Page 15 of What Is Dark Within Me

“No more coffee,” Nicolas snapped. “We need to track down whoever is left of the Diabolus Society. Pay attention.”

“Tracking, yes. We can do that,” she said. “Um. How exactly are we supposed to—”

“You’ve got half of my power now. Do some witchwork,” he said.

“Send Garm!” Aleja said, throwing her arms up. “I’m sure you have an army of hellhounds. Can’t they sniff someone from the Society out?”

“I’ve tried,” he said. “Wherever they’re hiding, they are using wards or ironsalts to keep hellhounds at bay.”

Ironsalts. Aleja hadn’t heard that term since she left Miami. They were a rare combination of black salt and meteorite iron; one of the few things capable of repelling lesser Otherlanders.

“What about the Dark Saints? Can’t you send them out to—”

“No. I’ve been forthcoming with you about everything else, but I will not speak of the Dark Saints. In this case, they cannot help us.”

Her palms again warmed. It was a new feeling, like discovering a sense she didn’t have a name for. When Aleja glanced down, her hands were pink and the coffee was boiling in her mug.

“I suggest you try to stay calm. You don’t want to burn this apartment building down,” Nicolas said. “Your powers are manifesting.”

“Wait. This is fire magic. You were going to leave me on my own with brand-new fire magic I couldn’t control?” she said.

“An ounce, yes. Half of mine? No.”

In no world had Aleja imagined Garm’s presence would be a comfort, but the slap of his tail against her ankles distracted her as she wrestled her anger down. At least, the Doberman didn’tseemlike he wanted to kill her anymore. That honor belonged to Nicolas and his silver eyes, which were fixated so intensely on her, she worried she actually might catch fire.

Aleja rubbed her hot palms against her jeans. “You don’t know where we could find another scrying mirror, do you?” she asked.

“Garm, go searching. I’m sure you can avoid trouble for a few hours,” Nicolas said.

“Yes, boss. No more trouble, I promise. I’m agooddog now, even she said so. I’ll be back soon.”

Garm took a step back into the refrigerator’s shadow, and the only evidence there had been a dog in Aleja’s kitchen were a few muddy paw prints and a whiff of damp fur. She’d known the Otherlanders could travel through shadows, through mirrors, through fairy rings and secret barrows, but she’d never seen it happen.

She lifted her coffee cup again, avoiding Nicolas’s gaze. The euphoria of bitter and sweet on her tongue was duller now than before, but it made her feel better about having the embodiment of evil tapping his fingers impatiently on her kitchen counter.

“Well?” he said.

“Well, what? I’m going to have a second look at what I took from Agnes’s house. I don’t see why we should have to interact until Garm gets back.”

The corner of his mouth twitched, but he waved her on from the rickety stool Aleja had rescued out of the dumpster behind her building. His great black wings may have been glamoured away, but Nicolas’s presence was still as unsettling as it had been in Agnes Flanders’s cellar. The most dangerous of the Otherlanders and Aleja had managed to not only steal half his power, but somehow bind them together.

At least he wouldn’t kill her until the spell was broken—probably.

Miss Flanders’s planner was the final object she hadn’t investigated before collapsing last night, but there was nothing that stuck out except for one date. A note on a Wednesday about seven months ago that simply said:Meet with Miss Timmons?

But as she continued to flip through, she noticed something odd. That was the last entry, and before that date, Miss Flanders had rarely left a day blank, even if the only reminder was that Sarita from the Gentle Hearts Agency was due to visit. Aleja moved through the remaining pages, trying to find a bit of writing she’d missed, and a small object tumbled from the planner, bouncing off her feet before falling to the rug. An SD card used to store digital images.

A camera. She needed a camera. Violet had lent her a cheap one last year, so Aleja could take pictures on the trip she was supposed to take to Italy for her graduate research. She could feel the heat of Nicolas’s gaze as she scrambled toward the bedroom.

“Found something?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

It took a moment of fiddling with the camera before she got a small latch to open. The battery was long dead, but the phone charger by Aleja’s bed worked, and a red light above the lens eventually flickered on.

She ignored Nicolas’s tall silhouette in the doorway as she scrolled through the gallery. The camera’s software was old and slow, and though there were less than a handful of images on the card, sheknewViolet had taken them. Her skill with a camera was one of the reasons Violet’s social media accounts had exploded after only a few months—she was young and beautiful, sure, but she was also extremely talented.

Most of these images were taken in the same snowy place. The first few were of what looked like a trailhead, though there was nothing visible in the frame to mark it.

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