Page 18 of What Is Dark Within Me

The thought of leaving the Knowing One and his dog to wander around her apartment while she slept wasn’t appealing, but if she was struck by the waves of illness the separation had given her before, she’d be just as useless in the morning. “Fine. Don’t touch anything and do not come into my room.”

“You needn’t concern yourself with anything other than finding Laurent.” His skin was still perfectly unblemished, as if she hadn’t laid a hand on him at all. While some animals used their beauty as a warning, the Otherlanders used it as a weapon.

“But I can nap on the couch, right?” Garm said, apparently sensing the danger had passed.

“Do you shed?” she asked.

“Oh, yes.So much.” His tail swooshed across the rug.

“Fine, but I saw those creepy little hands you made for yourself. You’re vacuuming later.”

Garm looked pleased by this arrangement. The last she heard of either the dog or his master was the creak of her couch springs settling beneath him, as she practically jogged the last few feet to her room and locked the door behind her.

* * *

Her dreams werefire and heat and violence; vague images that slipped away as soon as she tried to remember them. Mud boiled beneath her boots. She had the sense that a blistered arm reaching for her belonged to someone she knew, but she couldn’t say who.

Aleja waited until the light behind her curtains was pale pink before getting up. She wasn’t sure if she should shower—being nakedanywherein her apartment while the Knowing One was so close made her feel vulnerable, but in the end, the lure of warm water on her sweat-caked body was impossible to resist. A bandana from her dresser would do for her damp hair. The fabric still smelled of the bug spray Aleja had doused herself with the last time she’d hiked with Violet.

“I made breakfast!” Garm barked as she slipped through her bedroom door. He was again on his hind legs, his front paws transformed into a facsimile of human hands. A few hard-boiled eggs rolled in place next to the broken scrying mirror.

“He ate half the food in your fridge as he did so,” Nicolas said. “Are you ready, witchling?”

At least the dog was excited. He sat and rose and sat again, as if there was no other way to get out the nervous energy. “I’ve never been for aridebefore!” he barked as Aleja reached for her keys.

They drove for an hour before Nicolas did anything other than stare out the window, watching the city give way to suburbs, then farmlands. Plumes of smoke from ranchers burning their pastures rose over the hills, as if bombs had dropped while Aleja slept. From the backseat, Garm barked at a group of cows huddled close to the fence line.

Nicolas hit the radio button. She expected her true crime podcast to come back on, but classical music crackled out of her car’s blown-out speakers. The music was sharp, the violins high and vicious. With her new senses, Aleja could feel it in her jaw. “What the hell is this?” she muttered.

“Tartini’s Violin Sonata in G minor.”

“Oh,” she grunted, wondering if this could be any more awkward. At least they didn’t have to look at each other.

“Also called the Devil’s Trill. Tartini claimed that one night the devil came to visit in a dream, and played him a violin sonata so beautiful that the composer sold his soul to recreate it.”

“What did you take from him in exchange?”

“Nothing. Tartini didn’t need my services, but we drank wine once or twice in Padua. You’d think he was an Otherlander from the way he played the violin—wild and fast, with madness in his eyes. A charming dinner guest as well.”

She didn’t know what to say to this, or why Nicolas had spoken now, when they’d be trapped in this car together for several more hours. She’d sensed their dislike for each other was mutual.

“And my great-great-grandfather and his brothers? They needed your services?” Aleja winced as soon as the words left her mouth. Trapped together for several hours, she reminded herself. But Nicolas’s history with her family was like a fourth passenger wedged between them, who couldn’t stop nudging her with its knees and elbows. It reminded Aleja of how she felt about Violet’s disappearance—the absence of knowledge had a weight and presence in her life, as if it was a corporeal thing.

“I thought we weren’t talking about them, witchling.”

“Stop calling me that, would you?”

“My apologies. I’ve never believed ignorance was bliss. Even so, you may not like the answer.”

She blinked, not having expected him to agree so soon, but she didn’t want to lose the opening while she had it. “Bullshit. I want to know. What would make three men sacrifice three of their descendants for fame, wealth, and magic?”

“They were greedy,” Nicolas said simply. “Magic and talent weren’t enough. They wanted it so that none who came after could ever hope to match them in skill or fame.”

“A human impulse,” Aleja muttered.

“Most humans don’t summon an Otherlander and offer the lives of their descendants for a deal. At the time, they were bachelors and had come to a loose agreement not to have children. But, as you said, human impulse is human impulse. After the first baby came, they decided they should have as many as possible to make up for the ones they’d lose.”

Aleja’s chest burned with so much anger she briefly considered yanking the wheel to the side, so Nicolas’s face would smash into the glass. “And you went along with the whole thing.”

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