✧ ✧ ✧
"Mir!" My hands shaking, I tuck Nilam's gun behind the belt of my jeans and storm out of the club. The sun is blinding after the darkness of the basement; I squint, shielding my face with one hand, but when my eyes adjust to the light, I don't see anyone. The alley is empty.
Mir's car is still parked where he left it, his broken cellphone and the car keys on the ground. "Mir?" No. He wouldn't have left without a reason, not the Mir I know, not after his friend was brutally murdered.
Dread wrenches my guts. Something bad happened.
"Bogdan!"
He doesn't reappear as well.
This is it. The end. The killer has stricken again, and I have no idea how to stop them without Nilam or Mir. Did Bogdan do something to Mir? But I would have heard them, instead it's like Mir quietly walked away. Like he was tricked into leaving, compelled or bound with some sort of spell. Bogdan can't use magic as long as he's insubstantial...unless somebody helped him.
"Lav's not answering her phone," Kadri says, stepping outside through the rusty door after Adélard. Then her eyes land on Mir's smashed cell, and alarm twists her round face. "What happened?"
Kneeling to pick up the car keys, I realize my fingers are stained with Nilam's blood. He left me a clue, didn't he? He wrote it with his blood on the wall. Zagovor. Even being dead, he's helping me. My heart aches again, just as it did when I saw his dead body. I don't believe this is real. Could Laverna betray us? Now I remember Lav saw me closing the door to Mir's room last night. Was she jealous? She once told me, Mir's my only chance to have a place in this world. Or did she think I deprived her of her chance to gain powers? Lav kept asking me how I became a Vedma at the Birch Park, then about Mir's sigil scar at the garage. And wasn't Lav the one who found Jasna's body?..
Nobody heard Laverna leave the apartment last night. But how could you do it, Laverna? Weren't you in love with Nilam once?
"Mir has the Soulwrecker on him," Ady says. "How do we stop the killer without it? Yara, what do we do?" His voice is small, but determined. I look up at him, then at Kadri who nervously tugs at the silk scarf at her neck. They are ready to do anything I say.
It sets my anger aflame.
I have nothing to say! Wiping my fingers on my black t-shirt, I grab the keys and clench them in my hand so the metal digs painfully into my palm. Do they really expect me to solve the problem now? I'm the one who always creates problems, I am the problem. Perhaps if it wasn't for me, none of this would have started in the first place.
Now Mir can die next. How could I fail to notice the obvious? I want to scream and cry at once. This is happening all over again, I'm losing everyone I love just like the day before I burned.
"I can call Mir's brother," Ady suggests. "His stepmom, the law school. Ask everyone who can help find him."
"Great idea, Lishan." Despaired sarcasm pours out of me as I stand up. "The full moon is tonight, the night when the Soulwrecker can be crushed. And you want to gather more people? Sure, bring popcorn, let's watch together as the Soulwrecker devours our souls."
Ady's expression hardens. "What do you propose, then?"
"The sun is high yet."
"And?"
"And I'm angry!" Killing some magic users I've never met is one thing, but killing Nilam? Threatening Mir? No. An angry Vedma--even an ex one--is ruination. I have time till tonight and maybe...a plan of my own. "Do you have any vials of Morox left, Adélard?"
"Yes, at home. But what for, do you want to forget today?"
"Kinda. Meet me at the apartment in three hours, bring it." My eyes flick to Kadri. She looks even more worried now. Maybe it's my furious voice to blame. "Kadri, trash the whole place if you need to, but find my bones." Infuriated, despaired, and icy-cold determination settles within my skin as I walk over to Mir's car and yank the driver's door open. "I'll need them in case we have to go for Plan B."
"Plan B?" Ady calls after me. "But what's your Plan A?"
"Witchcraft."
✧ ✧ ✧
Three years and six months ago.
The day before my death.
It'd been four weeks since I'd stood barefoot in the snow, watching the boy I'd confessed loving walk out on me. Watching him leave me in the night. Truth be told, it wasn't that bad, having my heart broken. There was an aching kind of satisfaction in it.
My worst fear became real, the weight off my shoulders: I was right, fearing it, after all, I was right in this particular thing--I didn't deserve to be loved.
I didn't belong.
