Prologue
ADA
The night is too quiet. Only the hum of my old Wagoneer’s engine from where it sits on the driveway reaches my ears. No revelers nearby noisily heading home from the Samhain festivities. No buzz of insects or leaves rustling in the breeze. It’s as if the world around me is paralyzed with fear, holding its breath in hopes of going unnoticed by the fae. As I run toward the carriage house, the magick cast around it overwhelms me to the point I choke on it, like breathing in a cloud of cloying perfume.
I pull back to avoid it, feeling its sticky strength against my skin as I slide on my feet. Giving a wide berth, I skirt around the building with urgent but silent steps.
“What in the blue blazes?” My hands fly to cover my mouth, but not in time to catch my outburst. Behind the carriage house, a dark figure shambles toward the woods, almost like something undead out of those old human horror films. It turns its head fully behind it to look at me while its body remains walking in the other direction. The vertebrae in its neck pop like gunshots in the oppressive silence. Swirling yellow eyes pin mine in a sinister stare. I’m frozen in place as I watch them bulge too big for the head they’re contained in. And like an eggshell cracking—the sound it makes not dissimilar—its body sheds and withers to the ground, a shadowed entity spewing from the husk of its skull.
This is my first glimpse of a fae. All Whispered Folk know of them. As children, we’d spin yarns to frighten each other, the more outlandish the made-up tale, the better. Yet the spine-chilling reality is worse than we imagined. Inky black coils frame the over-bright eyes, now as big as dinner plates, illuminating the space between us. It grows into a shadowed, incorporeal giant, an embodiment of pure magick. The most dangerous and powerful of the Malefic Folk. It’s unfathomable that someone let this foul thing through the town’s wards. I wouldn’t believe anyone would do such a thing, except the evidence is staring me in the face.
My eyes dart to the discarded body. An unfamiliar human-looking male. Thanks to Mother Earth it’s not Cara, but that doesn’t mean she’s safe. Quite the contrary. Something is happening to the carriage house, and she’s most certainly trapped inside. I try to push that thought from my mind as I summon the full strength of my magick—what’s left of it after performing the Samhain rituals, anyway. I must slow down the fae until help arrives. There’s no room for error.
“You’ve come alone, Mayweather heir. Think you can save that pesky little bird all by yourself? How amusing. This shall be fun. What secrets will I steal from your mind while you eagerly wish for death?” It has no discernable mouth, no vocal chords. Yet its deranged, hollowed out masculine voice is ear-splitting, surrounding me from all sides, stabbing at me like a knife.
I can’t let the taunts distract me. A glib response would be a waste of breath. I won’t beg for my life, but I will fight for it.
“Shield my body and mind, no cracks for the fae to—” I falter mid-casting as banshee-like shrieks and moans that don’t belong in this realm of existence bellow from behind me, sending a heart-pounding frisson of fear through my veins.Both the fae and I are caught off guard, turning our attention to its source. A line of figures appears behind me, standing like phantasmic sentries, magick swelling around them. Their otherworldly voices cast spells strong enough to make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
Whoever they are, their appearance isn’t crisp, almost like they’re covered in a fine, flickering layer of static from an old television that blurs around the edges of their forms. Their movement isn’t quite right either. Sometimes too quick, sometimes too slow. But their magick is certainly tangible.
Trying to keep my wits about me, I study their faces to figure out who they are. Oh, moon and stars, those are my own violet eyes gazing at me in a face all too familiar. I see it in the mirror more clearly with each passing year. My mom, so graceful even in this liminal state. And next to her, a slim, tall figure with a mop of dark red hair with a white forelock, curling so roguishly at his forehead. There’s no mistaking my dad, still looking impossibly clever. I never thought I’d see them again in this life.
My parents, gone fifteen years now, stand closest to me. Followed by grandparents and others in my lineage, generations of Mayweathers, from long ago who I never met. I’m knocked for a loop, right when I need to fight for my life.
A high-pitched whine rises from behind the lump in my throat.
“Mom. Dad. You’ve returned to me,” I gasp, as a shuddering sob pushes its way out of me. Tears blur my vision, and I nearly sink to my knees in front of them. I don’t know how they’re here. Unless the ward has brought them to defend me and our family land? Has this Samhain night really blurred the line between our realms so completely?
As I’m drenched by a tidal wave of grief, my mom’s arms raise high and I feel a warm tingle around my body just before a sharp push unsteadies my feet. The spell, cast in a voiceso different than the one locked in my memories, shields me, cushioning the blow from the fae’s attack while I’m distracted. It startles me into action. Like an innate choreography hidden deep in my subconscious, the steps of which I could never recreate, magick flows from me.
