I managed a stiff smile.

  Alice, never tearing her gaze away from me, cleared her throat. “I think we need more rice.”

  Cassidy spluttered. “We already have four bowls. And there are only three of us.”

  Alice shot her a grim frown. “The wicked need their energy.”

  The wicked…. The more I was drawn into this world, the less clue I had and the less sure of myself I became. Still, there was one certainty I could clutch hold of. It was one that made my back stiffen as I sat straighter.

  Before several days ago, I’d erroneously thought that there was no evil. Now I… wasn’t sure. I couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever Caxus was, his intentions were darker than any I’d ever experienced before. Before this mission was over, maybe I’d experience them firsthand.

  I shut down as I tried to hide from that ominous thought.

  Alice and Cassidy kept chatting between themselves, though Alice’s careful gaze shifted towards me several times. “Heard anything from Larry?”

  I pushed back, surprised.

  “He was your employer, wasn’t he?” Cassidy put her head in her hands as an interested smile crumpled her lips. “Isn’t he working for the profilers now?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I haven’t seen him in ages, though. Apparently, he’s busy.”

  Alice snorted. “Busy is an understatement. He’s running circles around the rest of the team. He’s found more targets for Vali in the past month than the rest of the team has in a year. He was a good find. You did well.” Alice dipped her head low.

  I nodded, biting my lip. Receiving a compliment from Cassidy was one thing – an extremely common thing. From Alice? I should treasure this memory for life.

  Before Alice could chuck back her third bowl of fried rice, she stiffened. I heard something vibrate in her pocket. With a quick, practiced move and a frown compressing her lips, she tugged out her phone.

  Cassidy paled.

  The phone’s screen flashed a shade of angry red I’d never seen before. “What’s going on?” I asked through a tight breath.

  Alice shoved up. She yanked the napkin off her lap, scrunched it into a ball, and chucked it into the center of the table. “Let’s go.”

  Cassidy snapped up beside her.

  The owners of the restaurant barely blinked an eyelash as we ran out of the establishment without paying. They were magical, after all. Chan, the chief chef, dipped his head out of the doorway, waved at us, and wished us good luck.

  Good luck for what?

  My heart was hammering by the time we made it out onto the street. This restaurant was in Chinatown – a tightly knotted twisting nest of streets. It had every restaurant you could think of, a lively market during the day, and an even livelier drug trade at night if Alice was to be believed.

  Alice stopped abruptly on the pavement as she checked her phone. Steam issued from a vent to our side, and the heady scents of cooked food mixed with car fumes filtered around us.

  “What’s happening?” I hissed.

  “Emergency case,” Cassidy said through a tight breath. “Magical crime being committed close by.”

  A cold sweat trickled down my back. “What kind of crime?”

  She shrugged.

  Alice pointed forward with a stiff hand. She waved us on, only tearing her attention off her phone to ensure she didn’t veer off in front of any cars.

  The blinking, flashing light on her screen was tracking something. The closer we came to our target, the more angrily and frantically the screen blinked. The more frantically it blinked, the sicker I felt.

  Don’t ask me how, but I couldn’t help but feel that he was somehow involved: Caxus.

  Alice came to an abrupt stop. She twisted down the side of some kind of restaurant. There was a cramped alleyway, just half a meter across, squeezed between two tall buildings.

  She pointed forward with a white finger then plowed ahead. Nothing in this world terrified Alice.

  Everything in this world terrified me. Though I’d recently discovered I had courage, it came and went. Now it felt gone for good.

  The sound of low voices and cooking filtered out from the restaurant beside us. Every hiss, creak, and splatter frightened me more and more. Even the creak of my knees made my skin crawl.

  Though it wasn’t cold for everyone else, my breath caught against my cheeks in white puffs. An Arctic, angry wind swirled around me, catching my hair and sending it tumbling over my shoulders and dashing against my thick woolen jacket and scarf.

  Abruptly, this tiny laneway ended with a doorway – one that shouldn’t be there. It looked as if it was a wound sliced down the brick.

  Alice brought up her hand, curled it into a fist, and paused.