In those four weeks, I used magic more than in all previous years. I stole cars twice more often, I partied at Qing's house every night and drank every day, I kissed boys whose names I never learned, and I even went with Wayra to buy drugs once.
In other words, I was miserable.
Maybe deep down, I still hoped Vlad would show up again, sense me using my sigil, exposing his secret.
He didn't.
That day I answered my phone only when it rang for the third time, my hungover head pounding like a train on rails in sheer silence.
"Yaroslava Slavich?" a way too polite female voice said. "This is Detective Rubio. I'm afraid there was a fire in your family house in Blakfait. Can you come?"
That was the moment my life ended, well before my body burned.
It took two hours to drive, and when I came, there was no fire already, only smoke. The thin blanket of early winter snow covered the streets around, but not here. Here everything was black. Our house, our little, white-walled house became a crumbling mess of charred wood. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. The burned pieces of blue kitchen curtains; the crippled shape of old wardrobe, its silver handles melted; Mom's scorched cookbook lying forgotten among the ashes.
It smelled of death.
"Where's my mother?" I urged, my voice trembling. I wanted to rush inside, but a stern police officer stood in my way. "Where's my sister? Why didn't they call me!"
The woman with a detective badge and concerned lines around her mouth walked toward me. I didn't look at her. "Please..." That was the moment my heart wasn't just broken. It was shattered into a thousand pieces. Forever.
The eyes of two other police officers and a few gawking neighbors flicked to me, curious of my tears. It can't be real, it's a dream, a nightmare. A joke. But the longer I stared at the ruins, a sable patch blemishing the blue sky before me, the deeper my anguish was. The more details I saw, the more real they became.
I would never see my family again, I realized. A cursed Vedma, I had no reason to search for a way to give up my magic because I had nobody to return to. Nobody to call Mom. Nobody to call Sis. No place to call home and no chance to be just a girl.
"Miss," Detective Rubio began, keeping a step away from me. She seemed disquieted around me. She should be disquieted. My pain was eager to snap all the hearts around me lifeless. "We found two bodies. Unrecognizable. I'm sorry for your loss, but, please, understand that I'm doing my job. To make sure this doesn't happen to anyone again, I have to ask. What were you doing about 3 a.m. this morning?"
Getting drunk and numb.
But she wasn't asking about that. I sense it. I sensed her nerves, her trepidation; she would have left if wasn't obliged to do her job. And she'd be right to do so--I longed to rage, to tug at the hearts of everyone around me, the stupid gawkers, the impassive officers, the damn, merry birds up in the trees! I longed for them to feel my pain, I wanted them to hurt.
Instead, I dropped to the ground and let my pain turn into weeping.
"Miss?"
I was a suspect in their eyes, not a victim. I was a girl known for leaving the town and never coming back. I had no official job, and last week, Euklas and I were caught selling stolen tires. Of course, I used magic and convinced the officer at the precinct to let us go, but did I convince that officer to delete all the traces of our adventure from the database? Everyone thought my mom was mentally sick after setting our kitchen on fire many years ago when I was five, and the whole town had been gossiping about me being a freak ever since.
"We need to explore every possibility," the woman went on, not a trace of sympathy in her voice, only cautiousness. "Including arson."
Suddenly, Vlad's words echoed in my mind. The words he told me before disappearing in the dark. Do you think your life is in ruins? You've seen no ruins yet.
I knew what I had to do. With the satisfaction of knowing you were unlovable also came freedom. The freedom to be ugly, and angry, and vengeful. And with losing everyone you loved came the privilege to seek out revenge.
To destroy.
✧ ✧ ✧
Now
"At the morgue, you told Adélard you didn't know how to drive."
Startled, my hands squeeze the leather wheel. A dull shadow blinks beside me, and on the passenger seat, Bogdan appears. He looks even less solid and more translucent now, away from Nilam's place, away from all the magical stuff in it. Still, it is Bogdan, and something stirs in my heart, a timid hope that he might still be my best friend.
No, he's a demon. I mentally strangle that hope and glare at him, moving my foot to the accelerator. "I lied." Guided by my hands on the wheel, the car takes me out of the alley and into the main street, blending in with the noise of the morning traffic. I'm not sure I remember how to drive, though. And I've never driven those stolen cars in daylight, only under the stars.
