25. Cultists

twenty-five

With a hand on Darkly’s shoulder, Milla stepped onto the passenger footrest and swung her leg over the saddle, dropping behind him and scooting close in a smooth, practiced motion. She wrapped her arms around his waist and balanced her weight along the centerline, earning a quiet hum of approval she didn’t hate.

“Hold on tight.” Darkly gripped her thigh, right above the knee, and gave a firm squeeze.

She scooched closer, lacing her fingers together, and they were off. He maneuvered the bike around clusters of tourists on Hypolita, taking the turn onto Cordova and then King Street, where he opened the throttle. She could sense his elation as they sped west across the bridge. It was in how he held his shoulders and tilted his head back, the controlled line of his body on the turns, and the utter confidence with which he drove the bike.

Every minute she spent on that motorcycle erased more of the chambray and khaki lies, and she found it harder and harder to convince herself she didn’t like the witch revealed by their absence.

Darkly turned them off the main road onto a tree-lined street, and Milla’s stomach sank. The trees grew thicker, dripping with Spanish moss and choked by Kudzu. Through the thick trunks, she caught flashes of a worn wrought-iron fence. Long grasses bristled through the bars and clung to the stone bases of statuary speckling a green field.

Milla tightened her arms around Darkly, wishing with every atom of her being that he would drive past. Instead, he slowed the motorcycle and pulled over to the side of the road, parking behind a white SUV. Two dozen people in running clothes gathered near the open gate, chatting and sipping from red plastic cups, a handful of them glancing over and raising their hands in greeting as Darkly pulled off his helmet.

“I can’t be here,” she said once hers was off. “Seriously, Darkly, this is a bad idea.”

“It’ll be fine.” He tossed his jacket on the saddle. “The cemetery runs along the border of St. Augustine, so we’re technically nae in the demesne.

“It’s not the demesne I’m worried about.” She nervously glanced around, then popped onto her tiptoes to whisper, “It’s the dead people.”

Darkly’s eyes widened. He jerked his head up, scanning the cultists and the cemetery. “Do you see dead people?” he asked in all seriousness.

“Shut up.” Milla swatted his arm. “You know what I mean. I’m a Death Witch.” She pointed to herself, then to the open gates and lawn. “ That’s a massive cemetery.”

“It’ll be alright, Milla.” He grabbed her hand and squeezed, not letting go. “The pack is excited to meet you; they wouldnae chase a trail that puts you, or anyone else, in danger.”

“And how do you know?”

“Trust me.” He dug in the saddlebags, withdrawing her running clothes and shoes. She took them, and he circled a finger in the air over her head. “May I?”

“May you what?”

“Offer some privacy?” Smoke clouded his eyes, and shadow bloomed in his palm. Milla nodded, and he grinned widely. Thick wafts of smoke spilled from his palm, crashing against the ground at her feet and curling in over itself. Higher and higher until Milla was hidden behind a roiling wall of shade.

Though shut off from the cultists, she heard their muffled chatter, and the space within Darkly’s casting remained evening bright. Swirls and whorls of dense fog twisted and rolled on a phantom breeze, and she caught the faintest whiff of clove and smoke, that scent she associated so strongly with Darkly. It reminded her of incense burned in censers. Of warm tea and flannel blankets. And him.

Milla ran her fingers through the smoke, and a shiver of what she could only define as pleasure ran up her arm.

“You can’t see me, can you?”

A moment of silence followed, and then that voice .

“ No. ”

“Why don’t I believe you?” She tugged off her boots and shimmied out of her jeans. Darkly did not respond, but she could feel his presence all around her like the Shades were an extension of himself and not summoned from the Neitherworld, the space between the living and the dead from which he called his Way. The thought had her dressing more quickly, and when her clothes were wadded in her arms and laces tied, she cleared her throat. “I’m done.”

The wall of shadow smoke crashed down, revealing Darkly in his running gear and a beaded necklace matching those the cultists wore. He held out a hand for her clothes.

“Thank you,” she said, handing them over.

“Dinnae fash.” He stashed them in the saddlebags and faced Milla. “You ready?”

“Nervous,” she admitted, which wasn’t a lie but was far from the full truth. Milla avoided the magick-addicted cultists as a rule. Morgen had always explained it as a side effect of being exposed to large amounts of the Ways. As mortals, the Staid, their bodies were not equipped to process magick, and it altered their chemistry, causing an addiction that had them obsessively seeking out more for the high it gave.

