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Now

The night wind bites my skin and sends a shiver down my spine as I barge out of the club. The innocent rain has grown into a spring downpour, soaking my clothes. My hair clings to my face, the raindrops heavy on my lashes. The street is nothing but a blur, and I'm not even sure if it's the rain to blame--or my tears.

Jasna's last memory?

Yaroslava.

Past the library, past the river bridge, past the old statues of angels guarding the empty streets. Run, run, run. My knees tremble, but my feet move as though knowing where to take me before my brain does.

How could Nilam see me in Jasna's memory? Perhaps someone could plant a fake image along with her body to make me look guilty, but why if I was dead already? I might not remember it all, yet I can bet my new body I've never even met a girl named Jasna. But will they believe me? Will they listen? I didn't kill anyone. Not on purpose.

Aren't you tired of being blamed for everything? But then Mir called me a liar. I'm pathetic. I shouldn't have run, shouldn't have let my fears conquer me once again, practically taking the blame. But their faces the moment before I ran off! I just couldn't bear it. Nilam stared at me, triumphant, Lav was shocked, and Mir... was it disappointment or satisfaction in his eyes? They all looked at me the way Bogdan had looked when I'd finally confessed that I'd been a vedma, and then he'd told me to never talk to him again.

You're a monster. You chose to be.

Gulping the cold air, I find myself in front of the iron bars of a fence, too weary to go looking for the gates. My boots squelching, I jump, grab the wet metal, and lift my body over the fence. A decorative spike at the top grazes my ankle, drawing my blood, as I hop down, and the air instantly stings the cut. It doesn't feel nice, blood and rain trickling down my skin, but I'm grateful for the feeling.

An hour ago, on the roof, I didn't want to feel anything, and now I want it all. All the way through. Mine, real. The thought that this might be my last day on Earth twists and yanks and shreds me from inside. What if they decide to get rid of me now? They can destroy my bones, banish my spirit forever. One eerie witch down just to make sure that she won't cause any troubles in the future, right?

Think, little freak.

Beyond the fence, the graveyard is calm. These slanted crosses used to frighten me, but now they seem...safe, with nobody to see me cry. Even the rain here is quieter, cautious. Maybe because I belong here now, to a grave not to life? It was foolish to think I could change my fate if given a second chance. I can only repeat my mistakes.

Slouching, I dawdle past the graves, round an abandoned chapel, and approach a nameless headstone nestled between two others. They didn't even fill the hole back up after retrieving my bones. That is all what's left of me--a nameless hole.

I fall to my knees, on the muddy ground, ruining my clothes, giving up to my shivering. The chill clutches at my bones while my hot tears course down my cheeks, leaving salt on my lips. It feels like dying all over again, but only inside.

"Hey, Mom," I whisper to the headstone on my left, then turn to the right one. "Hey, Sis." I'm so sorry.

After our house had burned down, I spent most of my money to buy a place in this graveyard. The first one in old St. Daktalion city, where only the richest families could afford a place. And apparently whoever's job was to bury my remains later decided to rest me here, too. The legends say the Nótt river floods this graveyard every hundred years, washing half of the graves away--that's why the city is haunted, that's why there's always a place available. I hope it's a lie.

A withered yellow flower is neglected on the path between the stones, its petals streaked with the mud, its stem cut short. Whoever left it didn't bother about the beauty, whoever left it threw it here to die.

"I'm truly sorry," I swear under my breath, pulling my knees to my chin, only to shudder again. "I didn't know it would cost this much. I only wanted to be stronger."

The night doesn't answer me, doesn't accept my apology.

Four years ago, I moved to this city with one purpose--to find Vlad, to demand him to undo the spell, to make me what I was always supposed to be. Ordinary. But the more I looked, the more insane it appeared--nobody knew Vlad Voskresenyev, nobody believed in magic more than in spooky Halloween stories.

That girl's seriously asking if we have a section on witchcraft in the library?

Dude, did you see her? She creeps me out, it's like she has an aura of death around her or something. Where's she from, again?

Could Vlad actually the one? The demon from the tales, the immortal bored in his immortality, playing with humans, designing their fates like a child designs a sandcastle? A boy with a broken leg and a sad soul when you need him. A teenage friend with a key to all your problems. A lover for a longing heart.

