Page 78 of What Is Dark Within Me

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A Spell to Find Your Way Home

Take a piece of string from your pocket. Tie it into a knot so intricate that you cannot remember how to undo it.

Focus on the knot and nothing else as you walk. Trust your feet, without ever looking up to see what path they have chosen. But beware. All magic is dangerous if you undertake it with fear, even a spell as simple as this.

Do not look up, although it may seem as though you are being led away from the place you desired.

Your body remembers how to return home, even when you do not.

A long notebeside the entry; only a few words can be made out:

They tell me I’m special. They tell me to —patience. To wait. To rest. To sleep. —call for me soon. There is some sign it will give them. —don’t know what it is.

PARTIII

9

A SPELL OF TRESPASS

The radio was on.

Aleja opened her eyes and shivered. When they’d arrived, she’d been surprised to find her car still parked near a ruined shed, surrounded by a thick crop of fir trees. Nicolas had offered to drive. Now, there was a scent of dog in the air, and she didn’t need to look in the rearview mirror to know that Garm was dozing in the backseat.

“You’re awake,” he said softly.

“How long has it been?” Aleja tried to stretch, but there was only so much room in her tiny hatchback. Her hands hit the ceiling.

“A few hours, but we’ll make it before nightfall.”

Aleja was hungry, but there was so much anxiety in her stomach that she didn’t think there’d be room for food. “How is it that the Devil’s Trill is always on when you’re in the car?”

Nicolas shrugged. “Otherlander magic can be inexplicable, even to us. Besides, I like it. I brought you something. It’s in the backseat if you can get Garm’s big head off the box.”

The dog snorted as Aleja tugged the small package from under his chin. She could guess what was inside without opening the lid. “I told you, I don’t want this thing.”

“And I told you, that’s not how it works. You won the weapon. It’s yours by our laws.”

The laws you and I once broke, she thought. Maybe he was right. Maybe they’d gotten into this whole mess by flaunting the rules whenever they could. And right now, Violet needed Aleja to be powerful.

The sickle’s blade curved like a half-moon. Bands of silver and blue moved across it whenever they passed beneath a streetlamp. The small diamonds in the skull’s eyes shone like those of the Knowing One.

“How the hell did James get his hands on something like this?” She winced as she said his name. It had been easier to forget when she’d been busy in the Hiding Place, but there was nothing to do now but picture his slack face against a plush rug. Not to mention Liam. He’d only been near that cave because she had asked him to be.

“Perhaps it was the same way he got everything else: money, connections, and an Otherlander willing to break our rules for him. I’m surprised he never lit the black candle.”

“He didn’t have to,” Aleja pointed out. “His brother was one of the Dark Saints. He had plenty of power at his fingertips.”

Nicolas said nothing, but she caught the way his knuckles whitened around the steering wheel. Are we hypocrites? she wondered. Didn’t you break the rules once for me too, husband?

When the mountains appeared on the horizon, Nicolas pulled the car into the driveway of some fast-food joint Aleja was too distracted to catch the name of. “You should eat,” he said, when she stared at the soggy paper bag in her lap, unsure of what she’d ordered.

Garm snored in the backseat. The notes of the Devil’s Trill had long since faded; there was only static now, broken by the occasional sound of a voice from a distant broadcast, like people calling to them from another world.

“We might not get another chance. What happened back then? What did you do that was so terrible that you were going to be punished with a mortal life?”

“You should be resting.”

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