Cultists were rampant in Key West. Milla and Morgen had worked hard to keep them from noticing her Way, and for good reason. The Ways were many and spread across the globe. Chronomantics and meteomantics, stitch and green witchery, technomancy. Most cultists gained their first hit of magick from one of the common Ways, building tolerance and, with time and care, remaining functional citizens of wherever they lived. But death magick?

To Morgen’s knowledge, no cultist had ever been exposed to her Way, and to do so risked not only Milla’s discovery but catastrophic results.

What would happen when a horde of drunks addicted to her Way were unleashed on the unsuspecting mortal world?

“I’ve never spent much time around them.” Every horror story Morgen had spun ran through her head. She shivered and raised her hands, wrists up, catching the light in the shimmering swirl of Lou’s Soul Sigil. “Guess it’s good I have this then.”

“Yeah.” Darkly said, hard and cold enough that Milla jerked her face up. He stared over her head at the cultists, eyes distant and jaw tight. The bob of his throat had her eyes dropping to the beaded necklace. She read it the name it bore. Then, read it again.

“Hold on.” Milla hooked the necklace with her finger and pulled it away from his throat. She’d known about this particular quirk of the cultists. Many of them were lawyers or physicians, teachers, and law enforcement. Respected members of their communities holding positions of power and influence. Because of this, they kept their day-to-day identities separate from the cult, adopting nicknames to protect their real lives from the life affected by the Ways. It was only—she had never expected a witch to also earn a nickname. “Peter Pansexual?”

Darkly’s cheeks flushed pink. He raised his hand, sliding his fingers beneath Milla’s and gently pulling them away. “Earned it in Glasgow,” he said, not letting go. “Working a job for Lou.”

With one brief squeeze of her fingers, he sauntered away. The cult greeted him by name, cheering Darkly’s arrival and welcoming him with high fives and pats on the back.

Her cult, by rights. Members of her demesne greeting him like an old friend.

Milla staggered at the unexpected hurt—the pain at seeing how easily he had inserted himself among the mortals she had so carefully avoided. She slipped into the cemetery, perching on the nearest tombstone to gather herself. A swell of magick surged to greet her, reaching for the exposed skin and stopping shy of latching on.

Her wrists felt heavy. Her entire body felt heavy. Unwanted and out of place in the city she had called home for eight years. A thickness developed in her throat, and her eyes prickled. She pressed the heel of a palm beneath her eye. Crying in front of the cultists wasn’t an option. Milla was their Witch of the Demesne, and while she might have been acting in absentia for close to two months, this was still hers, and she was theirs. She had tended the demesne daily, treated with the desecrants, and fed enough of herself into the land that they should know her Way, even if they didn’t know her.

But they knew him.

A cool breeze wafted over the ground, wrapping around Milla’s bare ankles and grounding her in the moment, the place. She inhaled deeply, taking in the loam and moss, the sticky-sweet scent of late spring. Her body relaxed into the comforting cold and she exhaled, examining the gathered crowd and picking out faces she recognized.

The bartender from Drake’s Fire. Paul, an audiomantic she knew from attending concerts with Ezra. The meteomantic from the yacht club, and, to her shock, Agatha the Augurist seated in the open sliding door of a minivan with a beer in hand. Witches she knew and didn’t know at all, laughing with Darkly like they’d known him for years while Milla clung to the outskirts of her own city.

“He is good with them,” Tobias said.

“Holy Horned God.” Milla jumped off the tombstone, her heart racing. She pressed a hand to her chest, half afraid her heart would burst through her ribcage. “What in the Goddess’ name are you doing here?”

“Keir asked me to come.”

“And you just,” she wheezed, “do what he says?”

“I sometimes do as he asks,” Tobias answered. “Generally, that is what friends do.”

Milla crossed her arms and cocked a hip. “Friends.”

“Yes.” He mimicked her pose, gaze darting to the cult as a whistle blew. “Time to go.”

And with that, he was off. The front runners to through the cemetery like greyhounds in a race, led by Darkly in his white technical shirt, their bobbing forms disappearing among the tombstones. Milla held back, watching the chaos unfold and sort itself into something resembling order.

A second wave of cultists followed, holding a steadier, more maintainable pace. They seemed to know the route without a map, choosing the correct turn at an intersection between mausoleums and down a narrow path worn into the grass. It left Milla with the uneasy knowledge that either they ran the cemetery often, or she was more out of touch with her demesne than she had ever considered. The former was unsettling for a number of reasons—she and Ezra had trained her Way here, practicing for their failed ritual, and no small amount of her Way would have seeped into the ground, fueling the outskirts of St. Augustine with her magick.

Far easier to deal with than the latter, which was a whole other box of thoughts and big feelings she had no interest in unpacking.