A demon grown to disrelish their creations and destroying those, one by one.

Until someone rebelled. Until Mir rebelled. And brought me back.

The worst part is not about being betrayed though--the worst part is about being betrayed by the last person I trusted. He's never done me any harm, why then? Why?

My hand itches, and I rub it, but the feeling gets only stronger, unfurling like a candle flame beneath my skin. Magic. Someone's using my bones to perform magic. To locate--or to banish me.

Here it is. The second chance lost.

Desperate to outrun time, I fumble for the topaz I've snatched from Nilam's room in my pockets, then I press it against my pendant, letting whatever powers the gem possesses to transfer into the wooden crescent hanging around my neck and buy me a little more time. And then I remember about the bracelets Mir has rewarded me with. The pendant doesn't work.

"Found you," a voice behind me says.

I hold my breath, my heart hammering.

Wading through the rain, Nilam stops beside me, an umbrella over his head. He looks down at the gem in my palm, his tongue clicking. "I guessed you'd steal something."

"It wasn't hard."

"I know. I only questioned your audacity."

Something dry and soft falls over my shoulders, a small woolen blanket. I stare at it for a confused moment, then wrap it tight around me, leaning into its warmth. Then I raise my head to see if Nilam's mocking me, but his eyes are clear and sharp, not a trace of contempt.

I watch as he glances around, looking for a more or less dry place to sit, then curses, hands me the umbrella, takes his leather jacket off to spreads it on the ground. "This shitty rain should have stopped by now," he grumbles and drops next to me. The tattoos covering his arms are an intricate pattern of a lion and a leopard and a wolf. Nilam impressed me as arrogant and impudent when we were at the club, but now his moves are so casual it's easy to sit by his side. As if his invisible walls have fallen, when you know you see the truth.

"What have you decided?" I ask.

He cocks his head to one side to look at me, puzzled. "Meaning?"

"Am I guilty of Jasna's unfortunate state?"

"Damn, girl. Mir's right, you do pin everything on yourself."

"Everyone pins everything on me."

"We're not everyone."

"Mir despises me, and you despised the very idea of me when I was resurrected," I hand the umbrella back to him, but Nilam refuses to take it.

"True, but...not true." His brow creases as he searches for words. "Mir is just a drama king who doesn't know how to be emotionally available. And--" A chuckle rumbles in his chest. "Don't tell him I told you, but it was Mir who asked me to come here and talk to you. And me, I don't despise you. I, as you said, despise the idea of you. Of the magic you once wielded."

"Sounds complicated."

"It is."

Minutes bleed one into another as we sit in silence, both staring into the darkness. The rain slowly ceases, and I don't feel that cold anymore. I haven't looked around much as I conjured my way here from my shattered memory, but now I'm glad Nilam came.

As the clouds drift across the sky, the shadows along the ground follow. The crosses peek out of the night and disappear again, and lone tree branches above us are crooked like a crone's fingers. It's not calming at all, and I don't feel like I belong to the grave anymore. I cling to Nilam's presence like he's an anchor in a sea.

"My parents died of it," he says suddenly, his voice clipped. "Sorcery. An accident kind. I was three. But it doesn't matter now, what matters is that I know how magic smells. How it ripples the air, gripping your senses." He loosens a protracted breath before continuing. "You can't even imagine how you reeked of magic that first night, Yaroslava. For a few seconds, I honestly believed I went back in time and crawled out of my bed to find Mom and Dad glassy-eyed, lying on the floor in our dining room. It's been seventeen years, and I still can't shake off the feeling sometimes."

I swallow at the mere thought of it.

"And then you come to my club, a girl so...alive? Don't get me wrong, you still smell of magic but somewhat differently. Not of death but of life, unbendable." Nilam turns to look at me, and again I notice that strange emotion flashing in his eyes, the one I saw but couldn't place in the club. Then it's gone, and Nilam chuckles. "I suddenly wanted to know how you did it, how you survived all this. Because I remember you--"

"You remember me?" My surprise rolls off my tongue without my permission.

Tentative, Nilam's lips purse, but he doesn't stop looking at me, doesn't stop searching my face as if some hidden answer is written over my cheeks. Then he nods.

"I've seen you before, in your own body. Once. The truth is you and your colleagues stole my car."

I probably should apologize. But will it change anything?

