Carnival of Secrets (9 page)

“Are you feeling any better?” He studied her. “The ankle? The scratches?”

“All fine.” She offered him a reassuring smile. “Mostly just embarrassed.”

“Everyone has accidents.” He gave her a one-armed hug.

“Sure,” she said.

She wanted to reassure him, to promise she could handle any real threats they encountered, but she knew that if he had his way, she’d never encounter any dangers.

“Maybe at the next school you can meet someone to watch shows with or do whatever girl things with.” Adam stepped past her and dropped his briefcase on the kitchen table. “There are more witches there, and you’ll be safer.”

“It’s fine.” She walked over to the stove, checked that the teakettle still had water, and then turned on the burner.

“It’s not fine. I should be home more. We should do more together.”

“I’m almost seventeen, not seven.” She measured tea into the teapot and resolutely didn’t look at him. “Plus, we train. It’s not like I don’t see you.”

Behind her, she heard him rummaging in the fridge. “Once we get settled, maybe we ought to take another father-daughter class.”

She turned to face him. Once he had pulled a container of leftover Chinese out of the fridge, she told him, “Maybe what we ought to do is both of us find some people our own age to socialize with. I was thinking that this move might be a good time to start a few new things . . . like dating.”

“Like
dating
?” he repeated. Her usually unflappable father stared at her with a look of horror on his face.

“I’ll be seventeen tomorrow,” she reminded him as she pulled out dishes.

He opened the top of the container and spooned some sesame chicken onto a plate she handed him. “How about this: you can date if you meet someone we both think is worthy of you. You don’t want me to be stuck at home all by myself, do you?”

Mallory turned as the teakettle whistled. She’d been his whole life since her mother had left, and she
did
feel guilty at the thought of abandoning him. “Mom’s not coming back, is she?”

Her father sighed, but instead of ignoring the question like he typically had when she’d tried to ask about her mother, he said, “She loves you, Mallory, and we both want what’s best for you.” He paused. “But she doesn’t love
me
, and we agreed that it was best for her to leave.”

“Best for whom?” Mallory asked.

“You.”

Mallory felt tears trickle down her cheeks. It wasn’t that her father was saying anything she hadn’t suspected, but it hurt to hear him finally admit aloud that her mother was truly gone and that he didn’t think she’d come home.

“She could visit me,” Mallory suggested softly. “I could visit her. If you knew where she was—”

“No.” Adam turned his back. “No more talk of Selah. She’s gone, and she has no business in your life.”

“She’s my mother,” Mallory said.

“Which is why she was in your life as long as she was.” Adam kept his back to her, so she couldn’t see his face. It didn’t sound like hurt in his voice. There was a lack of emotion that sounded far too like his sister, Evelyn, like the callousness of most of the witches Mallory had met. Hearing it in her father’s voice, especially about her mother, unsettled Mallory.

The silence that filled the kitchen was weighty with things that she didn’t quite understand. Had her mother done something awful? He didn’t date, so Mallory had thought for years that he must still love her mother, but now, she wasn’t sure.

He
could
date. Maybe that would help—and make him more likely to let her date. He was attractive in that old-guy way. He had hair that was dark enough still that she teased him that he secretly got it dyed, no wrinkles that she could see, blue eyes with the sort of thick lashes only seen on cartoon characters and baby dolls, and, despite only minimal exercise and an atrocious diet, a physique that would shame most guys her age. If not for the way he dressed, she suspected that he could pass for an older brother rather than her father. It was the benefit of being a witch: he was almost creepily attractive to human women despite being hundreds of years old.

She, unfortunately, had none of his genes. Her hair was a nonremarkable brown; her eyes were a normal brown; and her calories added up. She wasn’t unattractive; she was simply closer to average than to inhumanly striking, smart, and healthy like Adam. If she were more like Adam, she’d have had no trouble getting boys to actually ask her out. If she were a witch, she’d be able to learn spells to protect herself. If she were a witch, so much would be easier. Regrettably, she was just a human.

She sighed as she poured the tea.

“Mals? Is something else wrong?”

“I was just thinking that it’s not really fair that I
want
to date, but I look like me when you look like”—she motioned at him—“
that
and don’t date. I wish I had your genes . . . well, for a lot of reasons, but sometimes, for utterly shallow reasons too.”

He ignored the reference to dating and said only, “I wish you had my genes too.” Then he glanced at the clock. “I have an hour free. Cards? Television? Chess?”

Mallory picked up both cups of tea, feeling guilty for hoping that the rest of her life wasn’t like this. She loved her father, and she understood that there were dangers in the world, but sometimes she felt like she was smothering under his protections—and every time she tried to argue with him, the will to do so vanished before she could speak more than a word. It sounded ludicrous, but she’d wondered if his being a witch made it impossible to argue with him. Humans found witches attractive. Maybe it made it hard to argue with them too.

Adam walked over to the door, took a handful of the powder he kept there, and spilled it in a line over the doorway as he did every night. Then, he grabbed his plate. “Come on, Mals. I think we have a few episodes of that police show recorded.”

B
ELIAS CAME INTO CONSCIOUSNESS
with a yell that rolled into a name: “Aya!”

“Keep it down,” someone muttered.

The unfamiliar voice brought Belias to his feet. Several frightening moments wherein he couldn’t see passed, but as he blinked and stayed still, his vision returned. However, what he saw wasn’t particularly comforting: a strange woman in a gray suit sat on a chair in front of a table.

Belias felt his flesh where he’d been stabbed with Aya’s toxin-laden knives: no injury remained.
Am I dead?
If he was, he had been thoroughly wrong about the afterlife. If not, he wasn’t sure where he was. The woman, her clothes, and the room were unlike anything he’d seen in his life.