  I wanted her to call this mission off, to say it was nothing, to tell me I could just go back to the restaurant. She didn’t.

  She flicked her left hand in a circle. At the same time, Cassidy twisted her hand, too.

  They both selected magical weapons. Strong magical weapons, if I was any judge.

  Waves of nausea crashed against me.

  The door opened with a creak. It put me in mind of a gravestone falling over.

  I shuddered.

  “Let’s go,” Alice snapped.

  The two of them pushed forward.

  I couldn’t move. The chaotic storm in the center of my chest just couldn’t be controlled. As my fear arced up, it became more and more powerful.

  That would be when I heard the screaming. High-pitched, terrified, breathy – there could be no mistaking it.

  Some burst of courage enabled me to shove forward, and I grabbed the gun from my holster.

  We entered a darkened room. It was no ordinary level of dark. Just as light can be blinding, as soon as I entered the room, I had to jerk a hand up, covering my face to protect it. Don’t ask me how, but the dark… it was almost as if it were trying to burn my face.

  Alice took a snapped step back, hissing as she brought her own hand up to protect her face. “Shit, it’s an anti-light spell. Quick, Cassidy, burn it away.”

  Cassidy, unlike me, wasn’t frozen.

  Though the dark was all-encompassing, somehow as she brought up her left hand and flicked her wrist to the side, I could make out the faintest flicker of her magic. It was subdued as if it was under a great, thick blanket.

  The magic was bright enough that I could see a slice of Cassidy’s face. Determination plastered her brow as her right hand curled into a tight fist.

  She was having to concentrate to cast the spell. Whatever this anti-light enchantment was, it had an effect on other people’s magic.

  What would happen if whatever force was out there was too strong for Cassidy and Alice? What if they were knocked out? What if it all came down to me?

  It was a question I kept playing with every night when I went to bed. If the situation dictated it once more, would I take my bangles off without Vali’s permission?

  The answer, even though it would likely see Vali torture me for the rest of my life, was yes.

  If it came to it, I would do anything to save my new friends.

  “Cass.” Alice’s voice rose high in a kick of desperation.

  “Got it,” Cassidy managed. With a click and a buzz, her magic leaped up in a great circle. It howled forward, combatting the dark. I’d never seen anything like it. The dark acted like some viscous liquid. As Cassidy’s fire magic slammed into it, the darkness wafted around, eddying, billowing like a storm cloud as it was shoved back.

  Alice kept up a defensive guard beside Cassidy. As Cassidy’s magic pushed back the dark, the light of Alice’s sword grew. Alice’s magic came from metal, just like her personality. Both were equally strong. Though Cassidy’s magic was doing the brunt of the work pushing the dark back, Alice sliced around with her sword at seemingly strategic points, and somehow managed to break through even more of the dark power.

  I stood there, motionless. It wasn’t as if I could start taking pot shots into the dark with my gun. Who knows what I would hit.

  Or maybe the darkness was it? Maybe it was our enemy.

  Cassidy let out a small whoop, and with a click, the darkness receded in full.

  Then I got my answer. Was the darkness our enemy? No. It was just hiding reality.

  “Put him down,” Alice warned as she took a strong step and raised her sword high.

  I stood there, terrified.

  Now I could see, I made out a man tied against the back wall. He was strung up like he was nothing more than a cut of meat. It wasn’t ropes or chains that bound him to the wall – just twisting arcs of magic like ordered bursts of water.

  There were two men standing around beneath the victim. With one glance, I recognized them as the warlocks from the footage. They were torturing the man on the wall.

  On some level I knew crimes like this existed. I understood that humanity was capable of the most heinous violence. But as I stood there and witnessed this abhorrent act, something snapped deep within me. It wasn’t disappointment. It was more than horror. It was….

  “I said put him down,” Alice growled, her voice so loud it boomed through the room.

  The two men turned to us. They looked….

  I gasped. Jerking back, I brought my gun up even higher in defense.

  The men’s eyes were red, bloodshot, the skin around them so tight it looked as if invisible hands were pinning their eyelids open.