He sees my frustration. "A blue roadster?"

"Sorry." I shake my head. "I'm afraid there were too many cars then, and I never actually paid attention to what they looked like."

"Yeah, whatever. I don't pin it on you." Nilam reaches down and picks up the withered flower.

As he does that, his shoulder brushes mine, and I realize he's tense from the cold wind. What a horrible Fire Girl I am. I take my--Nilam's--blanket and throw its end over his back, shielding us both from the wind. He groans in gratitude.

"Because, you see, I could have stopped you," he goes on, inspecting the flower. "You stood at the corner of a street, dressed in all black, including makeup, only your hair was red. I knew what you were doing--mentally shooing people away so that nobody interrupted your friends working on the car. An ideal guard, the kind of perfection only magic can grant. I hid behind the trees and watched you..."

Looking at the flower in his hand, I recall that night now. The roadster. The corner around a fancy restaurant at the dead hour of the night. I knew I felt someone's presence nearby then, but I saw nobody.

"...You didn't look like one capable of stopping a heart, Slavich. I knew my fear wasn't real. I could have walked up, could have told you I knew of your mojo, knew what you were. A vedma." The word sounds palpable on his lips. "But I didn't. The very idea of the terror consuming my heart, my emotions, my entire being, terrified me. Reminded me of the day I'd been striving to forget my whole life."

"Why are telling me this now, Nilam?"

"I want you to know why I am the way I am. I want you to understand why you are the way you are. Stop blaming yourself for the things you can't control, Yaroslava. We don't need to fight each other, just give others some time to know real you."

"You said I tried to kill Jasna."

He lets out a raucous laugh. "I didn't say you tried to kill Jasna, I said you were her last memory. A witch, dressed in black, red hair. For some reason, Jasna was thinking about you that last moment."

The rain's finally stopped, and I waggle the umbrella, letting the raindrops cascade down onto the earth. They gleam in the moonlight like shooting stars cutting the darkness. "I didn't even know your friend."

"Apparently she knew you." Nilam shrugs. "And in that memory of hers, she also thought of someone else. A hook-nosed boy, she referred to him as Euklas."

Euklas? The nervous kid whose job was to track down the cars easy to steal.

"If I've seen him, he's as alive as you currently are, otherwise it's all smoke in visions," Nilam says. "We find him, we figure out whoever's messing with us. Sounds good?"

Vlad. Why don't you say it's Vlad?

"Good," I echo.

What's Nilam suggests is a chance, a choice, his friendship. But it still feels delusive. He didn't ask of my past, didn't call me a liar, yet his words moved me. So sarcastic and prudent at the club, so honest and open-hearted now, in the stillness of the night.

We're shoulder to shoulder under the blanket, and there can be nothing more ordinary than this. But not for me. Here and now, I'm not a witch to be afraid of, not for him. His mere silence proves he accepts my mistakes, shares my pain, cares to listen. I've been waiting for it for my entire lost life, and here it is. Afterlife? Neither Heaven nor Hell, but something better. Something real.

Nilam turns the flower in his fingers once again, then whispers something, too quiet to hear, and gently blows at the expired bud. Its petals quiver and then start to reshape, losing all signs of decay, the muddy raindrops trickle down, the stem grows longer.

In a few seconds, I find myself gawking at a perfectly fresh and beautiful yellow poppy. "How did you do it?"

A mischievous grin curls up Nilam's lips. "Let me keep some secrets, just yet. I'll only say I broke a rule, reviving this flower."

"Does magic have rules?"

"It does, just too many to follow if you ask me. But the rules of magic also break the rules of nature."

"Was the rain ceasing also of your doing?"

"Nope, hon. That magic's called a weather forecast," he laughs as he scrambles to his feet, then gestures, inviting me to go with him.

We head back past the crosses and the chapel, out of the graveyard, into the empty streets cleansed by the rain. Just the two of us, alone but lonely no more.

"So how about a fresh start?" Nilam says, offering me his hand. "Hello, I'm Nilam Vinshu."

For a hesitant heartbeat, I think about the day I shook Vlad's hand, about all the things that it brought upon me. But today is nothing like that. Today is a fresh start. And so I clasp Nilam's warm hand. "Yaroslava Slavich."

"Nice to meet you, Yaroslava. Let's break the rules together, shall we?"

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