SEVEN YEARS AGO
Lancashire, England
The first thing you learned on the job as a Hollower was to never trust your eyes.
Nash, of course, had a different way of saying it: All sorcery is half illusion. The other half, unfortunately, was blood-soaked terror.
In that moment, though, I wasn’t scared. I was as angry as a spitting cat.
They’d left me behind. Again.
I braced my hands on either side of the garden shed’s doorframe,
drawing as close as I could to the enchanted passageway without
entering. Hollowers called these dark tunnels Veins because they
carried you from one location to another in an instant. In this case, to
the vault of a long-dead sorceress, containing her most prized
possessions.
I checked the time on the cracked screen of Nash’s
ancient cell phone. It had been forty-eight minutes since I watched them
disappear into the Vein. I hadn’t been able to run fast enough to catch
up, and if they’d heard my shouts, they’d ignored me.
The phone screen blinked to black as the battery finally croaked.
“Hello?” I called, fiddling with the key they’d left in the lock—one of
the sorceress’s finger bones, dipped into a bit of her blood. “I’m not
going back to camp, so you may as well just tell me when it’s safe to
come in! Do you hear me?”
Only the passage answered, breathing
out whorls of snow. Great. The Sorceress Edda had chosen to put her
collection of relics somewhere even colder than England in the winter.
The fact that Cabell and Nash weren’t answering had my insides
squirming. But Nash had never been deterred by the promise of danger,
and he was about to discover I wouldn’t be deterred by anyone, least of
all my rotten bastard of a guardian.
“Cabell?” I said, louder
this time. The cold gripped my words, leaving white streaks in the air. A
shiver rippled through me. “Is everything all right? I’m coming in
whether you want me to or not!”
Of course Nash had taken Cabell with him. Cabell was useful to him. But if I wasn’t there, there was no one to make sure my brother didn’t end up hurt, or worse.
The sun was shy, hiding behind silver clouds. Behind me, an abandoned
stone cottage kept watch over the nearby fields. The air was quiet,
which always stirred up my nerves. I held my breath, straining my ears
to listen. No humming traffic, no drone of passing airplanes, not even a
chirp from a bird. It was like everyone else knew better than to come
to this cursed place, and Nash was the only idiot too stupid and greedy
to risk it.
But a moment later, a fresh wave of snow carried Cabell’s voice to me.
“Tamsin?” He sounded excited, at least. “Watch your head as you come in!”
I plunged into the Vein’s disorienting darkness. Outside was nothing
compared to the barbed cold that wrapped around me now, knifing at my
skin until I couldn’t draw breath.
In two steps, the round
doorway at the other end of the Vein carved itself out of the black air.
In three, it became a vivid wall of ghostly light. Blue, almost like—
I glanced down at the broken chunks of ice scattered around the
doorway, at the swirling curse sigils carved into them. I turned,
searching for Cabell, but a hand caught me, stopping me in my tracks.
“I told you to stay at the camp.” With his head lamp on, Nash’s face
was in shadow, but I could feel the anger radiating from him like the
warmth from his skin. “We’ll have words about this, Tamsin.”
“What are you going to do, ground me?” I asked, riding high on my victory.
“Perhaps I will, you wee fool,” he said. “Never do anything without knowing the cost.”
The light from his head lamp danced over me, then swung upward. My gaze followed.
Icicles jutted down from the ceiling. Hundreds of them, all capped with
razor-sharp steel, poised to fall at any moment. The walls, the ground,
the ceiling—all of it was solid ice.
Even in the darkness,
Cabell was easy to spot in his tattered yellow windbreaker. Relief
poured through me as I made my way to his side, crouching to help him
pick up unused crystals. He’d used the stones to absorb the magic of the
curses surrounding the doorways. Once the curses were nullified, Nash
had taken his axe to their sigils.
All Hollowers could perform a
version of what Cabell was doing, but they could only clear curses with
tools they’d bought off sorceresses.
Cabell was special, even
among the Hollowers with special magic. He was the first Expeller in
centuries—someone who could redirect the magic of a curse away from one
source and into another, deflecting spells from our path.
The only curse Cabell couldn’t seem to break was his own.
“What curse was this, Tamsin?” Nash asked, pointing the steel toe of
his boot toward a sigil-marked chunk of ice. At my look, he added, “You
said you wanted to learn.”
Sigils were symbols used by the
sorceresses to shape magic and bind it to a location or object. Nash had
come up with stupid names for all the curse marks.
“Wraith
Shadow,” I said, rolling my eyes. “A spirit would have followed us
through the vault, tormenting us and tearing at our skin.”
“And this one?” Nash pressed, nudging a chunk of carved stone my way.
“White Eyes,” I said. “So, whoever crossed the threshold would be
blinded and left to wander the vault until they froze to death.”
“They probably would have been impaled before they froze,” Cabell said
cheerfully, pointing to a different sigil. His pale skin was pink from
the cold or excitement, and he didn’t seem to notice the flakes of ice
in his black hair.
“Fair point, well made,” Nash said, and my brother beamed.
The walls exhaled cold air around us. An otherworldly song rippled
through the ice, cracking and twanging like an old tree playing puppet
to the wind. There was only one way forward—the narrow pathway to our
right.
I shivered, rubbing my arms. “Can we just find your stupid dagger and go?”
Cabell reached into his bag, retrieving fresh crystals for the curses
that lined the hallway. I kept my eyes on him, tracking his every move,
but Nash’s gloved hand caught my shoulder when I tried to follow.
Nash tutted. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked knowingly.
I blew a strand of blond hair off my face, annoyed. “I don’t need it.”
“And I don’t need attitude from a sprite of a girl, yet here we are,”
Nash said, rummaging through my bag for a bundle of purple silk. He
unwrapped it, holding the Hand of Glory out to me.
I didn’t have
the One Vision—something Cabell and Nash reminded me of every infernal
chance they got. Unlike them, I had no magic of my own. A Hand of Glory
could unlock any door, even one protected by a skeleton knob, but its
most important purpose, at least to me, was to illuminate magic hidden
to the human eye.
I hated it. I hated being different—a problem that Nash had to solve.
“Whew, he’s getting a bit crusty, isn’t he?” Nash asked, lighting the dark wick of each finger in turn.
“It’s your turn to give him the bath,” I said. The last thing I wanted
to do was spend another evening massaging a fresh coat of human lard
into the severed left hand of a prolific eighteenth-century murderer
who’d been hanged for his crime of annihilating four families.
“Wake up, Ignatius,” I ordered. Nash had attached him to an iron candlestick base, but that didn’t make holding him any nicer.
I turned the Hand of Glory so the palm faced me. The bright blue eye
nestled into its waxy skin blinked open—then narrowed in
disappointment.
“Yup,” I told it. “I’m still alive.”
The eye rolled.
“The feeling’s mutual, you impertinent piece of pickled flesh,” I
muttered, adjusting the stiff, curled fingers until they cracked back
into place.
“Good afternoon, handsome,” Nash crooned. “You know, Tamsy, a little sugar makes everything nice.”
I glowered at him.
“You wanted to come,” he said. “Think about the cost next time, eh?”
The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils. I switched Ignatius into
my left hand, and my view of the world flickered as his light spread
along the surface of the ice, bathing it in an unearthly glow. I sucked
in a sharp breath.
The curse sigils were everywhere—on the ground, on the walls, on the ceiling—all swirling in and out of one another.
Cabell knelt at the entrance to the path. Sweat beaded on his forehead
as he worked to redirect the curses into the crystals he slowly set out
in front of him.
“Cab needs a break,” I told Nash.
“He can handle it,” Nash said.
Cabell nodded, setting his shoulders back. “I’m fine. I can keep going.”
A drip of burning lard scalded my thumb. I hissed at Ignatius, meeting his narrow, spiteful gaze with one of my own.
“No,” I told him firmly. I wasn’t going to set him down beside Cabell
like I knew he wanted. First, because I didn’t have to obey the commands
of a severed hand—actually, I didn’t need another reason beyond that.
Just to torment the impertinent hand, I held Ignatius out toward the
wall at my right, pushing the exposed eye closer and closer to its
frozen surface. I wasn’t a good enough person to feel guilty about the
quiver that moved through his stiff joints.
The heat of his
flames cut through the heavy coat of frost on the wall, and as each drip
of water snaked down it, it revealed a dark shape on the other side.
A gasp tore out of me. The heel of my sneaker caught the ice as I
stumbled back, and before I could even register what was happening, I
was falling.
Nash shot forward with a startled grunt, catching my arm in an iron grip. The chill of the nearby wall kissed my scalp.
My heart was still hammering, my lungs throbbing to catch their next
breath, as Nash eased me upright. Cabell rushed to my side, grabbing my
shoulders, checking to make sure I wasn’t hurt. I knew the moment he
saw what I’d glimpsed through the ice. His already white face turned
bloodless. His fingers tightened with terror.
There was a man in
the ice, made monstrous by death. The pressure of the ice looked to
have broken his jaw, which gaped open unnaturally wide in one last
silent scream. A shock of white hair framed his ice-burned cheeks. His
spine was bent at tortured angles.
“Ah, Woodrow. I was wondering what he’d gotten up to,” Nash said, taking a step forward to study the body. “Poor bastard.”