  Their cheeks were slack, their lips open with licks of saliva glistening over them.

  They looked drugged, but not on something simple like cocaine or amphetamines. No. Something terrifying – violence.

  Though I desperately wanted to cover my mouth with my hand to stifle another echoing gasp, I didn’t dare remove my grip from my gun.

  “Shit, they’re possessed,” Alice managed.

  Possessed. That word, it….

  Suddenly, I saw him. I have no idea how I’d missed him before. But there he was at the edge of the room – the man in the suit. The demon – Caxus.

  He stood there, his arms crossed, his stance casual, but his gaze directed like a laser as it locked on someone.

  Me.

  I screamed this time, incapable of controlling myself as I lurched back. My shoulders banged into the door. The door was closed. It hadn’t been seconds before. Somehow, without a sound, it had slammed shut.

  “Shit, Alice, it’s him. The demon.” Cassidy flicked her hand around in a great circle, and the swirling flames that constituted her spell arced and doubled in size until their glow rivaled a volcanic explosion.

  Caxus, now sprung, didn’t appear to care. He remained there, his arms crossed loosely, the expensive fabric of his dinner jacket rumpled around his large shoulders.

  Despite the fact Cassidy had just increased the power of her fire spell, he didn’t seem affected. Even as Alice took a defensive step towards him, he didn’t shift his attention off me.

  The two drugged warlocks either didn’t notice Caxus, or couldn’t see him at all. In a daze, they went back to torturing their victim.

  A sickening crunch echoed through the air as one of them lurched forward, rounding his fist into a point and slamming it into the victim’s stomach.

  The guy shook back on the chains, his head cracking against the drab concrete wall behind him as more blood trickled from the wounds on his face.

  “Stop it,” I screamed. I didn’t direct my terrified plea to the men. They were beyond reason.

  Caxus just smiled. Still looking at me, he shrugged. The move was apathetic, but apathetic with an edge. That dark smile never left his thin lips. “Why? Why stop something so beautiful?”

  “You’re a monster. Stop this. Let them go.”

  “Them?” He reached out a hand and gestured towards the two warlocks.

  Their eyes were so rimmed with red it looked as if their pupils had started to bleed.

  I winced, jerked back, and kept my gun raised.

  This made him chuckle all the more. “I’m not making them do this, frozen witch. They are doing it of their own free will. I simply gave them the option to finally exercise their deepest, darkest desires.” On the term darkest desires, his attention became all the more direct. It roved openly like a searchlight.

  “Stop this. You’re wrong. Stop this.”

  “Lilly, who are you speaking to?” Cassidy spat.

  All the blood drained from my face. “The demon.”

  “He’s not speaking.” She backed off towards me. She took up position right in front of me, the flames still lapping off her left hand in waves.

  My heart ground to a stop.

  Caxus chuckled. Opening his arms wide, he tilted his head down, folded his hand before his chest, and bowed. “They can’t hear me,” he clarified with a chuckle. “They wouldn’t understand me, anyway.”

  My shoulders were already pressed hard against the door, and short of opening it and running away, there was nowhere I could go to.

  Caxus shoved his hands casually into his pockets, smiled, and took several steps towards me. I cowered against the door, my shoulders knocking into it with such rapid force, the wood shook as if it were under siege from an army.

  At my obvious fear, he just smiled all the wider. Then, his eyes still on me, he flicked his hand to the side.

  The two warlocks reacted to his move, and I could see their brows twitch with even more concentrated anger.

  Still facing me, never turning away, Caxus winked. “Do you wish to see pure chaos, frozen witch?”

  Sweat drenched my brow, my heart hammering so hard in my chest, I was barely aware of it anymore. I could hardly feel my body. From my toes to the tips of my fingers as they held the gun – everything was becoming numb.

  “Time to finish this.” Caxus half turned over his shoulder. He took in a deep breath as his ordinary nostrils turned into slits. He spoke in a language I didn’t recognize. Yet it was one I could understand. As his hissed words hit the air, they ignited it. Not with fire, but with more of that darkness. It spilled out from his stiff, white-blue lips and rumbled through the air.

