Page 16 of What Is Dark Within Me

A selfie came next. Violet was smiling, despite the dark circles under her eyes. This was followed by a series of images of the deep woods. It could have been almost anywhere in the Pacific Northwest during winter. A pine tree’s branches hung heavy with snow, sagging like soft bones. Brown ferns collapsed against the ground, looking exhausted.

The last image was not a picture at all, but a video. Violet’s tired face watched from the thumbnail. Aleja had spent plenty of time scrolling through Violet’s old blog posts, through her picture feeds, and listening to podcasts detailing every aspect of her life, but it had been months since she’d heard Violet speaknewwords.

“Hey! I don’t really know who I’m recording this for, but it feels weird to come this far and not tell anyone. I’m almost at the spot, I think. There are some old ruins, just like he told me I’d find.”

Violet trailed off, looking behind her before returning her attention to the camera. “I’m not going to lie. It is incredibly spooky out here. I’ve done plenty of solo hikes before, but I can’t remember a time when every sound made me jump like this. I’m terrified, but this is my last hope. The specialists are worried about how aggressive the cancer is this time. But he showed me the people who came out here. How they were thriving. How they were cured. If I can find the same place, then maybe—”

A raven cawed. Violet jumped, and Aleja glimpsed the landscape behind her. An old shed was visible among the trees. The single window was empty, aside from a few shards of broken glass that gave the impression of teeth.

Violet continued. “…Maybe I’ll be okay too. Deep breath, Vi. You can do this. If anyone is watching, I hope it’s because we’re all at a party and I’m telling you a funny story about how I went alone into the backcountry to find—well, that’s probably not something I should say on camera. All right, here we go. Just another half mile.”

The video ended.

Tears dripped from Aleja’s chin to the camera’s touchscreen, but she couldn’t move to wipe them away. Cancer? Violet had survived lymphoma in childhood, and she’d never been shy about telling her story. Vi even had a funny way of phrasing her experience: she’d seen what would happen if you were forced to swallow down your life in one giant gulp. Now, she wanted to chew on it. To savor it, however she could.

“You’re crying.”

Aleja had forgotten she was sharing a space with the Knowing One. His rumbling voice sounded like the cellos in a funeral dirge, but she wasn’t in the mood for sympathy from a murderer.

“Yes. Because my friend was sick. Because she didn’t tell me. Because I can’t find her. Because I’m mad at her for leaving me without any explanation, and because I feel guilty for being mad at her. Is that too human for you to understand?”

Nicolas didn’t answer. His shadow shifted and disappeared, leaving Aleja alone again. Anger made her follow him, clutching the camera in her shaking hands.

“I thought you might want to be alone,” he said. Nicolas had again taken a seat against her kitchen counter and one of her art books was open to a double-page spread of The Garden of Earthly Delights, a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, one of Aleja’s favorites.

“What do you care?” she snapped. Her anger was vague, directed at everything and nothing all at once, and there was a conveniently placed Otherlander in her line of sight. A spark flew from her hands, whirling once before it landed on her rug, leaving a black spot behind.

“I don’t think you want to know the answer to that, witchling. Have some patience. As soon as Garm returns, you’ll be free of me.”

“But not the bargain.”

“No. Not the bargain. That is no longer in my control.”

She could feel each thread of the rug through her sock-covered feet. She could hear the bubbles popping in the last unopened can of seltzer in her fridge. She could feel fire rushing across the planes of her heart.

It was intoxicating, despite knowing what it meant. She’d never be free of this man, even if they broke the binding between them. Not until she died, because she was certainly never lettinganyoneget close to her again.

Garm chose this moment to bound back into the apartment, leaping out of the shadow between her computer desk and the wall. A small disc wrapped in velvet was clenched between his jaws, and he dropped it gently against the rug as soon as he’d taken a few steps into the apartment. “I got one, boss!”

It was not Nicolas that Garm ran to first, but Aleja, furiously licking her hand as she noticed every groove of his tongue. His tail knocked one of the books off Aleja’s coffee table, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. It felt good to have someone be nice to her right now.

“There’s no time to waste,” Nicolas said. Aleja didn’t miss the way his tongue clicked against the roof of his mouth, as if it irritated him that Garm had defaulted his attention to her. “I saw you grab a picture of the club, witchling. Reflect the photograph in the mirror and it should show us the whereabouts of all the surviving members.”

Garm leaned into Aleja’s touch as she scratched him behind the ears. It didn’t seem possible this was the Otherlander that’d nearly killed her less than forty-eight hours ago, but she wasn’t about to question her luck when there was a brand-new scrying mirror on her table.

“Fine,” she grumbled, dropping to her knees by Garm’s side. He nuzzled his snout into her neck as she reached for the Polaroids she’d taken from Agnes’s cellar.

“You better work fast,” Garm said. “I stole this from someone who wasn’t pleased by my presence. Some magicians have no sense of humor.”

“Great,” she muttered. “Shouldn’t we use this to look for Violet?”

“Go on. Try,” Nicolas said.

The cloth unraveled, revealing a polished silver surface surrounded by a frame of two metal centipedes, facing one another as if preparing for a fight. She held up the Polaroid of Violet. The reflection was murky, as if she was looking out of a window in the dead of night and the only thing visible was the occasional flurry of snow against the glass.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“There are many reasons someone can’t be found with a scrying mirror,” Nicolas said. Perhaps she imagined his voice had softened. “Try the other photograph.”

---