CHAPTER ONE
If there was one thing Melanie S'velare
was sure of, it was that her soul was in jeopardy because she was a witch. Not
because she'd made a demonic deal, but because she suspected her powers might
be stronger than she was. She was afraid that one day, the lightning and
thunder churning inside her would rip through her control, leaving her soul and
body open to the Ace of Hearts, like an unlocked door to a burglar.
The Ace of
Hearts, if it was still alive, would kill for that chance.
"Princess,
are you listening?" Mrs. Elyse Clovis Bouchard asked. Melanie's tutor in
political arts, Mrs. Bouchard was of average height, average weight, and fish
mouthed, which sent the whole picture of the woman off kilter. When she spoke,
spit flew across the library in direct proportion to how much enthusiasm she
had for the subject. She was currently attempting to teach Melanie the finer
arts of political maneuvering that led to the rise of the Ottoman Empire, known
not only for its wealth, but in the secret world that Melanie occupied, for its
elemental power over huge swaths of civilization. Mrs. Bouchard's spit had
spattered on Melanie's notebook paper in three fat drops.
"Yes,"
Melanie said, looking up from the spittle wrinkling the paper. She was in a
class of one, no longer able to attend public school because of the unusual
things that tended to happen when she was in any sort of mood that wasn't
perfect relaxation. That, and she'd destroyed an entire classroom and
traumatized several students three months previously when an azri had attacked
her, tried to eat her soul and take the Ace of Hearts, her reliquary of power,
from her. Also, Melanie was a huge insurance liability because she tended to
start electrical fires every twenty-eight days or so when her emotions took a
turn into the depressive and destructive, in a three day hormonal sprint.
"Have you
some other place to be?"
Melanie pushed
herself straight in her chair and rapidly blinked her eyes, trying in vain to
force herself awake. "No," Melanie said. "I'm just having a hard
time staying awake."
"Do I bore
you, Princess?" Mrs. Bouchard looked down her nose over those fish lips at
her.
Melanie
swallowed. She needed to know these things. She needed this strategy if she was
ever to be a good leader for her people. There were other covens out there in
the world, and the political interactions in the magical community made the
mortal world's politics seem like commercials for cupcakes. "No, I need to
learn this. Please, keep going."
"Perhaps we
will take an extended lunch today. Let's meet back here in an hour."
Melanie sighed
and nodded. She needed to get out of the dreary library. She gathered her bag
and put her books inside, thinking that she would study over lunch. At the
bottom of the bag, a bottle of unused pills rattled. The prescription
anti-anxiety meds messed with her ability to keep control of her magic, so
she'd stopped taking them weeks ago. She still couldn't control the flood of
panic every time she thought a shadow was the noir reaching out to corrupt her.
Melanie wouldn't
be attending a public school again, not until college. She was far too
dangerous. One stray argument with pretty much anyone, and in seconds there
could be an electrical storm of biblical proportions terrorizing all the
teenagers at her high school, setting off fire alarms, with follow-up videos
posted to the internet. The damnable internet.
A video of
Melanie, in the grips of the Ace of Hearts's consciousness, while she and her
Vanguard tried to destroy it, had surfaced online. She couldn't afford to be
recognized by anyone as the girl in that video. There would be far too many
questions, and it would endanger the coven. The last thing anyone wanted was a
conflict with the mortal humans. Melanie had also learned that there were strict
international laws about magic and its use in public. The kind of laws that,
when broken, resulted in death, dismemberment, or worse.
According to
several of her mother's advisors, Lord Rossi's mustache among them, she wasn't
fit for public interaction because the risk that she would break one of those
international laws of magic. One fuzzy video of a girl with auburn hair spewing
lightning from her hands at a man who looked like a teacher, and she was banned
from public appearances beyond the rare outing to lunch. Not the glamorous,
paparazzi-filled life of the crown princess.
It was a good
thing she wasn't in public very often. Her control on her magic was still weak.
She could snap at any second and voila! Twenty thousand volts of raw witch
anger, depression, or just downright irritation could electrocute the nearest
bystander. She could probably solve the world's energy crisis if someone hooked
her to a set of jumper cables and a battery array. Until she got control of her
powers, she was on a strict "no use" ruling from her mother.
"Rough
lesson?" Jack, her friend and a member of her Vanguard, asked as he caught
up to her. He'd been reading in an overlarge chair near the door. He was her
guard today. He and his twin sister, Luciana, attended public school, with him
taking classes Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, and Luciana attending
Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Melanie sighed
dramatically and hiked her bag higher on her shoulder. "Do the words 'ce
n'est pas terrible' cover it?"
