Geist's entire posture shifted.

His shoulders, perpetually hunched, relaxed. He crossed his arms. His lower jaw shifted to the side a tiny bit and he looked around, his eyes examining the surroundings as though for the first time. He even turned in a small circle, really taking in the Shadow Vaile.

Is this a trick? Is he setting up an ambush?

Maybe this was what happened when the Shadow Vaile broke a person’s mind.

When Geist had turned in a full circle, he let out an unimpressed grunt.

“I always thought it would've been bigger. And…” He paused, chewing on his lip for half a second before shaking his head. “And I guess more… what… shadowy? Strange?”

His eyes drifted over to fix on me. I couldn't get over how shiny and red his eyes were, how strange they were.

“So,” he said in a soft, polite voice. The voice coming out of his body sounded nothing like Geist's. There was almost a cultured lilt to it, a hint of an accent from long ago that had never truly been forgotten but still slipped into individual syllables, making you unsure whether or not the person even had an accent. “You’re Hexana Covington.”

“Hex,” I corrected.

Geist lifted his finger to his nose and tapped the right side of it twice.

“Hex,” he said and gave me an agreeable smile. “Sure. Why not?”

I wanted to ask him what was wrong, to ask what had happened, if he’d changed his mind about killing me, but none of those questions came out. What did come out was an entirely different question which I wasn't sure I wanted the answer to.

“Who are you?”

Geist smiled at me and shook his head. “There are all sorts of ears listening in this place. I'm not about to say my name in the Shadow Vaile. Who knows what could overhear it and transfer that name to someone else's ear. Think about it. The web my name could create is infinite.”

Frowning, I just stared at him.

“The question isn't who, it's what,” he said. “What am I?”

I raised my eyebrows at this, and he raised his own in response.

“Fine.” I’ll play your game. “What are you?”

“I'm Geist's boss.”

His boss? How does that make any sense? If he’s Geist's boss, is Geist possessed right now? Is there something magickal living inside him that occasionally comes up to the surface to take over?

This idea of something coming to life within Geist, coupled with his strange red eyes, sparked something that Flin had said.

My eyes narrowed. “You’re a blood caster.”

The man held up a single finger and shook his head.

“Wizard?” I guessed.

Geist dropped his finger and nodded. As I stared at him, I realized that someone, some wizard back on Nidema, or possibly a different plaine or shard altogether, was controlling Geist's body. I had a good feeling the Shadow Vaile wouldn’t mentally affect this wizard as he wasn't physically here.

“So, what is Geist?” I asked. “Just some lackey?”

“Lackey?” the blood wizard asked, letting out a deep, rumbling laugh. “Geist was no lackey. A vessel to be sure, but no lackey. His son, however…” The man glanced around, looking for Flin.

His eyes focused on the bloody obelisk and I wondered if he could see Silvy curled around the tip, sleeping.

“Oh,” the blood wizard said. “Is that…?”

Silvy lifted her head. “Yes, I’m her familiar. Don't talk to me, blood wizard. You have no power here.”

“Wow.” The blood wizard lifted Geist's hand to his chest. “She was rude. Very rude. Did you teach her to act like that?”

I shook my head. “No, she was like that when I was cursed.”

“Cursed.” The blood wizard nodded. “I'm sorry about that. I really wish I could've come up with a better plan, but…” He shrugged. “You understand.”

I didn't understand. I had no understanding at all.

“What's with the park—” He bit his lip and tapped the side of his nose twice. “Right. Witches are always cold. I wonder… It’s been theorized that witches don't have the cold issue on their own shard. Do you know if that's true?”

The blood wizard controlling Geist was completely agreeable. It felt like talking to someone’s extremely outgoing uncle.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“It's warm here,” I offered. “I don't know about the witch shard.”

“Belladonna,” the man said with a curt nod.

“What?” I asked.

“Belladonna. That's the name of the witch shard. Belladonna.”

“Belladonna,” I said. “Okay.”

He smiled and nodded. “It’s always good to be learning. Anyways, I think it's interesting that you don't have the cold issues in the Shadow Vaile. I wonder if that's more because you’re a witch or because you're a Covington.”

I shrugged.

“Right. So.” He took a step towards me and, although his speech was completely unaffected, the step held malice.

He’s stalking me. Luring me to sleep with his words. I’m prey.

His next question caught me off guard.

“Did you know that your father and I worked together?”

My eyes narrowed at this.

“I supposed that might be a surprise,” he said. “I helped him build Blackhart. I helped him fashion that permanent gateway between Blackhart and Sulis.”

I frowned. “Sulis?”

“Oh,” he said with a frown, “the theatre? In Nightsbridge? That's what he named it: Sulis.”

“Sulis.” I didn’t know he’d named it.

“Anyways. We used to be very close.”

He took several more steps towards me and I realized that I was right up against the obelisks. I didn’t have space to back away. He'd managed to shrink the area in which I had to escape.

“Do you know what we were working on?” he asked.

I shook my head no, trying to come up with a way to escape now as the blood wizard kept speaking through Geist’s lips.

