Chapter 5

5

I’d been accepted. I’d been accepted! The academy hadn’t forgotten about me, and my answers on the enrollment questionnaire had apparently been enough to secure me a place at orientation.

I slept fitfully, kept awake by dreams of being chased. Chased by someone…to somewhere…I didn’t know. None of it made sense and seemed more like nightmares.

Wide awake before dawn, I stared at the ceiling for the longest time, trying to compose myself and failing. I buried my face in my pillow and pulled the blankets higher. I’d need to enjoy every moment I had with my bed. Because soon enough I’d be out of here for good.

My body vibrated. Excitement filled me at the change in the game I had only hoped would come.

After last night, I knew there would be no persuading my uncle to find some loophole in the whole fated mate agreement, to dissolve whatever magical bond people thought had formed between me and Kendrick. To spare me. I didn’t even bother telling him about my reservations, or any misgivings I had based on Kendrick’s behavior. Uncle Will would think me a liar. He’d think it just another trick to get out of the engagement.

It left the Fae Academy as my only choice. Tuesday couldn’t get here soon enough.

Later, after spending my day interning at the law firm, I dashed through the park, heart racing, with the moon high overhead. With no one around to question me, I let my wolf shine through. Let her sniff the air and inhale the night. My eyes glowed a deep amber and I ran. I ran through the underbrush and the shadows and became part of them without changing entirely.

It might be my last time showing this part of myself so freely.

I’d gotten my invitation. I’d been accepted into the academy, or at least far enough I’d be attending orientation. It was better than nothing, and more than I could have hoped for.

Yet still so far from the finish line.

“Elfwaite?” I called out, slowing as I approached the area she claimed as her own. “Are you there?”

Glancing around, I saw I was alone. My senses remained on high alert, where they’d stayed since the encounter with Kendrick. I refused to be taken by surprise again.

The pixie popped her head out from a whorl no larger than an acorn in the trunk of a nearby tree. “Tavi! You finally came to see me. It took you long enough.”

I held out my hand to her and Elfwaite darted forward, resting on my open palm. We smiled at each other. “I know it’s been a while. I haven’t had the opportunity to get away,” I said.

Since the disaster at last night’s dinner, Uncle Will had decided he wanted to keep a close eye on me today. He’d tried to make it seem as though the extra attention was nothing. We both knew better.

Elfwaite’s eyes went wide. “Something happened to you.” I watched her eyes darken, black taking over the white as she saw me without seeing. “It’s fresh. An emotional wound you would rather hide. Talk to me.”

I told her about last night. I told her about Kendrick cornering me outside of the powder room and how I’d tried to fight him off and could not. There were no scratches on my neck to show her. I healed quickly on the outside.

“He’ll pay for what he did. Trust me. Did you hear back from the academy?” Elfwaite tucked her wings behind her, those odd upturned eyes catching mine and holding.

My stomach clenched. “I did.”

“And what’s wrong?” she blurted out.

The email had seemed like a life preserver. Until I read the fine print. “The orientation email gave me a specific list of acceptable half-breeds. Wolf shifters were not there.”

My blood had gone cold upon closer reading of the orientation email, warring with the excitement I’d felt from receiving it in the first place. I really should have known better. My kind would never be accepted by the Fae. Just as the Fae were seen as substandard by weres. The two breeds did not mix.

Except for me. Except for my parents, who’d decided to flout the longstanding and unwritten rules of their two kin, and look where it got them.

Elfwaite looked me over from head to toe. “You can’t let this stop you, Tavi. You need to keep moving forward. You need to fight.”

I didn’t want to smile, and I tried not to, but a hint of a grin tugged at my lips. No one had a better outlook on life than Elfwaite. “You know I love you.”

She winked at me, her skin a deep periwinkle in the hush of twilight. “I know. I love you too. And I’m sorry this is causing more stress for you.”

“I hate asking you for more…” I began. “But you mentioned someone who might be willing to help me?”

Elfwaite made a sound that might have been a scoff were she human. As it was, with her tiny pixie body, it more resembled a slight shift in the low murmur of the wind. “We’re friends, and friends help each other. I know a way around this problem. Or rather, I know someone who can fix it for you. The witch I mentioned to you has the magic to get you through orientation.”

I swallowed hard. “She can fix my being half wolf-shifter?”

Elfwaite nodded. “She’s a powerful creature of much renown, as long as you are willing to pay the price. It is nothing to scoff at.”

A part of me relaxed. Money was no issue. Uncle William did well as a defense attorney. Our comfortable living situation attested to his prowess in court. Although I had little cash of my own besides a bank account set aside for me by my parents before they died, I knew I could get the funds one way or another.

