Mörderin E-Book

Natalie J. Case

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Seeking to reunite her family, Thána and her mother Alaina head back to the world where Daria lives with her husband and son.

The once vibrant city where people traveled freely through a collection of portals has been reduced to rubble, and Daria is now a prisoner of the invading army. With her magic still in nascent stages, Thána agrees to a daring and dangerous rescue mission with Daria’s husband and friends, once again putting her life on the line for a family she barely knows.

To make it work she has to push her magical skills to their very limit and rely on those she’s only just met, not to mention breaking into a prison camp and getting out again in one piece. How hard could it be?

Leseprobe

MÖRDERIN

THE BLOOD WITCH SAGA

BOOK 2

NATALIE CASE

CONTENTS

1. Family

2. Back to Basics

3. Camp

4. Portals

5. War

6. Magic

7. Flirting

8. Casting

9. Sneaking Out

10. Prep

11. Checkpoints

12. Caught

13. Pain and Blood

14. Escape

15. The Wilds

16. Attack

17. And We’re Walking

18. A Long Road

19. Theravee

20. Release

21. Defense

22. Offense

23. Bonding

24. Impossible

25. Practice Makes Perfect

26. Building Bridges

27. Into the Storm

Glossary of Terms

From The Author

Next in the Series

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2022 Natalie J. Case

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Edited by Charity Rabbiosi

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author’s permission.

You know who you are. You know what you did.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

CHAPTER1

FAMILY

I looked up from the book I was studying when I heard footsteps on the stairs. Mom smiled over a tray with a teapot and a couple of cups. We'd been back at Merry's for nearly two weeks while I finished recovering physically. I still tired easily, but Merry had made me a little concoction I could add to my coffee or tea to give me some pep.

I had taken to spending the afternoons in the basement, trying to learn everything I could. While the purges of blood witches in the past centuries had pretty much decimated any books that would teach me how to use those gifts, I wanted to at least get some basic magic under my belt. I hadn’t yet graduated to the tomes I had taken from the Kourt, all of which went well beyond my meager knowledge.

“I thought you two could use some afternoon sustenance,” Mom said as I cleared a space at the table for the tray. She set it down revealing more than tea, but a plate with sandwiches as well.

She poured the tea and handed a cup to Ciara who sat across from me cutting up herbs she'd gotten from Merry's gardens to brew something. She had probably told me what, but I'd been more focused on the spells I was learning for defense and combat. I’d bet things would have gone much better for us if I'd known some of these, and since we didn't know what was coming next, it would be good to learn.

“Thanks.” She took half a sandwich and settled back on her stool. She’d been quiet since we came back, but I’d learned that she had only discovered her specific gift at fourteen and that it made her a pariah to her family.

“What book do you have your nose in today?” Mom asked before tipping it aside so she could see. “Oh, yeah, that one is… very dry. There's another one that is probably better for you to start with. That one's all theory, which is nice if you're an academic, but not so much for practical use. I'll see if Merry has a copy.”

I put the book down and rubbed my eyes in agreement with her assessment of the book’s dry theoretical approach. I'd been reading it for hours and couldn't tell you much about it. “I heard from Cambious this morning,” I offered as I took my cup of tea from her. “They found Reyansh's clan, and are staying a few days to help him settle in. Then he said he’d head back to the gate.”

“It will do Reyansh good to be back with his people, even if he would have rather stayed with you.” She took the only empty stool and poured her own cup of tea. “And Merry thinks she may have found your aunt, Ciara. It looks like you might be related to Thána, on her father's side.”

Ciara made a face. “Aunt Greta? She won't want me. Dad's side of the family is very anti-blood witch. They might even be the reason the Brotherhood found us.”

My mother frowned deeply. “You can't believe your own family would… do that?”

Ciara shrugged. “Mom thought so. That's why we moved around so much, hoping Dad's side of the family would lose track of us.” She chewed for a minute, then swallowed. “Honestly, I'd rather stay where I'm wanted. And Merry has a great book collection. I could learn a lot here.”

Mom smiled. “Yes, you could. Since you're nearly eighteen, we probably won't even need to do any legal paperwork to keep you, but I'll have Merry's daughter do some checking.”

Peter’s family had been easier to find, and his parents had traveled to come take him home. He’d been so happy to see them, and they were beyond grateful that we brought him back to them. They believed he had been killed.

