Sloane Briallen

It would start with a crow. It was the only way I knew how to get to Corvine.

Fortunately for me, they were everywhere, and it only took a few minutes to find one once I started looking. It was perched on a broken neon sign advertising a pawnshop.

I launched myself into the air, moving as fast as I could. The bird barely had time to register that I was coming at it before I had grabbed it off the sign. The crow squawked, driving its beak into my collarbone where I cradled it to me.

I swore, landing on the ground before darting into the closest alley. I didn’t want people to see me yelling at a bird. It wouldn’t be weird in this part of town, but I still didn’t want the attention.

The crow squawked and beat its wings against my hands, pecking to get me to let go. I caught its wings and held on down by its stomach to keep it from pecking. The feel of its glossy feathers beneath my fingers made me want to shudder. I had always had an image of feathers carrying disease, and that hadn’t changed since I died.

I moved us back to the alley from which I had originally spotted it. Doing this next part always made me look batshit, but it was the only way to do it. Corvine had never taught me her stupid summoning spell.

Tucked away in the alley, hidden behind dumpsters, I moved the bird close to my face but not close enough to peck my eye out. I could feel its little heart thumping hard enough to beat out of its chest.

“Corvine!” I shouted at the bird. “Hello! Anyone in there?” I hoped she was attuned to crows like she was ravens.

The bird stilled, staring at me. I didn’t know if it recognized its master’s name, or if it was scared that I was yelling at it. Crows were smart, but I wasn’t sure if they were this smart. Oh God, I hoped it didn’t poop in my hands. That was the last fucking thing I needed right now.

“Corvine!” I yelled. “Come out! I need to talk to you!”

“Sloane!”

I looked up.

Karhi stood next to the dumpster I hid behind, staring at me with wide, confused eyes. I could feel the judgment emanating from him. He thought I’d finally cracked.

I dismissed him, shaking the bird. “Corvine! Get your ass over here. I need to talk to you.”

“Sloane, what are you doing?” Karhi stepped toward me, but I took a step back.

“Karhi, stay away from me.”

Before he could reply, the glossy feathers pressed hard into my hands and I started, dropping the bird.

The bird didn’t hit the ground. A man did.

He towered over me, enormous black wings rising high above him. They enclosed his broad shoulders, cocooning him.

He had dark umber skin, as if dipped in the same inky blackness of his wings. His hands and feet were talons, like a bird. His feet talons were longer than my forearm and I would definitely not want to see them at work. They could probably disembowel a rhino. While flying.

An enormous bird skull sat on top of his head as a hat, the beak thin and sharp enough to skewer a fly. Long dark hair flowed from beneath it, framing the hardened face of a warrior. A skirt of black, brown, and white feathers encircled his waist.

I had never met any of the corvae, Corvine’s warriors, but I’d seen her with them. I knew what they looked like.

“What the fuck?” Karhi whispered.

I ignored him. “Do you know who I am?” I asked the birdman.

He bowed his head deeply. I had to take a step back, so he didn’t accidentally kill me with the beak of his skull hat. When he spoke, his voice was deep and melodious, something I wasn’t expecting. Their language, Carlahck, was an ugly series of harsh squawking and cawing. I had expected his speaking voice to be very similar. “Yes, Sloane Briallen. Of course. We all do.”

That would make things so much easier. “I need her,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “I think that was made clear by how violently you shook me.”

I eyed him for a second. I felt no shame, but something was clicking together.

“Were you watching me?” I asked. The chances of having come across a crow that wasn’t just a regular crow were a little too low for this to have been coincidence.

He didn’t say anything. His gaze was dark and intense.

Right. That wasn’t the point.

“Tell her she can repay her debt to me,” I said.

His eyebrows rose but he nodded. “I will go to her now and tell her.”

“Thank you . . .” Did the corvae have names?

“Korbin,” he supplied.

Of course, it was. “Thank you, Korbin. Tell her I’ll be at home. And tell her I needed her ten minutes ago.”

“Yes, Sloane Briallen,” he said. He bowed to me again before he took a step back. His wings opened out and up. They beat down and he launched into the air, disappearing from sight.

I turned to Karhi, who was staring up at the sky, mouth agape. I could feel the vibrating mass of confusion, awe, and disbelief in his head.

“Are you going to continue following me around?” I asked him.

