Dire Blood (The Descent Series, Book 5) Read online

Unfortunately, it turned out that Hannah had already been dancing for several years, and she was in a much more advanced class than he was. But James was a fast learner when he wanted to be. Magic fell by the wayside as he spent more and more time practicing dance.

  The coven noticed.

  “Would you like to test for initiation into the coven early?” Landon asked James at the next esbat.

  James had been hoping for exactly that outcome since his year studying with Pamela, but the idea suddenly didn’t sound quite as appealing.

  “I guess,” he said.

  Landon had a very long talk with James’s parents after that. Accusations like “lack of enthusiasm” and “distraction” were bandied around.

  “I think it’s love,” his mother whispered.

  Soon enough, James found himself placed in Hannah’s ballet class. He was very tall and strong for his age, and the instructor wanted him to practice lifts so that he could join their holiday performance.

  “You’re a good dancer,” Hannah said after their first class together. It didn’t sound like a compliment.

  James felt hot all over. “Thanks.”

  “You’re amazing at witchcraft and pretty much a genius at everything else you try. Did you have to take over dance, too? Can’t you suck at something?”

  Hannah whirled and marched out of the room, leaving James alone in the dance studio as he struggled to understand what he had done wrong.

  DECEMBER 1980

  Christine came home for the holidays, and she was nothing like the sister James had left behind at Pamela’s house. She had to stop to catch her breath every time she walked somewhere, even if it was just across the room.

  “What’s wrong with you?” James asked when she took a break in the middle of decorating the house for Christmas. He was balanced precariously atop a chair so that he could hang garland over the kitchen doorway.

  “You’re what’s wrong with me, twerp,” she snapped, and then she stretched out on the couch to rest for a few more minutes.

  James’s mother entered the living room and snapped the back of his legs with a dishtowel. “Get down from there! You know that belonged to Mama Gray!”

  “Then how am I supposed to get up there to string lights?” he asked.

  “Get creative. Down. Now.” He grudgingly dropped to the floor and threw the rest of the decorations into the box. Seemingly satisfied that Mama Gray’s legacy was safe once again, their mother put her hand on Christine’s forehead. “You’re looking sick, dear. What’s wrong?”

  “I’m just sleepy,” Christine said.

  Before she could interrogate her daughter further, the timer in the kitchen started beeping. “Don’t let your brother break priceless antiques.”

  James’s mother returned to the cookies.

  “I wasn’t going to break anything,” he said, pulling a notebook out of his back pocket and flipping through the pages.

  Christine sagged on the couch, apparently too exhausted to argue with him. That worried James more than her lack of color. She had never had problems finding a reason to argue with her little brother.

  He tore a piece of paper out of the notebook and blew on it.

  Sparkling lights erupted throughout the room and settled like glistening diamonds on the garland he had already hung. James turned the chandelier off, and the living room remained bright enough from his magic to see perfectly.

  The twinkling lights reflected in his sister’s hungry eyes. “What is that?” Christine asked.

  “It’s a spell I was playing with,” James said, crumpling the scorched page and tossing it in the trash. “It’s just for looks. It’s stupid.”

  “No. What’s that?” She pointed at his notebook.

  He shrugged as he stuffed it into his pocket again. “Aunt Pamela’s been teaching me about paper magic over the phone and stuff. She wanted my help developing it.”

  Christine sat up and reached for him. “Let me see.”

  “I’m not supposed to let other witches play with my notebook.”

  “Give it here, James,” she insisted, getting to her feet and bracing a hand against the wall. “I’m not just some witch. I’m your sister.”

  It was easy to dodge her swiping hands. Christine was awfully slow.

  “Pamela told me specifically not to give it to you.”

  That stopped her cold. “Pamela told you that?”

  “Yeah,” James said. Emboldened by her reaction, he added, “She said that she doesn’t trust you.”

  Christine’s face crumpled. “But I’m getting better,” she whispered.

  “You’re just not as good as me.”

  Her chin trembled, her eyes glistened, and her entire face turned red.

  She fled from the living room and slammed her bedroom door.

  Christine didn’t show up for the performance of The Nutcracker on Christmas Eve. “Where is she?” James asked his parents backstage after the show, drenched in sweat and abuzz with adrenaline. He was only in the chorus, but he had done well, and he knew it; James felt the same way he always felt after unleashing a successful spell.

  “She’s sick,” said his dad as his mother hugged him tightly. “She stayed home to sleep.”

  He thought back on telling Christine that she wasn’t as good as he was, and felt guilty. Just a little. Despite their constant conflict, that had seemed to cross some unspoken line that siblings shouldn’t cross. But he was much too excited by his fantastic performance to worry about it for long, and Hannah was meeting her parents a few feet away, too.

  She had done even better than James. He had a hard time focusing when he was watching her dance, and he wanted to tell her just that.

  He pushed his mom off of him. “Wait a minute.”

  Hannah stepped away from her parents so that they could speak. “What do you want, James?”

  He wanted to tell her that she was incredible. Perfect. But all that came out was a few incoherent stutters, and, “Amazing.”