From the corner of my eye, as the sunbathed streets glide past, I see Bogdan's gaze trained on me. He seems troubled, and it troubles me in return, because according to every sorcerous book I've read, demons can't feel that way. He's mimicking my emotions. "Yara--"
"What did you do to Mir, Bogdan?"
"Me? Nothing. He left on his own. And I had no desire to learn where since he's in possession of the only thing that can kill me now. You need to know something about him, Yara. Mir is--"
"And you don't deserve to be killed? Mir believes you're the killer."
Bogdan scoffs. Then his smile falls away as he realizes I'm not joking. "You can't seriously consider I murdered Nilam and everyone else. Murdered you? You're my best friend! Whatever Mir told you it was mendacity. Being a demon doesn't make me a criminal, Yara. Magic changed my body, gave me powers, but it didn't change my soul." He hesitates, sitting disturbingly still. "As it didn't change yours when you became a Vedma, right? I know it now. I'm sorry for calling you a monster that night when we last talked."
Stopping at the red light, I turn my head to look at Bogdan. I hate this, I hate following my feelings because my feelings have brought me pain so many times, yet despite the lack of shades and colors in Bogdan's face, it's the same kindness I knew that shines in his eyes. It's the same habit of reacting for the crucifix hanging around his neck I see as he looks back at me, waiting for my reply. There's no crucifix there now, though, and his fingers brush nothingness. "Demons don't feel things, Dan." But why does it sound untrue?
His expression sours. "That's what Vlad's book said, huh? Yes, I thought so too. It didn't specify what exactly demons don't feel." He looks away, staring at the tree shaken by the wind on the street corner. "I don't feel the warmth of the sun, Yara. I can't taste sugar or smell a flower. No cold, no wind, no touch... At least, while I look like a bleached ghost. But sadness, fear, loneliness? They're all still mine." He pauses. "Just like they're yours."
Oh Angels...
"And I knew you wouldn't believe me, just like I didn't you believe once, that's why I haven't told you earlier. Besides, Mir was always around, and he is--"
"What do you think about playing Go? I loved that game, remember?"
Bogdan's nose crinkles with puzzlement. Well, he can't mimic that, because I'm not puzzled. "I do remember, but...Now?"
"Answer the question!"
"You know my answer. No." He frowns, annoyed. And that's not an imitation, either. I'm not annoyed, I'm agitated. "Because you always win at that game."
Relief washes over me, and I can't bite back my smile. Mir was wrong. Demon or not, Bogdan still does have feelings. He's still my friend. But that only complicates things. What happened to Mir, then? Who made him leave?
"We can play chess, however," Bogdan says as I slam down the accelerator. We pass the bridge, and the waters of the Nótt river flash, sparking white gold under the sun.
I laugh. "No. You always win at that one."
✧ ✧ ✧
I'm running out of time. Slowly but steadily, the sun begins to lean toward the Birch Park on the horizon when I park at the curb and run toward the old, two-story brick building with narrow windows. It has only three apartments, each with a separate front door.
Bogdan glides after me. "What are we doing here?"
"Looking for answers, saving Mir. And I hope Jasna has something that can help me." Nilam wrote Zagovor with his blood on the wall. He wouldn't have wasted his last breath to remind us of the restaurant, he must have meant what he told me. Zagovor is an incantation used to compel others to do your bidding. Ask Jasna, she likes spooky myths. If Lav was compelled to kill him, that would explain why she did it. She had no control over herself.
I can't ask Jasna, but if she researched this magic, she'll have notes. Pushing a flower pot next to the front door aside, I pick up the keys Mir hid there when we were here last time. The door groans open, and the familiar place is a soothing sight to see. Soothing, but also lonely.
"Yara," Bogdan says, whirling to block my way, "I won't let you risk your life for Mir." His last word comes out harsh and loud, requiring too much energy, and his silhouette before me blurs, almost nothing but a shadow. Dan curses, but his voice sounds like a whisper now.
I give him a cynical smile. "Stop me." And I walk right through him into the hall.
"Mir is Vlad."