I sipped at my tea, then reached across the table for the tablet Zo had loaned me, swiping the screen to the last thing I’d been looking at. I turned it to Mom. “So, it looks like Patoras died of his injures yesterday.” When he had been found in the ruins we left behind, his body was covered in third-degree burns, bringing the last of the prophecy to fruition. We found Peter and he helped us find my mother. My blood had spilled when I’d slammed into the torn-up cemetery and now, Patoras had died by phoenix fire, said to be sacred to Apollo.

Mom took the tablet, her eyes scanning the news story. “Good riddance.”

There was a lot about the destruction that sat sick in my stomach, the number of men and boys who had died was high among them. Not a single one of the youngest men had survived. We had no idea how many did make it out, but we were fairly certain no one was coming after me, at least for a while. Still, the loss of life was too much to think about.

“Meanwhile,” Mom turned to look at me, “I hope you’re ready for the madness that will descend on us tomorrow.”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure that what I was could be called ready. Anxious. Nauseous. Sort of terrified? “As much as I can be, I suppose,” I said, trying to keep my tone neutral.

“It will be nice to see my brothers and sister,” Mom said, “but I worry about the rest of them. I’m hoping they won’t be too much for you.”

Her hand caressed mine until I pulled it away. “Yeah, me too.” I was uncomfortable whenever the word family was used. I’d gone a long time believing I had no family, and now I was being asked to participate in some sort of family reunion. I had no context for how to feel or what to expect. “And they all… know?” I asked, glancing at Ciara before looking Mom in the eyes.

There was a sort of apology there, in her eyes. “At this point, I think the whole family knows that we have a blood witch in the family again.”

I licked my lips and swallowed. “How do I… navigate this?” I had spent some time with Zo who had warned me not to let myself be sucked into playing savior, that there were bound to be family members who would want to see me demonstrate my powers, including a few who might be expecting miracles.

“Merry’s told everyone to not expect you to be some sort of super-witch,” Mom said. “But I’m told that there is at least one who could use your help. He doesn’t have long, and the cancer is too far spread for any magic but yours.”

I flushed and my stomach sank. I still had no idea how to control those gifts, or if I could rely on them. “I don’t want them all staring at me.”

Mom smiled sadly. “I know. We’ll get through it.”

The earthy scent of what Ciara was cutting up smelled strong and reminded me of the inxbane that Cambious had brought me. I found the absence of the big man strange. So much of my life since arriving in California had involved him. I had given up trying to figure out exactly how much time had passed since that first meeting.

The spot in my side where the fence had ripped me up was still tender and the stretch for a book near Ciara’s elbow made it twinge. The ache in my shoulder from the gunshot wound made itself known at least once per day as well, but back home, I’d likely still be in the hospital, if I had even survived.

I snorted. Back home, none of this would have happened.

* * *

“Stop fussing, you’re beautiful.”

I snorted and turned to look at her. “You’re biased, Mom.” My hair was shiny and clean, the curls more defined than I had ever allowed, thanks to some product Mom had given me. Part of me was starting to like the look.

I finger-combed a little more, turning my head to see the side in the mirror. “People have started to arrive,” Mom said, touching my arm.

“Lovely,” I muttered, my tone only mildly sarcastic.

“Best to get it over with.” Mom’s hand slid down my arm and into my hand, tugging lightly to get me moving. Voices drifted down the hall as we moved toward the kitchen Merry was positively beaming as she was swarmed by small humans. Mom led me through the kitchen and into a room I had never seen before. It was spacious enough to hold fifty people comfortably. At the moment, there were maybe ten.

“Anna!” Mom let go of my hand and pulled a woman into a hug. She was my height, her hair dark and pulled up to show a graceful neck. She pulled off a soft yellow coat, and handed it off to a man beside her as she smiled at my mother.

“Alana!”

They hugged like long-lost sisters before my mother pulled me in. “This is Thána, my oldest.”

Anna’s dark eyes met mine and I held my breath for a moment, unsure how my newfound family would feel about me. Anna smiled and hugged me tightly. “We’ve been worrying over you for years, Thána. Welcome home.”

“Thank you,” I managed to say, looking to the man she was with as she touched his arm.

“My husband, Guntar.”

He nodded to me, and I returned the gesture. He was the opposite of his wife, his hair so blond it was almost white, his eyes a pale ice blue. “We heard you were injured, Thána. I trust you are recovering?” Guntar said, his accent thick and somewhere between German and Russian, at least to my ears.

