Witch's Sacrifice: The Hemlock Chronicles Book 5 (Paperback)

If there was one thing being a Hemlock witch had taught me, it was that some doors, once opened, could never be closed. 

Places touched by death attracted spirits, while sites of tragedies drew the dead in swarms. In the post-apocalypse world, there was no shortage of work for a necromancer. While other people went out clubbing on Saturday nights, I’d been wandering around the abandoned train station for an hour in search of an elusive spirit and all I had to show for it were blistered feet. I kept my spirit sight on in the background, a second sight which pierced the veil invisible to most humans and showed my fellow necromancers’ souls in haloes of bright light. Four living people—and no dead. Yet. 

A breath of cold air lifted strands of dark hair from my face. Being a necromancer meant I was no stranger to freezing temperatures, and I’d learned to distinguish regular coldness from the chill that indicated the dead lurked nearby. A faint whistling noise followed my steps as I led the way down the broken escalator, footsteps crunching in bits of disintegrating bone and charred zombie.

“Woo,” Lloyd called back. My fellow necromancer and best friend buried his hands in the pockets of his long coat. “C’mon, ghost. I’m freezing my arse off here. Where are you hiding?”

“Maybe this one’s shy.”

Our words bounced back at us through the echoing emptiness. The station was little more than a gutted carcass of shattered glass and abandoned shops and cafes. The ceiling hung in tattered strips, while undead rose from the broken remains like maggots from a festering corpse. 

Somewhere close to us lay several liminal spaces, including the one where I’d fought a deranged vampire and a bunch of witches and helped Mackie escape their clutches. The slight Asian girl walked one step behind Lloyd, scanning her surroundings with sharp eyes. In the last few months, she’d come a long way from the timid, defensive rogue we’d rescued last November, and had come to master her psychic powers under the guidance of her mentor, Morgan. He and his sister Ilsa brought up the rear as we came to the coffee shop where a vampire had once set an army of zombies on us.

A spark pinged on my vision—not in the waking world, but beneath and above it all at once, in the realm only visible to those of us who possessed the spirit sight. There you are.

The flashing orange lights of old display boards pierced the gloom, bringing a rush of anticipation. “We’re close.”

“How close?” Ilsa asked. Once, she’d have been able to sense the dead herself, but that was before Evelyn Hemlock had stolen the source of her power. “Is the spirit in this realm or outside of it?”

“Not sure.” If I concentrated hard enough, I could fool myself into thinking I sensed the current of energy which formed the spirit line that ran through the heart of the train station, fuelled by the magic that concealed my coven from sight. 

My lungs constricted when I saw the outline of another person hovering ahead. Indistinct features, but my mind filled in the gaps, picturing a young woman with long curly hair, high cheekbones, grey-blue eyes…

The blurred shape remained indistinct. Hidden by magic. It’s not her, Jas. Pull yourself together. 

Evelyn Hemlock would face me head-on, if at all.

I drew in a breath. “I think she’s hiding on the other side. I’ll have to cross over.”

Steeling myself, I pulled out a set of candles from the deep pockets of my long black cloak. The sound of chattering teeth came from my shoulder. 

“Mackie, you don’t have to look,” Morgan said. 

“I’m fine,” she snapped at Morgan. “I’m not spending the rest of my life avoiding the places that bastard held me captive. Let’s go and kill some dead.”

“You’re not coming in.” I finished laying out the candles in a circle of twelve. “Sorry, Mackie. Ilsa and I are the only ones who can cross over.”

Mackie gave me a sharp look. “That place totally collapsed when you got out last time. How do you know there’s anything left?”

“That.” I pointed to the human-shaped shadow. “The ghost is hidden in a liminal space. Maybe the same one as last time, maybe not. The only way to know is to go in.”

Lloyd released a breath. “All right. Mackie, you ready to keep watch?”

“Fine.” Her mouth turned down at the corners. “I’m not scared.”

“You’d be a fool not to be,” said Ilsa, who’d assembled her own circle of twelve candles beside mine.

“There’s a difference between nervous and scared,” Mackie insisted.

“There’s also a difference between brave and reckless,” Morgan put in.

“You know all about that, do you?” Ilsa stepped into the candle circle. “C’mon, Jas. Two of us should be more than enough to handle a single ghost.”

