Page 123 of The Witch They Fear

And that's the thing. Nobody knows the exact shape of a moment except the person sitting inside it with you, and the person sitting inside this one is Emric Vane, who's read me like a page all afternoon and is looking at me like I'm the best thing that's happened to his whole week.

I'm suddenly, stupidly certain.

"Can I ask you something weird?" I say.

"Always."

I open my mouth. What's queued up behind my teeth is the actual question—are you the voice that lives behind my sternum, the one that's been narrating my life for months, because the timing is genuinely unhinged and you just said you could feel me and I think it might be you—and I hear it the way it would sound out loud.

Insane.

"...Nope," I say. "Lost it. Gone."

His mouth twitches. He felt me veer off—I can tell—and lets it go, because Emric is kind and lets me have the exit. "You can tell me the weird thing whenever," he says. "I'm hard to scare off. Ask my father."

Eventually the kid behind the counter starts flipping chairs onto tabletops, and we take the hint. Emric stands and offers a hand to pull me up; I take it, which a month ago I wouldn't have.

We head back the long way, in no hurry, the light gone long and gold and Zeva drifting ahead to give us the path. The conversation doesn't stop so much as wander—lighter now, the worst of it said and survived. And when it lapses, the quiet doesn't itch the way quiet always has with me; I keep bracing to fill it and never have to. It's the best couple of hours I've had in years.

At the cottage he stops at the bottom of the step, hands back in his pockets, and the easy thing between us goes shy.

"So," he says.

"So."

"Can I see you again? Not a fixed-it date. A real one. As many as you'll let me."

"Yeah." The word comes out before I can even think. "Yeah, you can."

He reaches up—slow, telegraphed, giving me a whole second to step back—and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, his thumb just barely grazing the edge of my jaw, and then he steps back himself, because he is a better person than the situation strictly requires. "Goodnight, Cal," he says, and walks off into the gold with the sugar handprint still on his shoulder, and I stand there like an idiot until he's out of sight.

I get inside. Shut the door. Lean against it with my heart going like a kicked drum and my face hot, grinning at nothing, grinning, twenty-five years old and undone by a boy tucking my hair back. Then I open my eyes, and I'm looking at the inside of my own door, and the giddy thing in my chest curdles into a long, tired groan.

Right. The ritual.

Whoever carved that damn rune into my door is here to ruin the moment.

Again.

Because no matter how the day goes, the door still has a summoning anchor carved into the other side of it, and a vampire's blood worked into the grooves, and a standing appointment with me every single night until I find out whose. I get the kit—the tin of ward chalk Odette ground for me, the candle stub, the matches—and crouch and start drawing the counter-rune on the inside of the wood, same height as theirs, every angular line reversed, a mirror thrown up against whatever's trying to come through. I light the candle. Hold my palm flat over the flame. Reach down into the place behind my sternum and start to channel.

And it fights me tonight.

It's loud—too much left over from the river, from the hair, from being wrapped up in the way Emric made me feel—and the magic comes up fast and bright and wanting, and I have to stop, breathe, find the bead at my wrist, drag myself down to something steady before I push it through the heat. Easy. Easy. The chalk drinks it in. The flame stretches, gutters, goes blue—one clean blue second—then settles back to gold, locked, holding till dawn.

I sit back on my heels, sweating, the high of the day wrung out of me and the old weight settling back into its seat.

And that's when I feel it. The anchor on the other side of the door, through the wood, through my fresh counter-rune. The hum of it.

It's stronger than it was yesterday.

Fresher.

Someone came back to my door today. Refreshed it. Pressed their blood into the wood and walked away—while I was sitting on a levee getting powdered sugar on a boy who can feel me from across a table, somebody stood right here, on the sweetest afternoon of my life, and quietly sharpened the thing they're going to use to get in.

I press my palm flat over the counter-rune and let the fear have its minute.

Then, soft, from the warm place behind my sternum where it always arrives: