Page 5 of The Crow Games

They would scream Lisbeth’s name before I ended them.

The whole world would know my pain and would cry out for her as I did.

I would kill the ones at fault slowly, I decided, the thought soothing to my burning soul. The garm who’d done this would die in pieces. I would rip Hel asunder to find them. The gods who’d crafted all of their wretched kind would die for this day, too. They were all guilty. Not even Death, The Old One himself, was safe from me for ferrying my dear sister’s soul to a place I could not go.

I didn’t know who had done this. But if I killed them all, I couldn’t miss.

The entire city of Kosh would burn for Lisbeth. For three years we had worn their clothing and followed their rituals, minded their rules, and all I’d ever asked for in return was that they hid her for me. They had failed her. They had failedme.

I was no fucking harmless green witch descended from an earth coven. I had no coven. I had no one at all now and nothing to lose. I was a witch even the divines feared.

A gray witch.

Spirit magic pumped through me alongside the god-fire fury boiling in my veins, and the new trapped sigil flared in my chest. It turned my belly molten. Its ashy soot gathered in my throat. Beneath me, the pooling blood dried in the heat my rage radiated.

I rose slowly to my feet, and when I took a step forward, one pace closer to glorious retribution, the floorboards cracked beneath me. A splinter shaped like a bolt of lightning appeared between my boots. I reached through it with spirit and wrath and the fire in my chest.

Down and down and down I reached, gray claws of magic coiled with iridescent flame.

I stretched myself past my limits, determined to pierce the Otherworld, to travel farther still, to find Hel at its belly and rip open its icy gates, to punish every beast I found there in an ethereal assault. The god Nott, Lord of Night and Mischief, would die first. His twin who ruled Hel with him, Mara, Lady of Nightmares, would die too for housing the foul garm who lived amongst them. I cared not whether they’d sent the one who’d murdered my sister. They were all to blame now. Every god in every realm that had made us live in fear would pay.

But a shadowy power blocked my way. Death himself had responded to my magical assault on his realm. Still, fear could not touch me. If he would not let me pass through his Otherworld, then he would die now.

I grabbed him up in my magical grip—as much of him as I could gather. He was massive, a never-ending stretch of midnight, but that did not slow me. I would make him smaller. I would tear and tear at him until his divine soul was tiny enough to squash beneath my boot, and then I would consume whatever remained. With his power added to mine, no force in existence would be able to stop me.

Cosmic energy poured out from the rip in the world I had created, an inky darkness dotted in tiny stars. It broke into pieces and swarmed around me like angry black flies. The buzz of it echoed and crackled in my ears. Flames shot from my feet and caught the floorboards.

The shop Lisbeth loved would be her funeral pyre.

Somewhere in the distance, a voice screamed, “Fire! Fire!”

A faraway part of me, a part shrinking by the second, recognized Bram. More shouted voices joined his, calling for buckets and water. That tiny shrinking bit of me worried what would happen to my shop, my home, the people outside, the street children that might be too close, the nearby buildings I would scorch to the ground, my beloved sister’s body . . .

Through the path of my reaching powers, Death grabbed me back, and I fell out of my realm and into his. His ethereal grip was icy and oily and so strong his might was suffocating. The fire in my chest went out with a spark and a sizzle.

I had a moment to ponder the end of my mortality, to wonder if it would be difficult to find my baby sister in the life after.

All at once, everything went dark and cold.

Chapter 2

“A ticket aboard Death’s train cannot be purchased. Passage on the Schatten is secured with magic and blood and regrets.”– Esther Weil, Renowned Folklorist

“Lisbeth!” I came to with a gasp.

Bursting upright, I knocked my head on the bunk above me. I rubbed the ache out of my scalp. My heart was a war drum in my chest, ready for battle. The fabric of my skirt was too heavy for the hot, dry temperature here. I yanked on my high collar to loosen it, and my fingers snagged on the delicate chain of the amulet I’d tucked under my shirtwaist. All at once the horrors of the evening returned to me.

I looked about for Lisbeth, but I was no longer in our shop.

A sob caught in my throat as my mind cruelly replayed the source of my grief. Closing my eyes, I pressed my palms over wet lashes, willing the visions away. My throat burned, and I lost the battle against my tears, weeping loudly into the bedding.

I sobbed until my throat hurt and my eyes were crusty with salt, fingers digging into the unfamiliar blankets.

Sacred Crone save me. I’d gone mad. The divine fire in my chest had burned out only after it had turned me dangerously reckless. The gods deserved to pay for their many crimes, but a full-frontal assault aimed at Hel had been utter lunacy.

It’s a wonder I was still alive at all.

I sucked in a breath, fighting back the next current of tears. The floors and walls resembled limestone, but the surface was too smooth and there was a yellowish hue to it under the gaslights. Like bone. The gentle sway of the small cabin and the rumble of the tracks below confirmed my worst fears. I was no longer in Kosh. I wasn’t in the Upper Realm at all.

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