Jack didn't
laugh. It wasn't that funny. With his six-foot-two frame, his shoulders broad
enough to make any body builder salivate, Jack walked with both a natural
swagger and like a man about to crack skulls. He kept pace at her side and
considered. When Jack considered, he took his time about it.
"Want to
get out of here for lunch?" he finally asked, his impossibly deep voice
rumbling in his chest.
"I need to
study," Melanie said. "I need to know this stuff if—"
"Hey,"
he said. "You're going to break something if you keep that up. Relax.
Let's just find a place to eat. Someplace you like, that you won't accidentally
burn down." From their mind-to-mind connection, Melanie felt a flicker of
emotion from Jack: a dash of comfort, some humor, a hefty helping of happiness,
and the relaxed satisfaction of belonging. There was only one place that filled
that order: the Tattered Ear, where the local pack of Scottish-bred shape
shifters met. It was also where Ignatius Bruce, the pack's alpha, and Melanie's
soul mate, worked during the day.
It didn't take
much prodding to get her to agree. "We'll have to sneak out," she
said.
"Let's go
then," Jack said. His huskiness intimidated the shape shifters enough that
Melanie soon learned if any of her Vanguard would be accepted into the pack's
circle, it would be Jack. Also Ignatius co-owned the local pub with his uncle,
Fergusson. "Sneak out the back?"
"My
thoughts, exactly," she said. Besides, it was finally warm enough to go
outside without a parka, so walking wouldn't be miserable.
"Keep a lid
on the weather," he said. "It's a dead giveaway whenever you are up
to something."
Melanie felt her
smile slip. "Right," she said.
"Mel,"
Jack said, stopping, "I'm sorry." He ran a hand through his short
brown hair. "I didn't mean it like that."
The problem with
having a Vanguard who was blood bound to her is that they could sense her
emotions and her thoughts through touch. Any one of them could pinpoint her
exact location as long as they were within a ten-mile radius of each other. So
when her depression hit her like a two-ton brick, he felt the shockwave.
Likewise, his remorse filtered through the bond, and the combination was a
power-punch of teenage angst, regret, and mutual suffering, that neither of
them wanted or needed more of.
"Don't
worry about it," she said, forcing her thoughts away from the one thing
she couldn't think of, the one thing she kept a secret from everyone. The one
thing that terrified her as much as her out of control abilities did.
"Let's just go."
Jack nodded and
waited for her to go first, still feeling as sorry as a kicked puppy. Which
made it worse, because Jack was like a puppy. He just loved everyone. When he
was sad, it was like a double shot of negativity in her brew of
already-hard-to-swallow latte called life.
The Manor was
huge. Castle huge. It was also decorated with expensive furnishings that were
the remains of Melanie's family history. Her ancestors were mostly Italian, and
the frescoes and tapestries were of spreading fields of olives and grapes and
European landscapes. It was all very idyllic, very much a lie compared to the
truth about the S'velare's.
Under normal
circumstances they would shift out,
using their magical abilities to travel through the space. Lately, Melanie's
magic had become a liability rather than a boon when jumping from place to
place. It was safer to walk. The last time she'd made the attempt with another
person, it had been in the depths of February, soon after Valentine's Day, and
she and Luciana had ended up waist-deep in a frozen pond, halfway to their
destination. An emergency trip to the witch doctor had saved them both from
hypothermia. Still, Melanie hadn't tried to shift
since. She didn't trust her control not to accidentally drop her and Jack over
a cliff, or worse, inside it.
"Let's go
out the back this time. I'll throw you over the wall or something."
Melanie had to
smile at the joke. She sensed his humor in her mind, and it helped.
Her smile
vanished when they rounded the corner and her black-eyed brother, Owen, stood
in the exact middle of the corridor, waiting for them.
Jack placed a
protective hand on her shoulder, ready to draw her behind him. She could feel
his pulse through the contact, his shock and the sudden instinctive fear that
matched her own.
Owen's eyes were
black as pitch, like an azri's, but he wasn't one. He was still a mage, but he
no longer had a soul. He'd been totally exposed to the raw darkness of the
noir, black magic. What looked out through his eyes was neither human nor azri,
but something in-between. Melanie felt stripped down to her soul when he turned
that black gaze on her, as if he could see every secret she was keeping from
the coven, her Vanguard, and her boyfriend. Worse still, Owen's soullessness
was her fault.
She swallowed.
"Someone is
looking for you," he said, tonelessly. "To give you a message. Listen
carefully to what he has to say. It will be very important."
