37. As Above, So Below

thirty-seven

Milla drummed her fingers on the counter, watching the coffee drip into the pot and pondering the kettle. Did Darkly drink coffee or take tea in the morning? And if tea, did he drink it black? Was black even the right phrase?

Diego’s door creaked open, and footsteps shuffled onto the landing. She was about to call out to the boys and ask if they wanted coffee when Trav said harshly, “Don’t, Diego.”

“Dulzura, please.” Diego followed him down the stairs, hair in a messy bun and wearing one of Milla’s silk robes. The black one with the gold embroidered dragon she had bought in Hong Kong.

I wondered where that went.

Trav jogged down the stairs with a tweed weekender slung on a shoulder, hesitating at the door. From her vantage in the kitchen entry, she glimpsed Diego’s profile between the posts halfway down the stairs and the puffy, red eyes behind his glasses. He gripped the banister, leaning for Trav as though every atom in his body wanted to go to the cultist.

“I just—” Trav dragged a hand through his hair and let it fall to his side. “I need some time, alright?” Milla sucked in a quick breath, and Trav’s attention skirted to her. He frowned and looked to the floor. “This is … it’s a lot to unpack.”

“Sí, I understand, but can we please talk? Will you stay?”

“I can’t, D.” Trav sniffed and swept his little finger at the corner of an eye. “I have the store to run, and I—”

“Trav.” Diego eased onto the bottommost step, bringing his face level with Trav’s. His fingers danced at his sides. Milla knew that gesture. He made it whenever he wanted to touch a particularly lovely ream of cloth or an occult item.

“I’m sorry, tesoro.” And Goddess, did he look it. If hangdog as an expression had a poster child, it would be Travis Bergstrom. His mouth curved in a deep frown, and he dropped his chin, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. “It’s just that …” Two fingers flicked in Milla’s direction, and she went ramrod straight, wondering how in the nine rings she fit into this. “She’s a witch.”

“ I am a witch.” Diego pounded a fist to his heart.

“I know!” Trav swept a hand through his hair again, fingers falling to the base of his throat. He scowled, glancing down briefly, then tugged on the collar of his button-down. “I know, D. But I knew that and Milla …”

A long, terrible silence stretched, ended by the soft rustle of his tweed bag hitting the floor.

“How long have I been this, Diego?” Trav finally asked in a weak, terrified voice. “How long has magick fucked with my life? Did I stay in Key West because of Martin? The store? Or did I stay because—” He stopped and sniffled. “I don’t even know what’s real anymore.”

“Trav.” Diego hurtled down the last stair, halting as his boyfriend backed away. Milla knew she shouldn’t be witnessing this. She should disappear into the kitchen or her bedroom and give them some privacy, but Trav had named her, and she could not look away.

Darkly opened her bedroom door, sleepy-eyed and wearing nothing but his boxer briefs, but even that could not drag her attention elsewhere.

“You said this was real,” Diego said in a hoarse voice. “After the mangroves, after everything, you said this was real. You promised me it was not the curse. That you—”

“I do, Diego. At least I-I think I do, but all this magick is fucking with my head, and she’s a witch .” He pointed down the hall, voice rising to a shriek. “I’ve known her since high school.”

“Travis,” Diego said his full name as a plea.

Trav’s shoulders dropped. Someone knocked on the front door, and he stooped to pick up his bag, one hand on the knob. “I’ll call you, Diego. I promise, but I need time to get my head straight.”

He pulled the door open, and Josh, the cultist from Tallahassee, popped his head in. “Are you ready?”

Trav nodded, and Josh moved aside as he left the duplex and headed down the stairs. Cicerhoe, the short, curvy brunette who had been with him at the burnout site, waited on the porch. She looked at Trav and held out her arms, embracing him as he all but collapsed on her shoulder. “We’ve got you.”

All Milla heard was a sniffle.

Josh nodded to Diego, reaching out to shake his hand. “We’ve got him, D. Just give it some time, alright?”

