“What’s that?” he asked, looking defensive.shifted uneasily. “Just what it sounds like. Remember when I told you that all Inderland magic runs on witch magic?” I thought of the elves, and added, “Mostly, anyway. Vampires love witch magic. They use it to look young after they die, to call demons to beat up helpless witches, and when they want to hide themselves, they use it to lock themselves in.” I was going to have to tap a freaking ley line, but a little pain would be a small payment for finding Kisten’s killer.tucked his flashlight under his arm and angled it to the line between the wall and the floor. There was a shifting of dust to show where the door had been opened once, how long ago was up for debate, invisible unless you were looking. Hand shaking, I put my palm against the smooth rock. The FIB captain’s bulk shifted to take an aggressive stance by the door.
“Edden,” I complained, “if there is an undead vampire in there, he will kill you before the door even finishes opening.” Ugly, but true. “Back up.”FIB captain frowned. “Just open the door, Morgan.”
“Your funeral,” I muttered, then took a deep breath. This was going to hurt. My fingers were numb from the cold, and they cramped as I pressed them deeper into the stone. Taking a breath and gritting my teeth against the coming pain, I locked my knees and tapped a line.gasped, jerking straight as the line hit me. I tried not to, but I did.
“Rachel?” Ivy said, close and concerned.stomach was rolling, and I panted to keep from vomiting. The undulating surges of power from the nearby line were making me seasick, and every nerve felt the power grating across it. “Fine,” I gasped, unable to even think of the right words. There were three charms that were generally used, and my dad had taught me them all, plus one that wasn’t used except for the most dire situations. Oh God, this was awful.took a heaving breath and held it, fighting to think past the pain and dizziness. Ivy’s cool hand touched my shoulder, and my breath exploded out as I felt her aura slip to cover me, soothing.
“I’m sorry!” Ivy shouted, her hand leaving me, and I almost fell when the pain returned.
“No,” I said as I reached to grasp her hand and the pain again vanished. “You’re helping,” I said, watching her fear that she’d hurt me replaced with wonder. “It doesn’t hurt when I’m touching you. Don’t let go. Please.”in the lamp-lit dark, she swallowed hard and her fingers in mine became firmer. It wasn’t perfect. I could still feel the waves of ley line coming at me, but at least it wasn’t so raw and the agony across my nerves was muted. My thoughts returned to last Halloween, when she had bitten me that last time. Our auras had become one before she lost it. Was I seeing a lingering effect of that? Were Ivy’s and my auras the same? Able to protect each other when one was compromised? Was it love?stood beside us, not sure of anything, and taking a steadying breath, I put my free hand more firmly on the door.
“Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat,” I whispered, and nothing happened.shifted my feet. “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” I tried again, and still nothing.scuffed his feet. “Rachel, it’s okay.”hand quivered. “Nil tam difficile est quin quaerendo investigari possit.” That one did it, and I pulled my hand back when I felt a quiver of response rise up from the charm buried in the cement and ping through my soul. Nothing is so hard that it can’t be found by searching. It figured that it would be that one.stepped back and dropped the line, and Ivy searched my face before she let go of my hand and I fisted it. Edden put his fingers into the curve of the handle and pulled. The door cracked, and Ivy flung herself back with her hand over her face.
“Holy crap!” I exclaimed, gagging and falling back as well. I almost tripped Edden as he reared back at the stench. The light from the lantern showed Edden’s expression, twisted in distaste. Whatever was in there was long dead, and anger started trickling in. Kisten had succeeded in killing our attacker. Now who would I yell at?