Cabell gripped my wrist, turning Ignatius’s light back toward the
tunnel ahead. Dark shadows stained the gleaming ice like bruises. A grim
gallery of bodies.
I lost count at thirteen.
My brother
was trembling, shaking hard enough that his teeth chattered. His dark
eyes met my blue ones. “There are . . . there are so many of them . . .”
I wrapped my arms around him. “It’s okay . . . it’s okay . . .”
But fear had him in its grip; it had ignited his curse. Dark bristles
broke out along his neck and spine, and the bones of his face were
shifting with sickening cracks, taking on the shape of a terrifying
hound.
“Cabell,” came Nash’s voice, calm and low. “Where was King Arthur’s dagger forged?”
“It . . .” Cabell’s voice sounded strange rasping through elongating teeth. “It was . . .”
“Where, Cabell?” Nash pressed.
“What are you—?” I began, only for Nash to quiet me with a look. The
ice moaned around us. I tightened my grip on Cabell, feeling his spine
curl.
“It was forged . . .” Cabell’s eyes narrowed with focus as they landed on Nash. “In . . . Avalon.”
“That’s right. Along with Excalibur.” Nash knelt in front of us, and
Cabell’s body went still. The hair that had burst through his skin
receded, leaving rashlike marks. “Do you remember the other name
Avalonians use for their isle?”
Cabell’s face started to shift back, and he grimaced in pain. But his eyes never left Nash’s face.
“Ynys . . . Ynys Afallach.”
“Got it on the first try, of course,” Nash said, rising. He put a hand
on each of our shoulders. “You’ve cleared the bulk of the curses
already, my boy. You can wait here with Tamsin until I return.”
“No,” Cabell said, swiping at his eyes with his sleeves. “I want to come.”
And I wasn’t going to let him go without me.
Nash nodded and started down the hallway, passing the lantern back to
Cabell and aiming his head lamp down the stretch of bodies. “This
reminds me of a tale . . .”
“What doesn’t?” I muttered.
Couldn’t he see that Cabell was still rattled? He was only pretending to
be brave, but pretending had always been enough for Nash.
“In
ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named Arthur ruled man and
Fair Folk alike,” Nash began, carefully making his way around the
crystals. He used the tip of his axe to scratch out the curse sigils as
he passed by them. “But it is not him I speak of now—rather, the fair
isle of Avalon.
A place where apples grow that can heal all
ailments, and priestesses tend to those who live among its divine
groves. For a time, Arthur’s own half sister Morgana belonged to their
order. She served as a wise and fair counsel to him, despite how many of
those Victorian-era shills chose to remember her.”
He’d told us
this tale before. A hundred times, around a hundred different smoky
campfires. As if Arthur and his knights were accompanying us on all our
jobs . . . but it was a good kind of familiar.
I focused on the sound of Nash’s warm, rumbly voice, not the horrible faces around us. The blood frozen in halos around them.
“The priestesses honor the goddess who created the very land Arthur came to rule—some say she made it from her own heart.”
“That’s stupid,” I whispered, my voice trembling only a little. Cabell reached back, taking my hand tight in his own.
Nash snorted. “Maybe to you, girl, but to them, their stories are as
real as you or me. The isle was once part of our world, where
Glastonbury Tor now proudly stands, but many centuries ago, when new
religions rose and man grew to fear and hate magic, it was splintered
away, becoming one of the Otherlands. There, priestesses, druids, and
Fair Folk escaped the dangers of the mortal world, and lived in peace . .
.”
“Until the sorceresses rebelled,” Cabell said, risking a look around. His voice was growing stronger.
“Until the sorceresses rebelled,” Nash agreed. “The sorceresses we know
today are the descendants of those who were banished from Avalon, after
taking to darker magic . . .”
I focused on the feel of Cabell’s
hand, his fingers squeezing tight as we passed by the last body and
moved through a stone archway. Beyond it, the ice-slick path wound its
way down. We stopped again when Cabell felt—before he even saw—a curse
sigil buried underfoot.
“Why are you so desperate to find this stupid dagger, anyway?” I asked, hugging my arms to my chest to try to keep warm.
Nash had spent the last year searching, blowing off paying work and easier finds. I’d found us the lead for this vault . . . not that Nash would ever acknowledge the research I did.
“You don’t think finding a legendary relic is reason enough?” he asked,
swiping at his red-tipped nose. “When you desire something, you must
fight for it tooth and claw, or not at all.”
“It’s clear,” Cabell said, standing again. “We can keep going.”
Nash moved ahead of us. “Remember, my wee imps, that Sorceress Edda
was renowned for her love of trickery. All will not be what it first
seems.”
It only took a few steps to understand what he meant.
It began with a kerosene lantern, casually left beside one of the
bodies in the ice, as if the hunter had merely set it down, leaned
forward against the freezing surface, and been swallowed whole.
We passed it without a second look.
Next was the ladder, the one that offered safety for the long climb down to a lower level.
We used our ropes.
Then, just as the temperature plunged deeper into a killing freeze, a
pristine white fur coat. So soft and warm and just the kind that an
absent-minded sorceress might have left behind, tossing it over an
equally tempting crate of food jars.
Take me, they whispered. Use me.
And pay the price in blood.
Ignatius’s light revealed the truth. The razors and rusted nails
lining the interior of the coat. The spiders waiting in the jars. All
but one rung missing from the ladder. Even the lantern was filled with
the Smothering Mother, a vapor that tightened your lungs until breathing
became impossible, made from the blood of a mother who’d killed her
children. Anyone who opened the glass to light the wick would be dead in
an instant.
We passed it all, Cabell redirecting the dark magic
of the curses laid between each trap. Finally, after what seemed like
hours, we reached the inner chamber of the vault.
The round
chamber shone with the same pale, icy light. At its center was an altar,
and there, sitting on a velvet pillow, was a dagger with a bone-white
hilt.
And Nash, who never struggled for a word, was silent. Not
happy, like I would have thought. Not bouncing on his toes with glee as
Cabell broke the last of the curses protecting it.
“What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “Don’t tell me it’s not the right dagger.”
“No, it is,” Nash said, his voice taking on a strange tone. Cabell stepped back from the altar, allowing Nash to come forward.
“Well,” he breathed out, his hand hovering above the hilt for an instant before closing around it.
“Hello.”
“What now?” Cabell asked, peering down at it.
A better question was probably who he was going to sell it to. Maybe,
for once, we could afford a decent place to live and food to eat.
“Now,” Nash said quietly, holding the blade up into the gleaming light. “We go to Tintagel and recover the true prize.”
We traveled to Cornwall by train, arriving just as a fierce storm blew
in over the cliffs and ensnared the dark ruins of Tintagel Castle in its
wild, thundering depths. After we battled to set up our tent in the
lashing rain and wind, I crashed into sleep. The bodies in the ice were
waiting for me in dreams, only now they weren’t Hollowers, but King
Arthur and his knights.
Nash stood in front of them, his back to
me as he watched the surface of the ice rippling like water. I opened
my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Not even a scream as he
stepped forward through the ice, as if to join them.
I jolted
awake with a gasp, twisting and thrashing to free myself from my
sleeping bag. The first bit of sunlight gave the red fabric of our tent a
faint glow.
Enough for me to see that I was alone.
They’re gone.
Static filled my ears, turning my body to pins and needles. My fingers were too numb to grip the zipper on the tent’s flap.
They’re gone.
I couldn’t breathe. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. They’d left me behind again.
With a frustrated scream, I broke the zipper and ripped the flap away, tumbling out into the cold mud.
The rain came down in torrents, battering my hair and bare feet as I
swung my gaze around. A thick mist churned around me, blanketing the
hills. Trapping me there, alone.
“Cabell?” I yelled. “Cabell, where are you?”
I ran into the mist, the rocks and heather and thistle biting at my
toes. I didn’t feel any of it. There was only the scream building in my
chest, burning and burning.
“Cabell!” I screamed. “Nash!”
My foot caught on something and I fell, rolling against the ground
until I hit another stone and the air blasted out of me. I couldn’t draw
in another breath. Everything hurt.
And the scream broke open, and became something else.
“Cabell,” I sobbed. The tears were hot, even as the rain lashed against my face.
What good will you be to us?
“Please,” I begged, curling up. The sea roared back as it battered the
rocky shore. “Please . . . I can be good . . . please . . .”
Don’t leave me here.
“Tam . . . sin . . . ?”
At first, I thought I had imagined it.
“Tamsin?” His voice was small, almost swallowed by the storm.
I pushed up, fighting against the sucking grass and mud, searching for him.
For a moment, the mists parted at the top of the hill, and there he
was, as pale as a ghost, his black hair plastered to his skull. His
near-black eyes unfocused.
I slipped and struggled up the hill,
clawing at the grass and stones until I reached him. I wrapped my arms
around him. “Are you okay? Cab, are you okay? What happened? Where did
you go?”
“He’s gone.” Cabell’s voice was as thin as a thread. His
skin felt like a block of ice, and I could see a tinge of blue to his
lips. “I woke up and he was gone. He left his things . . . I looked for
him, but he’s . . .”
Gone.
But Cabell was here. I
hugged him tighter, feeling him cling back. Feeling his tears become
rain on my shoulder. I had never hated Nash more for being everything I
always thought he was.
A coward. A thief. A liar.
