He blinked his gaze back into focus to find Viv kneeling on the floor in front of the tapestry, covering a portion of the last panel. Smoke drifted between her fingers, and when she moved her hand aside, Micah saw a hole burned into the cloth, obscuring one of the dancers’ faces.
“Micah, intense emotion can sometimes trigger magic.” Viv’s voice was level, but her fingers shook as she brushed at the tapestry. “Take a deep breath.”
“I did that.” Micah stared at the hole. “I… started a fire.”
“I don’t see you breathing.”
He’d burned part of Viv’s wedding tapestry—the thing she loved so much she kept it rolled up in a drawer, a precious symbol of her legacy. And he’d ruined it.
“I’m sorry.” He backed up a step. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Micah,breathe.”
“I’m so sorry,” Micah said again, and he turned on his heel, racing for the door to the cave.
* * *
“Oh, I’m a man, and I have a—uh—cone, a pine cone, and a pine cone is my trueeeeeest loooove,” Sasha sang, swinging the basket of foraged goods while making sure none of the mushrooms he’d found escaped, a brace of rabbits slung over his shoulder. There were also berries, late-ripening ones that Viv used for a million different things—crafts, tea, pie—and some stones that she’d asked him to gather for… something witchy. Sasha didn’t always know, but he trusted his wife. She wanted stones? She’d get stones.
“I love my pine cone, and it lovesmeeee,” Sasha sang, smiling as he saw the smoke from the fires near the Compound. Their community might not be perfect, and they had a lot of work to do to address the fucked-up shit that happened for years under Evgen, but they’d get there. Dragan had offered them land to build a house and sobriquets to become part of the wolf-people’s village, and he and Viv had considered it, but they’d decided to stay put. Their home was comfortable, and while Sasha didn’t mind the idea of building a house, someone else would have to design it, since that was a lot of math and shit he didn’t know. Working with his hands, maybe with Zev and his hot mate shirtless, sure, that would be fine. He was married, not dead, and it wasn’t like Viv didn’t think Zev waspretty. And every now and then when she wasn’t feeling too great, she’d find a nice, hot dom to fuck Sasha senseless. Dragan and Zev didn’t seem like the sharing type, though. Bummer. But while they hadn’t made the move to the village, they’d spent some time there over the summer, and Sasha had wrestled happily with Sava, Tomas, and even Dragan—though it had been difficult, given how much Sasha liked dominants pinning him down. He’d been in a lusty mood after, and he and Viv had fucked with abandon, him on his back on the soft grass and her riding him with her nails digging into his chest. It’d been a good day. Summer was good to them. Viv seemed stronger when the sun was shining.
It made him wonder whether they should take a chance and hop on one of those boats, like Dragan’s daughter had. She was married to the ruler of the Arkoudai now. Maybe she’d find them a house where Viv could get enough warm sun but not so much that her perfect, beautiful skin would burn—
“Oops,” Sasha groaned as he nearly tripped over a tree root, swinging basket dropping a few mushrooms and some of the rose hips on the ground. “Oh no you don’t! You’re gonna be tea for my gorgeous lady—there’s no escape.” He scooped up the fallen items and then glanced up… and saw a person standing a ways off in the woods.
Sasha frowned, the hair on the back of his neck raising in alarm. It was late afternoon, but since the year was heading toward winter, the sun was already dipping below the horizon. But that didn’t make people look like shadows. And this person—or thisthing—that’s what it looked like. It was human-shaped but indistinct, like the shadow on the wall of a cave in candlelight.
And it was… not right. Sasha wasn’t the brightest log in the fire, but he knew somethingwrongwhen he saw it. He straightened slowly, a hunter again—his songs gone quiet, his clever rhymes forgotten. Sasha moved toward the thing, eyes wide and unblinking, as silent now as he’d been loud earlier.
The… person-shadow… saw him. It didn’t move, and Sasha didn’t knowhowhe knew it was looking at him, but he did. They regarded each other, there, in the fading light. And then the thing turned and began to movedeeper into the forest.
“Oh no you fucking don’t,” Sasha whispered. “You do not just… stand there and be all—all weird and not-human atme, buddy.” He followed, moving far more nimbly than anyone might expect given his large frame and heavy tread. But Sasha Black knew how to hunt, and whatever this thing was, it needed to be hunted. Because it was moving toward the Compound, and fuck that. They had enough shit to deal with without adding ghost-shadow creatures to the mix.
The thing didn’t move right, either. It would sort of…glide, then fade out and blink back, and Sasha was glad he had to focus his attention on tracking it, because otherwise, the thoughts ofWhat is this, and how can it do thatwould probably terrify him. It faded and appeared a few feet away, still turned toward Sasha, and it took Sasha a minute to realize that it wasleadinghim. And he was foolish enough to let it. Wow, yeah, he wasn’t even the… third-brightest log in the fire, was he, that he just ran after it?
“Nah. I’m brave. I got this.” Sasha marched toward the thing, ducking under a branch and hearing leaves crunch under his feet. He didn’t need to be stealthy. The thing wanted him to follow. “You just… go on, now. Back to, uh, wherever you’re… Huh?”
It was gone.
Sasha blinked, but no shadow person appeared in front of him, not close by or even far off in the distance. A sudden horrible sensation crept up the back of his neck, and Sasha whirled around… but it wasn’t behind him, either. He chuckled, sheepish, and ran the hand that wasn’t gripping the basket’s handle through his shaggy hair. “Guess I imagined all that,” he said, ignoring the slightly unsteady sound of his own voice. Of course he had. Shadow people didn’t exist.
Feeling ridiculous, he turned… and saw his wife.
Viv stood there in her favorite winter cloak, the hood pulled up to frame her lovely face. Strands of her white-blond hair contrasted with the thick black fabric, and her dark eyes were fixed on Sasha.
She smiled.
And he knew it wasn’t her.
“What the fuck,” Sasha hissed, and moved. He dropped the basket, reaching for her, but she blinked away and reappeared deeper in the woods, laughing, the sound wild and unnatural and nothing like Viv’s actual laugh. “You donottake her face! Fuck you, no.”
There was nothing quiet about Sasha’s pursuit of the thing wearing his wife’s face. Branches swung at him. Sasha hit them out of the way. His heart raced, his fury carrying him as easily as it had the night they’d gone to find Zev in Dragan’s village. More so, even, because this was his wife. His Vivian. And Sasha might be ignoring the signs because thinking about them woke him up in a cold sweat, but Viv was going into one of the downturns she took when the weather grew cool, and they both knew it. That was always when he worried the most, both about her condition in general and that in her weakened state some common illness that should be easy to fight off would take her away from him. But if something was going to take her, it wasn’t this phantom in the darkening forest, wearing her features and laughing someone else’s laugh.
Sasha roared like a bear and sprang forward, arms outstretched, going in for the kill. Or at least the tackle. He wasn’t about to wait for this creepy thing to drag him to some equally creepy village or wherever it came from. For a moment, it felt like he was grabbing on to… something made of smoke and sulfur and slick oil, ugh—and then there were brambles scratching his hands, and he kissed the dirt as he fell flat on his face.
Spitting, he pushed up on his stinging palms and looked down at what he’d “captured.” It was nothing but a mess of branches, wood, and moss. The taste of the moss was in his mouth, fetid and gritty. Sasha spat it out, heart racing, and looked around wildly. His basket was gone, as was the thing that had been Viv. He turned, on high alert, expecting it to be there again, laughing, staring out of hungry eyes that weren’t Viv’s at all.
He saw no one.