“Hold this,” the FIB captain said as he shoved the flashlight at me. I set my lantern down and took it. Edden pulled the door farther open to show a black archway and little else. The stench rolled out, old and putrid. It wasn’t the smell of decay, which would have been muted from the cold and perhaps sheer time, but the stink of vampire death that lingered until the sun or wind had a chance to disperse it. It was incense gone bad. Decaying flowers. Spoiled musk and dead sea salt. We couldn’t go in, it was that bad. It was as if all the oxygen had been replaced with thick, poisonous, decaying oil.took his flashlight back. Holding a hand across his nose, he played the light over the floor to find the edges of the room. I stayed where I was, but Ivy came forward to stand at the threshold. Her face was damp from tears, and her expression was blank. Edden moved to get his shoulder in front of hers, but it was the smell that was keeping her out, not his presence.floor was the same dust-colored stone, and the walls were cement. A black scum stained the floor, crinkled and cracked, the color of old blood. Edden followed it to the wall to find scratches gouged in the concrete.
“Neither of you go in there,” Edden said, then gagged from the deep breath he had taken to say the words. I nodded, and he quickly played the light over the rest of the room. It was a nasty hole of a place with a made-up cot and a cardboard box table. On the bare floor beside another smaller puddle of dried blood was the body of a big black man, faceup and spread-eagled. He had on a lightweight shirt, open to show that his throat had been completely torn out. His lower body cavity had been opened as well, almost as if an animal had been at him, though I expected the small mounds of something piled beside him were probably his insides.couldn’t tell if he had been attacked while not wearing any pants or if his attacker had eaten through them. Vampires didn’t do this. At least not that I’d heard. And this wasn’t the man who I’d remembered at Kisten’s boat.’s light shook as I held it on the body. Damn it, it had all been for nothing.
“Is that Art?” Edden asked, and I shook my head.
“It’s Denon,” Ivy said, and my gaze jerked from the corpse to her and back again.
“Denon?” I gasped, feeling my gore rise.’s light dropped away. “God help him. I think it is.”leaned against the wall as my knees went wobbly. That’s why I hadn’t seen him lately. If Denon had been Art’s scion, assigning Ivy to his stable of runners would make it really easy to watch her. And insulting to assign her to me.
“The cot,” Ivy said, her hand over her face. “Bring your light to the cot. I think it’s a body on there. I’m not…sure.”came close and carefully angled the lantern’s light to the cot, but my hand was shaking and it wasn’t clear. Edden had known Denon. Had a friendly rivalry with him. Finding him torn apart was hard. I heard him take a shallow breath, and his light found the bed as well.squinted, trying to figure out what I was seeing. What had first looked like a bundle of forgotten clothes and straps…“Shit,” I whispered as my mind shifted and it made sense. It was a gray, grotesquely twisted body, the bones warped into unnatural curves as the two viruses had fought for control, each trying to make the vampire into its version of perfection. Pale white parchment skin had flaked off in sheets, drifting slightly in the draft that opening the door had created. The black hair was puddled around the skull, and there were no eyes in the sockets gazing at the ceiling. Canines twice as long as a normal vampire’s spouted from the jaw. The mouth had been ripped wide and the jaw was hanging at a broken angle. A hand with several fingers missing hung from the corner of it. God, had he done it to himself?jerked, and I swung the light wildly as she tried to go in. Edden grunted, grabbing her arm and using her momentum to fling her to the opposite wall of the tunnel. She hit with a thump, her eyes wide and angry, but he had his arm under her chin and wasn’t letting up.
“Stay out of that room!” he shouted, pinning her to the wall, his voice echoing in what sounded like pity. “You are not going in there, Ivy! I don’t care if you kill me. You are not going in that…filthy”-he took a gasping breath, trying to find words-“cesspit of a hole.” He finished, tears shining in his eyes. “You’re better than that,” he finished. “You have nothing to do with that perversion. It’s not you.”wasn’t trying to move. If she’d wanted to, she could have broken his arm without a thought. Tears shimmered in the light as I angled the flashlight down. “Kisten died because of something I did,” she said, anger shifting to pain. “And now I can’t do anything to make the hurt go away. He’s dead! Art even took that from me!”