  “Amazing?” She folded her arms. “What’s amazing?”

  You are, Hannah.

  “The show,” he said weakly.

  She tilted her chin down and arched an eyebrow, which James would later think of as “the Hannah glare.” It would always have the ability to wither him on the spot. “I heard that Landon has invited you to initiate early.”

  He was surprised and pleased that she had been paying attention. “Yeah, he did.”

  “Tell him no,” Hannah said. “Don’t do it.”

  “Why?”

  She glanced around, as if to see if anyone were listening. Her parents were talking to his parents now, and she pushed him into the shadow behind a curtain. She was a full inch taller than him. Her lips were shiny with pink gloss. “When you initiate, you’re still not a real member of the coven. Not until you’re an adult, and you get a private meeting with Landon. Then he tells you things. Coven secrets.”

  “I probably already know all those secrets. I’m the high priestess’s nephew,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Not this. And you don’t want to know.” Hannah peered at their parents around the curtain before going on. “You can’t leave the coven once they make you a full member. You’re stuck for the rest of your life. They made Ariane a full member last year, even though she’s still too young, and you know what she did? She ran away.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Don’t initiate into the coven,” Hannah said. “That’s all.”

  “But aren’t you going to do it?” he asked.

  She didn’t get a chance to respond. Their parents had realized that they were missing and had located them behind the curtain.

  “What’s with the frown?” asked James’s mother, squeezing his shoulders as she led him to the car. She was crying again. She always cried at his performances. “You should be happy! You did so well, sweetie!”

  “Can we just go home?” James asked, wriggling out of her grip. He wanted to forget what Hannah had
told him. But it wasn’t the last time he heard about problems with the coven.

  JUNE 1982

  It was summer again, and that meant that it was time for James to study magic at Pamela’s house for three more months. When he arrived, Christine met him at the front door to watch him move his bags into the spare bedroom.

  “Ariane’s going to join us soon,” she told James as he set his suitcase on the bed.

  “Really?” He could barely summon Ariane’s face from his memory. Even though they had spent an entire year studying together, he had done a lot since that time. He had successfully put the Metaraon thing, as well as all of the unsettling feelings that came with it, out of his mind. “Does that mean Hannah might visit for the summer, too?”

  His sister gave him a pitying look. “Hannah’s studies are over. She won’t be back ever again.”

  “What? But I see her at every esbat.”

  “The coven’s being polite so that her parents don’t get mad and stop paying dues. But when she turns sixteen and applies for full membership, they’re going to refuse her. She’s not a strong enough witch.”

  James felt cold all over. Hannah wasn’t joining the coven. She wasn’t strong enough. He wondered if she would be disappointed, considering what she had told him at the Christmas recital.

  “But she was the only one of you three who actually studied during our year with Pamela,” he protested.

  Christine’s whole face darkened. “Sometimes, studying isn’t enough.”

  Ariane arrived that weekend. James watched from his bedroom window as Landon dropped her off. There was no sign of her supposed boyfriend, that Isaac guy. She was alone. Ariane was wearing a long, loose dress with her hair gathered in glittering clips.

  Pamela embraced her and led the girl inside. James ran into the living room to meet her, but by the time he got there, she had been taken into one of the bedrooms. Every door was shut.

  “What’s going on?” he asked Christine, who was reading a book on the couch.

  She placed a bookmark between the pages. “Nothing, as far as you’re concerned. Go outside.”

  Disappointed, James did as his sister ordered. She could hardly bully him anymore; he was a very tall twelve-year-old, and she still had to catch her breath when she walked across a room. But nobody nagged like Christine. If she wanted him to go outside, she would make sure that he went outside.

  He spent his afternoon wasting time in the forest, but returned a few hours later. He kicked a rock through the garden, sending it jittering and dancing over the brick path. When he passed the open window of his sister’s bedroom, he heard a strange sound: a soft, feminine noise that sounded like it was being muffled into a pillow.

  James paused to peer into her room, but the curtains were drawn. He couldn’t see anything. But someone was definitely crying, and it didn’t sound like Christine.

  He sneaked into the house and checked Pamela’s office. His aunt was seated in an active circle of power, and she was lost in meditation.

  Slipping past her office, he eased the handle of his sister’s door down and opened it to peek through the crack. He could see Ariane sitting on the foot of the bed with her hands in her lap.

  “I can’t believe it,” Christine was saying somewhere out of sight. “Why you?”

  “He said my skills were most suitable, so I volunteered.”

  “You volunteered?”

  “It’s important, Christine. There’s nothing more important than this.”

  Ariane ran a hand down the front of her dress, and James realized that the voluminous material concealed a strange curve to her stomach. For a moment, he had the unkind thought that she was a lot fatter than he remembered—and then he realized that it was the only place she had gained weight.

  She was pregnant.

  His sharp intake of breath made Christine look up. Before he could slip back into the shadows, she crossed the room, threw open the door, and grabbed his arm. “You snooping little prick!”

  “Hey! Let me go!” he protested. For a weak girl, she had an awfully strong grip.

  Ariane’s voice whipped through the air. “Christine! Let him in.”

