✧ ✧ ✧

Three years and five months ago.

The night of my death

I never looked back.

Not for a minute did I allow myself to grieve. Escaping the detective's endless questions, I hurried back to the city, with one thought in my mind sharpening like a blade. Vengeance. Still having the wallet Vlad had thrown at me the night he'd abandoned me, I had one last hint of where to look for him. A business card that was tucked in the wallet's pocket. Praejis Hall.

A small internet search told me that it was the name of the law firm, and Igor Praejis was some supercilious attorney, the best of the best, praised by everyone who knew him. If Mr. Praejis's reputation was the result of some magical scam, I thought, I wouldn't be surprised. He must know Vlad.

The rest of the day I spent making arrangements for my family's burial at St. Daktalion's graveyard and--burying Mom's pendant under cathedral walls. Wearing it felt like too much, a reminder of loss, pain, and tears. If I rest it there, in a jewelry box, in the ground, I swore to myself, my tears would be locked away with it; I wouldn't have to grieve, or mourn, or hurt. And I crumpled the business card and threw it into the box as well, it was an impulse, a wish to forget.

When the evening settled over the city, it was bitter cold. No stars, no moon in the sky, only dark clouds and endless snow, falling over my head like ashes. A perfect night for revenge.

"You want to break into a lawyer's office, driving there in a stolen car?" Wayra asked that night, his dark, bushy brows arching, when I told him to make a quick stop. "Are you high or generally nuts?"

I'm angry. I'd never felt that way before, seething with fury I could barely hold inside. And every time my thoughts slipped back to the image of my charred house and the detective's meaningless Sorry for your loss, the magic in my blood throbbed hot, ready to ravage. I didn't need anyone's sorry--I needed justice.

"It might be fun, though." In the car's rearview mirror, Qing cast me a scythe-like smile. She looked sly, but her pointed chin and heavy black makeup made her also appear confident. And she truly was, I sensed it. She always knew what she wanted. I envied that, so I started to wear makeup just like hers. "Are you sure the office is empty at night, Slavich?"

"You don't need to come," I told them. "I don't want the money, I only need... Praejis's files." I needed something--anything--that would show me the direction where to search for Vlad. He could break my heart, but burning my house, taking my family away from me? That was unforgivable.

Our car suddenly lurched to a stop in the middle of a road. Wayra's gaze shone with a dangerous spark, when he turned to look at me. "Did you say Praejis?" he asked, his large hands gripping the wheel.

I nodded.

"That bastard of a lawyer threw my uncle in jail for a crime he's never committed. Just because it looked good for the press." The car jerked in another direction. "Hell yeah, we're breaking in. And I do want the money."

All this time, Euklas sat right beside me, mute as a fish. He never said yes, but he never argued, so no one paid attention to him then. "What about the guards or security cameras?" he only asked.

"People like Praejis don't favor security cameras," Wayra said. "Too much shady business can be caught on those. And I bet he's too self-assured to even think someone would dare rob him."

The streets flew past, and soon, I stood in front of Praejis Hall. It was an imposing building, its glass facade reflecting the streetlights. It looked like a frozen ghost in the dark. I knew I was right the instance I set a foot in that building. The front door was open, yet not a living soul was around. A sense of foreboding rippled through me. The magic was always a feeling, and I felt it here, in the very air. A death's breath.

Vlad was here recently.

I mentally searched the building, trying to find the echoing of other hearts, but there were none. The void. Only a person who had a sigil scar, as I did, as Vlad did, could shoo people away like that. Not a pedestrian in the streets around. What was he up to?..

Trepidation tightened its grip on me, blending in with my anger into something weighty and sinister, as we skulked along the unlit halls and up the empty stairs. The silence of every corner and every floor was perfect. Unnatural. Wrong.

Regardless of all my instincts begging me to flee, I followed that deadly taste of magic. Right to the very top. Right into the main office. Right toward my doom.

When I saw a lifeless body on the floor of the office, I didn't scream. Shock paralyzed me. It was him, Igor Praejis, the man I was looking for. And Vlad was the last to see him alive, wasn't he? How could he know what I was planning?

None of us noticed that Euklas had slipped away, not until the police sirens yowled outside. Euklas would be the only one of us to survive that night, the one who I would find years later at the university with Adélard and Kadri, the one whose hooked nose Mir would break without an apology for calling me nothing. Yet, Euklas lived, right? Maybe he was right to do that.

"Fuck," Qing shrieked, eyes darting between me and Wayra, who was cramming his bag with money from the safe that was also left open. "That's not fun! They'll say we've killed him." With another high-pitched noise, she ran toward the fire exit.

"Leave the money," I told Wayra, but he only grinned at me.

"No way," he said, and pulled out a gun. He always carried a gun, yet he never used it for anything but shooting soda cans for leisure. I thought it was a part of his grumpy style, an accessory to scare the strangers away.

I was wrong.

The moment we swept out of Praejis Hall, the police cars had already surrounded the building. There was no escape. I knew I could convince the cops to let us go, I could make them want to let us go, but panic consumed me. I wasn't sure what I felt myself anymore. Anger, despair, fear? Whatever dark energy circled in my veins, it singed me from inside, and if I couldn't control my emotions--I couldn't control the energy.

I didn't see where I ran. I didn't hear what the police officers shouted as they chased us, but when Wayra began shooting, they shot back.

Fear it was.

Somewhere to my left, in the dark, Qing gave a spine-chilling cry, when a bullet tore at her flesh. The sound of her body collapsing to the ground followed, and I never heard her voice again.

