Page 4 of Rites of Passage

Ah. To be dead and uncaring.

She became aware of a piercing stare from across the parlor. Mrs. Son-Ha’s gimlet eyes were focused on her with a laser-like intensity. Mae tried not to squirm.

It never ceased to amaze her how much the woman knew about the private goings-on in their community. She’d even clocked the New York coven’s visits to her apartment, even though Mae lived miles from Koreatown, in Ridgewood. Mae had started to wonder if Mrs. Son-Ha was some kind of witch. She chewed her lip at that thought.

I’d know if she was.

Following her spectacular awakening as the prophesied Witch Queen of the occult world that had existed in the shadows of the more mundane human one since time immemorial, Mae could now sense magic in those who possessed it. She could even roughly see the locations of the witches and sorcerers who inhabited New York mapped out in her head like some kind of crazy GPS, a fact she had yet to reveal since it would more than likely freak them out.

But it wasn’t just magic Mae was now able to detect. She could discern the demons who inhabited the souls of the unsuspecting humans wandering the city, as well as the men and women who had willingly embraced Hell’s corruption.

There weren’t as many of the fiends as there had been when she’d first come into her powers. A significant number had been affiliated withOniks, the Russian crime gang whose influence had started to grow in the city’s underworld a year ago.

Most of those demons and their human hosts had died at her hands and those of the magical and otherworldly allies who’d fought alongside her during the epic battle that had gone down in an abandoned factory on the Brooklyn waterfront. A fight that had seen the building reduced to its very foundations, with not a single brick or piece of metal left standing.

The missing structure and the gaping crater where it once stood were still baffling experts. Many were calling it the result of a freak incident of nature. No one had been able to answer the question of where several tons of masonry and steel had vanished to in the space of a single night, although some claimed they were now at the bottom of Upper Bay. Only the people who’d survived the fight knew the factory and its contents had been sucked into a black hole of Mae’s making.

A chill coursed through her as she recalled the incredible things she had done, the role she’d been unwillingly thrust into, and the responsibility she now lived with every day.

Has it really only been two weeks?

Not only had she learned that she was the reincarnation of the daughter of the fallen angel Azazel and Ran Soyun, the first witch who ever walked the Earth and the woman whose family had given rise to the most powerful emperors to ever rule Korea, she had also come into possession of the familiar and the weapon that were once promised to Na Ri, the original Witch Queen.

However much she mourned the loss of her once normal life, Mae knew she had no option but to accept her fate and embrace her destiny. For none other than she could accomplish the task ahead. And that was to lead the world of magic and defeat the mad man and the demon who had wrought so much misery not just on her own family, but innumerable others.

It wasn’t all bad, though. She had a lot of new friends and allies she wouldn’t have met otherwise. People she trusted with her life. And she had Brimstone and Hellreaver. The bond between the three of them only grew stronger with time. And she wouldn’t give that up for anything in the world.

CHAPTER4

Mae’sfamiliar stirred where he lay at her feet behind the oratory podium.

Are all funerals like this?

The nine-tailed fox spirit was in his diminutive form, the aura of powerful, crimson magic that normally surrounded him when he manifested his true body curtailed to a faint, red light that occasionally flashed in his pupils.

“You mean the wailing?” Mae murmured. “Yeah, I’m afraid that’s just a staple feature of traditional Korean funeral rites.”

Ryu owes me big time for this.

Her sister was home with a cold and had begged Mae to take over the funeral ceremony that morning. Since she had yet to resume her mortuary assistant job at Grandview General, Mae had been splitting her time between helping out at the family business and learning more about the magical community from Bryony Cross.

The High Priestess had told her the New York coven was more than willing to take care of her every need and that she could quit her job at Grandview if she so wished. But that was something Mae wasn’t ready to do. Not only because she fully intended to continue her surgical residency at some point in the future, but also because of Rose Blake’s link to the place.

As far as the human world was aware, her best friend Rose had died during the attack on Grandview. Despite her remains never having been recovered from the wreckage and her grave at Union Field Cemetery bearing an empty coffin, the authorities deemed her deceased.

Only Mae and the magic world knew the truth. That Rose’s body was now host to Barquiel, a fallen angel and Archduke of Hell. All evidence pointed to Barquiel having made an unholy alliance with the original Sorcerer King who killed Na Ri and Ran Soyun thousands of years ago. An alliance that extended to every Sorcerer King who had since followed.

A familiar rage danced through Mae as she called to mind the memories Na Ri had shown her on the day of her awakening. Memories of when the first Sorcerer King had attacked her people and her family.

It was by a sheer act of will and by focusing on her breathing like Brimstone and Na Ri had taught her that she managed to subdue the violent magic that would have escaped her core and made the funeral parlor shake on its foundations.

Though she did not hear her voice often these days, Na Ri was still alive somewhere inside her, her soul now fused with Mae’s.

A lump formed in Mae’s throat. The time Na Ri had spent with Ran Soyun and Azazel may have been short and ended with abrupt violence, but it had been filled with love. Just as Mae’s life with the family she had been born into was.

Ryu’s feverish face rose before her. Guilt darted through Mae. She suspected the stress of dealing with the Ho-Nams and the Ye’uns had finally gotten to Ryu. Her sister was normally as healthy as a horse.

I should have helped out more at the funeral home.

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