Page 13 of A Bond with the Dark

“And beyond that?” I ask as I pet his soft fur.

Hilda swirls the ice around in her glass. “We’re not sure. It’s in her journals at home. We’ll bring them when we come back for the celebration.”

Nox stands and stretches, jumping on the table.

“That would make me feel better,” I reply, picking him up and setting him on the floor before he can knock anything down.

“The Cartwright sisters,” Maggie says maudlinly, holding up a photo of the five of them.

They’re young and carefree in the photo, posing by a sign that says No Loitering, laughing at something one of them had said. A moment frozen in time.

“The Cartwright Witches,” I correct, leaning on Maggie’s shoulder and gazing at the picture.

The wind blew their hair around in a soft breeze, the Pacific Ocean at their backs. The three shorter sisters were Hilda, who had strawberry blonde hair in a pony, Pricilla with dark long hair and bangs, and Maggie, who had short, spikey dark hair. The two taller, skinny women had wild curls of fiery red and the other with golden blonde.

While admiring the picture, I absentmindedly pick up my mother’s wand from the table. An invisible shockwave blows through the house, causing my hair to rush off my shoulders. It feels so real I swear my mom’s hair moves in the picture as well, her eyes glittering like a cat’s in headlights. I hear a phantom voice in the wind: There is light in the dark.

Shaking my head, I look at my aunts; Maggie’s holding the photo still, unfazed by the sudden blast of wind, and Hilda is staring off into space, oblivious as well.

I must be exhausted.

That picture didn’t move.

Did it?

6

BRINK OF A PANDEMIC

DOM

“So, what is a phoenix, and how do we find one?” Ollie asks as we sit on the back porch, sipping bourbon and smoking cigars. Well the men are; the women are drinking blood from wine glasses and chatting in the kitchen.

“Your guess is as good as mine,” I respond, swirling the bourbon around in my glass, watching it leave behind the most beautiful cathedral arches on the side of the glass.

The lake my parents live on, Lake George, is peaceful right now. The water is still and quiet, and the only sounds are a distant hoot of an owl and the wind rustling the trees.

“Well, if the grimoires say something about them, then there has to be other knowledge somewhere,” my dad says, his blonde bushy eyebrows furrowing.

“Like, is it an actual bird?” Ollie asks, taking a puff of the cigar, the blue smoke whirling around his head in the amber light of the porch. “Or is it a person who has phoenix powers? And if it’s the second one, what the fuck kind of powers do phoenixes have?”

Ollie is one of my favorite people. Having been the first one to succumb to our curse, he’s the best out of all of us. When we became creatures of the night, our humanity was pieced out and intertwined with shards of barbarity and splinters of wickedness. If we’re not careful, more pieces of our mortality slip away and are replaced with increased particles of evil. But Ollie—he’s clung to every bit of his humanity and has cradled it with an empathy that normally isn’t found in vampires. Granted, he kills for me when I can’t. But he is the glue that holds our family together. Darkness has tempered him in some ways and softened him in others.

“In the almost three hundred years I’ve been on Earth, I’ve never even heard of this,” Dad says, his left leg jittering, making the smoke leave intricate designs in the air. “But I would imagine it is a metaphor for a fire wielder.”

“A fire wielder?” I query, quirking my brows up. “Doesn’t Mom do that thing with her arms that lights all the candles in a swoosh?”

“I love when she does that!” Ollie exclaims, lightening the mood a tad.

“That’s minor fire magick,” Dad chides Ollie. “She’s not a fire wielder. She can’t make flames come out of her fingers or hands or anything. She can only make it come alight with things already prepared for fire.”

“Do you know any super old vampires that were around even before Mom’s curse we can ask?” I question Dad.

His gray eyes slide to the lake in thought. “After your mom discovered the curse and what had happened,” my dad replies, tapping on the cigar so the ash falls to the ground, “she sought out others, as we couldn’t be the first vampires to ever grace the Earth.”

“And?” I press.

“We found the secret order of vampires, the Nyktorim Syndicate,” he answers. “They’re very different from us. But this was hundreds of years ago. I’ve no idea if they are even still around.”

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