He looked at me, the awe fading from his face into hard lines of annoyance. “What the fuck is going on?” He scowled, an expression that was so blessedly familiar on him that I almost laughed. Nothing in the past two days had been familiar.

The humor disappeared just as quickly as it had come. Fine. We needed to do this. “Keep up,” I said, before bolting past him. He followed me, no problem.

“I grew up here,” I said. “This is where my family lives. And someone has been trying to hurt them. That guy you have pictures of?” I ignored the guilt that bubbled up as I said that. There was time to deal with that later. There was time to deal with everything later. “He’s been missing for four days. And I didn’t go looking for him because . . .” The guilt came back up, like acid reflux this time. It burned the back of my throat, and I couldn’t say anything else.

“Because?” Karhi prompted.

I pursed my lips angrily and shook my head. “I thought he had tanked his sobriety and was on a coke bender from the stress of everything else that’s happened to our family.” The feeling of shame was bitter and harsh in the back of my throat. I tried to swallow it down, but it remained.

“And who is Corvine?”

“Bestia queen. She owes me a favor.”

He cursed under his breath.

“What?”

“Carry and Onyx were right.”

I hadn’t expected they would guess Corvine was a queen . . . but I guess if it was anyone, it would have been them to guess.

“Why does she owe you a favor?”

“Something about breaking curses. I’ve never really followed why, she just does.” I waved my hand dismissively. “Why are you here?” I was much ore interested in that, though I had a sinking suspicion I knew why. Lunette had already told me that she was looking for me.

“The Samhain festival.”

Yeah, I had guessed. The Arizona Samhain festival wasn’t the biggest Samhain festival, but it was up there.

“We were called here to attend with Ilona. She’s looking for you.”

I could feel the fear that crept into him as he spoke. But the adrenaline and focus for finding Mikko was a solid barrier and kept the fear away from me. “To torture me?”

He glanced at me for a moment. I could feel the war inside of him to answer truthfully and to . . . shield me? That didn’t sound right.

“Why do you care about protecting me?” I asked. He had never had that instinct before.

He sputtered. “I—I don’t care about protecting you.”

“The war between telling me and lying to me in your head says otherwise,” I replied. I just narrowly avoided a car as we crossed the street, traveling way too fast. I heard tires squealing and shouts of surprise and dismay.

He curled a lip in a sneer. “I just don’t think anyone should have to go through that. Whatever.”

I had always known he felt like that. I had felt his disdain for Ilona along with his simultaneous anxiety at doing anything to displease her. The fear was palpable when she was even brought up. But there was something more to it. I could feel it beneath the embarrassment and feigned disdain.

I glanced at him for a moment. Was there . . . it felt like admiration. “Wait . . . do you actually like me more now that I stole your car and completely fucking fooled you into thinking that I was a vanilla human when I was alive?”

His eyes narrowed but I had hit the nail on the head.

“Karhi, what the actual fuck is wrong with you?”

It was ridiculous. Everything was so hard and heavy. I was so fucking scared for Mikko that I couldn’t even be scared for myself. But this—this was a welcome relief. The eye of the storm. The flush of embarrassment I felt from him when I called him out was a wonderful bit of levity in the middle of the worst week of my life. He didn’t really answer, just grumbled something unintelligible.

Okay. I could fucking do this.

“This is your brother that’s missing?” Karhi asked after we passed a couple streets in silence.

I made a so-so motion. “Not by blood. But we grew up in foster together. We were both chronic runaways. Frankie and Genie, I told you about them finding their parents dead. But on top of that, Mikko went missing this week. And I found Annie late last night, barely breathing and covered in blood. Mikko was the only one left I hadn’t found, and I thought . . .” I trailed off. I didn’t know how to finish the sentence. I thought what? He was high somewhere? He was dead somewhere from a high? I didn’t know, but I had been too afraid to look. “They called me to come back. They needed help.”

Annie had been right. Mikko hadn’t skipped out on them to do coke off someone’s counter somewhere. He was still clean. I felt awful for doubting him, but at the same time, I actually felt worse knowing the truth.

“Why did it have to be him?” I murmured. At this point I was just talking to avoid being left with my own thoughts. “He had it the worst. I mean, yeah, we were all beaten a lot. Any one of us, we were in our fair share of abusive foster homes. One guy beat me with a belt once. But—”

“Wait,” Karhi interrupted.