I need to direct the wind, push against the fae, compress the oily, coiling tendrils trying to reach me. Instinctively, it’s clear I shouldn’t let it touch me. But despite all I do, those yellow eyes never dim, their strength never wavers.
Changing tactics, I cast spells to wildly swing the temperature surrounding the fae, determining whether extreme heat or cold has any effect. Pulling water out of the humid night air, freezing it on contact, I attempt encasing the fae in ice. The nebulous inky cloud is too quick for me to contain and manages to slither out in a way a physical form couldn’t. When that doesn’t work, I try to use physical barriers to deflect the magick. I pull the ground out from under the fae, creating a tall berm between us. The fae magick blows holes through it soon enough.
The ghostly emanations behind me continue their onslaught, though they seem focused on blocking the fae magick from reaching me. Sometimes enclosing me in a protective barrier, sometimes hitting an opposing spell straight on like an arrow, knocking it off its path. Despite their effort, sometimes the fae magick grazes me, like a lick of fire to my skin. Mostly it’s only a momentary sizzle but at times it’s so excruciating, like lava injected into my veins, that it pulls the breath from my lungs, forcing me to start my spell over after it passes.
A loud crash of breaking glass pulls me out of the trance of casting powerful magick. My eyes flash toward the carriage house beside this impromptu battlefield. Flames burst through the roof near the front of the structure. Even though the fire is on the other side, waves of heat roll off the smoldering building. Sweat drips from my forehead into my eyes. I rub the sting awayas fast as I can. The coven should be here any moment. I can’t think about what’s happening there. I need to hold on just a little longer.
My voice chants a recitation of a long and ancient verse, but the words aren’t my own. The ward has morphed into this living entity, a new consciousness that I’m borrowing from. Generations of knowledge and experience flood into me. My magick ups the ante, trying to disrupt the cellular structure of the fae, to force it into a solid state of matter, anything to paralyze or contain. Not knowing what that murky form is composed of makes it even trickier. But I try to target any natural elements that may occupy space along with its magickal essence. It’s hard to pinpoint, but I strike at what I can. The fae staggers with each surge of magick but regroups swiftly, its form swirling into new and puzzling shapes.
As I pull deeper from my dwindling magickal reserves to cast even more potent spells, I’m shoved backwards by a wall of sound, like a sonic boom. My arms flail as I regain my balance, catching myself before I fall. A bubble of silence surrounds me, though the action around me hasn’t stopped. I do my best to cast spells as before, but my voice chokes in my throat. The fae has muted me, as well as blocked my hearing. This presents another obstacle; one I’m not sure I can overcome.
I slow my breath and attempt to clear my mind, summoning my magick without the aid of my voice to focus its power. I rarely practice this, as it takes considerable mastery to be as effective. It’ll be next to impossible to center myself when all I want is to turn around and catch any glimpse of my parents while I still can. It may be dumb luck they were spared this silencing spell. Their magick still swirls in the air around us.
There’s a sudden rush of movement around me. Members of my coven enter my peripheral vision. Finally. They’re here. Mayhap I’ll survive this night after all. As another spell to fightoff the fae plants itself in my mind, a particularly powerful blast hits me square in the chest. I’m horrified to look down at a long, inky tendril punching right through my sternum.
I crumple to the ground landing hard on my hip, jarred by the impact of that final crush of fae magick. A hole has been blown through my chest. Is this what it feels like to die? Will my parents escort me into the next realm? I struggle to lift my weakened arm to place my hand to my injury, expecting the smear of oozing blood and viscera as I touch it, to hold my heart during its final few beats as I expire from the land of the living. Certain of my impending death, it’s an utter shock to discover my body is intact. There’s no physical damage from the blow. I hold out my trembling hand in front of my disbelieving eyes, clean beyond a scuff of dirt. But the staggering pain is real. And I’m so exhausted.
With black edges narrowing my vision, I force my gaze one last time to my beloved mom and dad, whose lives were cut too short, still standing at the ready behind me, casting spells to protect me and my fellow witches.
I love them so much. I always will.
“Don’t go without me,” I beg in a final burst of strength before I succumb to the darkness.
“Come back! I need you!” I gasp awake, my voice a high keening wail in my dark bedroom. That nightmare repeats itself every night since. Each time I wake up their loss feels fresh, a vicious cycle of torment. Whether or not it was them in any conscious form or simply a strand of the ward’s long memory, I’ve come to see that night as their final act of love for me. Ashes, the very notion tears my heart wide open.
Only silence answers me as I sob into my pillow. My mom and dad, my grandparents, returned to the far reaches, the realm of the dead, that night after dozens of coven members arrived and finally restrained the fae. I wish I had been awake to say goodbye to my parents, like I’ve always wished I could.
