Page 54 of The Crow Games
Like Hel we will.
We hoofed it to the train at high speed.
* * *
Asher was eager to be rid of the relic. He returned it to me, careful only to touch the scarf it was wrapped in. Then he slunk off into the corner of the lounge car, his fair skin gone gray as a gravestone.
We’d taken over the car, with one new addition: Talia sat beside Blue, across the table from our high witch. Nola mixed us drinks at the bar. I abstained from the gin, still regretting my choices from the night before that had led to nightmares and weakness today.
“You’re a warlock?” Ruchel clarified from the seat beside me. The sisters occupied the cushioned chairs nearest the entrance. It was their job to dissuade intruders.
If boxing her in with our coven bothered Talia, she hid it well. Her glossy midnight curls shone under the gaslights. “I am a warlock,” she confirmed quietly. The amulets I’d believed marked her as a witch hung around her umber neck, swaying with her movements. She fingered one of the pendants shaped like a bird in flight. “I do use hexen relics but only ones made of bronze or copper. I trade for them honestly. I let others believe I’m a witch for their comfort. Please know, we’re not all . . .” She searched for the right word.
“Ass-heads,” Nola supplied.
“That. Yes,” Talia said, her full lips in a droll twist. The deep lines that accentuated her amber eyes crinkled.
I unwrapped the hexen relic from the satin scarves that concealed it, and I pushed it across the table to her.
She touched it hesitantly, and a shiver tremored through her. “It’s . . . definitely powerful. I sense its pages are made of the skin of a gray witch.” Her throat bobbed, and she flipped through more of the book. “Yes, definitely a gray.”
“It’s pure evil, then,” Blue said, and with great restraint I resisted rolling my eyes.
“Interesting as all that is,” Nola said, “can it get us the fuck out of the Otherworld or not?”
Talia turned the pages tentatively. The bloody ink had smeared into a macabre mess, and she snapped the relic shut. Eyes closed, she stole a steadying breath in through her nose. Her nostrils flared. “It is an evil thing, and it’s hungry.”
If it was made of a gray witch, then I had an idea of how it worked, and I felt the color draining from my face. This book hungered the way my magic hungered. It was just as dangerous as I was.
“It could get us out of the Otherworld,” Talia continued, “but the cost is horrid.”
“Souls,” I whispered. “It needs spirit to fuel it.”
“That is the function of it, yes,” Talia said glumly. “Feed it the life force of another, and it will eat their soul and perform any number of impossible things.” She slid the book to the center of the table and wiped her hands roughly down her pant legs.
“What if we fed it magic?” I asked. I knew how to take things for myself, not how to give them, but magic and energy were aspects of spirit—I thrived on them as well. Perhaps not all hope was lost. “Energy can be renewed as can magic, yes? Feeding the book that would not be so detrimental.”
Talia shook her head, and her amulets knocked together. “I’m afraid I don’t know how that would work and would be too frightened of the consequences to experiment. I’m not a gray and can’t mold spirit. And I’m not a reaper—”
“A reaper wouldnever,” Asher said, bristling.
“Of course,” Talia added gently. “Since I am unable to help you at all, I will not accept payment for this reading. Let us part as friends.”
“Friends, yes,” Ruchel said glumly. “We’re grateful to you.”
I really like this Talia, Lisbeth said in my head, and I couldn’t agree more. She was an ally I wanted to keep close. One Blue was convinced was high witch—warlock—of a much, much larger coven than she let on.
Talia pushed up from the table.
I reached for her. “Wait. There’s something I’d like you to have in the name of that friendship. It matters not that you were unable to help us this time. There will be other times we need to help each other.”
She slid back into her chair, her elegant brows knitted. I pulled the amulet from under my shirt, and her amber eyes rounded.
“Please accept this from our coven to yours,” I said. The amulet hung from my outstretched hand.
Tentatively, she touched the bronze and gasped. “This isn’t hexen,” she said, awe in her voice. Then her hand snapped back from it like it had bitten her. “That’s a god-made relic.”
I could feel Blue’s accusing eyes boring into my skull.
