Page 5 of Moth to a Flame

Motthew:

Thanks bro!

No more dots popped up, but my hand was clamped around the phone. He was fine. He was nearly eighteen and a genius and…I’d watched him burn soup once.

Twice.

Just finish up the job. Then you can head home. He’ll be fine.

Fine. He’d be fine. I flipped to the delivery instructions.

Please deliver to the greenhouse in the back of the property between 11:30 p.m. and midnight.

I groaned, climbing off my bike. I pushed my red motorcycle goggles up onto my forehead. My night vision was good, but not good enough to see with no moonlight and my goggles on. I didn’t want to get tangled up in something and make this delivery take any longer than it needed to.

My boots crunched against the path that led around the house until I rounded the corner and my breath caught.

A greenhouse blazed with light, orange and warm against the black sky painted with stars. Every window glowed like a beacon, illuminating the skeletal shapes of plants inside. It was so beautiful, so perfectly inviting…

I blinked, shaking my head to clear the spell of the light. Being a moth had its disadvantages—this being one of the biggest.

I wiggled my goggles back down over my eyes, and the skin scraped raw by hours of wearing them protested. I had no choice. The red lenses were designed to filter out the part of the spectrum that affected me most, and I needed this delivery done. Everything took on a deep crimson hue, but my head cleared.

The order form had been annoyingly specific. But then again, most witches I’d met were type-A lunatics. This order had been type A-plus. I’d had the weird bundle of leaves in my pack for days, as I was required to carry them across at least three boundaries before delivery. I hoped state lines counted as boundaries, and I’d crossed more than three this week, so maybe I’d even get a bonus.

The closer I got, the brighter the light became. Gods, it was so perfect. When was the last time I saw light like that?

My steps slowed. I should’ve been watching the path, but I couldn’t tear my eyes away from those windows. The light clearly wasn’t from electric bulbs. It wavered as if it were alive, the candles fueling it dancing with their own ecstatic joy. It called out to me in a voice I couldn’t ignore, my wings starting to unfurl without my permission.

Just make the delivery. Drop and go.

But that light…

I was ten feet from the glass when I saw her.

She stood inside a casting circle surrounded by a dozen black candles. Their flames swayed in unison like they were all breathing together. The woman—the witch—had her hands raised, her orange-red hair catching the candlelight like embers, spilling over her shoulders as she spoke words I couldn’t hear through the glass. It floated around her face like living flames. Like she was the flame.

She was stunning.

This woman looked as if she’d grown from the same soil as the deadly plants surrounding her. Sharp cheekbones, full lips moving through an incantation, and an expression of absolute concentration that made my stomach flip. I’d known dozens of witches in my life, but the way the surrounding plants all bent toward her like they were listening told me something. Plants were rarely wrong about people—magical or otherwise.

As I watched, a dark vine unfurled toward her, curling against her cheek and wiping away…a tear.

She was crying, and it made my antennae twitch. They tasted her on the air, and I recognized that sadness. A sadness that staying busy could mostly hide. I knew better than most how depression couldn’t hit a moving target.

Fuck, I needed to get laid instead of standing around psychoanalyzing pretty girls by candlelight. I was staring like a creep. Just knock and⁠—

The candles flared brighter. All of them, all at once.

The light exploded outward, and even my goggles weren’t enough to fight its overwhelming power. My brain just—snapped.

Every rational thought evaporated. My body moved without permission, pulled forward by nothing but primal instinct. The light was everything. I needed to reach it, to touch it, to be it.

My boots pounded against the gravel.

Get to the light get to the light get to the light⁠—

Some distant part of my mind screamed at me to stop, but my body wouldn’t listen. The moth in me had taken over completely, drowning out everything human and rational. There was only the light and the desperate, overwhelming need to have it.