mysteries have you pursued tonight?” I whispered, bending down briefly as one of them rubbed her face on my hand, all their tails vibrating with delight. I could barely walk forward without tripping over them.

I took a candleholder from a hall table.

The new sprightly flame guided my descent into the belly of the house.

The glow washed over the ornamental pieces, the portraits of Dorian and me smiling down, and a mirage of reflections against glass and gilding.

But even without the candle, the place was never strange to me.

I was never afraid of the dark; it was friendly.

The cats scattered, nails skittering across the hardwood until their sound was just a gentle brushing, a successful scurrying away.

My other pets had awakened. My most beloved.

I stopped at the edge of the staircase, the red carpet, fastened by brass, disappearing down the dark pathway.

I touched the ornate railing, the gentle curves of the botanical carvings.

A slight vibration reverberated through the banister, reaching my fingertips with so much haste it might have startled someone unfamiliar.

A slight echo tinged the air, like a faint ringing of the ears while being underwater for too long.

Along the crown molding of the ceiling, the shadows moved, at first no more than a mirage.

Then, like ink spilling directly into water, the blackness shifted and poured onto the floor, gathering itself into two indistinct forms. They slunk over to my ankles like leeches, circling around my legs, not unlike the begging cats from before.

“Hello, Absinthe,” I whispered. A pinch at my other ankle. “I didn’t forget you, Tonic.”

I was, admittedly, not very creative in picking their names, which came from my mother’s leaded glass decanters that I’d imprisoned them inside while in my childhood bedroom.

Even now, I was unsure of exactly how these two had found their way to me.

Be it luck or accident, I had no way of knowing they would be the key to my affinity for touching a new world and new knowledge.

No one understood the Peculiars like I did—none who were alive today, at least. Most people couldn’t even see them.

As I understood it, you were an anomaly if you could.

During my childhood, I’d thought they were a curse, a never-ending nightmare of shifting shadows.

But now, I knew they were completely harmless.

No one would believe me if I told them, as the Peculiars sounded like tall tales and metaphorical spiritual stories from the old books.

Not literal creatures, as I’d found them to be.

Just down the stairs, on the middle floor, was my library study.

One of my nonnegotiable requests had been to have my own workspace.

I often told myself that it was important to balance necessary work and the passions of the soul.

It was easier to separate myself if I had a door to hide behind.

Dorian hadn’t put up much of a fight. Whatever you want, it is yours to have, he would say as he signed the invoices.

Absinthe and Tonic scattered upon entry, water over a scalding cast-iron skillet.

It was our favorite room for many reasons.

For them, it must have felt like some midway region between my world and their home.

For me, it was a sanctuary, the place I went when I needed the world shut out, sweet solitude.

My bookshelves stretched high to the ceiling—barely any of the walls weren’t covered in books.

My collection reached far and wide. Most of it was dedicated to my hunger for knowledge, to reach into the unknown with more than just a gut feeling.

The less you knew about something, the more easily it could take advantage of you.

Preparing yourself was the least you could do.

Across from the tall French-style windows was a large fireplace scraped from an old English estate and repurposed in my home.

The stone itself told stories of old, both in condition and from carvings along the mantel, held up by two Roman-style sphynx.

I was reminded of some of the statues back where my parents were from, the stones weathered and smoothed by the coasts of Sicily.

My study was a museum of old and new, the perfect place to harvest.

Absinthe and Tonic pooled in the middle of the open floor, dancing on the Sarouk carpet.

“Gather yourselves”—I clicked my tongue, snapping my fingers before pointing to the middle of the rug over the medallion design—“right there, go on.”

The Peculiars twitched before their movements smoothed out as they combined themselves and flattened into a puddle.

The reflective surface shimmered with an iridescent sheen, like black oil.

I knelt down beside the pool, the hairs along my arms rising the closer I got.

I shed the silk nightgown, the slow thrum of energy racing over my skin feeling vaguely like needle pricks or when a limb hadn’t been moved in a while.

Along my body were asymmetrical pale spots resembling nothing I could describe accurately.

The vitiligo under and between my breasts, my collarbones, my thighs, and any hinging limb was pale as linen.

The patterns were evenly distributed over my body, painted over the tawny maple skin in starlike shapes.

A four-pointed star on my upper chest had been the first to appear.

The rest came gradually throughout my life, collecting like new shimmers appearing in the night sky.

The way these patterns appeared on my body was about as unknown as the other world I dabbled in.

My parents had sworn the marks were divine, which I, too, had chosen to believe.

I leaned in toward the pool, reaching through the liquid surface.

My wrist went in, then my forearm. The deeper I went, the more the vitiligo began to glow.

I didn’t know why, and I’d never cared to ask.

It had become the best way for me to identify when I was close to them, the ones that not many could see.

“Florescentia.” The welcoming of the void with a single word. Once the deed was done, you sent the void back whence it had come with Obscuria. Words older than our religion, the power behind them more ancient than the words themselves.

Energy shot through my veins, my skin warming so fast it became slightly itchy.

Tension in the liquid clamped down on my arm.

I leaned back on my heels to pull. It was like trying to retrieve something buried in clay. Slow and steady, my arm was resurfacing, and around my wrist a thick tendril of ink tightened, reddening the skin as it gripped.

Other forms began to bubble and rise from the pool, climbing over to my legs. A dark substance quivered upon reaching my knees, ascending from the depths I’d summoned it from.

This Peculiar was a strong one. I could feel it by the way the air grew cold and the liquid became warmer, but also by the grip.

The liquid formed a semi-stiff appendage as it wrapped around my leg. The tapered tip lingered between my thighs, feathering its touch before it ventured into all the sensitive places.

A second, longer appendage wrapped around my waist and up my back, curling and caressing the nape of my neck.

The warmth was enough to melt me, my legs relaxing and widening to allow the dark creature access. To touch me, tease me, savor me.

The darkness slipped deeper between my legs, the other appendage by my neck hooking into my mouth as a thousand other touches from the shadows erupted over my skin, a rush of elation, arousal, every good feeling you could imagine catalyzing the ritual.

The energy was at its peak, and eventually, I would be too.

Lust for luck.

The easiest bargain in history.