"Keep it safe!" Wayra screamed, and before I registered what I was doing, I seized the bag of money he'd tossed me. He shot two of the officers, who dashed after us into an alley. Even with snow covering everything, it was too gloomy to see clearly. Or perhaps, fear dimmed my vision. Two bullets pierced the air above my head, and the third one bore its way into my side. It felt like molted iron poured under my skin, too much pain to ignore and keep running. I fell to my knees.

When another gunshot swished past me, and Wayra sprawled onto the ground beside me, with a bullet hole in his head, something cracked in my soul. I was exactly what people were expecting me to be for my whole life, wasn't I? A joke. A plague. A broken human. They accused me of all the bad things happening around me, and finally, I lived up to their expectations. I was the curse ruining everything it touched.

But I wasn't ready to die.

Please, give me a second chance.

Within all the emotions winding through me then, with all the maddening fear, I grasped the only straw I could reach. It was magic. Yet it was different. Darker, deeper, stronger. I pulled at it, and for a heartbeat, I forgot of my own pain as Wayra's eyes snapped open. They were unfocused, dead nonetheless, but I felt the blood in his body responding to my command as though it was a living being, albeit deprived of emotions of his own. Then I felt the dead officers behind my back rise up as well.

Please.

The undead officer lashed out at their own colleagues, protecting me.

I would never understand how I, hurting and bleeding, found the will and the strength to scramble to my feet and sneak away. Without thinking I slid into a taxi parked around the corner. The napping driver flinched and stared at me as if I was a corpse myself.

"To Blakfait," I told him.

"It's a two-hour trip, at least. No way am I taking it at night during this snowfall, the road--" And then his eyes finally landed on my jacket soaked with blood. "Are you hurt? I heard the gunshots. Did you--"

"Drive." I tugged at his nerves, and his expression relaxed into a placid mask. He started the car without another word. "I'll pay extra." And I did keep that word, because when I got in the car, I was still with the bag of money--when I got out of the car, I never remembered to retrieve it.

✧ ✧ ✧

The cold winter air prickled my lungs as I dragged my feet out of the taxi and toward Vlad's house. I was barely conscious, yet I was alive. Maybe the magic kept me awake, maybe the bullet had missed anything vital. Still, I was done. So much for revenge.

The lights in the house didn't work. With shaking hands, I lit a candle and climbed upstairs, into the library. It was there, I remembered, the book of healing spells, my only chance to survive. But I couldn't find it! Every step was torture, like a dagger twisted in my stomach, leaving bloody marks on the book pages in my wake. And what would I even do if I survived? They would pin it all on me: a girl who went crazy, who burned her own family, then robbed a lawyer and killed him as well, along with several police officers and her own accomplices. We always said she was crazy. We knew it. Don't you see? That's what she is.

Even with magic, I wasn't strong enough.

When another book slipped my weak fingers and fell into the darkness of the floor, I realized the candle I left by the door wasn't there. I heard the footsteps downstairs. Or did I imagine them?

Yara...

No, I did not imagine that. And I didn't imagine the heat rising to my cheeks that smelled of smoke. Vlad?

Yara, Yara, Yara...

Will you help me?

My head spinning, the world before my eyes tilting, I clutched to my wounded side and braced myself for the stairs. It took a lifetime to descend without succumbing to the pain and passing out. I didn't feel anything anymore--no magic, no fear, no heat. It was a whirlwind of everything at once in my mind. Madness. Only when my feet touched the lower floor, I fathomed that the light blazing before my eyes wasn't the part of my confused imagination. It was as real as the candle lying on the wooden floor, its flame eating the boards, as real as a book with a silver poppy on its leather cover beside it.

Don't worry, I'm helping you.

The book Vlad gave me the summer we'd met, the book it all began with. I thought I'd lost that book.

The fire flashed, leaping onto the window, and I saw a dark silhouette standing in the street outside, the dawn painting the sky crimson behind its back. A poppy, the flower the book had, was in the hands of that silhouette.

Isn't it what you wanted? To get rid of magic. That's the only way.

✧ ✧ ✧

Now

Standing in the middle of Jasna's room, I look at my own mirror reflection. At the face of the stranger that is mine now. Isn't that what I wanted? To get rid of my powers, of every reminder of my past. I craved a fresh start, freedom.

Yet I don't feel free.

Only now do I realize that without thinking, I've dressed in a black t-shirt and black jeans this morning, I've dressed as I used to, when I was a Vedma. History repeats itself, and I'm back to where I lost. Witches are wicked, and black is perfect to reflect the wickedness, isn't it? Black as night, and... I used to convince myself that behind these clothes and makeup, nobody would see how broken I was. It was my armor, a mask keeping my real emotions out of a foe's reach, and magic was my shield. Maybe... I was wrong. My emotions, my magic, my credulous heart--they were not my armor but weapon. The nights were always mine.

Picking up black eyeliner from the dresser, I outline my eyes in thick black and stare at the result in the mirror. Bogdan's words appear in the air behind my back:

It doesn't suit you.

I give myself a sad smile. "I wasn't asking." And I'm not afraid of my heart now. Since I woke up in the graveyard, I was terrified of remembering my past, of facing the fire that consumed me. But how can I be free from my fears if I don't face them? If Vlad really is the one who took everything from me, I'm not afraid of getting my heart broken this time. I'm not afraid of staying alone, of being a Vedma, of not belonging to a place I don't even like and people I don't even know. I'm not afraid of anything.

If history repeats itself, this time, I'm winning.

Zagovor doesn't explain how to locate Mir now or how to reverse the incantation, so there's only one option left. Slipping my bone back into my pocket and grabbing the car keys, I start toward the front door. "Let's go, Dan. Plan A has failed, it's time for Plan B. Rising from the ashes."

✦ ✦ ✦