She shouldered her worries, packing them down, down, down as she fell in with the third wave of cultists. Their speed settled somewhere between a jog and a speedwalk, and she followed a bobbing brown ponytail and a woman with a pixie cut for close to a quarter mile before realizing the cultists did not magically know which way to run—they were following a trail.

A handful of white powder had been thrown down every five or so strides, leading the pack, but it was more than that. There was an energy, a humming in her ears she could not quite place. A sound that was not a sound but present all the same, turning Milla left, then right, then left again.

The pair she followed stopped at an intersection, kicking a pile of flour dropped in the center of a crudely drawn chalk circle. The ponytail pointed down the road, and the pixie cut shook her head.

“We could wait for the walkers,” she said. “One of them has a map.”

“There’s a map?” Milla asked as she jogged up.

“More of a vague idea,” Ponytail said with a smile warmer than Milla felt she deserved. Friendly, as if she knew who Milla was, even though she could not place the woman at all. “Paul isn’t the best at sticking to the plan.”

“Paul.” Milla looked from one woman to the other. “The audiomantic?”

“Yeah.” Pixie Cut tapped her temple. “You feel it in your head?” When Milla nodded, she grinned. “Smells like a fog machine and weed to me.”

“And sweat,” Ponytail added. “But the other witches describe it as a dull tone they can’t quite hear. Or, like, tinnitus.”

At the mention, Milla widened her jaw, attempting to pop her ears, and both cultists smiled.

“Told you,” Pixie Cut said.

“I didn’t disagree; I just said I didn’t know what she was.” Ponytail scanned Milla head to toe, then leaned closer and sniffed. “Can’t place it, but definitely witch.”

Milla stepped back, not liking how the cultists were eyeing her hungrily. “How did you know I was a witch?”

Pixie Cut snorted and broke into an easy jog, following a barely visible arrow on the ground pointing to the left. Ponytail tapped Milla on the arm and gestured for her to follow.

“You reek of it,” she said, tapping her nose. “It’s what your Way is, I can’t figure.” She angled her head at Milla and inhaled. “You’re earthy, kind of? But not like a Green Witch, and there’s a mineral-y note, crisp like a meteomantic.”

“And loamy,” Pixie Cut added. “Like the water. My money’s on vinefica. All those potions.”

“Not a potion witch,” Milla said.

“Well, whatever you are, it’s familiar,” she replied. “Smells like home, in a way. Like it’s a part of the city.”

They slowed at another intersection, Ponytail jogging ahead to look for more flour. Further ahead, whistles shrilled, and distant cries filled the night. A handful of cultists joined them at the intersection, and Pixie Cut held out her hand.

“Daddy’s Leather Girl, by the way.”

“Come again?” Milla coughed, unsure she’d heard correctly.

“My cult name, Daddy’s Leather Girl. And that”—she pointed to Ponytail, who was jogging back their way, pointing at the road to their right—“is Whorelando. She’s newer, but her first hit must have been strong. I’ve never seen a cultist take to the lifestyle so quickly.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” They took off together, the other cultists falling into stride behind them. “It’s impressive; she drives up from the parks every week to run with us.”

“Is that usual?” Milla glanced at her newfound running partner, brimming with questions. Though her muscles ached from their misuse in the cells, and her endurance was a joke, the nature of the trail they followed allowed for brief breaks to recoup her energy and maintain a decent pace to the next intersection, or check, as Daddy’s Leather Girl had called it.

Beyond that, the company kept Milla moving. The cultists were more welcoming than she’d expected and far more lucid than Morgen had ever painted them to be. Her stories had been full of stumbling addicts begging for a hit, not friendly conversation, and a sense of belonging. Even as a witch, the very thing she’d been told the cultists hunted for their next high, this group of mortals seemed happy to have her there. Yes, their eyes were bright and speech slurring, but there was a lightness to it all. An innocence and exhilaration so different from the anxiety-inducing fear she’d been raised to expect.

“Oh yeah,” Daddy’s Leather Girl answered. “We travel all over the place. Campouts, cult parties up and down the state, mass rituals.”

That got Milla’s attention.

“Have you attended any?”

“Oh, dozens.” Daddy’s Leather Girl grinned, her expression hazy. “Samhain in Orlando, Imbolc in the Villages. Oh! And Beltane. That one’s my favorite. Are you going?”

“I think so.”

“Awesome, we’ll have to meet up for a drink.” Daddy’s Leather Girl grinned at her, and Horned God be damned, it looked genuine. The smile, the invitation. All of it.