“H-he’ll be back, won’t he?” Cabell whispered. “Maybe he just f-f-forgot to say where he was g-going?”
I didn’t want to ever lie to Cabell, so I didn’t say anything.
“W-we should go b-back and wait—”
We would be waiting forever. I felt the truth of it down to my bones.
Nash had finally unloaded his hangers-on. He was never coming back. The
only mercy was that he hadn’t taken Cabell with him.
“We’re okay,” I whispered. “We’re okay. We’re all we need. We’re okay . . .”
Nash said that some spells had to be spoken three times to take hold,
but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that, either. I wasn’t one of the
girls from the gilded pages of storybooks. I had no magic.
I only had Cabell.
The dark bristles were spreading across his skin again, and I felt the
bones of his spine shifting, threatening to realign. I held him tighter.
Fear swirled in the pit of my stomach. Nash had always been the one to
pull Cabell back to himself, even when he fully shifted.
Now Cabell only had me.
I swallowed, shielding him from the driving rain and wind. And then I
started to speak: “In ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named
Arthur ruled man and Fair Folk alike . . .”
PART I
Two of Swords
1
No matter what they say, or how much they lie to themselves, people don’t want the truth.
They want the story already living inside them, buried deep as marrow
in the bone. The hope written across their faces in a subtle language
few know how to read.
Luckily for me, I did.
The trick,
of course, was to make them feel like I hadn’t seen anything at all.
That I couldn’t guess who was heartsick for a lost love or desperate for
a windfall of money, or who wanted to break free from an illness they’d
never escape. It all came down to a simple desire, as predictable as it
was achingly human: to hear their wish spoken by someone outside
themselves—as if that somehow had the power to make it all come true.
Magic.
But wishes were nothing more than wasted breath fading into the air, and magic always took more than it gave.
No one wanted to hear the truth, and that was fine by me. The lies paid
better; the bald-faced realities, as my boss Myrtle—the Mystic Maven of
Mystic Maven Tarot—once pointed out, only got me raging internet
reviews.
I rubbed my arms beneath the crochet shawl, eyes darting to the digital timer to my right: 0:30 . . . 0:29 . . . 0:28 . . .
“I’m sensing . . . yes, I’m sensing you have another question,” I said,
pressing two fingers against my forehead. “One that’s your real reason
for coming here.”
The glowing essential oil diffuser gurgled
contentedly behind me. Its steady stream of patchouli and rosemary was
powerless against the smell of deep-fried calamari drifting up through
the old floorboards and the rancid stench of the dumpsters out back. The
cramped, dark room circled in tighter around me as I breathed through
my mouth.
Mystic Maven had occupied its room above Boston’s
Faneuil Hall Marketplace for decades, bearing witness to the succession
of tacky seafood restaurants that cycled in and out of the building’s
ground level. Including, most recently, the particularly malodorous
Lobster Larry’s.
“I mean . . . ,” my client began, looking
around at the peeling strips of floral wallpaper, the small statues of
Buddha and Isis, then back down to the spread of cards I’d placed on the
table between us. “Well . . .”
“Anything?” I tried again. “How you’ll do on your finals? Future career? Hurricane season? If your apartment is haunted?”
My phone came to the end of the playlist of harmonic rain and wind
chimes. I reached down to restart it. In the silence that followed, the
dusty battery-powered candles flickered on the shelves around us. The
darkness gathered between them hid just how dingy the room was.
Come on, I thought, half desperate.
It had been six long hours of listening to chanting-monk tracks and
mindlessly rearranging crystals on the nearby shelves between what few
customers had come in. Cabell had to have the key by now, and after
finishing up with this reading, I’d be able to leave for my real gig.
Franklin opened his mouth, only to be cut off by the digital wail of my timer.
Before I could react, the door swung open and a girl barreled inside.
“Finally!” she said, parting the cheap beaded curtain with a dramatic sweep of her hands. “My turn!”
Franklin turned to gawk at her, his expression shifting as he assessed
her with clear interest—the way she all but vibrated with excited
energy made it difficult to look anywhere else. Her dark brown skin was
dusted with a faint shimmer, likely from whatever cream she used, which
smelled like honey and vanilla. Her braids were twisted back into two
high buns on her head, and she’d painted her lips a deep purple.
After giving Franklin a quick once-over in return, she quirked her lips
in my direction. In her hand was her ever-present portable CD player
and foam-covered earphones, relics of simpler technological yesteryears.
As someone incapable of throwing anything away, I was begrudgingly
charmed by them.
But the charm quickly faded as she turned her
belt around and tucked both into what appeared to be a pink fanny pack.
One with fluorescent cats and the words i’m meow-gical emblazoned across
it in glow-in-the-dark green.
“Neve.” I tried not to sigh. “I didn’t realize we had an appointment today.”
Her smile was blinding as she read the painted message on the door. “Walk-ins Welcome!”
“I was going to ask when we’re getting back together—” Franklin protested.
“We have to save something for the next time, don’t we?” I said sweetly.
He grabbed his backpack with an uncertain look. “You . . . you’re not going to tell anyone I came, are you?”
I gestured to the sign over my right shoulder, all readings are
confidential, then to the one directly below it, we are not liable for
any decisions you make based on these readings, which had been added
three minor lawsuits too late.
“See you next time,” I said with a little wave that I hoped didn’t look half as threatening as it felt.
Neve swept into his seat, propping her elbows on the table. She rested her chin on her palm with an expectant look.
“So,” she said. “How’s it going, girl? Any interesting jobs lately? Any nefaaaarious curses you’ve untangled?”
I shot a horrified look at the door, but Franklin was already out of earshot.
“What question would you like answered by the cards today?” I asked pointedly.
I’d accidentally left my work gloves—made from a distinctly reptilian
hide called dragonscale—hanging out of my bag two weeks ago, and Neve
had recognized them and made the unfortunate connection about my real
job. Her knowledge of Hollowers and magic meant she was likely one of
the Cunningfolk, a catchall term for people with a magic gift. Although
I’d never seen her around the usual haunts.
She reached into the
pocket of her shaggy black fur coat and pressed a rumpled twenty-dollar
bill onto the table between us. Enough for fifteen minutes.
I could do fifteen more minutes.
“Your life is so exciting,” Neve said with a happy sigh, as if
imagining herself in my place. “I was just reading about the Sorceress
Hilde the other day—did she really sharpen her teeth like a cat’s? That
seems painful. How do you eat without constantly biting the inside of
your mouth?”
I tried not to bristle as I leaned back against my chair and set the timer. Fifteen minutes. Just fifteen.
“Your question?” I pressed, wrapping Myrtle’s crochet shawl tighter around my shoulders.
In truth, being a Hollower was 98 percent boring research, 2 percent
deadly misadventures trying to open sorceresses’ vaults and tombs.
Reducing it to light, glorified gossip prickled every nerve in my being.
Neve tugged at her black shirt, distorting the image of the pink rib
cage that covered it. Her jeans were ripped in places, the tears
revealing the shock of purple tights beneath. “Not very talkative, are
you, Tamsin Lark? Okay, fine. I have the same question I always have: Am
I going to find what I’m looking for?”
I glared at the cards as
I shuffled, focusing on the feeling of them fluttering between my
fingers, and not the intensity of her stare. For all the bounce in her
step and the cheeriness of her words, her eyes were dark pools, always
threatening to draw you in deeper with their ribbons of gold. They
reminded me of my brother’s tiger’s-eye crystals, and made me wonder if
they were connected to her magic gift—not that I’d ever cared enough to
ask.
After seven shuffles, I started to draw the first card, only for her hand to catch mine.
“Can I pick today?” she asked.
“I mean . . . if you want to,” I said, fanning them out facedown on the table. “Choose three.”
She took her time in selecting them, humming a soft song I didn’t
recognize. “What do you think people would do if they found out about
sorceresses?”
“What they always do when they suspect witches,” I said dryly.
“Here’s the thing.” Neve hovered her fingers over each card in turn. “I think they would try to use their
power for their own ends. Sorceresses have spells that predict the
future more accurately than tarot, right? And find things . . .”
And curses that kill things, I
thought to myself, glancing at the timer. The part of me stirred that
suspected all these visits might be a ruse to size me up for a potential
recovery job. Most of the work Cabell and I did as Hollowers was
for-hire; we went into vaults looking for lost or stolen family
heirlooms and the like.
Neve laid two rows of three cards out on the table, then sat back with a satisfied nod.
“I only need one row,” I protested, then stopped. It didn’t matter.
Anything to kill these last ten minutes. I gathered the remaining cards
into a neat pile. “Go ahead and flip them.”
Neve turned over the bottom row. Wheel of Fortune reversed, Five of Wands, Three of Swords.
Her face scrunched up in annoyance.
“I read the three positions as situation, action, and the outcome,” I
explained, though I suspected she knew all this. “Here, the Wheel of
Fortune reversed is saying that you’ve been drawn into a situation that
is beyond your control, and that you’ll have to work harder to see your
search through. Five of Wands advises you to wait out the situation and
not jump into things if you don’t have to. And the outcome, with Three
of Swords, is usually a disappointment so I’m going with, you won’t find
whatever it is you’re looking for, through no fault of your own.”
I turned over the pile of cards in my hand. “Bottom of the deck—the root of the situation—is Page of Wands reversed.”
