Page 2 of What Is Dark Within Me

Not merely a witch then, she thought. Agnes was—like Aleja’s family—a practitioner of the Silent Art. This was no herbalism, no hedge-magic. It was the witchcraft you did under cover of night, appealing in hushed voices to the Otherlanders. The beings that lived in shadow.

See? People of all ages can appreciate evil, said a little voice in Aleja’s head, but she ignored it.

She paused before opening the last door in the hall. Maybe sheshouldcall Paola, who could tell her what to do with a Miss Flanders who’d broken a hip drunkenly climbing into bed. But everyone at Gentle Hearts already thought Aleja was a sympathy hire and they were right. Since dropping out of her master’s program, she’d been so desperate for money that she’d jumped to fill the position as a caretaker, even with no experience.

Aleja tried Miss Flanders’s name again. When there was no answer, she gave the knob a hesitant turn and stepped inside.

The woman atop the bed wore a sparkling silver gown with a pair of matching pumps kicked off by the bedside. Her gray hair was coiffed, held in place with so much product Aleja could smell it from the doorway alongside a whiff of jasmine perfume. Around the woman’s neck, a dainty silver pendant—an upside-down pentagram—dangled.

But Agnes Flanders was not asleep.

Aleja recoiled. The only dead things she’d seen before were the occasional roadside corpses of deer whenever Violet coaxed her into a hike. She reached for her phone, intending to call Paola or an ambulance oranyonewho could tell her what to do, but Violet’s smiling face again watched her from the lock screen.

The scrying mirror.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered, gently closing the door as if not to rouse the corpse.

Scrying mirrors were made of pure jatrite silver; a rare and expensive material only found in the other realms. There were likely a dozen kept at her family’s estate in Miami, but she’d not been back since her grandmother died. Catalina had been the only one of Aleja’s relatives who’d never treated her like a walking corpse. A pre-determined sacrifice.

It wasn’t until Aleja reached the lounge on the first floor that she found something worth stealing. It appeared the party had reached this area of the house as well, and many of the shelves hosted half-empty glasses of scotch, with beads of condensation moving perilously toward the surrounding antiques.

Several prayer candles lay scattered among the space with crude illustrations of the Dark Saints. A shudder moved down Aleja’s spine. Her family may have done business with the Knowing One, but even they had forbidden calling to the Dark Saints when in need.

A piece of black velour had been thrown over the scrying mirror in the corner. Aleja grabbed the mirror and shoved it into her satchel before dialing 9-1-1.

It took twenty minutes for the ambulance to arrive and when it did, no one questioned why she was there. No one questioned why she flinched every time a paramedic or police officer addressed her or asked why her satchel was so obviously overstuffed. By the time she arrived home, Aleja had inadvertently pulled off one of the greatest magical thefts in recent history.

* * *

“Why arepeople so invested in this case? After all, thousands of women go missing each year, and very few get this type of attention.”

“The honest answer? Violet is the kind of victim the media loves. Beautiful, chronically ill, open online about the struggles she faced—”

Aleja silenced her phone. It took hours to work her way through the mountain of paperwork to do at the Gentle Hearts office, but Paola fortunately didn’t notice the velour-wrapped object protruding from the top of Aleja’s bag.

Paola had been eager to join the early search teams who’d scoured Violet’s last known locations. But as weeks—then months—passed, Aleja received a common refrain whenever she asked her cousin to repeat anything unusual about Violet’s last days.

“She was hiking alone. You don’t want to hear it, but she probably slipped and tumbled down a cliff. I know you miss her, but I’m really worried aboutyou.”

Aside from Paola, the only family member Aleja had been close to was her grandmother. Aleja’s mother had disappeared the moment her daughter’s hair began growing in—a shade of dark red unusual even among witches. To the Ruizes, this red hair was a reminder the devil still had one more of them to take, and this quiet child seemed marked for him. But even after Aleja’s grandmother was chosen instead, her mother hadn’t returned.

Aleja flicked on the light switch, half-hoping she wouldn’t be greeted by the messy space she’d left this morning. Next to her laptop sat a number of coffee mugs piled into towers. The prints of Renaissance paintings on the walls were one of the last reminders of the art history degree she hadn’t earned. Three weeks after Violet’s disappearance, Aleja’s thesis advisor called her into the office. Dr. Whitman stared at Aleja with damp eyes as she said, “I say this with respect. You are one of my best and favorite students, but maybe you need some time to heal before you can devote yourself to this program.”

The file on Aleja’s desktop entitled “Exploring Botticelli's Angels: Symbolism, Mythology, and Cultural Significance in Renaissance Art” was something she couldn’t bear to open, just as she avoided looking at the black candle stub on her coffee table. A melted pile of wax she couldn’t seem to throw away.

Aleja grabbed the mirror and a canister of Morton’s salt and took the fire escape to the rooftop. A neglected vegetable patch had become a lump of mud where patches of yellow wildflowers struggled to keep from drowning in its wet soil.

She used the salt to make a ring and sat cross-legged with the scrying mirror balanced on her lap. Then, while the rest of the world blurred as if a heavy mist had descended on the city, she ran through the facts of Violet’s disappearance.

One: Violet seemed upset the week before she disappeared, though she usually celebrated the yearly anniversary of her remission from lymphoma.

Two: Violet’s car wasn’t found in the parking lot of the trailhead she’d claimed to be heading to. Nor were her backpack and camera.

And three: There’d been no mention of the occult items Aleja knew should have been strewn throughout Violet’s home when it was searched by the police. Either the cops were keeping it quiet, or they’d been removed beforehand. Perhaps by Violet herself.

Aleja had spent so long lurking on forums dedicated to Violet’s disappearance that the story seemed separate from the pain she experienced at her friend’s absence. There was the Violet who existed online—the beautiful graduate student who’d survived cancer to become an adventurer, environmentalist, and photographer.

Then there was the Violet Aleja had known. The one who’d had such a big crush on the barista at the campus coffee shop that she stumbled over her words whenever she tried to order. The one who dreamed of going to the San Diego Zoo to see pandas. The one who would answer every text within five minutes, even if it was only Aleja panicking because she had no idea how she was going to make a living with an art history degree.

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