I stop. Bogdan's voice rings like thunder in my head, and then silence stretches between us. Glancing over my shoulder, I meet his eyes, and he shakes his head as though telling me not to cry. Why would I cry?
"Mir is Vlad," he repeats, his expression apologetic. "He's been lying to you all this time. I'm sorry."
A laugh rushes past my lips.
"Don't laugh. It's true, Yara. He--"
"I know."
Shock alters his face. "What?" He takes a step back, and the sunlight entering through the opened front door filters right through him.
"I might be credulous, but I'm not stupid." And I guess Mir called me a liar not without a reason if I managed to make everyone believe I haven't suspected a thing so far.
"How long have you known?"
I shrug. "I'm not sure." Since Mir said I love you too, though I knew I didn't say it out loud last night? I said it three and a half years ago, in my hometown, standing barefoot in the snow. Or since I saw Bogdan at the restaurant and realized it wasn't Vlad who'd been spying on me from the shadows? Or perhaps I knew it since the moment I woke up in the graveyard and met Mir's eyes, dark as a storm, staring down at me. Everyone was terrified of Yaroslava the Witch, and he wasn't. I trust you, he said.
I did have my doubts. His hair was different color after all. Vlad seemed taller than Mir, but only because my original body was shorter than Polina's, right? Vlad has never let me see or touch his back, so I never knew he had scars. And I think I was too busy last night to notice his sigil scar was over his ribs, just where Vlad's was.
"It doesn't matter, Dan. Mir thought I was a mad sorceress who wanted to use his feelings against him, and he still gave me a second chance. I stole his car, robbed his father's office, and his grandfather's house with the library of priceless books on dark magic in it burned because of me. He never blamed me for any of that. He thought I used my powers--he himself helped me gain--to kill innocent people. Still, he gave me a second life. I can't let Mir die."
"But he burned you!"
"Did you see it with your own eyes?"
"No, but..." Bogdan's figure fades away like smoke in the wind, and his voice dies out. Whatever magic he found at Nilam's club has finally worn off. The demon has no more energy to hold on to the Mortal Realm. But he's still here, isn't he?
"You haven't seen him, Dan," I reply in the empty room and close the front door, "because it's not true."
The apartment is quiet now. In the kitchen, everything is as Mir and I left it, the cups and plates in their places, yet the mess in the bedroom looks fresh. Clothes--Lav's clothes--are scattered across the floor as though left in hurry. Kadri couldn't reach her phone, because she's run off. Who is Laverna running from? Who is the killer she's been helping and now is so terrified of?
I open the wardrobe, but there's nothing but more clothes. Ransacking through the boxes around, my eyes roam over masquerade masks, and cookbooks, and another pair of handcuffs. Well, now we know where Mir found those the other day. Not that hard to find.
While I flip through the books, hoping for any forgotten note, the piece of my skull in my pocket grows hot. Pulling it out, I realize the bone's surface shimmers slightly as though the magic it holds inside is being siphoned out of it.
In the air before my eyes, letters appear glowing like a moonlight shred in ribbons, one by one, scribbled by an invisible fingertip.
You can't trust liars, Yara.
My anger leaps to my throat again. A ghost-like demon, my ass. Dan's been able to communicate with me all this time and chose not to. And now when Mir's gone, he's suddenly trying to convince me I can't trust liars?
"I can't trust you as well, then!" I scream at the letters. They quiver and vanish. "And you can't trust me."
New words follow.
Think, Yara. You're scared of staying alone, and Mir uses it, making you feel needed. Not with magic maybe, but he's always been manipulative. Didn't he tell you he loved you last night?
"Bastard." Grabbing a pen from the dresser, I throw it at the writing. "He said it in the morning! Do you spy on us at night, too?"
EW.
No. And I can't enter the apartment.
But it wasn't hard to guess since from the street, I did see you two canoodling on the windowsill. Next time, close the curtains.
"I forgot how annoying you can be, Dan." Ignoring him, I start checking the dresser.
He wanted you to choose him, Yara. So he took all other choices from you. Your family. Your life.
"You're lucky I'm not Vedma anymore and can't make you corporeal. I'd be happy to break your nose," I snarl, dragging another drawer open. There are only cosmetics and knick-knacks. "I died four weeks after I last talked to Vlad. Four weeks! Why would he wait?"