I nodded a little uncomfortably. “Better every day.” My hand went to my side involuntarily, as if I could feel the scar through my sweater. A door opened on the other side of the room and cold air blew through along with the sound of rain. A crowd of people entered, and my mother left to go greet them.

Over the next half hour, I met an impossible number of relatives that included my mother’s siblings and their offspring, various and sundry great aunts and uncles along with third and fourth cousins. I was dizzy with introductions. As Mom settled in with her brothers and sister, I withdrew to the kitchen where Ciara was helping Zo and Merry move the trays and trays of food into the large formal dining room.

Helping them gave me a reprieve from the large group of people who were all far too keen on knowing me. It reminded me of Christmases in foster care, where I was the odd one out and everyone felt the need to make awkward small talk. The table was overfull by the time we were done and Merry went to call everyone in to eat. I grabbed a plate and filled it before the crowd could block me into a corner and took it to the other room.

Ciara joined me, her eyes skipping over the others. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen this many people in one place.”

“Unsettling, isn’t it?” I asked. “How are you doing?”

She shrugged and picked at her food. “You know… I’m dealing.”

I wasn’t sure how to talk to her or give her what she needed. An awkward silence fell, until it was broken by a tall, lanky cousin who came and plopped herself on the floor in front of us. I knew I’d been introduced, but her name escaped me. She grinned, clearly reading the loss on my face. “Helen. And you must be Ciara.” She balanced her plate on her lap and reached out a hand. Ciara took it with a tight nod.

Helen was the daughter of one of my uncles, I couldn’t remember which, somewhere in her early twenties. She wore her hair shaved close on the left side, the rest of it flopped over to the right in a thick blanket of black. “My mom always said that there were no blood witches left, and here I sit with two of them. That is awesome.”

“Sure,” I replied dryly. “Awesome. As long as you don’t count the people who want you dead because of it.”

“There is that, for sure,” Helen agreed. “But the things you can do! I’ve been fascinated by blood witches my whole life. Did you know that at one time they were practically revered as gods? And some of them became so powerful that they could raise the dead.”

I chuckled a little. “Merry says that’s hogswallop, that the patient was declared dead prematurely.”

Helen shrugged. “There are stories, not just family stories either. There was a blood witch from Frenko who specialized in curing the blind, back around a thousand years ago.”

“Yeah, and she was probably bled to death by the brotherhood as a reward,” Ciara said bitterly.

Helen frowned. “I don’t know, I’d have to look it up.”

“While I appreciate your enthusiasm,” I said, “you have to understand that both of us have suffered very recently for being what we are. Not quite ready to embrace the history just yet.”

Helen accepted that with a nod. “I can understand that. My family is sick of me talking about it. Even as a kid I’d wished I’d been born one.”

Ciara stood abruptly and left the room, leaving Helen gaping after her. “The brotherhood killed the only family that accepted her for who she was,” I said softly. “She’s alone in this world.” Not unlike I had been all those years.

“I didn’t mean to upset her.”

“I know, just give her some space,” I replied. I nibbled on the hot potato dish that Merry had made. Not for the first time, I wished I had her skill in the kitchen.

“So, what about you, then?” Helen asked.

“Me?”

“I hear that you’ve used your gifts. What is it like?”

I inhaled deeply, not sure how to answer. “Scary. Weird. And not knowing what I am capable of makes it worse.” My mind flashed back to the day my father died, how the pain called out to me, begging me to ease the agony, then to the day I had taken the illness from my sister. I had been led by instinct. The one book I had on blood witch magic said I shouldn’t have been able to do it at that age. But those limitations didn’t seem to apply to me. “Mostly just instinct.”

“Helen, I told you not to bother Thána,” a voice said from the doorway. I looked up to find Uncle Christophe which meant Helen was Emily’s sister. “She’s been dying to talk to you since we found out you were here. Please forgive her impertinence.”

I smiled a little. “It’s okay. I like her curiosity. It’s a refreshing change from people wanting to kill me.” I stood to take my plate to the kitchen, hoping to find a quieter spot to hide out without actually going into hiding. Two boys went running and slid past me on the tile floor, laughing. I moved back out of the way, which was when I nearly stepped on a third boy I hadn’t seen behind me.

He was maybe thirteen, but small for his age and painfully thin. His face was pale and his eyes dark. I apologized and his gaze met mine. I could instantly tell he wasn’t well. Something inside pushed me toward him. “Are you okay?”

“Devin, there you are.” A woman only slightly younger than me bustled up to the boy. “I told you not to wander off.”