I almost laughed. It was the card that always came up in her readings,
signaling impatience and naïveté. If I actually believed in this tripe,
it’d be pretty clear the universe was trying to send her a message.
“Well, that’s just the cards’ opinion,” Neve said. “Doesn’t mean it’s
true. And besides, life wouldn’t be half as fun if we couldn’t prove
people wrong.”
“Sure,” I agreed. The question was on the tip of my tongue. What exactly are you looking for?
“Now let’s do you,” Neve said, turning over the second row of cards. “And see the answer to whatever’s been on your mind.”
“No,” I protested, “really, that’s—”
She was already laying cards out: the Fool, the Tower, and the Seven of Swords.
“Oooh,” she said, all drama as she took my hands in hers. “An
unforeseen event will liberate you to explore a new path, but you must
watch out for a person who seeks to betray you! What question has been
on your mind, hmm?”
“No question,” I said, extracting myself from her grip. “Except what I’m having for dinner.”
Neve laughed, pushing her chair back. I looked down at the timer.
“You still have another five minutes,” I told her.
“That’s all right, I got what I needed.” She freed her CD player from
her atrocious fanny pack, hooking the earphones around her neck. “Hey,
what are you doing tomorrow night?”
Money was money. Resigned, I reached for the leather-bound book beside me. “I’ll put you down for an appointment. What time?”
“No, I mean to hang out.” Seeing my blank look, Neve added, “To hang out, a
phrase commonly used to suggest that people grab a meal together, or
see a movie, or literally do anything that involves enjoyment.”
I
froze. Maybe I’d read this situation completely wrong. My words were as
awkward as they were stilted when I finally managed to get them out.
“Oh . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m not into girls.”
Neve’s laugh was like chiming bells. “Tragic for you, but you’re not my type. I meant as friends.”
My hands curled under the velvet tablecloth. “I’m not allowed to be friends with clients.”
Her smile faded for a moment, and I knew she’d recognized the lie for what it was. “Okay, no problem.”
She lifted her old foam headphones over her ears as she turned to go.
They did nothing to stop the reverberating bass and distorted whine of
melancholic guitars from leaking out. A woman’s cosmic wailing flooded
into the room, backed by a shuddering drumbeat that made me feel anxious
just hearing it.
“What in thundering hell are you listening to?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Cocteau Twins,” Neve said, pushing up her headphones. Her eyes glittered with excitement.
“Have you heard of them? They’re amazing—every song is like a dream.”
“They can’t be that amazing if I’ve never heard of them,” I said. “You should turn it down before you lose your hearing.”
She ignored me.
“Their songs are like different worlds.” Neve wound the headphone cord around the bulky device.
“I know it seems silly, but when I listen to them, it pushes everything
else away. Nothing else matters. You don’t have to feel anything but
the music. Sorry, you probably don’t care.”
I didn’t, but guilt
welled in me all the same. Neve made her way to the door just as Cabell
opened it. He blinked at the sight of her before she brushed past.
“Bye!” Neve called, hurrying down the stairs. “Until we meet again, Oracle!”
“Another satisfied customer?” My brother lingered in the doorway, brows
raised as he ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair.
“But of course,” I said, throwing Myrtle’s shawl down. After scraping
my tangled hair back into a ponytail, I gathered up the cards, neatening
them into a pile. I reached for the small velvet bag I used to store
them, only to stop when I saw what was at the top of the deck.
I
had never liked the Moon card. It wasn’t anything I could explain, and
that only made me hate it more. Every time I looked at it, it was like
trying to tow a sinking memory back to the front of my mind, which had
never forgotten anything before.
I drew the card closer,
studying the image. It was impossible to tell if the moon’s luminous
face was sleeping or merely contemplating the long path below. In the
distance, misty blue hills waited, guarded by two stone towers, silent
sentinels to whatever truth lay beyond the horizon.
A wolf and a
dog, brothers in fear, one wild, the other tame, howled up at the
glowing orb in the sky. Near their feet, a crayfish crawled from the
edge of a pool.
My gaze drifted to the dark hound again, my stomach tightening.
“How did it go today?” Cabell asked, drawing my attention back to him.
After taking my cut of the day’s earnings and locking the rest in the safe, I held up two hundred-dollar bills.
“Hey, hey. Look who’s buying dinner tonight,” he said. “I await the fabled Lobster Larry’s Unlimited Seafood Tower.”
My brother was all lanky height and had little meat on his bones, but
he looked perfectly comfortable in what I’d come to think of as the
tried-and-true uniform of Hollowers: loose brown slacks and a belt laden
with the tools of the trade, including a hand axe, crystals, and vials
of fast-acting poison and antivenom.
All of which were needed if
you wanted to empty the sorceress’s vault of the treasures she’d
hoarded over the centuries and keep both life and limb.
“Why not just eat garbage from the dumpster out back instead?” I said. “You’ll get the same dining experience.”
“I take that to mean you want to stop by the library and try to drop in
on some potential clients before we order pizza for the tenth night in a
row,” he said.
“What happened with the key for the Sorceress
Gaia’s job?” I asked, reaching for my bag. “Was there a match in the
library’s collection, or did you have to go to the Bonecutter after
all?”
To open a sealed Vein, one of the magic pathways the
sorceresses created for themselves, we needed bone and blood from the
one who created it, or her kin. The Bonecutter sourced and procured
them.
“Had to ask the Bonecutter,” he said, passing it to me to
examine. This key looked like two finger bones welded with a seam of
gold. “We’re all set to open the tomb this weekend.”
“God’s teeth,” I muttered. “What did the key cost us?”
“Just the usual,” he said, shrugging a shoulder. “A favor.”
“We can’t keep handing out favors,” I said tightly, making quick work
of switching off the music and the battery-powered candles.
“Why not?” He leaned a hip against the doorframe.
The small movement—that careless tone of voice—brought me up short.
He’d never reminded me more of Nash, the crook of a man who had
reluctantly raised us and drawn us into his profession, only to abandon
us to it.
Cabell cast a quick look around my Mystic Maven setup.
“You’ll have to ditch this bullshit gig if you want to be able to pay
the Bonecutter with actual coin next time.”
Somehow we’d
arrived at my least-favorite conversation yet again. “This ‘bullshit
gig’ buys us groceries and pays for the roof over our heads. You could ask for more shifts at the tattoo parlor.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” Cabell let out another irritating hum. “If we just went after a legendary relic—”
“If we just found a unicorn,” I interrupted. “If we just uncovered a
lost trove of pirates’ treasure. If we just caught a falling star and
put it in our pockets . . .”
“All right,” Cabell said, his smile falling. “Enough. You’ve made your point.”
We weren’t like the other Hollowers and Nash, who chased mist and
dreams. Sure, selling a legendary object on the black market could make
you thousands, if not millions, but the cost was years of searching for
an ever-dwindling number of relics. The magic users of other parts of
the world had secured their treasures, leaving only Europe’s up for
grabs. And, besides, we’d never had the right resources for a big get.
“Real money comes from real jobs,” I reminded him. And whether I liked
it or not, Mystic Maven was a real job, one with flexible hours and fair
wages graciously paid under the table. We needed it to supplement the
for-hire work we took from the guild library’s job board, especially as
the number of those postings thinned and clients cheaped out on the
finder’s fees.
Mystic Maven may have been a tourist trap built
on incense and fish-stick-scented woo-woo nonsense, but it had given us
the one thing we’d never had before. Stability.
Nash had never
enrolled us in school. He had never forged identity paperwork for either
of us, the two orphans he’d collected from different sides of the
world like two more of his stupid trinkets. What we had was this world
of Hollowers and sorceresses, unknown and unseen by nearly everyone
else. We’d been raised at the knee of jealousy, fed by the hand of envy,
and sheltered under the roof of greed.
The truth was, Nash hadn’t just forced both of us into this world—he had trapped us in it.
I liked the life we had carved out for ourselves, and the small
measure of stability we’d scrounged now that we were older and could
fend for ourselves.
Unfortunately, Cabell wanted what Nash had: the potential, the glory, the high of a find.
His lips compressed as he scratched at his wrist. “Nash always said—”
“Do not,” I warned, “quote Nash at me.”
Cabell flinched, and for once, I didn’t care.
“Why do you always do that?” he asked. “Shut down any mention of him—”
“Because he doesn’t deserve the breath it takes to say his name,” I said.
Draping my leather satchel over my shoulder, I forced a tight smile
onto my face. “Come on, we’ll check the library’s job board and then
stop by the Sorceress Madrigal’s to give her the brooch.”
Cabell
shuddered at the mention of the sorceress’s name. I patted his
shoulder. In all fairness, she’d fixated on him at the consultation with
an intensity that had alarmed both of us, even before she decided to
lick a drop of sweat from his cheek.
I locked up and followed
Cabell down the creaking staircase and out into the boisterous night.
Tourists milled around us, merry and pink-cheeked from the crisp
early-autumn air.
I narrowly avoided colliding with several of
them as they craned their heads to gawk at the Quincy Market building.
The sight of them leaning in for photos in front of restaurants, eating
apple cider donuts, pushing strollers with sleepy kids up the
cobblestones toward their hotels.
It was a vision of a life I’d never known, and never would.SEVEN YEARS AGO
Lancashire, England
The first thing you learned on the job as a Hollower was to never trust your eyes.