It hadn’t escaped my attention that Ilsa herself was at less than full strength at the moment. As Gatekeeper between life and death, she drew most of her power from her talisman, so it took a toll on her every time she entered the spirit realm without the Gatekeeper’s book.

I was far from the only person Evelyn had screwed over, yet some small, ridiculous part of me hoped it was her, hiding from me on the other side.

I stood in the circle of candles and snapped my fingers, igniting their flames. My skin tingled, and for a second, I could almost fool myself into thinking it wasn’t my necromancy that came to life like fire in my veins, but witchcraft.

Hemlock magic. 

Then I floated upwards out of my body.

Like most spirits, I resembled my living self as a ghost, short and slight with dark brown hair I’d let grow out of its dyed black colouring; a lip piercing I forgot to wear more often than not; and pale features. I wasn’t much to look at, but if any ghost got too close, they’d see a dark shape hovering out of sight. A shade, voracious and deadly as the second soul I’d once shared my body with.

Ilsa’s semi-transparent form floated beside mine out of the candles, leaving our bodies suspended between life and death. The shadows grew, swallowing both of us up.

At once, the spark I’d sensed grew more distinct, revolving into the shape of a hunched female figure. Not Evelyn. She was younger than I was, a teenager. A rush of pity pierced my core. 

“Please don’t kill me,” whispered the spirit.

“I won’t hurt you,” I said—truthfully, since ghosts were incapable of feeling pain. “Tell me… what are you doing in here? How did you survive?”

“I didn’t.” She looked up at me, and her eyes shone blue-grey. A vampire. No, a shade.

“You’re one of them,” I said. “You escaped from the lab.”

“They took my body and destroyed my soul.” Her hands reached out. “Now I’ll take yours.”

“Sorry, I can’t let you do that.” I caught her hands in mine. Touching a spirit was like sticking my hands into thick fog, cold and uncomfortable, but I held tight.

Then I reached deeper, to the spark keeping her alive.

Energy zinged through my veins in a rush that almost made me forget the underlying hum of witch magic lingering around the warded room. Necromancers might deal in death, but guild law dictated that we give a peaceful end to all but the most violent spirits. The energy transfer was as peaceful as you could get, but I still didn’t like draining the life from others, even if it was the only way to kill a shade. I didn’t like the rush it gave me, as though part of me got a high from the life I’d taken. Far too like Evelyn Hemlock for my liking.

“Jas?” Ilsa said from beside me. “She’s gone. We should go back.”

I dragged my gaze away from the spot where the spirit had dissipated, then I returned to my body in a blink. My skin burned with cold, especially my wrist. No matter how many times I scrubbed at the mark Evelyn had used to separate our souls, it refused to disappear.

“Who was it?” asked Lloyd.

“A vampire,” I said. “Shade. Must’ve run from the battle. I dealt with her.”

“Good,” said Morgan. “See, Mackie? It wasn’t the Soul Collector.”

“I wouldn’t care if it was,” said Mackie, fooling nobody.

I picked up the candles, ignoring the others’ whispered arguments, and returned them to the deep pockets of my necromancer coat. Floor-length and black, it swept the dirt-strewn floor and made me look like I was auditioning for the role of the Grim Reaper’s sidekick.

Lloyd caught my arm. “You didn’t think she’d be here, did you?”

I shook my head, irritated with myself. “Of course not. She’s gone.”

As for the rest of my coven? They were further from reach than Evelyn herself. I’d never have guessed I’d ever find myself longing to see Cordelia’s face again. To ask her all the questions she’d refused to answer. To learn why she’d trusted Evelyn over me, even when that trust had turned out to be so badly misplaced.

“Aren’t we going to celebrate?” Lloyd wanted to know. “We completed the mission in record time, and nobody died.”

“Yay,” Mackie said, with sarcastic undertones. “Let’s throw a party, like the other dozen times we’ve not been murdered by zombies.”

“I’ll buy everyone a round at the pub,” Morgan said.

“I wouldn’t count on it.” Ilsa pointed out someone waiting outside. “Something’s up at the guild.”