“He’s okay,” I said, touching his shoulder. The sense of disease intensified. I wanted to help him. More than that, I knew that I could help him. “Do you…” I pressed my lips together as she looked up at me. “You’re Adria, right?” My mind was climbing back through introductions and trying to place her in the family tree, but this was definitely the boy Mom had told me needed my gifts.

She flushed a little, pushing red-brown bangs out of her eyes. “Yes, and this is my son, Devin.”

“Is he… he is sick?”

Her eyes were wide, and she nodded. “Yes, you can tell?”

“I can smell it.” I bent so that I could look into his eyes. “I think I could help, if you’d let me?”

Adria was holding her breath, a spark of hope in her eyes. I was suddenly aware of other eyes as well. “But how about we go someplace quieter?” Adria nodded and followed me as I led the way upstairs to the bedroom I had claimed as my own.

I closed the door on the others that had followed us. I did not want an audience. “I’m not promising anything,” I said cautiously. “I’ve only done this a few times.”

“Anything. The doctors cannot cure it.”

I nodded and gestured toward my bed. “Why don’t you sit down here, Devin, and I’ll try to explain what I’m going to do.” Adria pulled him into her lap, and I sat next to them. “Okay, Devin. I’m going to put my lips on your lips, kind of like a kiss, but I need you to keep your mouth open a little bit, okay?” His eyes grew wide, but he nodded. “Then I’m going to take a deep breath, and your body should let me pull the sickness out of you.”

“Will it hurt?” he asked, his voice barely above a squeak.

“I don’t know, I’ve never asked anyone what it felt like.”

“What happens to it?”

“What, the sickness?” I asked. He nodded. “Well, I take it from you and then I get rid of it.”

“You won’t get sick?”

I shook my head. “Do you want to give it a try?”

He looked up at his mother, then back to me. He nodded and I offered him a smile. “Okay open your mouth just a little. Good.” I set one hand on his cheek and guided his head back, then leaned in, barely touching my lips to his. I took a second to center and reached inside myself for that spark of magic. The cancer was riddled throughout his small frame, I could almost see it attached to his organs and even along his ribcage. I thought for a moment it might fight me, but as I breathed in, it leaped out of him, as though it had been waiting there for someone to come for it.

I swallowed and took a second breath, then a third, gulping it down as fast as it would rise up out of him. It was more than I had ever attempted, and by the time I could no longer sense the disease, I was starting to gag. I dashed out the door and across the hall into the bathroom, dropping to my knees as the cancer came roaring back out of me.

My head was filled with white noise as I vomited up black masses of gunk, retching until my stomach hurt. When I could finally raise my head, I felt drained and as I stood up, my body began the other process for ridding itself of the illness I had taken from Devin. I took my time getting cleaned up and brushing my teeth to get rid of the terrible taste. I was only shaking a little as I opened the door, just as my mother had been about to knock. I smiled weakly and gestured toward the bedroom. Her arm slipped around me, and she helped me to the bed.

“Are you okay?” she asked as I sat gingerly.

“I will be. How is Devin?”

“A little shaky, but already so much better. Adria’s got him out there eating.”

“Good, he needs it. He’s also probably going to need a good night’s sleep.”

“So do you.” She patted the bed to encourage me to lay down. “I’ll let everyone know that you’re okay, but that you need some rest.”

CHAPTER2

BACK TO BASICS

“Okay, so what you’re saying is that there are portals, like ours, that are created and some that are naturally occurring?” I said, squinting at the words in the book on the table in front of me.

“Yes, exactly,” my mother agreed.

“And they go to different places?”

She nodded. “This is the list of the known portals here that terminate in your world.”

There were twenty or so places listed, with the locations on this world to the left and their corresponding locations on my world to the right. “But Daria is on a completely different world?”

Mom smiled and reached across to turn the page. “Yes, there are only two known portals between here and there, however. The one was only documented when I came back through it.”

“Cambious told me that they are often in out-of-the-way places, sort of making you work to get to them?”

She nodded again. “Most of them are, yes. Then there’s the world where Daria is right now. They have a central location where eight portals all converge from eight different worlds.”

“Okay. I can accept that. I think.” I rubbed my eyes and sorted through the information I had already absorbed. Mom was ready to leave to go to Daria, but she wanted me to have a little more than theoretical knowledge. “So, the magic that creates these portals is what, exactly?”

She paced around me before coming back to the book on the table. “Well, it depends on the witches that cast it, largely. For example, our portal was created with a combination of opening, traveling, and destination magic several centuries ago. It took a coven of thirteen here, plus three on the other side.”