“We worked on a project together. Something much bigger than ourselves, something that was going to open up the magick world entirely.”

“Okay,” I said with a frown. Why is he telling me this? Why am I the one he’s telling?

“Anyways, do you know what your father asked me to do before he went away?”

I shook my head.

“He asked me to keep an eye on you, to look out for you, and that's what I've done.” He sighed. “I've watched you waste your life away, Hex. Placing your hope in lottery tickets and scratch offs. That silly, little cabinet filled with your miserable failures.”

His tone had shifted from friendly to disgusted so fast that my mouth fell open. And, before I knew what was happening, he lunged at me, grabbing both of my arms, pinning them behind me, and twisting me around so that I tripped and fell.

He fell on top of me, straddling me, holding my arms down. I tried to squirm, tried to move my arms out, tried to kick him, but he had me pinned.

The speed with which it had happened brought back a memory from elementary school.

Joey Martinez had brought in a python for show and tell. He’d placed a tiny mouse in the cage, and we all watched. Once the python realized there was something else in the cage, it became laser focused on the mouse. Slowly its head lifted, and it began to move at a painstakingly slow pace towards the mouse, getting ever closer until it was right next to it. And then, without warning, it struck, twisting the mouse up, curling it tight in its grasp.

The squeals of the mouse had been terrible. The squeals as it tried to squirm away had haunted my dreams that night.

Now, in the Shadow Vaile, I'd fallen for the exact same thing.

I'd allowed this blood wizard to get close enough to strike, for some reason believing he would only use magick. The physical attack had been something I hadn't seen coming even though I should have.

The blood wizard held me against the ground and stared down at me with his shiny blood red eyes, smiling like that kindly uncle.

“You know what I never understood about your father?” he asked, more to himself than to me. “I never understood why he turned his back on me, on us, on the magick world.”

What is he talking about?

“That always bothered me. You know, he went headlong with this pie-in-the-sky belief that he could help magickkind. But somewhere along the way, he fell in love with sticks. He fell in love with people like you.”

His eyebrows lifted and the corners of his eyes creased with what looked like a mix of supreme sorrow and good-natured empathy.

“I don't get what happened to him,” he said with a sigh as he slipped his hands around my throat and squeezed.

My hands, trapped by my sides, couldn’t move. I couldn't reach up and grab him. I couldn't stop him. I felt the air die in my throat and behind him, up on the obelisk, Silvy watched both of us struggle, her striped tail swishing back and forth.

She can help. She can save me. Why doesn’t she?

I looked back at Geist’s face, looked at the shining red eyes of the blood wizard possessing Geist’s body. With the hood of my parka obscuring my peripheral vision, he was pretty much all I could see.

If you don’t take control of your own life, someone or something else will.

“Your story’s nice,” I squeezed out and Geist relaxed his grip the tiniest amount so I could continue, “but you forgot one thing…”

Even though I could have said this louder, I didn't. I left it a strained whisper.

Magickal mindset, magickal mindset. C’mon, be fucking magickal, Hex…

I had one chance to make this work, one weapon. I needed to bring him in closer. I needed to make him lean forward.

He obliged, bringing his face down and putting his ear next to my lips.

“And what's that?” he asked.

“I'm a blood wizard too,” I lied.

The blood wizard’s laugh erupted from Geist’s mouth and he turned to look at me, turned to say something, his nose almost touching my own.

I didn't waste any time.

I slammed my head up into his as hard as I could. The sharp edges of my horns sliced through the folds of his forehead then cut down to his eyebrows. When the tips of my horns found his eyes, nestled in his eye sockets like soft, blood red eggs in a nest, I drove my horns deep.

He screamed, his hands suddenly off me, his legs trying to stand, but I stayed with him. I wrapped my arms around his ribcage, my legs around his waist, making sure my horns stayed right where they were as I twisted my neck to the left and right.

I’d blind him, sure, but that wouldn't be good enough to kill him. I needed to finish him off right then and right there.

He stood up with me wrapped around his torso. As soon as I felt upright, I dropped my feet to the ground and started pumping my legs, forcing him backwards, not knowing where we were in the circle but hoping we were close to the obelisks.

I dropped my hands to his chest so that I could have an escape once we hit.

I kept driving and he kept screaming. When I felt a sudden stop to my forward momentum, I pushed against his chest as hard as I could and ripped my head back. I pushed away from him so hard that I ended up rolling onto my back.

I sat up and looked for him, fully expecting to see him running right at me.

That wasn’t the case.

Geist stood upright; his back pressed to an obelisk.

The tip of the obelisk behind him folded, the point of it curving down and twisting back towards his stomach. It impaled him and he let out a choking noise that might’ve been words. The obelisk slid back into the forest of obelisks. His gurgling screams filled the Shadow Vaile and then suddenly cut off into silence.

I sat at the center of the circle, his blood dripping off my horns, down my forehead and cheeks. I pulled my hood up and brought my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them.

I was suddenly cold, my horns were freezing, and I just wanted to go home.