Page 13 of What Is Dark Within Me

In the end, no one spared her a second glance, and soon the dizziness was gone and replaced with something else. It felt as though she was standing in a place where lightning was about to strike. Her palms were hot against the car’s steering wheel. She could see shades of blue and violet reflecting off the feathers of a crow watching her from a fencepost.

Power, the Knowing One had promised. It sparkled against her tongue, exactly like the flat Champagne hadn’t. And, in return, she’d given away something she hadn’t even been pursuing.

Do you really think you can trick the Knowing One? asked the voice.

Aleja didn’t bother to answer.

* * *

Aleja stoppedby a Thai food truck, ordered two enormous portions of green curry, and ate on her bed before passing out with a third helping of jasmine rice on her nightstand.

She wasn’t sure how long she slept, but this time, her grandmother stayed away. Aleja knew the reason. She’d bargained with the very being who’d sentenced her grandmother to this surreal prison—neither quite life nor death. What dreams came to her were without any kind of plot, only a series of images; scorched landscapes filled with fire, the smell of singed flesh, and the heavy sound of beating wings.

She woke with the sunset and wondered if the flu would explain her nausea as she stumbled to her kitchen. Aleja didn’t bother to cover the scrying mirror as she downed an enormous glass of water, then another, neither of which eased the dryness in her mouth. Her immune system had been getting a workout since she’d started her caretaking job and she was due for a proper cold at some point.

Aleja decided she should call Paola and have her bring some medicine over, but the distance to the phone seemed insurmountable, and she barely made it to the couch. An attempt to stand a moment later ended with her face down on the rug beneath her coffee table, both of which had come from a thrift shop and oddly smelled like mushrooms.

“What did you do, witchling?”

She heard the voice, but it was so distant that Aleja wasn’t afraid. A rough tongue swept against her cheek, but her arms weren’t strong enough to shove the animal away.

Something warm dropped against her chest, and in what she knew might have been the last few moments of lucidity, Aleja realized the dog had nuzzled his head against her. “She’s sick like you were, Nicolas. What do we do?”

Aleja tried to hang on long enough to hear the answer, but there was only the deep rumble of a man’s voice—like cellos, like thunder, like heavy rain.

Then, nothing.

* * *

“Wake up.”

Aleja’s first thought was that she felt better.

No, not just better.

It was like she’d slept for ten hours, woken with the sun, and had a pot of herbal tea with honey instead of the cheap coffee she normally drank before work. Even the ache in her knee—a childhood fencing injury that never truly left her—was noticeable in its absence.

As the room came into focus, she spotted the well-dressed man seated on her computer chair with his arms crossed over his chest. Garm lay at Nicolas’s feet, his massive head resting on crossed paws. The dog was a far more welcome sight than the Otherlander, though it was Garm that had nearly killed Aleja once already.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?” she said. She sat, noticing how little strength it took to get herself upright. The pale teal of her refrigerator was intense enough to make her squint. Every detail of the scrying mirror’s ram-horn frame was sharp, even from a distance. Her furniture pulsed softly like sleeping animals.

“Witchling, pay attention. What did you do?” Nicolas said, pausing slightly after each word.

“I made a bargain with you like you wanted,” she said.

Nicolas’s wings were missing, but shadows rippled around him, forming fleeting shapes; horns, claws, licks of flame. “You did far more than that.”

Garm perked up. Unlike other Dobermans she’d seen, his ears drooped to either side of his face. One flopped inside out as he tilted his head to the right.

“I don’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about. You shouldn’t be here. I didn’t invite you in.”

“I’m not avampire, Alejandra. Stop being foolish and undo this binding.”

“Binding?” she said, the word feeling thick in her mouth. “I didn’t do a binding.”

“I told you, boss, she didn’t do it on purpose,” Garm said. He looked up at Nicolas and the misplaced ear shifted to its natural position. “She gave me cheese, Nic. Someone like that wouldn’t try to trick you.”

She was in complete agreement with the dog, but Aleja couldn’t bring herself to say so. Her brain was desperately trying to sort out the facts: the Knowing One was sitting on her computer chair and he didn’t look happy. Power flowed through her veins. Power she hadn’t woken up with yesterday. Power she would have to pay for.

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