“That must have been fun to coordinate,” I muttered, already rejecting the idea of the math that would have been involved. “What makes the natural ones?” I could feel myself frowning and rubbed a hand over my forehead.

“No one knows, exactly. They do seem to happen near other mystical places, liminal spaces.”

“Like a cave or something?”

Mom smiled. “Yes. Caves, tree corridors, even volcanoes, or stone arches.”

To complicate matters, there was also the fact that some portals were permanent structures, and some were temporary, and if I was understanding correctly, the magic involved was both intense and draining. Thus, the reason it took so many to complete it.

“So how many worlds are there out there? And are they…different planets? Or… what?”

Mom chuckled. “So many questions. You’ve always been inquisitive. I’m not sure anyone really knows, but it seems logical to think of them as different planets.”

The more I learned the more I was sure that I would never fully understand anything here. “So, this world of Daria’s? Are they magic too?”

Mom sorted through the piles of books, taking some of them back to the shelves. “Some. As I understand it though, magic isn’t inherent. Some of the natives have the ability to learn to use it, and with that many portals, they’ve become something of a varied population of different species. Each bringing with them their own values, gifts, and magics.”

“Like here? With the dragons and phoenixes and incubi?”

“Not exactly the same. I’ve met Pixins who look a lot like Native Americans but have no gender. And there are Dealthians, like Habros who are big, but mostly human-looking. Aside from their coloring, of course.”

“Oh?” I asked, watching her move around the room tidying things up.

“Most of the native races on that world are shades of aqua and blue.”

I felt a bit like I was spinning out of my head. “Did you ever visit any place else? Like, go through other portals?”

She shook her head. “I was pretty content to just stay in Vaneesh, but Daria did a few field trips with her school to a place called Callipha. She and Habros also honeymooned there.”

“I promised Merry I would practice those spells she gave me. Got any pointers?” I held up my spell book. I had taken to jotting down new spells with notes about what they did and what I needed to know about them. Merry had been giving me new spells each day to practice.

Mom came back to the table, smiling. “Maybe take those attack spells outside? Unless you want to spend the afternoon cleaning up down here.”

“Fair point. What are you up to today?”

She sighed and hitched a thumb toward the stairs. “I am off to pick up the car that will get us to the portal, and then I’ll be packing us up.”

“We head out tomorrow?” I asked, gathering up some of the supplies I’d been sorting through for my casting practice.

“If you’re still up for it.”

She’d been keeping a close eye on my healing and stamina because it was a long hike up a mountain to get to the portal that would take us to Daria. If I were honest, I wanted another week to work on my stamina, but she was anxious to get back. “I’m up for it.”

We climbed the stairs then, emerging into a kitchen flooded with morning light. “You’ll need a jacket.”

I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Mom.” I kissed her cheek and headed for the backyard where I could throw spells at targets Merry had set up for me. It was weird, this relationship I was building with her. The memories of my early childhood with her set certain emotional attachments that were hard to escape now that I remembered them, and yet here I was just getting to know her as an adult.

I set my book and supplies on the table beside the fire pit and stretched my arms up over my head, twisting at the waist to loosen up. I ran through the basics rapidly as a warm-up to the more complex spells. I tried to practice the entire list of spells I’d learned each day, kind of like spelling practice when I was a kid. The more I used them, the less likely I’d be to forget. I started with those Merry taught me that first day: open, close, come, go, and the others, about twenty in all. Most were simple things, good for day-to-day stuff, but of little use in the fight for your life when facing other magic users.

I went to the defensive spells then, starting with prostatévo and yperaspízo, both of which were quick means to block or push away an attack, but only in the direction they are cast. Next, I tried teíchos, which took me a few tries to get right. Both arms pushed out to the sides, hands upright. A wall of power slammed up when I finally got it correct, in a square around me. It would hold as long as I kept it powered, protecting me from just about any magic attack. Similar to basic wards, but only for as long as the witch could hold the spell.

I turned to my book then, flipping pages until I found the list of more offensive spells. “Spróxte.” I made the corresponding pushing motion with one hand, aiming it at the nearest wooden targets at the other end of the yard. The target moved back a few inches. The second time, I used both hands and it toppled over backward. Merry had taught me that it was more about my will than the words or gestures. The words help focus the will, and the gesture gave it direction. I could only imagine how much stronger my will would be if I needed to use it to save myself.

