Page 7 of What Is Dark Within Me

But it turned out that thinking about how to break into a locked home was a lot easier than doing it. She crept around the back of the house, hoping she would find an open window, but all were closed, the interior dark behind the pink curtains. At last, she stumbled upon a cellar door hidden beneath a large clump of overgrown blackberry bushes. Please be unlocked, she chanted to herself as she attempted to navigate the brambles without being cut.

Get low, the little voice told her.The shadow of the neighbor’s trees will camouflage your clothing.

Well, for once, the voice was being helpful.

A rusting padlock held the doors shut. The chain looked old enough to break if she hit it with one of the rocks scattered throughout the backyard, but this was a witch’s house. Aleja hoped the wards allowing her in yesterday would not try to shake her off today.

“If there are spiders down here, you’re going to owe me, Vi,” she muttered as she found a rock the size of a baseball and dropped to her stomach.

It took three hits before the chain broke, and Aleja was able to slink butt-first onto a concrete staircase, reluctant to summon a mageflare in case it triggered any lingering magic. It turned out, there was no need to grope for a lightbulb chain. As she put a hand on the wall to steady her descent, it brushed against a switch.

Like the rest of the house, this room was opulently decorated, though the color scheme was decidedly more sinister than the Victorian pastels upstairs. The walls were black, but instead of making the cellar look smaller, it seemed to extend the space indefinitely. Bright red furniture clustered in the center of the room like it was floating in the darkness.

“Oh my god. Sorry if I broke into your sex dungeon,” Aleja said into the silence.

A sparkling crimson banner pinned to the far wall fluttered in the breeze she’d let in. ‘The Diabolus Society, 50th Anniversary Party.’ That explained the quarter-full bottle of Champagne she was tempted to take a swig from to calm her nerves.

So, Miss Flanders hadn’t been drowning her sorrows alone last night. Light shimmered off a framed photograph beneath the banner. Three men and three women peered at Aleja from across the cellar. The historian in her couldn’t help but take a closer look. The people in the photograph all wore dark clothes, double-breasted suits, and crushed velvet blouses.

It’s like a fever-dream of the seventies, said the voice in her head.

One woman stood out. Aleja hadn’t seen pictures of a younger Agnes Flanders, but the resemblance to the corpse she’d found was undeniable. This Agnes was likely in her late twenties, wearing a heavy black robe adorned with red pentagrams fading to orange as the photo aged.

Most magicians who claimed to have contacted the Knowing One were either being fooled by a lesser spirit or lying, but her gaze wandered back to the coffee table surrounded by velour furniture. Another bronze statue sat upon it— a snake winding around a branch full of plump figs.

A part of her had been desperate to survive last night because Paola would inevitably be the one to go through her belongings, and she did not want her cousin to see the black candle stub on Aleja’s coffee table. Even if the Knowing One hadn’t appeared, Aleja still burned with shame when she remembered striking those long matches.

She’d been deep into a third glass of wine, scrolling through Violet’s blog posts, as if her friend had left some breadcrumb there. She’dowedViolet this. Violet had saved Aleja’s life the day she plopped down next to her in the college cafeteria and said, “I heard your family likes to summon demons.”

How did you find these people, Vi? Aleja thought, trying to remember if her friend had ever mentioned another coven—a cult—anything. Violet had been withdrawn in the weeks before her disappearance but perked up a few days before she set off on a mountain trail and never returned.

A few Polaroids lay scattered across the table. Aleja caught a glimpse of faces that looked like older versions of those peering from the photograph on the wall. A man with round eyeglasses, holding a censer that spewed plumes of black smoke. Another of Agnes Flanders, wearing a loose-fitting satin dress.

One photo was blurry, as if it had been taken by accident when someone picked up the Polaroid to examine it. Even smeared, the face was pretty and photogenic. It couldn’t have been a recent picture—Violet’s bangs were long, falling into her eyes. She’d cut them short the day before that last hike.

“What the hell?” Aleja whispered, as she snatched the photo off the coffee table and tucked it into her bag. That it was proof Violet had been here was almost secondary. Aleja had told her about everything that happened to her family since her great-great-grandfather and his brothers struck their deal.

She’d barely given Violet her entire family story when her friend said, “Ugh, fuck those people. Treating a kid like they were going to die at any moment? I’m your sister now. You ever need anything, you call good old Violet. I giveterribleadvice, but I always have wine.”

Aleja hastily swept all the objects on the table into her satchel. Then, every piece of paper on the dresser against the room’s opposite wall. Photographs. Drawings on scraps of cardstock. Candle stubs, incense ash, and poppets made of clay.

The door creaked open.

She dropped her bag. Something inside it shattered, but Aleja barely heard the sound as she spun to face the stairs leading into the house.

“You again? Brave little witchling, aren’t you?” The voice was male, deep, with a subtle accent she couldn’t place. She hadn’t recognized it last night, but to be fair, she’d also been bleeding internally.

He stood at the top of the stairs, dressed in a dark suit and fine shoes, his silver eyes shining down like beacons. Her pupils couldn’t adjust quickly enough to this new source of light, and the rest of the world blurred.

“Go away,” she snapped, not knowing what she’d do if the man didn’t listen. Most Otherlanders didn’t care for human whims unless they had a stake in the game. That she’d gotten the spirit named Garm to do her a favor—even one that ended poorly—was sheer happenstance. Luck she certainly wouldn’t stumble into again.

The glow of his eyes faded as he crossed his arms. He could have been in his mid-twenties, but there was a lone streak of gray across the dark hair coming from his left temple. High cheekbones cast shadows so intense they seemed to slice across his skin. The dim cellar light hit the ridge of his nose and the bow of his lip like a highlight. A face a painter would love.

Aleja remembered where she had seen it before.

Her ancestors had carried paintings with them from Spain to the Americas. Many were of her great-great-grandfather and his brothers; three men with large eyes and narrow jawlines. But occasionally, another figure loomed over them. Tall, olive-skinned, and dark-haired, with piercing silver eyes, and in his lapel, a pin in the shape of a snake.

The Knowing One. The Adversary. The Prince of Shadows and Lies. The Otherlander who had ruined Aleja’s family. Who had killed her aunt, uncle, and grandmother.

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