Nash, of course, had a different way of saying it: All sorcery is half illusion. The other half, unfortunately, was blood-soaked terror.
In that moment, though, I wasn’t scared. I was as angry as a spitting cat.
They’d left me behind. Again.
I braced my hands on either side of the garden shed’s doorframe,
drawing as close as I could to the enchanted passageway without
entering. Hollowers called these dark tunnels Veins because they
carried you from one location to another in an instant. In this case, to
the vault of a long-dead sorceress, containing her most prized
possessions.
I checked the time on the cracked screen of Nash’s
ancient cell phone. It had been forty-eight minutes since I watched them
disappear into the Vein. I hadn’t been able to run fast enough to catch
up, and if they’d heard my shouts, they’d ignored me.
The phone screen blinked to black as the battery finally croaked.
“Hello?” I called, fiddling with the key they’d left in the lock—one of
the sorceress’s finger bones, dipped into a bit of her blood. “I’m not
going back to camp, so you may as well just tell me when it’s safe to
come in! Do you hear me?”
Only the passage answered, breathing
out whorls of snow. Great. The Sorceress Edda had chosen to put her
collection of relics somewhere even colder than England in the winter.
The fact that Cabell and Nash weren’t answering had my insides
squirming. But Nash had never been deterred by the promise of danger,
and he was about to discover I wouldn’t be deterred by anyone, least of
all my rotten bastard of a guardian.
“Cabell?” I said, louder
this time. The cold gripped my words, leaving white streaks in the air. A
shiver rippled through me. “Is everything all right? I’m coming in
whether you want me to or not!”
Of course Nash had taken Cabell with him. Cabell was useful to him. But if I wasn’t there, there was no one to make sure my brother didn’t end up hurt, or worse.
The sun was shy, hiding behind silver clouds. Behind me, an abandoned
stone cottage kept watch over the nearby fields. The air was quiet,
which always stirred up my nerves. I held my breath, straining my ears
to listen. No humming traffic, no drone of passing airplanes, not even a
chirp from a bird. It was like everyone else knew better than to come
to this cursed place, and Nash was the only idiot too stupid and greedy
to risk it.
But a moment later, a fresh wave of snow carried Cabell’s voice to me.
“Tamsin?” He sounded excited, at least. “Watch your head as you come in!”
I plunged into the Vein’s disorienting darkness. Outside was nothing
compared to the barbed cold that wrapped around me now, knifing at my
skin until I couldn’t draw breath.
In two steps, the round
doorway at the other end of the Vein carved itself out of the black air.
In three, it became a vivid wall of ghostly light. Blue, almost like—
I glanced down at the broken chunks of ice scattered around the
doorway, at the swirling curse sigils carved into them. I turned,
searching for Cabell, but a hand caught me, stopping me in my tracks.
“I told you to stay at the camp.” With his head lamp on, Nash’s face
was in shadow, but I could feel the anger radiating from him like the
warmth from his skin. “We’ll have words about this, Tamsin.”
“What are you going to do, ground me?” I asked, riding high on my victory.
“Perhaps I will, you wee fool,” he said. “Never do anything without knowing the cost.”
The light from his head lamp danced over me, then swung upward. My gaze followed.
Icicles jutted down from the ceiling. Hundreds of them, all capped with
razor-sharp steel, poised to fall at any moment. The walls, the ground,
the ceiling—all of it was solid ice.
Even in the darkness,
Cabell was easy to spot in his tattered yellow windbreaker. Relief
poured through me as I made my way to his side, crouching to help him
pick up unused crystals. He’d used the stones to absorb the magic of the
curses surrounding the doorways. Once the curses were nullified, Nash
had taken his axe to their sigils.
All Hollowers could perform a
version of what Cabell was doing, but they could only clear curses with
tools they’d bought off sorceresses.
Cabell was special, even
among the Hollowers with special magic. He was the first Expeller in
centuries—someone who could redirect the magic of a curse away from one
source and into another, deflecting spells from our path.
The only curse Cabell couldn’t seem to break was his own.
“What curse was this, Tamsin?” Nash asked, pointing the steel toe of
his boot toward a sigil-marked chunk of ice. At my look, he added, “You
said you wanted to learn.”
Sigils were symbols used by the
sorceresses to shape magic and bind it to a location or object. Nash had
come up with stupid names for all the curse marks.
“Wraith
Shadow,” I said, rolling my eyes. “A spirit would have followed us
through the vault, tormenting us and tearing at our skin.”
“And this one?” Nash pressed, nudging a chunk of carved stone my way.
“White Eyes,” I said. “So, whoever crossed the threshold would be
blinded and left to wander the vault until they froze to death.”
“They probably would have been impaled before they froze,” Cabell said
cheerfully, pointing to a different sigil. His pale skin was pink from
the cold or excitement, and he didn’t seem to notice the flakes of ice
in his black hair.
“Fair point, well made,” Nash said, and my brother beamed.
The walls exhaled cold air around us. An otherworldly song rippled
through the ice, cracking and twanging like an old tree playing puppet
to the wind. There was only one way forward—the narrow pathway to our
right.
I shivered, rubbing my arms. “Can we just find your stupid dagger and go?”
Cabell reached into his bag, retrieving fresh crystals for the curses
that lined the hallway. I kept my eyes on him, tracking his every move,
but Nash’s gloved hand caught my shoulder when I tried to follow.
Nash tutted. “Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked knowingly.
I blew a strand of blond hair off my face, annoyed. “I don’t need it.”
“And I don’t need attitude from a sprite of a girl, yet here we are,”
Nash said, rummaging through my bag for a bundle of purple silk. He
unwrapped it, holding the Hand of Glory out to me.
I didn’t have
the One Vision—something Cabell and Nash reminded me of every infernal
chance they got. Unlike them, I had no magic of my own. A Hand of Glory
could unlock any door, even one protected by a skeleton knob, but its
most important purpose, at least to me, was to illuminate magic hidden
to the human eye.
I hated it. I hated being different—a problem that Nash had to solve.
“Whew, he’s getting a bit crusty, isn’t he?” Nash asked, lighting the dark wick of each finger in turn.
“It’s your turn to give him the bath,” I said. The last thing I wanted
to do was spend another evening massaging a fresh coat of human lard
into the severed left hand of a prolific eighteenth-century murderer
who’d been hanged for his crime of annihilating four families.
“Wake up, Ignatius,” I ordered. Nash had attached him to an iron candlestick base, but that didn’t make holding him any nicer.
I turned the Hand of Glory so the palm faced me. The bright blue eye
nestled into its waxy skin blinked open—then narrowed in
disappointment.
“Yup,” I told it. “I’m still alive.”
The eye rolled.
“The feeling’s mutual, you impertinent piece of pickled flesh,” I
muttered, adjusting the stiff, curled fingers until they cracked back
into place.
“Good afternoon, handsome,” Nash crooned. “You know, Tamsy, a little sugar makes everything nice.”
I glowered at him.
“You wanted to come,” he said. “Think about the cost next time, eh?”
The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils. I switched Ignatius into
my left hand, and my view of the world flickered as his light spread
along the surface of the ice, bathing it in an unearthly glow. I sucked
in a sharp breath.
The curse sigils were everywhere—on the ground, on the walls, on the ceiling—all swirling in and out of one another.
Cabell knelt at the entrance to the path. Sweat beaded on his forehead
as he worked to redirect the curses into the crystals he slowly set out
in front of him.
“Cab needs a break,” I told Nash.
“He can handle it,” Nash said.
Cabell nodded, setting his shoulders back. “I’m fine. I can keep going.”
A drip of burning lard scalded my thumb. I hissed at Ignatius, meeting his narrow, spiteful gaze with one of my own.
“No,” I told him firmly. I wasn’t going to set him down beside Cabell
like I knew he wanted. First, because I didn’t have to obey the commands
of a severed hand—actually, I didn’t need another reason beyond that.
Just to torment the impertinent hand, I held Ignatius out toward the
wall at my right, pushing the exposed eye closer and closer to its
frozen surface. I wasn’t a good enough person to feel guilty about the
quiver that moved through his stiff joints.
The heat of his
flames cut through the heavy coat of frost on the wall, and as each drip
of water snaked down it, it revealed a dark shape on the other side.
A gasp tore out of me. The heel of my sneaker caught the ice as I
stumbled back, and before I could even register what was happening, I
was falling.
Nash shot forward with a startled grunt, catching my arm in an iron grip. The chill of the nearby wall kissed my scalp.
My heart was still hammering, my lungs throbbing to catch their next
breath, as Nash eased me upright. Cabell rushed to my side, grabbing my
shoulders, checking to make sure I wasn’t hurt. I knew the moment he
saw what I’d glimpsed through the ice. His already white face turned
bloodless. His fingers tightened with terror.
There was a man in
the ice, made monstrous by death. The pressure of the ice looked to
have broken his jaw, which gaped open unnaturally wide in one last
silent scream. A shock of white hair framed his ice-burned cheeks. His
spine was bent at tortured angles.
“Ah, Woodrow. I was wondering what he’d gotten up to,” Nash said, taking a step forward to study the body. “Poor bastard.”
Cabell gripped my wrist, turning Ignatius’s light back toward the
tunnel ahead. Dark shadows stained the gleaming ice like bruises. A grim
gallery of bodies.