That led me to the next couple of spells which were more than one word and gesture. The first two I had successfully cast several times. One was akin to actually punching someone while the second combined projected confusion with a cloaking spell. That one would have been handy to have in my arsenal at the Kourt.

The new spells were meant to be physical, and dangerous. The first would cast fire out of my hands, supposedly. I took a solid stance and raised my right hand, pointing it toward the target. With a deep breath, I reached for the magic inside me and murmured the words, barely audible. At first, nothing happened. There was a growing warmth in the palm of my hand and when I looked, I had a small ball of fire. I willed it toward the target, and it would have been amazing if I could actually aim.

Instead, it sort of flopped onto the ground at my feet, catching the grass until I stomped it out. There was a spell for that too, I just didn’t remember it. On the third try, I hit the target, then had to run to douse the fire. I set the target back onto its feet and shifted it back to its original position.

After checking my list, I set myself up for the next spell. It was meant to break whatever you were casting at, like a locked door or what-have-you. Conceivably, it could break bones, or so Merry had said. It had limited applications if stealth was important because Merry said that it made a lot of noise, but it was a good one to learn. I picked up the stick Merry had told me I would need and held it up, looking past it to the target. Trying to focus on both points was harder than I had imagined, and I wasn’t entirely sure I understood how to throw the energy from the stick to the target.

My first attempt sent the unbroken stick flying. The second resulted in a broken stick. I was forced to stop trying when I ran out of sticks to break. At least I was starting to feel the energy created when the stick snapped. I was also feeling the strain of the work. I had learned that magic was about energy and in order to use magic we needed to transfer that energy, whether we took it from an action, like breaking the stick, or from our own bodies.

Which was why it was so draining.

I suppressed a yawn and gathered my things to go back into the house. Mom was anxious to get moving, which meant that if I was going to get anything more out of Merry before we left, I needed to pin her down.

* * *

My first thought, as we parked the car in a remote and difficult-to-find spot on the side of a mountain, was that I wasn’t sure I had a ten-mile hike in me. I’d been imagining a nice, gentle walk in the woods, but gazing up at our destination, my thighs were already complaining in advance.

Mom smiled at me over the roof of the car. “It’s not that bad.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t say anything.”

“I can see it on your face. Daria wasn’t a fan either.”

I circled to the trunk to pull out my pack. It was a proper backpacking-style pack, complete with a rolled-up, magic bedroll that Mom hadn’t shown me how to use yet. I shrugged it on and took a look around. “Is the car going to be safe here?” I asked.

“It will be fine.” She locked the car as I closed the trunk and we turned to survey the mountain.

We were already deep into the Amerin mountain range that ran along the southern end of Spítia, my mother’s homeland. It had been almost three weeks since our spectacular escape from the Mauno Kourt and the magic-augmented surgery that had saved my life.

Merry had been thrilled to have students in the house that she could teach, and she had enthusiastically answered my million and one questions, shown me how to use spells, and gave me a crash course in potion making, which was one of her specialties. I’d hardly slept, using Merry’s potion to keep myself awake and alert. It was better than coffee, and I don’t say that lightly. I’d had an illicit affair with coffee since my teens.

“Okay, so where is this trail?” I asked as we started toward the trees.

“It isn’t a trail so much as it is a… let’s call it a path.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, Thána. I know where we’re going.”

I was skeptical, but I followed her. The ground was fairly level and the trees around us were a mix of what I took to be maple, or maple adjacent, and some sort of evergreen. It was hard to be certain here. So many things were just like home, but most of the time they were just off from what I saw as normal. Like the apples that Merry grew on a tree in her yard. They look just like nice Fuji apples until you bite into one. Then it’s all purple flesh and tasting of blueberries. Delicious, but off-putting the first few times I tried one.

After a half mile or so, our path turned west and started to climb. Here and there the ground showed signs of an actual path; leaves and grass worn down to dirt from feet that had trampled this way over time, but much of it was only a hint of that, the grass sparse and thin. As we continued climbing, the high canopy of leaves became a ceiling and despite the early afternoon sunshine, the path we walked grew dim.

“So why were you all the way up here?” I asked a little breathlessly as we paused by a fallen tree to rest. I took the canteen from my hip and took a big swig of water.

“There’s a cabin further west where I was hoping Daria and I could spend the summer. It belonged to a friend’s family when I was a girl. I thought it might keep the Brotherhood off our trail.”

“And this portal just… happened to be what you found first?”