I looked at him, furrowing my brow. “What?”

“Are you telling me this to avoid feeling guilty?”

I blinked. “What?” That hadn’t been what I was expecting. I had been expecting outrage, shock, horror—people always wanted to focus on the pain of being raised in a shitty system if I brought it up. People loved trauma porn. It was an easy way to avoid what was really bothering me.

“Using the bad shit that happened to you in the past as a way to distract from how you’re feeling now—I fucking invented that shit, Sloane. I have five centuries on you. You’re going to have to try a bit harder.” He gave me a condescending look, rolling his eyes.

I glared at him. “Like you even want to hear about my feelings.”

“Well, no. But come on, try harder.”

I didn’t have an answer for that. But weirdly, his nonchalance and outright mockery was actually helping. I hadn’t been called out like this in years.

And . . . he knew it. I could feel his satisfaction at making the tension in my shoulders ease just a little bit.

Finally, I said, “I hate being able to feel your feelings.”

“Back at you, babe. But you and I can sit down one day and get fucking wrecked and see who can tell the worst story with a straight face.”

I glanced to see his smirk. “No heroin,” I said. “I don’t get fucked up like that.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Alcohol or weed?”

“I feel we can do both.”

He laughed.

When we arrived at Mira’s house, the door was already opening. Mickey and Bell stepped out as we stepped on her front walkway.

Right. Them.

The initial shock at seeing them had worn off. And while I wasn’t looking, it had been replaced with anger. Because in the back of my head, I had finally put together that they had been alive for two years and had never come looking for me.

Anger was easier than pain and I embraced it.

I held up a hand to them. “I do not have the ability to deal with you yet.”

“Sloane, we need to talk,” Bell said, fists clenching at his sides. The muscles in his shoulders strained against his shirt.

“Bell, if we do this right now, I may tear you’re fucking arm off,” I smiled without any humor. “I don’t have the time or energy to deal with one of your temper tantrums. At least this time, I acknowledged you’re alive. Now go fuck yourself.”

It was easy to focus anger and just anger on Bell. I avoided looking at Mickey because my feelings with him were more complicated. I had never been able to stay angry with Mickey. And moving on from anger would mean I would have to focus on the betrayal from both of them, and now was not the time.

Karhi broke the awkward, angry silence I had created. “Sloane, why are we here?”

“We’re here because this is home,” I answered. My original plan had been to walk into the house from here. But Mickey and Bell being here made it that much harder.

“Home?” I could feel his confusion. “With the White Psychic?”

I didn’t give it a moment’s hesitation. “The who?”

“Move,” I heard Mira say from behind Mickey and Bell. She appeared from between them, wiping wet hands off on her pants. “I go to the bathroom for one fucking second and this shit.” She looked up at me. “You don’t have to keep up the act, Sloane. I met your sire earlier today.”

“What?” I demanded. “Why the hell would you two meet up?”

A strong feeling quenched my indignation—horror. It wasn’t mine. I looked at Karhi to see him staring at the ground with wide eyes. “Ilona . . . asked me to pay my respects to her because she had a contract with Queen Hazel.”

“She knew,” Mira said.

“That bitch,” Karhi growled. “She knew about your relationship with Sloane and used me as a fucking puppet.”

“Wait,” I interrupted, staring at Mira. “You have a fucking what?”

“Yeah, I signed a contract with Hazel like two months ago. Amos hired a lawyer for me and came to the negotiations,” she said, waving her hand like it was no big deal. “I didn’t agree to anything that I was uncomfortable with. Basically, we’re in a truce and they can call on favors from me or vice versa. We both reserve the right to say no.”

I blinked, staring at her. “Mira, what the fuck?”

She didn’t have a chance to answer. Another voice interrupted.

“We will deal with that later.” A cool wash of energy hit me.

I looked up to see Corvine standing at the edge of Mira’s lawn. She looked like a teenager in a pair of black jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt. There was a faint, hazy aura around her.

“Corvine,” I said. A bit of the knot in my stomach eased.

“Dealing with whatever you’re talking about is a problem for another time,” Corvine said dismissively. “We have other work to do.” She addressed Mira. “I need something from the boy. Hair would be the most preferable.”

“I have his hairbrush.” Mira disappeared back into the house.