I lost count at thirteen.
My brother
was trembling, shaking hard enough that his teeth chattered. His dark
eyes met my blue ones. “There are . . . there are so many of them . . .”
I wrapped my arms around him. “It’s okay . . . it’s okay . . .”
But fear had him in its grip; it had ignited his curse. Dark bristles
broke out along his neck and spine, and the bones of his face were
shifting with sickening cracks, taking on the shape of a terrifying
hound.
“Cabell,” came Nash’s voice, calm and low. “Where was King Arthur’s dagger forged?”
“It . . .” Cabell’s voice sounded strange rasping through elongating teeth. “It was . . .”
“Where, Cabell?” Nash pressed.
“What are you—?” I began, only for Nash to quiet me with a look. The
ice moaned around us. I tightened my grip on Cabell, feeling his spine
curl.
“It was forged . . .” Cabell’s eyes narrowed with focus as they landed on Nash. “In . . . Avalon.”
“That’s right. Along with Excalibur.” Nash knelt in front of us, and
Cabell’s body went still. The hair that had burst through his skin
receded, leaving rashlike marks. “Do you remember the other name
Avalonians use for their isle?”
Cabell’s face started to shift back, and he grimaced in pain. But his eyes never left Nash’s face.
“Ynys . . . Ynys Afallach.”
“Got it on the first try, of course,” Nash said, rising. He put a hand
on each of our shoulders. “You’ve cleared the bulk of the curses
already, my boy. You can wait here with Tamsin until I return.”
“No,” Cabell said, swiping at his eyes with his sleeves. “I want to come.”
And I wasn’t going to let him go without me.
Nash nodded and started down the hallway, passing the lantern back to
Cabell and aiming his head lamp down the stretch of bodies. “This
reminds me of a tale . . .”
“What doesn’t?” I muttered.
Couldn’t he see that Cabell was still rattled? He was only pretending to
be brave, but pretending had always been enough for Nash.
“In
ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named Arthur ruled man and
Fair Folk alike,” Nash began, carefully making his way around the
crystals. He used the tip of his axe to scratch out the curse sigils as
he passed by them. “But it is not him I speak of now—rather, the fair
isle of Avalon.
A place where apples grow that can heal all
ailments, and priestesses tend to those who live among its divine
groves. For a time, Arthur’s own half sister Morgana belonged to their
order. She served as a wise and fair counsel to him, despite how many of
those Victorian-era shills chose to remember her.”
He’d told us
this tale before. A hundred times, around a hundred different smoky
campfires. As if Arthur and his knights were accompanying us on all our
jobs . . . but it was a good kind of familiar.
I focused on the sound of Nash’s warm, rumbly voice, not the horrible faces around us. The blood frozen in halos around them.
“The priestesses honor the goddess who created the very land Arthur came to rule—some say she made it from her own heart.”
“That’s stupid,” I whispered, my voice trembling only a little. Cabell reached back, taking my hand tight in his own.
Nash snorted. “Maybe to you, girl, but to them, their stories are as
real as you or me. The isle was once part of our world, where
Glastonbury Tor now proudly stands, but many centuries ago, when new
religions rose and man grew to fear and hate magic, it was splintered
away, becoming one of the Otherlands. There, priestesses, druids, and
Fair Folk escaped the dangers of the mortal world, and lived in peace . .
.”
“Until the sorceresses rebelled,” Cabell said, risking a look around. His voice was growing stronger.
“Until the sorceresses rebelled,” Nash agreed. “The sorceresses we know
today are the descendants of those who were banished from Avalon, after
taking to darker magic . . .”
I focused on the feel of Cabell’s
hand, his fingers squeezing tight as we passed by the last body and
moved through a stone archway. Beyond it, the ice-slick path wound its
way down. We stopped again when Cabell felt—before he even saw—a curse
sigil buried underfoot.
“Why are you so desperate to find this stupid dagger, anyway?” I asked, hugging my arms to my chest to try to keep warm.
Nash had spent the last year searching, blowing off paying work and easier finds. I’d found us the lead for this vault . . . not that Nash would ever acknowledge the research I did.
“You don’t think finding a legendary relic is reason enough?” he asked,
swiping at his red-tipped nose. “When you desire something, you must
fight for it tooth and claw, or not at all.”
“It’s clear,” Cabell said, standing again. “We can keep going.”
Nash moved ahead of us. “Remember, my wee imps, that Sorceress Edda
was renowned for her love of trickery. All will not be what it first
seems.”
It only took a few steps to understand what he meant.
It began with a kerosene lantern, casually left beside one of the
bodies in the ice, as if the hunter had merely set it down, leaned
forward against the freezing surface, and been swallowed whole.
We passed it without a second look.
Next was the ladder, the one that offered safety for the long climb down to a lower level.
We used our ropes.
Then, just as the temperature plunged deeper into a killing freeze, a
pristine white fur coat. So soft and warm and just the kind that an
absent-minded sorceress might have left behind, tossing it over an
equally tempting crate of food jars.
Take me, they whispered. Use me.
And pay the price in blood.
Ignatius’s light revealed the truth. The razors and rusted nails
lining the interior of the coat. The spiders waiting in the jars. All
but one rung missing from the ladder. Even the lantern was filled with
the Smothering Mother, a vapor that tightened your lungs until breathing
became impossible, made from the blood of a mother who’d killed her
children. Anyone who opened the glass to light the wick would be dead in
an instant.
We passed it all, Cabell redirecting the dark magic
of the curses laid between each trap. Finally, after what seemed like
hours, we reached the inner chamber of the vault.
The round
chamber shone with the same pale, icy light. At its center was an altar,
and there, sitting on a velvet pillow, was a dagger with a bone-white
hilt.
And Nash, who never struggled for a word, was silent. Not
happy, like I would have thought. Not bouncing on his toes with glee as
Cabell broke the last of the curses protecting it.
“What’s the matter with you?” I demanded. “Don’t tell me it’s not the right dagger.”
“No, it is,” Nash said, his voice taking on a strange tone. Cabell stepped back from the altar, allowing Nash to come forward.
“Well,” he breathed out, his hand hovering above the hilt for an instant before closing around it.
“Hello.”
“What now?” Cabell asked, peering down at it.
A better question was probably who he was going to sell it to. Maybe,
for once, we could afford a decent place to live and food to eat.
“Now,” Nash said quietly, holding the blade up into the gleaming light. “We go to Tintagel and recover the true prize.”
We traveled to Cornwall by train, arriving just as a fierce storm blew
in over the cliffs and ensnared the dark ruins of Tintagel Castle in its
wild, thundering depths. After we battled to set up our tent in the
lashing rain and wind, I crashed into sleep. The bodies in the ice were
waiting for me in dreams, only now they weren’t Hollowers, but King
Arthur and his knights.
Nash stood in front of them, his back to
me as he watched the surface of the ice rippling like water. I opened
my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. Not even a scream as he
stepped forward through the ice, as if to join them.
I jolted
awake with a gasp, twisting and thrashing to free myself from my
sleeping bag. The first bit of sunlight gave the red fabric of our tent a
faint glow.
Enough for me to see that I was alone.
They’re gone.
Static filled my ears, turning my body to pins and needles. My fingers were too numb to grip the zipper on the tent’s flap.
They’re gone.
I couldn’t breathe. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. I knew it. They’d left me behind again.
With a frustrated scream, I broke the zipper and ripped the flap away, tumbling out into the cold mud.
The rain came down in torrents, battering my hair and bare feet as I
swung my gaze around. A thick mist churned around me, blanketing the
hills. Trapping me there, alone.
“Cabell?” I yelled. “Cabell, where are you?”
I ran into the mist, the rocks and heather and thistle biting at my
toes. I didn’t feel any of it. There was only the scream building in my
chest, burning and burning.
“Cabell!” I screamed. “Nash!”
My foot caught on something and I fell, rolling against the ground
until I hit another stone and the air blasted out of me. I couldn’t draw
in another breath. Everything hurt.
And the scream broke open, and became something else.
“Cabell,” I sobbed. The tears were hot, even as the rain lashed against my face.
What good will you be to us?
“Please,” I begged, curling up. The sea roared back as it battered the
rocky shore. “Please . . . I can be good . . . please . . .”
Don’t leave me here.
“Tam . . . sin . . . ?”
At first, I thought I had imagined it.
“Tamsin?” His voice was small, almost swallowed by the storm.
I pushed up, fighting against the sucking grass and mud, searching for him.
For a moment, the mists parted at the top of the hill, and there he
was, as pale as a ghost, his black hair plastered to his skull. His
near-black eyes unfocused.
I slipped and struggled up the hill,
clawing at the grass and stones until I reached him. I wrapped my arms
around him. “Are you okay? Cab, are you okay? What happened? Where did
you go?”
“He’s gone.” Cabell’s voice was as thin as a thread. His
skin felt like a block of ice, and I could see a tinge of blue to his
lips. “I woke up and he was gone. He left his things . . . I looked for
him, but he’s . . .”
Gone.
But Cabell was here. I
hugged him tighter, feeling him cling back. Feeling his tears become
rain on my shoulder. I had never hated Nash more for being everything I
always thought he was.
A coward. A thief. A liar.