Elfwaite and I finished talking and I jumped up from the ground before she could issue another warning about price. Orientation was in two days. If everything went well, this could well be the last time I saw her for a long time.

We said our goodbyes, Elfwaite assuring me it wouldn’t be forever and me shrugging, trying to laugh it off. I’d be foolish to assume one way or another. I didn’t know what would happen. But I left a small piece of myself behind with her.

The directions to the witch’s house bounced around my head as I ran home, the distance providing a chance to conceive some sense of a plan for the future. And then I did what I needed to do.

* * *

Every town has a house—creepy, dark, and sinister—where the neighborhood kids spin tales of mayhem and despair. Where the shell of the home is long past its glory, surrounded by dark woods, and inspires new urban legends about children-eating monsters and scary things going bump in the night.

In reality, the only things going bump along the aged and weathered floorboards are those running on four legs and scrounging for scraps. Spiders and raccoons and opossums and the like.

The “witch’s house” at the end of Everly Lane was such a place.

Two stories high and set far back from the road amidst the trees, the roofline sloped and cut through the night sky like a dagger. Crumbled gables and turrets decorated the old Victorian, and empty windows stood in mute witness to the march of progress in the surrounding suburban paradise.

Despite the weeds choking the lawn and the overgrown tree limbs draping down toward the fence, magic lived there. I smelled it coming from the land itself. As though the witch’s power had seeped into her property.

It was a hell of a place to go at night. I didn’t have a choice.

Sunday after dinner, I’d driven over and parked a good distance away, walking the remaining two blocks to the address Elfwaite had given me, trying not to be seen. The stolen money I’d swiped from Uncle William’s office burned a hole in my pocket. He and his drinking buddies had missed their habitual meeting thanks to our dinner with the Grimaldis and it left him in a position to push his schedule back even knowing he had work in the morning.

A quick trip, he assured me on his way out the door, and then he would be back. I was not to leave the house under strict threat of penalty.

Too bad.

When the road, nothing more than a winding gravel drive cutting through the woods, ended in a patch of trees, I swallowed the rest of my misgivings and continued.

The living shadows reached for me the moment I entered the tree line, and the rest of the world faded away. The families living in their quaint cookie-cutter houses down the block, children tucked tightly into bed after urgings for sweet dreams, none of them would understand why I walked toward the house where no one wanted to go.

But when life backs you into a corner and offers you no chance for escape, when your friends and your family believe the monster in front of you is the best choice for a future, and when you’re at the end of your rope, alone and losing your mind, you’d do anything to find a way out. You’d do anything to make those problems disappear.

Then you’d find yourself on the witch’s doorstep. Then you’d steal from your uncle. Willing to pay any price.

My pupils narrowed at the change in light. The better to see through the darkness. Even so, I lost track of the sloping roofline of the Victorian through the crowd of tree trunks. The woods were alive. They shifted and changed and blocked my view. Strange noises sounded from the darkness. There were no owls here, no night creatures whose calls I knew and recognized. I could almost imagine strange beasts hiding among the limbs. Ready to lash out at any moment.

A strange heaviness fell over me.

I stopped, closing my eyes and drawing in a breath. There was nothing out here to hurt me, I reminded myself. The wolf inside of me, an apex predator, could handle whatever flew or skidded or crept among the trees. Right?

It took a moment to move my legs, to strengthen my spine and push forward.

I tried not to freak out or run, although I wanted to do both. Here, magic ran wild and snapped and bit like a rabid creature ready to pounce.

Had I thought myself immune to it?

Heaving in a breath, I fought through the heavy sensation, like pushing a wall of water aside.

Then something on the breeze drew me. A hint of the power I’d sensed before. My nerves tingled, and it reminded me of the way I felt around Elfwaite. It was cool, calming, serene, like dipping overheated feet into a cool lake.

The old house loomed ahead with liminal light reflecting off of rusted sconces on either side of the door. I climbed the four steps leading up to the landing and paused in front of a massive wooden door. The brass knocker looked to weigh close to twenty pounds and for a moment I wondered how the weather-beaten wood managed to keep it held up.

The slight sense of wrongness had me pausing, curling my hand into a ball and keeping it in the air before knocking.

Was I really doing this? Was I really seeking out a woman I didn’t know whose house looked like she lured in strangers to eat?

The memory of Kendrick flashed behind my eyes and the knots in my stomach tightened. Yes, you bet I am doing this.

Without any further hesitation, I reached out and let my fist fall.

“Hello? Is anyone home?” I called out.

Then nearly lost my dinner when the door jerked open suddenly and I saw a woman holding a double-barreled shotgun leveled at my face.