River Montgomery stood beside the wrecked doors of the train station. Ilsa’s boyfriend had curly blond hair and the pointed, slim features of a half-faerie. Green eyes indicated his Summer Sidhe bloodline, but he was also one of the guild’s top-ranked necromancers and the son of the head lady herself. An odd combination, given that faeries feared death, while necromancers accepted it as an inevitability. Some of us more than others.

River gave me a nod. “Lady Montgomery wishes to see you, Jas, when you’re back at the guild.”

“Sure.” What did the boss want this time? She’d given me my old job back despite my brief stint as a fugitive from the law, but rumour had it, the mage guild wasn’t pleased that I’d escaped unscathed. Personally, I felt my months-long exile while shackled to a spirit who was feeding on my life force had been punishment enough. 

“Really,” Ilsa whispered to River, as we headed back to the guild. “I can perform magic without my talisman, you know.”

“I know, but this spirit line’s a known target.”

I understood River’s concern, and I couldn’t help feeling guilty for failing to stop Evelyn from swiping Ilsa’s talisman. Not that I had the faintest idea why she’d stolen it, except to prove she could. The Evelyn I thought I knew had died long before she’d cut herself off from me, yet part of me had thought I’d figured out how she operated. I’d understood her loneliness and frustration at being the only Hemlock survivor, and I’d sympathised with her grief for her family. Yet in the end, her lust for power had won out over all else. 

The necromancer guild blended in with its neighbours in the middle of Edinburgh’s Old Town, except for for the thin veins of grey iron woven into the brick and the shimmering wards around the oak doors.

I left the others in the entrance hall and headed upstairs to Lady Montgomery’s office. One short rap on the door and she called, “Come in, Jas.”

To my surprise, Isabel stood beside the boss’s desk. Her flowery yellow dress contrasted the boss’s floor-length dark cloak, a mirror of our standard uniform embellished with medals depicting her various achievements. As usual, Isabel’s slender brown arms glittered with the remnants of old chalk stains and the distinct outlines of blood magic symbols. She had them on full display in front of my boss? Frowning, I brought my gaze to Lady Montgomery’s face. “Is there something you wanted to ask me?”

“I invited Isabel here to discuss the future of our relationship with the witch covens,” said Lady Montgomery. “Given the now publicly known link between necromancy and witch magic, I think we should look at working more closely together.”

“You mean, blood magic.” That must be why Isabel was wearing the symbols in public. Her fingertips moved up her left wrist, tracing the marks, but she stilled the self-conscious motion when Lady Montgomery looked in her direction. “Isn’t it still illegal?”

“We’re in a transitionary period while the mages elect a new leader,” she said. “When they do, I intend to put forward a proposal to rethink some of the old laws. I believe it’s time for an update, considering the threat of the Ancients.”

“But—most people don’t know how to use blood magic, do they?” I looked to Isabel, wondering why my boss had invited me into the discussion, considering I was no longer a Hemlock witch. Then again, I wore a blood magic mark myself. Namely, the mark Evelyn had left on me when she’d severed our connection.

“No, but it can be taught to any witch,” Isabel said. “Given how it saved my life, it feels selfish not to share that knowledge.”

“Not the binding rituals?” That Evelyn and I had survived being bound was an exception to a hard rule. Most ritual bindings ended in death.

“No, ritual magic will continue to be a restricted subject,” said Lady Montgomery. “I’d like to thank you for returning the book to us.”

“Ah.” I shot Isabel a guilty look. The ritual magic book had once belonged to the guild, but Asher had ‘borrowed’ it years ago, only for Lord Sutherland to take it from him and use it in his own nefarious plans. “I figured this was the safest place for it.”

“I agree,” said Isabel. “The local witch covens have been talking ever since the undead attacks in January. Telling them the truth about blood magic will squash any dangerous rumours.”

“Precisely,” said Lady Montgomery. “We’ll have to wait until the mages give their approval, of course.”

Lord Sutherland was currently rotting in a jail cell for using blood magic himself to bind his soul to a god’s in order to evade death, a fact no doubt Lady Montgomery hadn’t forgotten. 

“What if they vote for someone worse, though?” I glanced at Isabel. “Lord Sutherland’s arrest only exposed a bigger problem in the mages’ ranks.”

“Which is why we’re holding them at arm’s length for now,” said Lady Montgomery. “Keeping our distance and watching to see who they elect as their new leader.”