“Gracias, Josh,” he mumbled in reply.

The trio drove off in a sedan, Diego watching from the curb. He stood there for a long while, and Milla waited on her porch beside Darkly, hands clasped over her heart. When Diego finally turned around, tears shone on his cheeks. He stared down the flagstone path at Milla, his eyes brimming with anger, hurt, and blame.

“Diego—”

“No,” Darkly said in a low voice. He moved her out of the way as Diego stormed up the steps and into the duplex, feet pounding up the stairs. Only when his bedroom door slammed shut did Darkly let her pull away.

“What the hell?” Milla spun, batting his arm away and darting for the door. Darkly stepped in front of her. “Dude, move; I need to go talk to him.”

“If he fancied talking, he would have.” Though the words hurt, his tone was soft and weirdly gentle. Milla’s glare died away, and she was about to argue when Rai popped her head out of the other front door.

“Ah, good, you’re both up.” She glanced between the pair and rolled her eyes. “Lou needs Keir to shadestep, and I need to harvest the Solomon’s Seal from your yard, but the polevik won’t get out of the way, the twat.”

Unlike his sister and her million arguments, catching Darkly up on their theory took mere minutes. He simply listened to Milla walk through it, nodded, and asked how he could help.

“Find Cyrus,” Lou said. “Find anyone.”

Darkly nodded, and with less than a glance at the room, his Shade stepped free, and his body crumpled to the ground.

“Oh, Goddess.” Rai threw her hands up and whirled from the room, looking visibly ill.

Donmar shuddered. “I hate when he does that.”

“Right, so you’re helping move him.” Milla directed him to lay Darkly out on the couch. With his head in her lap and his body a cooling, lifeless weight, she took the rare moment of quasi-privacy to check her email and make her phone call.

Just as she thought, there was an email from Hostess City Tea and Spice asking her to send a new talisman charged with her Way. The skin at the nape of her neck prickled like spiders crawled out of her hair as she read the date—mere days before the Savannah ritual occurred.

“That’s three.” She took a deep breath, centering herself in a forced calm, and made her call. Tallahassee, Savannah, Hattiesburg. “Now for four.”

The line rang twice, and a blunt voice answered, “What is it now?”

“Hi, Sarah?”

“You called me; who else would it be?” Sarah Sanderson snapped back.

“No, you’re right.” Milla relaxed into the sofa. The hedge witch, at least, was fine. Not that she had any reason to believe the woman would not be. The Loa was gone, and while Sarah’s stepmother was still dead, she had made a decent amount of money off of Milla and was no longer stuck with glamoured leggings she could not offload. Winning all around, comparatively. “Look, I know this is really random, and it’s been a few weeks since I saw you, but I remembered that your dad is a long-haul trucker, and I was wondering—”

“This about the burnout?” Aaaaand she sat right back up, nearly spilling Darkly to the ground. Sarah sighed. “Horned God, how did I know you would be involved.”

A lanky arm fell to the ground, dragging Darkly’s chest in the same direction. She slapped a hand down on him, grunting as a leg followed. “Shit.”

“Milla?”

He tipped to the side, gravity hauling his useless body to the floor. “Double shit. No. Nonono!”

Tobias darted into the room, taking one look at Milla bent at an awkward angle, phone pinched to her ear with her shoulder, her nails clawed into Darkly’s shirt, and the lifeless Dark Witch about to spill face-first onto the hardwood.

And he hesitated.

“Woman, what the hells is going on over there?” Sarah shouted.

“C’mon, man,” Milla implored Tobias, who sauntered over, too slow to be useful. Cotton slipped between her fingers, and Darkly hit the floor with a heavy thud and a worrying crunch. Tobias grimaced, and Milla hissed, “Yikes.”

“He is going to feel that later.”

“Thanks.” She glared at the flame witch, so quick on the sparring court and slow as molasses when it actually mattered. “For nothing.”

