Page 6 of What Is Dark Within Me

All of it cast in glittering, golden sand.

“What am I looking for?” she asked as Catalina’s hands dropped firmly onto her shoulders.

Aleja didn’t scream as she was pushed and plummeted into a tumbling, easy fall she found strangely relaxing.

If this was what death was like, maybe it wasn’t so bad after all.

* * *

From Violet Timmons’s grimoire. Object currently missing.

A Spell for Finding Lost Things

Find something precious to give up in exchange. Place it in a wicker basket, alongside a bit of food, honey, or wine.

Take it to the forest trail where people go missing. Or to the bend in the river where the current drags swimmers away. Or to the old country road where you have seen cars driving toward the cornfields, but never back from them.

Place the basket in a clearing and allow yourself to weep for what you have lost. The Otherlanders will be drawn by your tears.

Leave the basket and return one week later. When you open it, what you are seeking will be inside.

A note beside the entry,in neat handwriting:

It didn’t work, maybe because I had nothing precious enough to offer. It’s been thirteen days since I came back to town. The sensation of something missing from my mind is getting worse. I found Agnes Flanders’s number on Paola’s phone when she wasn’t paying attention. Will try to contact her tomorrow.

2

A SPELL TO CLEAR AN OVERGROWN PATH

The soundof a knock from another apartment woke her. It took so long for her memories to return that Aleja’s first thought was, Did I order a pizza?

But as her eyes opened, she realized she should still be in the park or a hospital. Yet she was nestled into warm sheets smelling of laundry detergent and her coconut-lime shampoo. There was also the familiar dripping coming from the bathroom faucet her landlord had yet to fix.

Her hands flew to her torso, knocking the comforter off the bed, but there was no pain as she pressed against her ribs. The blood around her mouth was gone.

Her memories from last night were unfocused—the chase, her collapsed lung, and the man in black who’d commanded the Otherlander to back off. She couldn’t recall leaving the park, let alone making it back home.

Ugh. Did I challenge the big scary demon to a drinking contest?she thought, hissing as the cold floor touched her feet. She was still in the pair of scrubs with a puppy print. Her sneakers were by the door, placed more neatly than when she usually kicked them off.

As she stumbled toward her kitchen, she couldn’t help but look into the scrying mirror again. This time, there was only her face beneath a curtain of knotted reddish-black hair, but a drowsy revelation came as she stared into her bloodshot eyes.

The creature that’d escaped this mirror had said Violet’s name. Had claimed Violet was the one to capture him. Even Violet—whose idea of a good time was scrambling to the top of a gushing waterfall—should have known better than to summon Otherlanders. Violetknewwhat had happened to Aleja’s family. How it had destroyed them.

What the hell had this mirror been doing in Agnes Flanders’s house?

Are you going to waste this one chance to learn more? said the voice.

She knew it was a coping mechanism; an internal monologue gone awry, like the adult version of an imaginary friend she’d grown too attached to. But sometimes it said things like,You can deal with whatever happened later. Agnes Flanders had a family who’ll have received the news of her death by now. This is your last chance to get into that house unnoticed.

She glanced at her phone. It was six-thirty, less than twenty-four hours since she’d found Agnes dead. The paramedics had taken her body, but there hadn’t been contact information for next of kin in the paperwork they’d made Aleja fill out.

Her finger hovered over her text thread with Paola. Aleja desperately wanted to tell someone what had happened, even if it was simply for them to respond that she was over-stressed. That, of course, Aleja had terrible dreams; she spent too much time looking at crime scene photos. That there was no way the man who saved her last night was…

She stopped the thought short, returning to the matter at hand. There must have been a reason Violet acquired a scrying mirror and captured an Otherlander. And there must have been a reason she’d kept it a secret from her best friend. The thoughthurt, but Aleja pushed it aside as she changed into a pair of black jeans and an oversized dark gray sweater.

It didn’t take long to reach the spot where her car was illegally parked. Shattered glass from her mirror dotted a puddle by the passenger door, but as she looked toward the park, she couldn’t force herself to go in search of the dried blood she must have left behind. Maybe she hadn’t been injured as badly as she’d thought. Maybe she had stumbled back to the apartment before she passed out.

She parked a few blocks from Miss Flanders’s house, trying to remember everything she’d learned from true crime documentaries. There hadn’t been an alarm system or cameras, as far as she could tell. If she was caught, she could say she’d forgotten something at the house after calling in the death.

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