She shrugged. “It seems to be one of the naturally occurring ones, though the only naturally occurring portals I’d ever known about before this one went to your world. Of course, I knew about man-made portals opening into other places, but never even considered that a natural one might.”

“So how far do we have to go?” I asked, looking up the slope.

She turned and let her gaze sweep the trees. “A couple of hours to the place we’ll camp tonight. Tomorrow around noon should put us at the portal.”

I nodded, still skeptical about the magic sleeping bag and lack of tent, since it was still technically winter, and even here in the middle of the afternoon, it was cool. It would turn positively cold as the sun went down.

In the weeks since we had somehow pulled off the most impossible rescue, I had gotten the chance to get to know the mother who had loved me enough to hide me away. She took any memory of my life before that day and abandoned me to a life without her in a last-ditch attempt to keep me safe.

With my memory of her finally restored, I was glad to discover that despite being a prisoner of a religious cult for two years, Alana Alizon was much the same woman as she was in my memory of her. Her smile was warm and comforting and her voice stilled some need in me that I couldn’t even name.

Her laugh was richer than I remembered, and her hair had lost the glossy black of her youth, faded now into a mix of gray and silver and white that I thought made her even more beautiful. There were lines around her eyes and deeper lines between them. Her deep blue eyes sparkled whenever she spoke of my sister Daria, Daria’s son Kota, or my father.

She was a very tactile person though, something I was struggling to get used to. Having spent eight years of my life in foster care, I had developed an aversion to being held or even touched in some cases. Not due to anything bad happening, but none of the foster families I stayed with were physically affectionate. It rubbed off and kind of became my default over the years.

Still, she was fond of casual touch, of a hand on my arm and spontaneous hugging, and I was trying to cope with it. To be fair, she caught on pretty quickly and had curbed her need to constantly touch me. Maybe she was just reassuring herself that I was actually there.

“Hey, you ready to keep moving?” Mom asked, pulling me from my thoughts.

“Sure, lead on.” I leveraged myself up off the log after reattaching my canteen to my belt. Several hours later, we emerged from the trees to find a lake, with flat grassy land for camping on and there was even a fire ring already built.

We shrugged off our packs and Mom sent me back into the woods to forage for firewood. By the time I came back with an armful of dry wood, she had cleared a good 20-foot circle around the fire ring and was setting up her new set of ward stones. “We’ll need some bigger logs to get us through the night,” she said without looking up.

“Okay. I saw some dead stuff, but it’s all too big to carry.”

She looked up then. “The word is tomí. Center, touch the wood where you want to cut it, and say tomí.”

I headed back into the tree line and angled toward where I had seen the downed branches. The whole tree was dead, but most of it was still standing. I circled the pile of branches, looking for ones that were substantial, but that I could still carry, and finally pulled one branch thicker than my calf from the pile. I took a moment to breathe in slowly and let it out just as slowly, reaching inside me for the spot at my center that Merry had taught me was the place my magic lived. I set my hand on the wood and murmured the word.

Under my hand, the wood cracked and split cleanly. I grinned to myself and moved my hand further up the branch and repeated the spell twice more until I had six decent-sized pieces of wood.

I had a harder time stacking it all so I could carry it than I did cutting it, but eventually, I got it all up and headed back to my mother. She had a tidy fire going with the wood I had already brought back, and her ward stones looked ready to deploy. The field generated around the small circle of stones had a vague red tint to it, so it had to be some variation I had yet to learn. Most of the ones I knew tilted toward blues or greens.

She had food prepped to cook, the cast iron frying pan sat on the stones around the fire ring, filled with a fish. “I was gone ten minutes,” I said as I stacked the wood a few feet from the fire. “How have you already caught and cleaned a fish? You didn’t even pack a fishing pole.”

She chuckled. “I’ll teach you how to call them to you. First, let’s get our warding up.”

I moved toward her, bending down to take the first pair as she took the opposite pair. We moved away from each other toward the places she had already marked. We repeated the steps for the rest of the pairs, stretching out the field until it formed a dome barely over our heads. “There, that should help us stay warm,” Mom said, moving back to the fire.

CHAPTER3

CAMP

The fire ring was dead center of the circle covered by the wards, and I could already feel the heat generated by the fire bouncing off the wards and filling the air inside with warmth. Mom squatted next to her pack and pulled out a metal grill, unfolded its legs and put it over the fire.