  James shook his sister off and stepped inside. Christine shut the door firmly behind him. “You’re pregnant,” he said, circling around Ariane. She nodded. Her rosy cheeks shone with moisture.

  “Yes, I am. That’s why I’ve come here. Isaac is hunting a rogue overlord right now, and it’s too risky for me like…like this.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Her cheeks dimpled. “Don’t be sorry. I’m very happy. The problem is…” Ariane trailed off, and her gaze burrowed deep into James’s skull, as if she was seeing all kinds of things that he didn’t want anyone to see.

  He shifted on his feet. “I won’t tell anyone.”

  Christine gave a short laugh. “Everyone knows. Landon even congratulated her. Can you believe it?”

  There was something wrong about an adult congratulating a sixteen-year-old on her pregnancy. James thought back to the tall man called Metaraon inspecting the adepts, and Ariane binding as an aspis when she couldn’t even drive yet, and the swell of her stomach under her shirt. Yeah, there was definitely something wrong.

  James sat on the bed next to her and took her hand. “It’s okay,” he said firmly, even though it wasn’t. But he thought that it sounded reassuring. “Tell me what I can do to help you.”

  “You are very sweet,” Ariane said, patting his cheek. “Do you know what you can do to help?”

  “What?”

  “Never, ever go anywhere near my daughter.”

  James spent a lot of time thinking about that short conversation with Ariane. Never, ever go anywhere near my daughter. Was that meant to be for his safety or the baby’s? The latter didn’t make any sense. James was hardly a threat.

  One thing he did understand, with sudden clarity, was that there were secrets in his coven. Secrets that even he, the nephew of the high priestess, couldn’t begin to fathom.

  Secrets that he could only learn by immersing himself in them.

  He went to Pamela that weekend. She was writing another paper spell at her desk, and she looked strangely old and shrunken in her high-backed chair. Her black hair was streaked with white. Her skin was the consistency of the paper she wrote upon. “What do you need, sweetheart?”

  “Can you tell Landon that I’m ready to initiate?”

  Pamela set down her pen, gave him a sad smile, and nodded.

  James was initiated that week. Isaac killed his demon a few days later, and Ariane left to be reunited with her kopis.

  Christine died two weeks after that.

  Her funeral was held in the woods outside of Pamela’s house. James followed the pallbearers from a distance, watching his father shudder as he carried her casket to a grave that had already been prepared. He could hear his mother sobbing behind him, and it sounded so distant, like James was a million miles away from his family.

  Rain sprinkled on the clearing. The entire coven had gathered to honor Christine, and they milled around the disturbed earth of her grave wearing black robes. Ariane and Isaac stood shoulder-to-shoulder on the opposite side of the grave. Even underneath a loose sweater, James could see that she was growing quickly. Isaac looked skinny next to her.

  The ceremony was short. Landon said some words about eternity, and cycles, and the everlasting nature of souls.

  And then it was over. The crowd broke apart.

  James pushed through the coven to reach Ariane’s side.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She clutched the cross necklace over her heart, as if in prayer. “Do you…do you know what killed her?”

  He did. In fact, Pamela had given James two explanations for his sister’s passing: first, the publicly known cause of death that had been allegedly diagnosed by doctors; and second, the actual cause of death that had been diagnosed by the coven.

  The first reason was heart failure. An unknown defect.


  The second reason was accidental suicide via magic.

  Pamela had explained that, apparently, Christine had been struggling to catch up with James so that she could impress their family. She enchanted objects with greater and greater spells, none of which she was capable of handling. When she ran out of animals to sacrifice, she began drawing off of her own life force.

  After months of abuse, all it had taken was a single candlelight spell to do her in.

  Saying that out loud would have felt like admitting that James had killed his sister, and Ariane was already crying. So what he told her was, “It was an accident. An awful accident.”

  She nodded and sobbed even harder.

  He didn’t know what to say after that. Ariane and Christine had been close friends—much closer than James and Christine had ever been. He wanted to apologize for telling Christine that he was better than her, and that he was sorry for making her cry, and sorriest of all that he hadn’t trusted her enough to be more involved in her studies. But telling Ariane that wouldn’t fix anything. She had much bigger worries anyway.

  Ariane saved him from having to think of consoling words by reaching out to take his hand. “I’m going to name my baby after her. I would like to give her ‘Christine’ as a middle name.”

  “She would have liked that,” James said.

  “Yes. I think so.”

  Isaac finally spoke up. “Sorry for your loss, Faulkner.”

  It was the first time that James had ever heard Isaac speak, and it rang out as unemotional and inauthentic. His voice was deep and dead. He didn’t even change expression when he said it.

  James studied the kopis in the gray light of the storm. He had a hawk-like nose, eyes slanted in such a way that he would always look angry, even if he smiled, and a long scar running from one temple to the corner of his mouth. Now that he was standing right in front of him, James realized that his original estimation of Isaac’s stature had been wrong. The man wasn’t skinny; he was lean, but densely packed with muscle. He vibrated with tension, as if he might snap at any moment.

  Isaac was, in short, absolutely terrifying.