A series of sharp blasts on a whistle pierced the night, closer now, and a cry rose from a block ahead that had their tiny pack of cultists cheering, “Beer near!”

Without warning, they broke into a sprint, almost leaving Milla behind. She grit her teeth, shouldering into a run and swinging her arms like this were that last straight-away of an 800m sprint. Hands like scythes, legs churning over asphalt, a cramp building in her side. She sped past two cultists, eyes pinned on Daddy’s Leather Girl and Whorelando just ahead. The weight at her wrists kept her from overtaking the pair; no amount of internal competitive drive was enough to break through the heaviness of Lou’s Soulbinding.

Still, she ran into the parking lot of a brewery with a grin on her face and sweat rolling down her back, immediately finding Darkly amid the crowd, grinning like a fool. Shirt tucked into the waistband of his shorts, he led the pack in a bawdy song with a red cup raised above his head. On the far side of the crowd stood Tobias, cup raised to his mouth and eyes pinned on Milla. Still and stern, without a hair out of place, watching her as he had in the cells.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when Whorelando thrust a cup into her hand, beer spilling over the rim, and flinched when Daddy’s Leather Girl hollered, “Down, down, down, down!” gesturing for her to drink.

Gasping for a breath when the beer was finished, Milla stepped back from the crowd, signaling she was taking a break. Her head spun from the alcohol and the run and the heady crackle of magick. Darkly’s she would recognize anywhere—the cool waft of his Shades and wintry scent. But other Ways choked the humid night air, and finally, she saw what Morgen had warned about.

The cultist’s smiles turned manic, their gazes hungry as they surrounded the witches at the center of their circle. A plume of fire burst over their heads, and the rustle of tall grasses and wind through the Spanish moss sang a song only an audiomantic could compose.

She settled on a picnic table, happy to let the festivities play out and be forgotten. To her surprise, Daddy’s Leather Girl followed, handing her a fresh beer, and sitting beside her in a quiet understanding of the cult’s overwhelming nature.

“You get used to it,” she said after a minute. “First time is always the hardest.”

“Whatever you say.” Milla raised her cup in cheers and took a sip.

“But it’s not your first time, is it?” Daddy’s Leather Girl tipped her head. “I can’t remember you coming around, but your Way … whatever it is, it’s really familiar.”

Milla kept her expression as blank as she could. “Maybe you’ve met another witch like me.”

“No.” She shook her head. “It’s not that, but I can’t shake the feeling I’ve had a taste of you before.”

“That is a wildly colorful way to put it.” Despite her misgivings, Milla liked the cultist. Daddy’s Leather Girl was rational and one of the few not participating in the madness of the circle. Even Darkly had extricated himself and stood beside Tobias, scanning the crowd with a worried expression. On a whim, Milla raised a hand and waved, catching his attention.

A broad grin replaced the worry, and he began working through the crowd.

“Maybe it was at my sister’s?” Daddy’s Leather Girl continued. “I was up there a few weeks back. Couldn’t be anyone here; we’ve had the same witches for ages.” She frowned at Milla, eyes going hazy. “Except the new steward, but his Way is like … like Christmas.”

Milla straightened as the words registered and were promptly overwritten by something else she had said. An idea prickled in the back of her mind. She gazed over the cultists, singing and dancing, pounding their feet, and clapping their hands; their energy feeding into Paul and the Mix Witch, into Tobias, who sent little fireballs into the air with a small smile.

As if she could see it, Milla scanned the air over their heads, recalling everything she knew about mass rituals. Everything Ezra and Marie had put in place for their own. Witches, hedge witches, and cultists working to support Milla’s casting on the lake. Ways upon Ways, muddled together and fueled by the cultists’ fervor, feeding power into the witch at the center, supporting her in her attempt to summon the Shades of the Neitherworld and open the Gates.

Her eyes landed again on Darkly, and a puzzle piece snapped into place, connecting her disparate thoughts to his Way and hers—how their magick had worked together against the Loa and Milla had become stronger. Become something wild and more.

Cyrus’ E.R.I.E. scan and the weaving of all those Ways into one flickered in her mind’s eye.

“You said,” she started, stopping to swallow a sudden lump in her throat. “You said you’d felt my Way before? At your sister’s?”

“I think?” Daddy’s Leather Girl cocked her head. “I went up for a campout a couple of weeks ago, so I could be mistaken.”

“Where does she live?” When she did not answer, Milla faced her, gripping the woman’s knee and asking again. “Where does she live?”

“In Georgia.” Daddy’s Leather Girl leaned away from Milla’s intense stare. “Outside of Valdosta. Why?”