The frying pan went on the grill and she sat back,her face the picture of satisfaction. Even with everything I had learned since Finneas Connor had appeared in my life and changed everything, I could still be surprised. My mother had insisted on doing the packing, and while I knew she had used some form of magic, I was still amazed at how much she had fit into the two packs.

I pulled the magic sleeping bag off my pack and unrolled it. It didn’t look a whole lot different than any other sleeping bag I had ever seen. I shook it out and picked a spot far enough from the fire that if it sparked, it shouldn’t set me ablaze and spread it out.

Mom looked up from where she was seated beside the fire, cutting up onions and carrots, or what looked like onions and carrots. “Okay, put your hand on the middle of the bedroll, center, and set the intention in your mind for it to inflate. The word is fouskóno.”

I did as instructed, closing my eyes and trying to picture what the sleeping bag was supposed to look like when it was inflated, and I said the word almost inaudibly. Merry had been teaching me that a practiced witch didn’t even need to speak the words, but I wasn’t all the way there yet. Under my hand, there was movement and I stepped back as I opened my eyes. Below the sleeping bag there was… well, it was almost a mattress. I put my hand on it, testing the firmness. It was firm enough to hold me and I turned to sit, marveling again at the combination of magic and technology my mother’s world had to offer.

As I sat, my body began to make me aware that it was not a fan of the day’s walking. My legs were aching and my feet pounding inside my hiking boots. My hips were even complaining, particularly on the side that recently had wrought iron shoved into it. The injury could have taken my life, if not for a doctor who was also a witch. Still, it would ache when I overdid it with physical labor, or when I got cold. It would start there, where the metal had pierced my side, then spread up toward my shoulder and down toward my hip.

“Are you warm enough?” Mom asked as if she could hear my internal dialog. So far, I was pretty sure she couldn’t actually do that, but she sometimes made me wonder.

“Yeah, I’m good.” It was weird, getting to know my mother as an adult. All my memories of her were either from before my tenth birthday or from the last few weeks. That twenty-two-year gap sometimes sat between us like a stone. There was still some lingering anger in the deep, dark places where I shoved emotion that I didn’t want to acknowledge or deal with. It fit in right beside my simmering self-doubt and the strange feeling when I discovered Cambious had found other sources for feeding.

I untied my boots and loosened them up to give my feet some room to swell. The smell of the onions cooking filled the air around me as Mom spooned the melted butter and vegetables over the fish, making room in the pan for the delicious, potato-like things that Merry called patátí. The taste was something similar to a cross between a regular gold potato and a yam, with a touch of peppery flavor. They cooked faster than either a potato or a yam, their orange-red flesh absorbing heat in a way I had never seen.

But then, I was no kitchen witch. My meals were often something I could throw into the microwave. Mom seemed to be nearly at home in the kitchen as Merry was. Or, in this case, she was at home over an open fire. I yawned, suddenly exhausted. Not surprising really. The day was more exercise than I’d had in years, and I was only three weeks out from nearly dying.

Above us, the skies were getting dark. If the food wasn’t done soon, I was going to be asleep before it was ready. Again, as if reading my thoughts, Mom handed me a plate. It was a light wood, she had told me what kind, but I’d forgotten. As I started eating, she inflated her bedroll and situated it so that our heads would be close together. We were quiet as we ate, and I could feel the exhaustion pulling on me. Of course, that exhaustion was not just from the outdoor exercise. All the spell work and lack of sleep were catching up to me now that I was away from Merry’s kitchen and her supply of herbs to brew my little stay-awake potion.

I finished the food on my plate, and murmured, “Kathárise” over it, watching the remaining food bits vanish. That was one spell I had found to be super handy. I set the plate aside because I didn’t have the energy to return it to the pack.

Unzipping my sleeping bag, I slipped my feet out of my shoes and climbed in, leaving it open because I needed to be able to get out fast. I hated the feeling of being zipped in. It was too constricting. I was vaguely aware of my mother moving around, cleaning up, before she set two of the bigger logs onto the fire. She stirred the coals to be sure they caught, then she too was slipping into her sleeping bag and silence fell within the wards.

I woke early, with sunlight just starting to trade out the deep black of the skies for a dark crimson that would fade to orange. The dome of our wards had kept most of the cold out, but a chill hung in the air as I stuck my feet into my boots. The fire had burned down to a half-scorched log and an ash-covered bed of hot coals. I took one of the sticks from the pile and rolled the log to the side, then stirred up the coals before feeding some kindling into them. It took a bit of coaxing to get the fire burning again, but I had a tidy little flame I could build on.