“My pleasure.” He waved a hand at Milla, disappearing into the hallway.

“Anything?” Lou called from the kitchen, where she and Donmar annotated maps of the Beltane grounds over cups of tea and mini donuts.

“Not yet.” Milla prodded Darkly with her foot, wondering if the sudden collision would call his Shade back. It did not.

“Witch, I swear,” Sarah said over the line. “If you don’t start talking, I am blocking this number.”

“Right!” She grabbed her phone, popping it onto speaker so she would not have to repeat the entire conversation. “Right, sorry, Sarah. What was that about a burnout?”

Lou’s chair scraped against the floor, and Tobias’s head popped around the corner. A step creaked, and Rai settled halfway down the stairwell.

“Happened a few weeks back, right around the time you were in town.”

“While I was there?”

“No.” Sarah clicked her tongue. “A few days later, hold on.” A hinge creaked, followed by the clatter of a screen door against a frame. “I tracked it on my lunar calendar, you know how these things are.”

Milla did not, considering she was a C.R.O.W. witch and had no idea how hedge witches managed things, but she nodded before remembering Sarah could not see her. “Right, yeah, lunar calendar.”

“Let’s see. Waxing gibbous, Mississip’ on a retreat tide. Regulus rising in … Aquarius? No … no, you were here at the Pisces cusp. Ah, here it is.” Something clacked, like marbles against stone, and a wind chime tinkled. “Just under eight weeks ago. The Saturday after you were here.”

“The night of the Loa,” Milla exhaled. “Oh, shit, okay.”

“You sound like you know what this is.” Sarah let the accusation hang. She was not wrong, but Milla was not ready to admit how big a part she played in all of this. The hedge witch exhaled heavily and lowered her voice to a conspiratorial level. “They followin’ you?”

“Wait, what?” She jolted upright. Lou moved into the room, blue-green eyes gleaming. A faint vanilla scent filled the air, and Milla assumed she was leaning into her Way to glean the truth in Sarah’s words. She circled a finger at Milla, prompting her to keep going. “How did you …?”

“We were down for two days in Hattiesburg, I drove out to my cousin’s to recover, then three weeks ago, the same thing happened there.”

“Where is your cousin?” Due diligence required Milla to ask, but she knew. How could she not? There was only one location they could not nail down, and here was that missing piece identifying the pattern she had recognized.

“Near Valdosta, you heard about that one too?”

“Yeah.” Her knuckles went white from her grip on the phone. Goddess, witches were not supposed to believe in coincidences, but what were the odds?

“My cousin and her coven performed a cleansing on me while I was there, said I reeked of glamour and something worrisome. Scrubbed it out and sent me on my way. But you know how hedge witches are.” Again, Milla did not. “News travels fast. The cultists hosted some campout, and then BAM.” Sarah must have had Milla on speaker as well because a loud clap resonated through the phone like she’d slapped her tile countertop. “A two-day burnout.”

“They performed a cleansing?” Milla was going to be sick. If Sarah reeked from the Loa and from her enough to require a cleansing, then that meant—

“As above, so below, bad intent, to the earth you go,” Sarah sang and chuckled. “Hadn’t heard that one since I was a girl, near lost it when they whipped it out.”

It was an odd choice, for sure. A ritual no C.R.O.W. witch would perform. Hedge witches had a connection to the earth, to the land. They were outside of regulation and wild with their magick. Not quite dangerous enough to be considered Forbidden and Foule, but enough of a threat that Aural Insurance Adjusters gave them a wide berth.

“And when they cleansed you, they poured the energy into the earth?” Milla asked, to be sure. Lou gripped the back of the couch with both hands, and Tobias let out a low whistle.

“Where else would we send it?”

She couldn’t take the phone off of speaker fast enough. Lou pushed away from the couch, shouting, “FUCK.” and at the same instant, Darkly lurched back into himself.

“No Shades,” he rasped in a voice like ash and gravel.

