“Hey, Aunt Jane,” Little Evan copycatted.
Around us, night had started to fall, the early dusk of storms passing. Inside the house, lights were glowing through the windows, but I heard no one speaking, no one moving around. I got an unhappy sensation in the middle of my chest. This wasn’t good. I opened my mouth, lips dry and slightly cracked from the remnants of dehydration. “Hey,” I said to my godchildren. Neither replied, so I asked, “Is everyone inside... um... asleep?”
“Yep,” Angie said.
“Yep,” EJ said.
That unhappy sensation in the middle of my chest grew heavy, like a pebble dropped in water, tumbling deep. “Okay. You have something to tell me?”
“Nope.”
“Nope.”
“Ask me, then?”
Angie laughed, the sound playful and childish and happy, her strawberry blond hair stirring with the motion and resettling around her shoulders. “We want to know about that.” She pointed at my chest.
I looked down at my ratty T-shirt. “Just me.”
“Nope.”
“Nope.”
“You got something inside,” Angie said. “Right there.” She pointed at my chest, at the scar that was still unhealed. “Why you carrying her around, Aunt Jane?”
“Her?” I asked, suddenly confused, wondering if she was seeing Beast’s soul inside me.
“This.” She leaned in and touched my hurting flesh, drawing out something I had never expected to see. A mote of magic, its color uncertain, one moment silver, another red, another black. And then a tint of green. “Blood black magic,” Angie said with utter confidence.
“Holy craa...” I stopped, seeing the mote of dark power that she was drawing from my chest into the air. The mote was attached inside me via a length of dark red soul/spirit energy. My heart rate skyrocketed and my breath came fast. Pain flared along the length of the trailing energies and knotted around the healing wound. Each beat of my heart ached and trembled along the magical chain thatbound the mote to me. And the mote beat like a tiny heart, but an unfamiliar tempo, out of rhythm with my own, a peculiar antiresonance to my own heartbeat.
I had seen something like it before. The mote of magical power was familiar, as familiar as old scars and fresh wounds. It was part of my history in New Orleans, from the time I saved Angie and Little Evan from being killed by black magic witches searching for more power than anyone should ever need. Red motes of raw, black magic power had invaded me. I had thought them all gone. And this one was no longer just red, it was red and black and silver and blue and green, moving through the spectrum in scintillating patterns of light and shadow.
“When you was saving us,” Angie said, “one got inside. And it’s still there.”
From the time I fought the Damours and the blood diamond and the motes of evil energies attacked me.One stayed inside.
Somehow I had known this, on some deep plane, darker and deeper than I had been able to perceive on a conscious level. Hiding, along with a lot of other magical mumbo-jumbo crap. Chained inside me. I had seen it not so long ago, a black beating heart in the center of the roof of my soul.
Even with the protection of the angel Hayyel, the dark mote of power had been with me ever since the Damours.
I asked, “Angie? Can you yank it out?”
“IfIbreak the chain it might hurt your real heart and you might die, Aunt Jane.” Words so calm, so adult on her lips. Words no witch child so young should ever speak or understand or know.
The mote was chained to me. I remembered the chain I once had to Leo, when he tried to bind me and I had instead accidentally bound him. I had broken the chain and the binding, but that was many months ago and partially by accident. I wondered if Beast and I were strong enough to breakthischain. A spear of fear stabbed into me from the new wound and I wondered if I would die ifItried to break it. I wondered if it would kill me anyway, or warp me, or drive me to becomeu’tlun’ta. Liver-eater. The finalpersona of all skinwalkers when we veer from the path of good into the pathways of darkness. All that thinking took only an instant and I said, “Let it go, then, Angie. Let it go back into me. But keep an eye on it, okay? If it gets wonky, you tell me. Okay?”
“Wonky,” Angie giggled. “Okay, Aunt Jane.”
“Wo’ky. Okay, Aunt Jane,” EJ echoed.
Angie let the mote go and I felt it slide back into me through the scar and between my ribs. Into my heart. Into my spirit. Into my soul home. It hurt, sharp and cutting, as piercing as the sting of Gee DiMercy’s blade. I needed to talk to the little Anzu, maybe at the point of a steel blade. And soon.
Angie stood, EJ moving with her. He tossed the soccer ball to me and laughed, his eyes alight with mischief. I caught it and tossed it back, moving woodenly, without the grace of Beast, who had been silent inside me for too long. Again.
Standing, I followed the children into the house, shutting the door quietly behind me. On the sofa, Molly and Big Evan were curled against each other, Big Evan snoring slightly, his mouth open, lips drooped against his red beard. Molly was slumped on his chest, her baby bump more pronounced than only weeks in the past, her red hair in wild short curls, a nimbus of energy that even slumber didn’t abolish.
Alex was asleep at the small table he used as a desk, his head resting on his arms. Eli was sitting upright at the kitchen table, his eyes closed and jaw loose, but his posture perfect. Silent. Not snoring.