He stepped toward the woman—and hit an unseen wall.

Witch.
He looked again at her.
Unmasked witch.
That clearly couldn’t be good. No witch walked around unmasked in The City.

She looked only a few years older than him, but witches—like daimons—lived for centuries, so he had no idea how old she truly was. Few witches older than three hundred existed. Most of the older ones had been killed in the wars, but this witch seemed more poised than even the elder ruling-class daimons were.

He watched her as he put both hands up and pushed, but unlike the fight circles, this barrier didn’t shock him. It simply wasn’t permeable. He paced the perimeter of the circle, running his hands over it, nudging the base of it, and confirming that he was held as securely within it as he was within fight circles.

All the while, the witch continued to work on whatever the papers on her table were. She paid him so little attention that if not for her initial words, he’d wonder if she knew he was there. He felt for the weapons he’d had in the fight, but only found one knife. After ascertaining that he was still armed, he decided to speak. “Witch!”

She glanced up, spearing him with a cold gaze from her blue-and-gold witch’s eyes. “Daimon.”

Then her gaze returned to the paper in front of her.

Belias had never been ignored. He was a favored son in a ruling-class family, a well-regarded fighter, an experienced bedmate, and, of late, a finalist in Marchosias’ Competition. He frowned, and then said, “I demand my freedom, witch.”

“No.”

“You cannot—” His words died on his lips as she lifted one hand and waved it in the air.

“I can do whatever I want, Belias.” She didn’t look up even as she silenced his voice. Her pen continued scratching across the paper for several more moments.

He tried to speak, tried to clear his throat, and finding no sound possible, began running his hands over the barrier again. She had
silenced
him. It was more effective than anything he’d ever encountered in The City, but he didn’t need to speak, especially if she wasn’t going to listen. He’d tried conversation, but she resorted to her spells rather than act honorably.

It wasn’t surprising: witches were lesser beings, capable only of treachery unless they were kept in check. They’d murdered his father and countless other daimons. This one had imprisoned him. If witches tried to live openly in The City, they would be murdered in their sleep—as they should be. It had been that way for centuries. They’d traded in the flesh and blood of daimons to work their spells, had set nature against The City, and until they were all but purged from his world, they’d been a constant threat to order.

After the war, the witches had been given the human world; the daimons kept The City—what little of it they could save from the uncontrollable growth of the Untamed Lands. It was a fair treaty, far more so than the witches deserved. There were little conflicts after the treaty. A few daimons had exposed some witches somewhere called Salem, but daimons had become too complacent. Rumors of daimons summoned and bound as witches’ familiars circulated from time to time, and there was talk that other, stronger witches lived in the Untamed Lands, but there was no proof.

Except here I am, caged and silenced by a witch.

He’d been taught to always win, to never give in no matter the odds, so he wasn’t going to let some witch kill him. He was going to escape, and once he was home, he would use this experience to gain support for his plan to eradicate the remaining witches from The City.

Methodically, he began at the ground and slid his fingers around the edge, seeking a flaw or opening he could use to tear a hole in the circle. As he did so, he let his fingertips become talons. Animal wasn’t a form he preferred, but his talons were sharper and more sensitive than fingertips.

He heard a book close with a soft thump, and the witch’s footsteps clacked over the stone floor.

At her approach, he stood again. Even if he couldn’t get out of the circle, he wasn’t going to stay on the floor as if he was her subordinate. When he stood, he saw how very tiny she was: frail bones and no musculature to speak of, yet she had boldness unlike any witch he’d seen in The City.

“I dislike being interrupted when I am working, Belias.” She walked around the circle, and he turned as she did so, continuing to face her rather than let her stand behind him. “You’re different from the ones I’ve summoned before.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

She murmured something in the language of witches and motioned to him.

The temptation not to speak at her command vied with the need to know. The desire for knowledge won over pride. “Summoned where?” he asked.

She studied him as objects were studied in the Carnival of Souls, and Belias felt an unfamiliar prickle of fear spread over his skin. His hand went again to the hilt of the knife strapped to his thigh—and he realized that it was Aya’s knife, one he’d bought for her.

Why do I have Aya’s knife?

Nothing made sense.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You are at the offices of Stoneleigh-Ross, Belias. Specifically, you are in my office, in my summoning circle.” The witch looked bemused. “You are also completely and utterly unable to be anywhere else unless I allow it.”

Belias hadn’t ever heard of Stoneleigh-Ross, but he had heard of summoning circles. Daimons were only able to be summoned if the witch had their full name. “How? Who are you? Why? I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not going to stay here as your prisoner. Witches aren’t free from judgment. If Marchosias—”

“You aren’t within
his
domain,” the witch interrupted. “This is
my
domain.”

Belias narrowed his gaze. “Who are you?
Where
are we?”

“I’m Evelyn Stoneleigh, and we are in North Carolina.”

“Where?”

“The human world, Belias.”

Horror filled him. The human world was terrible. Every treatise his father had given him on the place highlighted the perversions and barbaric nature of humanity. The City wasn’t perfect, but it had a functional caste system, breeding control, and healthy commerce. Marchosias kept order, and judgments were swift.

The witch walked past him then, leaving him alone in the room, trapped in her summoning circle.

How did I end up here, in a world where witches hold dangerous amounts of power?

The last thing he remembered was his former betrothed stabbing him. He’d expected to die, been certain of it, in fact—and he wasn’t sure that waking up imprisoned by a witch in the human world was a much better fate.