It was still weird to me that everybody had been living with Mira.

“Korbin had to explain to me that you saying you wanted me ten minutes ago didn’t actually mean you wanted me in the past,” Corvine said. “That’s why it took me so long.”

I forgot. Corvine didn’t always understand hyperbole.

Mira came back out with the hairbrush. Corvine held up a hand, and the brush lifted from Mira’s hands and threw itself to Corvine. Animalia associated with animals that could fly had a specific proficiency in telekinetic powers.

Corvine looked at me. “Are you coming?”

I nodded. “Yeah.” I walked over to her and took her hand.

“Sloane—” Karhi said, taking a step to follow me.

I never got to hear what he wanted to say because Corvine pulled me into the sky.

It was always a disorienting feeling, flying with Corvine. I hadn’t done it much, but when I had as a human, she moved so fast that I couldn’t keep up. But now that I was a vampire, able to process thing so much faster, I actually saw as we moved.

Buildings and houses rushed below us. City lights rose up and swallowed the crisp night. The smell of exhaust and metal permeated the air.

And then we were floating above the city. Corvine let go of my hand, and I stayed in the air. It was the weirdest feeling in the world. I felt completely weightless but at the same time, I remained upright. Nothing supported me, but I was standing.

For about a minute.

Then I was rotating backwards.

“Uh, Corvine,” I said when I was halfway upside down.

Corvine flicked her hand at me and something righted me and kept me there. It felt like a block or something against my shoulders and ankles.

The hairbrush was a small plastic thing wound with fine, dark hairs.

Corvine held it out in front of her in her right hand. She held her left hand over it and began to murmur. It sounded like English, but I couldn’t pick up the words.

Mikko’s black hairs were wound into the plastic bristles on the brush. They started to glow. I felt the discharges of magic from the brush, and Corvine stopped murmuring. I hadn’t seen a lot of magic in my time, but I knew a bit about how blood or hair worked in a spell. It could be used to track someone.

Corvine held the brush out in front of us and moved it slowly around. It reminded me of that scene from The Princess Bride when Inigo asks his father’s ghost to guide his sword to find the secret door in the tree.

Then we were moving forward. We didn’t stop until we were by the mall, on the other side of town.

Corvine’s brow furrowed.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a cloaking spell. It’s telling me he’s in four different places at once.”

“Corvine, how—”

“Does Mikko speak any other languages?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Why?”

“I’m doing the spell in English because he speaks English. It helps to filter out through the rest. And because this city primarily speaks English, it also helps connect the spell to the city, also filtering out other influences.”

“Well, he knows sign language.” I thought she need a spoken language.

“Right,” she said. “Right.” She shook her head. “I don’t know it.”

“I do.”

She regarded me for a second before saying, “Put your hand on the handle.”

Her hand was cool as I covered it with mine.

“Now. You want him more than anything right now. Focus on that desire. Focus on it, and sign what you want to do.”

The levy I’d put on my guilt broke. If I had searched for him sooner, called Corvine sooner, maybe I would have spared him from the torture. If I hadn’t dicked around on it, too focused on him on a coke bender, maybe he would be here. It was all my fucking fault that he had been gone for so long, and I needed to find him.

Corvine stiffened beneath my grip. Holding out my free hand, I signed, Find Mikko.

The brush jerked away from us, and my heart flew into my throat. We were flying forward and then down.

The only thing that kept us from crashing to the ground was Corvine. She slowed us before we hit, and we alighted gently on pavement.

We had landed in the Phoenix Warehouse District close to where I had found Annie. There were a lot of brick buildings and empty parking lots. We were in one such empty parking lot.

“Uh . . .” I looked around. This couldn’t be it.

“I know where he is,” Corvine said, pulling her hand from mine. “I’m going to get him. I brought us here, a couple blocks away, so when I came out with him, they wouldn’t find you.”

I blinked. “You know where he is?”

“I do. I’m going to bring him out.”

“I want to—”

“No,” she cut me off. “You’re not coming with. This will be faster and easier because I won’t have to worry about you.”

Then she was gone without a word, disappearing into the air.

I scowled. I hated Corvine for leaving me behind, but she was right. She didn’t need to worry about my sorry ass. And I had known her long enough that I knew she wouldn’t back out of her agreement.

I’d wait.