“H-he’ll be back, won’t he?” Cabell whispered. “Maybe he just f-f-forgot to say where he was g-going?”
I didn’t want to ever lie to Cabell, so I didn’t say anything.
“W-we should go b-back and wait—”
We would be waiting forever. I felt the truth of it down to my bones.
Nash had finally unloaded his hangers-on. He was never coming back. The
only mercy was that he hadn’t taken Cabell with him.
“We’re okay,” I whispered. “We’re okay. We’re all we need. We’re okay . . .”
Nash said that some spells had to be spoken three times to take hold,
but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that, either. I wasn’t one of the
girls from the gilded pages of storybooks. I had no magic.
I only had Cabell.
The dark bristles were spreading across his skin again, and I felt the
bones of his spine shifting, threatening to realign. I held him tighter.
Fear swirled in the pit of my stomach. Nash had always been the one to
pull Cabell back to himself, even when he fully shifted.
Now Cabell only had me.
I swallowed, shielding him from the driving rain and wind. And then I
started to speak: “In ages past, in a kingdom lost to time, a king named
Arthur ruled man and Fair Folk alike . . .”
PART I
Two of Swords
1
No matter what they say, or how much they lie to themselves, people don’t want the truth.
They want the story already living inside them, buried deep as marrow
in the bone. The hope written across their faces in a subtle language
few know how to read.
Luckily for me, I did.
The trick,
of course, was to make them feel like I hadn’t seen anything at all.
That I couldn’t guess who was heartsick for a lost love or desperate for
a windfall of money, or who wanted to break free from an illness they’d
never escape. It all came down to a simple desire, as predictable as it
was achingly human: to hear their wish spoken by someone outside
themselves—as if that somehow had the power to make it all come true.
Magic.
But wishes were nothing more than wasted breath fading into the air, and magic always took more than it gave.
No one wanted to hear the truth, and that was fine by me. The lies paid
better; the bald-faced realities, as my boss Myrtle—the Mystic Maven of
Mystic Maven Tarot—once pointed out, only got me raging internet
reviews.
I rubbed my arms beneath the crochet shawl, eyes darting to the digital timer to my right: 0:30 . . . 0:29 . . . 0:28 . . .
“I’m sensing . . . yes, I’m sensing you have another question,” I said,
pressing two fingers against my forehead. “One that’s your real reason
for coming here.”
The glowing essential oil diffuser gurgled
contentedly behind me. Its steady stream of patchouli and rosemary was
powerless against the smell of deep-fried calamari drifting up through
the old floorboards and the rancid stench of the dumpsters out back. The
cramped, dark room circled in tighter around me as I breathed through
my mouth.
Mystic Maven had occupied its room above Boston’s
Faneuil Hall Marketplace for decades, bearing witness to the succession
of tacky seafood restaurants that cycled in and out of the building’s
ground level. Including, most recently, the particularly malodorous
Lobster Larry’s.
“I mean . . . ,” my client began, looking
around at the peeling strips of floral wallpaper, the small statues of
Buddha and Isis, then back down to the spread of cards I’d placed on the
table between us. “Well . . .”
“Anything?” I tried again. “How you’ll do on your finals? Future career? Hurricane season? If your apartment is haunted?”
My phone came to the end of the playlist of harmonic rain and wind
chimes. I reached down to restart it. In the silence that followed, the
dusty battery-powered candles flickered on the shelves around us. The
darkness gathered between them hid just how dingy the room was.
Come on, I thought, half desperate.
It had been six long hours of listening to chanting-monk tracks and
mindlessly rearranging crystals on the nearby shelves between what few
customers had come in. Cabell had to have the key by now, and after
finishing up with this reading, I’d be able to leave for my real gig.
Franklin opened his mouth, only to be cut off by the digital wail of my timer.
Before I could react, the door swung open and a girl barreled inside.
“Finally!” she said, parting the cheap beaded curtain with a dramatic sweep of her hands. “My turn!”
Franklin turned to gawk at her, his expression shifting as he assessed
her with clear interest—the way she all but vibrated with excited
energy made it difficult to look anywhere else. Her dark brown skin was
dusted with a faint shimmer, likely from whatever cream she used, which
smelled like honey and vanilla. Her braids were twisted back into two
high buns on her head, and she’d painted her lips a deep purple.
After giving Franklin a quick once-over in return, she quirked her lips
in my direction. In her hand was her ever-present portable CD player
and foam-covered earphones, relics of simpler technological yesteryears.
As someone incapable of throwing anything away, I was begrudgingly
charmed by them.
But the charm quickly faded as she turned her
belt around and tucked both into what appeared to be a pink fanny pack.
One with fluorescent cats and the words i’m meow-gical emblazoned across
it in glow-in-the-dark green.
“Neve.” I tried not to sigh. “I didn’t realize we had an appointment today.”
Her smile was blinding as she read the painted message on the door. “Walk-ins Welcome!”
“I was going to ask when we’re getting back together—” Franklin protested.
“We have to save something for the next time, don’t we?” I said sweetly.
He grabbed his backpack with an uncertain look. “You . . . you’re not going to tell anyone I came, are you?”
I gestured to the sign over my right shoulder, all readings are
confidential, then to the one directly below it, we are not liable for
any decisions you make based on these readings, which had been added
three minor lawsuits too late.
“See you next time,” I said with a little wave that I hoped didn’t look half as threatening as it felt.
Neve swept into his seat, propping her elbows on the table. She rested her chin on her palm with an expectant look.
“So,” she said. “How’s it going, girl? Any interesting jobs lately? Any nefaaaarious curses you’ve untangled?”
I shot a horrified look at the door, but Franklin was already out of earshot.
“What question would you like answered by the cards today?” I asked pointedly.
I’d accidentally left my work gloves—made from a distinctly reptilian
hide called dragonscale—hanging out of my bag two weeks ago, and Neve
had recognized them and made the unfortunate connection about my real
job. Her knowledge of Hollowers and magic meant she was likely one of
the Cunningfolk, a catchall term for people with a magic gift. Although
I’d never seen her around the usual haunts.
She reached into the
pocket of her shaggy black fur coat and pressed a rumpled twenty-dollar
bill onto the table between us. Enough for fifteen minutes.
I could do fifteen more minutes.
“Your life is so exciting,” Neve said with a happy sigh, as if
imagining herself in my place. “I was just reading about the Sorceress
Hilde the other day—did she really sharpen her teeth like a cat’s? That
seems painful. How do you eat without constantly biting the inside of
your mouth?”
I tried not to bristle as I leaned back against my chair and set the timer. Fifteen minutes. Just fifteen.
“Your question?” I pressed, wrapping Myrtle’s crochet shawl tighter around my shoulders.
In truth, being a Hollower was 98 percent boring research, 2 percent
deadly misadventures trying to open sorceresses’ vaults and tombs.
Reducing it to light, glorified gossip prickled every nerve in my being.
Neve tugged at her black shirt, distorting the image of the pink rib
cage that covered it. Her jeans were ripped in places, the tears
revealing the shock of purple tights beneath. “Not very talkative, are
you, Tamsin Lark? Okay, fine. I have the same question I always have: Am
I going to find what I’m looking for?”
I glared at the cards as
I shuffled, focusing on the feeling of them fluttering between my
fingers, and not the intensity of her stare. For all the bounce in her
step and the cheeriness of her words, her eyes were dark pools, always
threatening to draw you in deeper with their ribbons of gold. They
reminded me of my brother’s tiger’s-eye crystals, and made me wonder if
they were connected to her magic gift—not that I’d ever cared enough to
ask.
After seven shuffles, I started to draw the first card, only for her hand to catch mine.
“Can I pick today?” she asked.
“I mean . . . if you want to,” I said, fanning them out facedown on the table. “Choose three.”
She took her time in selecting them, humming a soft song I didn’t
recognize. “What do you think people would do if they found out about
sorceresses?”
“What they always do when they suspect witches,” I said dryly.
“Here’s the thing.” Neve hovered her fingers over each card in turn. “I think they would try to use their
power for their own ends. Sorceresses have spells that predict the
future more accurately than tarot, right? And find things . . .”
And curses that kill things, I
thought to myself, glancing at the timer. The part of me stirred that
suspected all these visits might be a ruse to size me up for a potential
recovery job. Most of the work Cabell and I did as Hollowers was
for-hire; we went into vaults looking for lost or stolen family
heirlooms and the like.
Neve laid two rows of three cards out on the table, then sat back with a satisfied nod.
“I only need one row,” I protested, then stopped. It didn’t matter.
Anything to kill these last ten minutes. I gathered the remaining cards
into a neat pile. “Go ahead and flip them.”
Neve turned over the bottom row. Wheel of Fortune reversed, Five of Wands, Three of Swords.
Her face scrunched up in annoyance.
“I read the three positions as situation, action, and the outcome,” I
explained, though I suspected she knew all this. “Here, the Wheel of
Fortune reversed is saying that you’ve been drawn into a situation that
is beyond your control, and that you’ll have to work harder to see your
search through. Five of Wands advises you to wait out the situation and
not jump into things if you don’t have to. And the outcome, with Three
of Swords, is usually a disappointment so I’m going with, you won’t find
whatever it is you’re looking for, through no fault of your own.”
I turned over the pile of cards in my hand. “Bottom of the deck—the root of the situation—is Page of Wands reversed.”