To look good in your eyes. Do you think he's incapable of killing someone he loves? I'm not the one who murdered my own father.
"His father was the real monster."
Exactly. Could a monster raise a good son?
The words disappear, and Bogdan writes nothing else. My bone that I put on the bed ceases shimmering.
I squeeze my eyes shut for a beat, taking a breath, and sink to the floor, propping my back against the dresser. Why is Dan doing this to me? What is he trying to prove? Maybe I was too quick to believe demons don't burn witches, maybe Dan is manipulating me now, messing with the memories I have left.
"I don't believe you!" I scream into the empty space. Bogdan is wrong, it feels wrong. And I'm not following my fear of being alone, I'm trusting my heart despite my fears.
Only fear grows stronger now.
Do you think your life is in ruins? Vlad's words echo in my memory. You've seen no ruins yet. He was talking about his own life, wasn't he? He said it because he didn't think I understood him. And now I do. Why would he resurrect me, bring me to his mother's apartment and give me his mother's bed? Why introduce me to his friends, and keep me safe till this moment?
But when my family died, I also thought it was Vlad's fault...
Mir looked so testy in the morning when I told him I wouldn't spend tomorrow with him. Testy as though ready to make me change my mind.
Don't start a fire you can't douse, Fire Girl.
He said he loved me, but what is love for him? Torture. That's the only kind of love he's been taught. He made me believe he'd give me just a year to live, yet at the very first night he left me my skull, knowing he wouldn't be able to send me back to the abyss with one bone missing. He's never needed a Vedma's help to find the demon, because he is a Vedmak himself. What if he killed those magic users to give his friends a reason to resurrect me? What if he killed Nilam because he saw me kissing him yesterday and couldn't bear the idea of me choosing someone but him? And now he's gone so I have to stay alive and find him.
What if Bogdan is right, and Mir killed me because he wanted me to be desperate for his affection, wanted to take everything from me. Where would a dead girl go if not after her savior?
If only I still had my powers, I could sense when Lav lied to me, I could know what Mir really felt! If only I didn't let my fears of magic guide me to the fire that fatal night.
Taking another deep breath, I open my eyes and rise to my feet. No, this can't be true. I'm making things up. I didn't know the real Vladimir then, but I do now. "Damn you, Dan." I look around the room again, but if Jasna does have any notes on magical myths, she's hidden them well. "If you actually want to help, saint demonic ass, help me find Jasna's notes!"
Dan doesn't answer. I start thinking he might have left, but then a glimmering line of letters finally assembles in the air next to me.
A box under the bed.
Fumbling under the bed and collecting all the dust in the world, I do pull out a box a minute later. A small wooden box with a weird rune across it. Inside, there's a deck of tarot cards, a handful of multi-colored gems, and--two notebooks. The first one is about potions and herbs, the pages filled with curvy handwriting. The other one has a title scratched on the cover: Forbidden Crafts.
What were you learning it for, Jasna?
Flipping through the pages, I search for the word I need. And I find it.
"Zagovor, an ancient, celestial kind of Immortal Realm magic the Fallen Angels have taught humanity," I read to the silence around me. "Classified as both Deadly and Forbidden for once the sacrifice is offered, the spell-caster is able to plant ideas and desires in the minds of other magicians, controlling their bodies like their own." I swallow. "Sacrifice: the person the caster treasures the most."
To plant ideas?
It means Lav didn't kill Nilam. Nobody did. Nilam held the knife in his own hand, that's why he didn't anticipate the danger. He believed it was his own idea until it was too late. And that explains why nobody saw the killer anywhere near the first two victims. To everyone but magic users, it looked like they killed themselves.
Jasna knew how the incantation worked, she recognized it in time and saved herself with the sleeping spell. Laverna figured it all out and took off because she thought she'd be next.
My heart lurches.
It's not enough to figure where Mir has gone. It's not even enough to prove he's the victim. He left with no sign of struggle because either someone compelled him to or that is what I'm supposed to believe.
Let's play a game? he told me when we were at the rooftop.
What if Bogdan is right? What if I was the sacrifice Vladimir treasured the most, and he is the madman masterminding this endless game for me to keep playing?
✦ ✦ ✦