  The two warlocks appeared to explode in frantic activity. Both of them lunged toward the man on the wall.

  One struck the guy in the head, the other in the gut.

  Alice bellowed in terrified rage. She didn’t hesitate any longer. She jolted towards the guys, her sword held high. “Get that guy down,” she screamed at Cassidy.

  Cassidy pressed both her hands into fists, her nails curling so hard against her palms, I saw blood trickle down and splash over her sleeves.

  She furled her hands open, and in a blast, flames shot towards the man on the wall. It was orderly, controlled enough that the spurts of fire slammed against the guy’s binds. Yet it was still flame. No matter how directed it was, it was hot. The bruised, broken, beaten man let out a shriek as I smelled the unmistakable scent of burning flesh.

  Caxus continued to chuckle as he took several direct steps towards me. Either Cassidy and Alice were now too busy with the warlocks… or they could no longer see Caxus.

  Caxus put on a burst of speed, and with his hand still casually locked in his pocket, he reached me.

  I was still frozen on the spot. Just at the last moment, my fear turned into a pulse of anger. I fired, or at least I tried to. Caxus was faster. Just as my fingers tightened around the trigger of my gun, he brought up one of his long-fingered, white-knuckled hands. He locked it over the muzzle. Though my finger jerked back and forth on the trigger, the gun wouldn’t fire.

  He enjoyed the moment, that smile digging harder into his face until he whirled forward, hooked an arm through mine, and pulled me to the side like we were engaged in some kind of dance.

  “A shame,” he hissed by my ear.

  He wasn’t speaking. Not in an ordinary way, anyhow. His voice traveled along the wind, just as it had when I’d met him several days before. With every hissed breath, I felt that same brush along my cheek.

  I tried to jerk back, tried to push him off, but his grip was insidious. The longer it was locked around my arm, the more tired I felt. Unless I broke free, I’d fall asleep.

  I was vaguely aware that Cassidy and Alice were engaged in a battle with the two torturers.

  The warlocks were throwing themselves forward, their actions and expressions frantic and so unstoppably violent, they were like berserker warriors from Nordic myth.

  Even if Cassidy and Alice could hear me, even if they could see Caxus as he dragged me back through the room, there was nothing they could do.

  “Let me go,” I managed, my voice stifled, my lips wobbling as I began to lose all control over them.

  My thoughts were becoming hazy. My… mind….

  “Think of all the things I can show you. Think of the chaos I can introduce you to. Time to embrace your true heritage, frozen witch.”

  I fought and fought, but I was not strong enough.

  Caxus pulled me back into the darkness.

  5

  I heard a crack behind me. The noise was so memorable, so loud. It reached inside and ignited some long-lost memory.

  I didn’t have time to reach forward and clutch hold of whatever it could be.

  The darkness enveloped me like the strongest arms I’d ever felt.

  I disappeared.

  It was the strangest experience I’d ever felt. With Caxus’ arm still wrapped through my own, it felt like I was being pulled apart and yet smothered at the same time.

  The impenetrable darkness gave way, and I felt my feet land on the floor. I lost all balance and crashed back, but I didn’t fall; Caxus darted around and caught me. The feel of his wiry, strong arm against my stomach was the most awful thing I’d ever experienced.

  I shrieked, kicked back, and tried to round my shoulder and shove it into his throat. Somehow, I managed to pull the move off, and I felt my arm connect with his windpipe. It didn’t matter. He cleared his throat as if nothing had happened.

  “There is no need to be violent. Because it will gain you nothing. I cannot be hurt, frozen witch, especially not by someone like you who cannot even remember who they are.”

  Terror leaped through me at that admission, but I didn’t beg him to explain himself. I continued to try to fight against his demonically strong grip. As I shoved into him, as I used all my strength to try to pull my arm from under his, I began to see the room around us. It was drab, dilapidated. It looked as if it belonged to a building earmarked for destruction. Though the room was cast in thick gloom, I could still see enough that I swore I recognized the exact shade of brown, chipped paint across the walls.