I almost laughed. It was the card that always came up in her readings,
signaling impatience and naïveté. If I actually believed in this tripe,
it’d be pretty clear the universe was trying to send her a message.
“Well, that’s just the cards’ opinion,” Neve said. “Doesn’t mean it’s
true. And besides, life wouldn’t be half as fun if we couldn’t prove
people wrong.”
“Sure,” I agreed. The question was on the tip of my tongue. What exactly are you looking for?
“Now let’s do you,” Neve said, turning over the second row of cards. “And see the answer to whatever’s been on your mind.”
“No,” I protested, “really, that’s—”
She was already laying cards out: the Fool, the Tower, and the Seven of Swords.
“Oooh,” she said, all drama as she took my hands in hers. “An
unforeseen event will liberate you to explore a new path, but you must
watch out for a person who seeks to betray you! What question has been
on your mind, hmm?”
“No question,” I said, extracting myself from her grip. “Except what I’m having for dinner.”
Neve laughed, pushing her chair back. I looked down at the timer.
“You still have another five minutes,” I told her.
“That’s all right, I got what I needed.” She freed her CD player from
her atrocious fanny pack, hooking the earphones around her neck. “Hey,
what are you doing tomorrow night?”
Money was money. Resigned, I reached for the leather-bound book beside me. “I’ll put you down for an appointment. What time?”
“No, I mean to hang out.” Seeing my blank look, Neve added, “To hang out, a
phrase commonly used to suggest that people grab a meal together, or
see a movie, or literally do anything that involves enjoyment.”
I
froze. Maybe I’d read this situation completely wrong. My words were as
awkward as they were stilted when I finally managed to get them out.
“Oh . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m not into girls.”
Neve’s laugh was like chiming bells. “Tragic for you, but you’re not my type. I meant as friends.”
My hands curled under the velvet tablecloth. “I’m not allowed to be friends with clients.”
Her smile faded for a moment, and I knew she’d recognized the lie for what it was. “Okay, no problem.”
She lifted her old foam headphones over her ears as she turned to go.
They did nothing to stop the reverberating bass and distorted whine of
melancholic guitars from leaking out. A woman’s cosmic wailing flooded
into the room, backed by a shuddering drumbeat that made me feel anxious
just hearing it.
“What in thundering hell are you listening to?” I asked before I could stop myself.
“Cocteau Twins,” Neve said, pushing up her headphones. Her eyes glittered with excitement.
“Have you heard of them? They’re amazing—every song is like a dream.”
“They can’t be that amazing if I’ve never heard of them,” I said. “You should turn it down before you lose your hearing.”
She ignored me.
“Their songs are like different worlds.” Neve wound the headphone cord around the bulky device.
“I know it seems silly, but when I listen to them, it pushes everything
else away. Nothing else matters. You don’t have to feel anything but
the music. Sorry, you probably don’t care.”
I didn’t, but guilt
welled in me all the same. Neve made her way to the door just as Cabell
opened it. He blinked at the sight of her before she brushed past.
“Bye!” Neve called, hurrying down the stairs. “Until we meet again, Oracle!”
“Another satisfied customer?” My brother lingered in the doorway, brows
raised as he ran a hand through his shoulder-length black hair.
“But of course,” I said, throwing Myrtle’s shawl down. After scraping
my tangled hair back into a ponytail, I gathered up the cards, neatening
them into a pile. I reached for the small velvet bag I used to store
them, only to stop when I saw what was at the top of the deck.
I
had never liked the Moon card. It wasn’t anything I could explain, and
that only made me hate it more. Every time I looked at it, it was like
trying to tow a sinking memory back to the front of my mind, which had
never forgotten anything before.
I drew the card closer,
studying the image. It was impossible to tell if the moon’s luminous
face was sleeping or merely contemplating the long path below. In the
distance, misty blue hills waited, guarded by two stone towers, silent
sentinels to whatever truth lay beyond the horizon.
A wolf and a
dog, brothers in fear, one wild, the other tame, howled up at the
glowing orb in the sky. Near their feet, a crayfish crawled from the
edge of a pool.
My gaze drifted to the dark hound again, my stomach tightening.
“How did it go today?” Cabell asked, drawing my attention back to him.
After taking my cut of the day’s earnings and locking the rest in the safe, I held up two hundred-dollar bills.
“Hey, hey. Look who’s buying dinner tonight,” he said. “I await the fabled Lobster Larry’s Unlimited Seafood Tower.”
My brother was all lanky height and had little meat on his bones, but
he looked perfectly comfortable in what I’d come to think of as the
tried-and-true uniform of Hollowers: loose brown slacks and a belt laden
with the tools of the trade, including a hand axe, crystals, and vials
of fast-acting poison and antivenom.
All of which were needed if
you wanted to empty the sorceress’s vault of the treasures she’d
hoarded over the centuries and keep both life and limb.
“Why not just eat garbage from the dumpster out back instead?” I said. “You’ll get the same dining experience.”
“I take that to mean you want to stop by the library and try to drop in
on some potential clients before we order pizza for the tenth night in a
row,” he said.
“What happened with the key for the Sorceress
Gaia’s job?” I asked, reaching for my bag. “Was there a match in the
library’s collection, or did you have to go to the Bonecutter after
all?”
To open a sealed Vein, one of the magic pathways the
sorceresses created for themselves, we needed bone and blood from the
one who created it, or her kin. The Bonecutter sourced and procured
them.
“Had to ask the Bonecutter,” he said, passing it to me to
examine. This key looked like two finger bones welded with a seam of
gold. “We’re all set to open the tomb this weekend.”
“God’s teeth,” I muttered. “What did the key cost us?”
“Just the usual,” he said, shrugging a shoulder. “A favor.”
“We can’t keep handing out favors,” I said tightly, making quick work
of switching off the music and the battery-powered candles.
“Why not?” He leaned a hip against the doorframe.
The small movement—that careless tone of voice—brought me up short.
He’d never reminded me more of Nash, the crook of a man who had
reluctantly raised us and drawn us into his profession, only to abandon
us to it.
Cabell cast a quick look around my Mystic Maven setup.
“You’ll have to ditch this bullshit gig if you want to be able to pay
the Bonecutter with actual coin next time.”
Somehow we’d
arrived at my least-favorite conversation yet again. “This ‘bullshit
gig’ buys us groceries and pays for the roof over our heads. You could ask for more shifts at the tattoo parlor.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.” Cabell let out another irritating hum. “If we just went after a legendary relic—”
“If we just found a unicorn,” I interrupted. “If we just uncovered a
lost trove of pirates’ treasure. If we just caught a falling star and
put it in our pockets . . .”
“All right,” Cabell said, his smile falling. “Enough. You’ve made your point.”
We weren’t like the other Hollowers and Nash, who chased mist and
dreams. Sure, selling a legendary object on the black market could make
you thousands, if not millions, but the cost was years of searching for
an ever-dwindling number of relics. The magic users of other parts of
the world had secured their treasures, leaving only Europe’s up for
grabs. And, besides, we’d never had the right resources for a big get.
“Real money comes from real jobs,” I reminded him. And whether I liked
it or not, Mystic Maven was a real job, one with flexible hours and fair
wages graciously paid under the table. We needed it to supplement the
for-hire work we took from the guild library’s job board, especially as
the number of those postings thinned and clients cheaped out on the
finder’s fees.
Mystic Maven may have been a tourist trap built
on incense and fish-stick-scented woo-woo nonsense, but it had given us
the one thing we’d never had before. Stability.
Nash had never
enrolled us in school. He had never forged identity paperwork for either
of us, the two orphans he’d collected from different sides of the
world like two more of his stupid trinkets. What we had was this world
of Hollowers and sorceresses, unknown and unseen by nearly everyone
else. We’d been raised at the knee of jealousy, fed by the hand of envy,
and sheltered under the roof of greed.
The truth was, Nash hadn’t just forced both of us into this world—he had trapped us in it.
I liked the life we had carved out for ourselves, and the small
measure of stability we’d scrounged now that we were older and could
fend for ourselves.
Unfortunately, Cabell wanted what Nash had: the potential, the glory, the high of a find.
His lips compressed as he scratched at his wrist. “Nash always said—”
“Do not,” I warned, “quote Nash at me.”
Cabell flinched, and for once, I didn’t care.
“Why do you always do that?” he asked. “Shut down any mention of him—”
“Because he doesn’t deserve the breath it takes to say his name,” I said.
Draping my leather satchel over my shoulder, I forced a tight smile
onto my face. “Come on, we’ll check the library’s job board and then
stop by the Sorceress Madrigal’s to give her the brooch.”
Cabell
shuddered at the mention of the sorceress’s name. I patted his
shoulder. In all fairness, she’d fixated on him at the consultation with
an intensity that had alarmed both of us, even before she decided to
lick a drop of sweat from his cheek.
I locked up and followed
Cabell down the creaking staircase and out into the boisterous night.
Tourists milled around us, merry and pink-cheeked from the crisp
early-autumn air.
I narrowly avoided colliding with several of
them as they craned their heads to gawk at the Quincy Market building.
The sight of them leaning in for photos in front of restaurants, eating
apple cider donuts, pushing strollers with sleepy kids up the
cobblestones toward their hotels.
It was a vision of a life I’d never known, and never would.
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