“Someone competent would be a starting point.” I liked to hope the mages would at least try to replace their leader with someone who wasn’t an insecure wannabe-dictator, but I didn’t trust them an inch. Plenty of them had voted Lord Sutherland into power, after all, and to many, money and connections mattered more than morals. “Uh, I know Isabel can help you reach out to the local witch covens, but I don’t have any witch connections. I’m not sure I’d be much help.”

“I had something else in mind for you,” she said. “I think our textbooks need an update. As a shade, you understand why.”

Yeah. Their definition is way off. Shades were, in fact, spirits who’d survived death through any means, and I’d had the dubious privilege of being the first known necromancer to have two shades living in my body, both of whom had both died more times than any living person had the right to. She might loathe our bond, but it had saved her from taking the Hemlock bloodline with her into the grave. Not that I wanted to mention her anywhere near the novice’s textbook.

“Aren’t I walking cautionary tale?” I said. “Also, I might be a shade, but I’m only a junior necromancer.”

“No, Jas,” said Lady Montgomery. “There’s nothing the highest-ranked necromancers know that you don’t. I’d like you to help design the new novice curriculum.”

Whoa. “Does that mean I have to take up tutoring?” Please, no. I’d been a bad student and I would be a worse teacher. 

She gave a rare smile. “Only if you want to. But you’ll have a seat at summits, along with Ilsa and the other top-level necromancers. Not just as my assistant, but as a master necromancer in your own right.”

Holy crap. That is a big deal. More than I deserved, really. Evelyn might have made her own choices, but she’d developed most of the skills she’d used to make her escape during our partnership. Still, the boss’s praise left me glowing, and almost made up for the gaping hole my Hemlock magic had left behind. “Thank you. Does that mean I don’t have to do any more long shifts on archive duty?”

“You can remain in charge of the rota if you like,” she said. “In fact, I need someone to to ensure every patrol has at least one individual who is proficient in the energy transfer skill. Can I trust you with that, Jas?”

“Sure,” I said, a weight lifting from my shoulders. I had a purpose now, aside from tracking down Evelyn. “Is that all?”

“That’s all for now, Jas.”

I took a step towards the door, then paused. “What about the mirror?”

“It’s still being decontaminated,” she said. “The lab, that is. We have a team searching the place, but considering the extent of the damage…”

I nodded, squashing my disappointment. “Okay.”

“Go, both of you.” She waved Isabel, off, too. “Get some rest before the next mission.”

“Should have seen that one coming,” I whispered to Isabel, closing the office door behind us. “I know the Briars could be miles away from the mirror for all I know, but she must know I’m not asking about it just to be annoying.”

“She’s trying,” Isabel said. “Changing the laws overnight will take some work.”

“I’m surprised she’s trying at all,” I admitted. “Let alone working with you. Wouldn’t Asher be more logical? Not that I’m complaining about you being here more often. We need more no-nonsense witches around the place.”

“Asher refuses to get involved,” she said. “Says he doesn’t trust the mages.”

“But he doesn’t mind you sharing the information on blood magic?” It had been Asher who’d caught me its potential for use in battle.

“Like I said, it’s hard to hide the truth now,” she said. “I think it’s necessary, besides.”

“To give us a fighting chance against the Ancients.” I didn’t add that without my Hemlock magic, I was no longer able to use blood magic on myself the way I once had. I’d need another witch to mark me if I wanted to go to war.

Her gaze dropped to my wrist, as though the same thought had occurred to her. “No change?”

“I thought it reacted on the mission,” I said. “We had to walk onto the spirit line. The forest has gone, and so has she, so I guess it was a false alarm.”

“The mark hasn’t faded, though,” she said. “That suggests it’s reversible.”

I doubt it. I’d read the ritual magic book backwards since uncovering Evelyn’s deception and found no clues on how to erase the unbinding symbol, let alone reverse it. “Wish it would help me keep tabs on her. I keep expecting her to march in here and declare war.”

Recent events had shown how hopelessly outgunned we were against our enemies. Evelyn might not be on the Ancients’ side, but she sure as hell wasn’t an ally either.

Still, the blood magic mark on my wrist was also a reminder that my coven survived, and as long as they existed, so would I. Whether Evelyn liked it or not.