"Who is
looking for me?" Melanie asked.
Owen frowned.
"I don't know. I just know that someone is looking for you. I will cover
your escape." Then a slight tug of power filled the air and her brother
vanished, shifting as if it were
child's play. He was only thirteen and such abilities should have been beyond
him, or at least more difficult. But without a soul, Owen was thirteen going on
infinity.
A cold sweat
broke out over Melanie's body.
Let’s agree to not think about it, Melanie
thought to Jack.
He nodded, his
brown eyes still wide. I'm going to have
nightmares tonight. I wish he
wouldn't do that.
Melanie didn't
respond. She always had nightmares. Ever since the Ace of Hearts had come into
her life, night was rife with terror of the thing she couldn't let her waking
self think about. No one could know.
The guards
posted in the early spring garden were absent. Jack gave Melanie a leg up near
the back wall closest to the dark forest of silver aspens and spruce spires
before he pulled himself over and joined her on the other side.
Melanie took a
deep breath of the free air. When she first arrived in Park City, Utah, she had
hated it. At the time it had been under several feet of snow. Now, a cool wind
caused the trees to sway gently, and the spring shoots poking through the waves
of gray dead grass from last season, rustled under foot. Park City was
beautiful, and possessed a wildness all to itself that conjured images of plaid
button-downs and leather boots. Everything smelled perfect, no hint of city
pollution for miles in any direction. The trees and mountains parting its
streets dispelled any urban feel and replaced it with artsy communities of
athletic outdoorsmen. Park City itself was an elementally charged place. Even
without the magical inhabitants, it was a magical place tucked away from the
rest of the world.
The walk into
downtown wasn't long. Soon the sounds of main street were close, the rumble of
cars and conversation of people interweaved with nature's rhythms.
Jack, his hands
in his pockets, sighed. "I love this town, but you know, sometimes I just
wish we could leave."
Melanie smiled
at him. She didn't have to say that she did too.
How many times
had she wondered that? The shape shifters could do it. In fact, Ignatius, Nate
for short, had done it several times when he needed a break. She'd never seen
him leave before; he was always where she could find him, or finding her when
she wasn't looking for him. But she knew he had escaped into the wilderness
more than once. At night, when he wasn't allowed in the ManorManor, he would
sit at the edge of the trees and watch over her until the moon rose high and
heavy among the stars. Those were the nights when she slept until morning. For
him, it wasn't anything to melt into the trees and disappear from a world that
was happy to forget about him.
Perhaps that was
the problem. The world was not ready to forget about Melanie S'velare, Keeper
of the Ace of Hearts, heir to the S'velare throne, the strongest witch ever to
live.
"I think
you'd end up living in a rockslide or something," Melanie said as they
stepped from the forest onto concrete sidewalk.
"Probably,"
he said. "But that would be pretty cool. I bet I could." Jack's
reliquary was the King of Spades, meaning he was a mage gifted with power over
earth. Luciana's reliquary was the Queen of Spades and she also had power over
earth, but over plants instead. Together they were a badass team of nearly
unstoppable power.
Melanie smiled
and adjusted the bag on her shoulder. It was a warm day, the Utah sun already
beating down, promising a dry and brutal summer ahead. She shielded her eyes
and looked up toward the tallest buildings, the two and three story historic
constructs comprising main street, a mass of artistry, talent, good food, and
outrageous resort pricing. The ski lifts were still active in April due to the
unusual snowfall this year. Snowboarders and skiers carried their equipment in
bikini's and swim trunks. Here, the beach wasn't a sandy stretch, it was where
the snow met the street. Lawn chairs were set out and people were sunbathing.
This year the
resorts were doing well. Melanie's nightmares messed with her emotions enough
that, for several weeks, nightly blizzards had coated the resort town in some
of the best powder Utah had experienced in years. The result was a longer
season and a boosted economy. So while she was damn good at destroying
buildings with accidental tornadoes, many members of the coven had complimented
her on the increased income her instability had brought them. Lord Rossi and
her mother were decidedly not pleased by this.
"What are
you looking at?" Jack asked, leaning down next to her and squinting in the
direction she was looking.
"I think
there's someone standing on top of the theater." With the sun behind the
person, it was hard to tell. It could be a movie gimmick, or something from one
of the new indie films coming to town. The wind picked up and the man's clothes
shifted. His coat, too warm for the unseasonably warm weather, swept out behind
him like a cape and Melanie recognized him.
Gavin.
She swallowed
and lowered her hand and he disappeared in a sliver of black vapor. Gavin was
an azri, a soul eater. He was also her birth father.
