Chapter 4

Four

I wake with a shiver and a puff of white breath in my face. Blinking at what little of the midday sun has penetrated through the canopy, I try to take stock of where I am.

It takes a minute to convince myself I am really out in the middle of the forest with nothing but the thin black slip covering me.

This isn't just another part of my dream.

Alone, cold sharp sticks poke at my feet and the gentle wind breathes over my goose-bump covered skin. But there's warmth at my waist.

A soft, furry head knocks at my hand.

All four of the wolves gather close to me, more solid than I've ever seen them in daylight. But whatever danger they sense, I can't see it. I can feel it though… and I can smell it.

There's a cloying scent of decayed magic on the wind, and my skin is chilled by more than just the December air. The fingers of something dark drag down my arm like bare branches, cold and scratching.

I draw in another breath that stings at my lungs, and when I exhale with a puff of white vapor, there's a flash of something in the trees to my left.

But when I turn to it, it's gone.

Under other circumstances, I might have thought it was a figment of my tired mind, but I'm here. And something definitely drew me out of the house.

Between my dreams and this, something is very definitely wrong.

"Arata."

The single world pulls a specter from the depths of the darkness. It claws and fights the whole way, tearing at tree bark and throwing up stones…

It breaks free the moment I inhale, taking back the breath that gave that single word its power.

But what it showed me is not good.

Aphrodite lourdes is dead.

I saw the twisted remains after her spell backfired and consumed her. This shade was not brought forth by the living. And the dead rarely want to stay that way.

Ghosts are real.

They are dangerous.

But more often than not, they are human and easily dealt with.

A witch on the other hand…

My unconscious journey left me near a familiar path, and I know that the boundary created by my wards lay another ten feet along it.

She was trying to draw me out of the protections of my home.

As I make my way back through the thick trees, the wolves keep close.

They're what keep me from thinking too deeply about how I got here and what I can do about it. Not because I don't need to worry, but because I do .

I can feel their fur against my skin, I can hear the low rumble of their growls…

The flicker of movement in the trees makes it clear: I'm not alone out here.

The fact that the wolves haven't taken care of the threat is what makes me certain it's not a physical being using Aphrodite's form… not yet, anyway.

It takes too long to get home, and when I slip through the back door into the kitchen, I don't take the time to wash my feet before I pluck one of the saddle blankets from the back of a kitchen chair and head through to the back staircase.

The step is still unsecured from the last time I dug through my mother's tomes on blood sorcery, and I shiver as I pull it away.

Something is very wrong.