“What the hells—”

“Sarah, I gotta go,” Milla rushed out, barely hearing the hedge witch’s parting profanity as she hung up and tossed her phone aside. Darkly flailed on the floor, caught in a jumble of arm and leg between the couch and coffee table.

“Hey, ow.” Milla grabbed his arm, too shaken by his jarring return to care that he’d smacked her in the face. “Hey, hey, it’s me. You’re back.”

“Milla?” Smoke-stained eyes searched her face as if he were still half-caught in the Neitherworld.

“It’s me, okay?” She slid off the couch to kneel beside him, gathering her Dark Witch close. His heart slammed in his chest, and he grasped her arms, clinging to Milla and the real world. “We’re in your living room, which is still weird. I’ve got you.”

Darkly swallowed and nodded, the green growing defined behind the smoke. “No Shades.”

“How can there be no Shades?” Donmar asked.

“You’re the bloody Master of Shades.” Lou stormed around the couch. “Call them.”

Milla shot her a glare. “Give him a minute, Jesus.”

“Isnae that easy, Lou.” Darkly hauled himself onto the couch and sprawled over the cushions. The vape pen appeared in his hand, and he pressed it to his lips. “They salted it.”

From the way Lou tensed, Milla assumed that was a bad thing.

“Salted what?” she asked.

Eyes closed, he blew out a long stream of vapor and let his arm fall to the side. Milla could not help but notice how his fingers trembled. “The Neitherworld.”

“What?” She hopped to her feet. “How … what? How is that possible?”

“They got in.” He opened one bleary eye. “Which means—”

“That whatever this coven is doing, they’ve managed to access the Neitherworld.” Lou paced around the couch and loomed over her brother. “Did you bring any back?”

“Nae,” he said around a mouthful of vapor. Lou snatched the pen from his hand.

“Then get back in there and bring us a sample so Rai can reverse cast and apply a signature.”

“Am nae going back in there.”

“Yes, you are.”

“I almost stepped in it.” Darkly sat up swiftly and planted his feet on the floor, chin lifted in challenge. “You want my Shade to get stuck out there as well? Where no one can reach me?”

Milla rose slowly and backed away from the siblings. “Black salt?”

“Black salt,” Darkly confirmed.

She pressed her hands to her mouth, understanding now why he had lurched into himself so violently. Salt did funny things to magick. It was why witches avoided the ocean and only cooked with the iodized or kosher variety. Where white salt, like sea salt, was a magickal disruptor used in scourings, black salt was used to banish spirits and ill-will. Topside, it could banish haints and Shades to the Neitherworld. But if used in Darkly’s realm…

He shuddered, a full-body shiver that left him looking even more haunted than he already did. “My Shade wouldnae have stood a chance.”

“How did you find the salt?”

“Tried to follow Cyrus’s anchor,” Darkly explained. At Milla’s blank look, he smiled softly. “It’s easy to get lost in there, especially if it’s just my Shade. Like calls to like, and all. Years ago, after I fell in the first time, Lou had me create anchors.”

“Okay …” Tobias had said something similar the night before, failing to elaborate.

“Something or someone to call me back.” Two fingers twitched in Milla’s direction. “Some are easier to follow than others, ‘specially if the emotional connection is strong enough. It’s always been weak with Cyrus, but I thought if I kept at it ...” He shook his head and drew on the vape again. “One of the other Shades, Lavelle. Nice woman. She warned me before I got too close.”

“Lavelle … from the trailer park in Louisiana?” He nodded, and Milla huffed in disbelief. “You didn’t send her on?”

“Nah, she likes me.” He grinned, but it was half-hearted and fled quickly. “How did they get in?”

“Did any of the other Shades see what happened? The ones in there?” She wiggled her fingers at him to imply the boundless expanse of the Neitherworld.

“Aye, they said they were called.” His gaze went unfocused, Darkly lost in thought. “But beyond you and I, who else could get in there? And what else can summon a Shade?”