“What are you going to do!” Edden shouted at her, his voice echoing. “The vampire is dead! You can’t get revenge from a dead body. You want to tear him apart and throw chunks of him at the wall? He’s dead! Let it go or it will ruin your life, and then he wins again.”was crying silently. Edden was right, but I didn’t know how to convince her of it.snatched the lantern from me and turned. “Look at that, Ivy!” he said, shining it directly on the corpse. “Look at that and tell me that is a victory.”tensed as if to scream, but then the tears flowed and she gave up. Arms wrapped around herself, she whispered, “The son of a bitch. The fucking son of a bitch. Both of them.”deep chill took the core of my being as I stared at the twisted pieces of what remained. The dusty scent of Art’s fingers on me was heavy in my memory as I looked at his broken hand and the flesh pulled tight to the bone. I could feel his touch on my throat, my wrist. It had been a hard death, leaving him mummified, a gross caricature of twisted limbs and contorted bones as the two strains of vampire virus fought for control, breaking him until he couldn’t survive even as an undead.was easy to imagine what had happened. Dying from the undead blood Kisten had given him, Art called his scion. Denon died by accident or design as Art tried to gain enough strength to fight off Kisten’s undead blood. No wonder Ivy wanted a way out. This was ugly.let the light fall from the cot. His eyes were tired as he flicked it off and only Mia’s lantern lit the tunnel. He looked at Ivy’s raw misery, then hiked his belt up to try to find a semblance of his usual demeanor. “We’ll let the room air out, then get a shoe for a print match. We’re done here.”was against the wall, staring at the black doorway. “He never would have touched Kisten if it hadn’t been for me.”
“No,” I said firmly. “Kisten said it wasn’t your fault. He said it, Ivy. Told me to tell you.” Setting the lantern down, I crossed the tunnel, my shadow blanketing her. “He said so,” I repeated as I touched her shoulder, finding her ice cold. Her eyes were black, but they weren’t looking at me, they were focused on the dark hole across from us. “Ivy, if you take this on your conscience, it will be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen you do.”got through to her, and her gaze flicked to me.
“He didn’t blame you,” I said as I gave her bicep a squeeze. “If he did, he wouldn’t have sacrificed his life to kill the bastard for you and me both. He loved me, Ivy, but it was thinking of you that made his decision. He did it because he loved you.”’s expression cracked, and her face twisted in pain. “I loved him!” she shouted, voice echoing. “I loved him, and there’s nothing I can do to prove it! Art is dead!” she said, gesturing. “Piscary is dead! I can’t do anything to prove I loved Kisten. This isn’t fair, Rachel! I want to hurt someone, and no one is left!”shifted uneasily. My throat was tight. I wanted to hug her and tell her that it was going to be okay, but it wasn’t. There was no one to take revenge on, no one to point to and say, I know what you did and you are shit for it. That Piscary was dead and Art was a twisted corpse didn’t come close to being enough.
“Ladies…,” Edden prompted, gesturing down the tunnel with his light. “I’ll get a forensics team down here tonight. Once we are sure of the identities, I’ll let you know.” He took a step to leave, hesitating to make sure we would follow.exhausted, Ivy pushed herself from the wall. “Piscary gave Kisten to Art as compensation for me putting him in jail. It was political. God, I hate my life.”stared at the black hole in the wall, tension rising in me. She was right. Kisten had died in a political power play. His bright soul just starting to learn its own strength had been snuffed out to soothe an ego and bring Ivy to her knees. Revenge I might have understood, but this…good-bye to Kisten, Ivy dropped her head and passed me. I didn’t move, staring at the black hole. Edden’s hand fell on my shoulder. “You need to get warmed up.”jerked out from under him. Warmed up. Good idea. I wasn’t ready to walk away. Kisten’s soul was at rest because he had fought back and won. But what about those of us who were left behind? What about Ivy and me? Didn’t we have the right to satisfaction, too?heart pounded, and I clenched my jaw. “I am not going to live with this pain.”’s boots scuffed to a stop, and Edden squinted suspiciously at me., I pointed at the dark hole. “I’m not going to let the I.S. cover this up, put them in the ground with pretty headstones and dignified names and dates and say that Kisten was murdered to further someone’s political agenda.”shook her head. “It makes no difference.”made a difference to me. The room was cloaked in black, hiding the depravity of what happened when a lifetime was spent afraid of death, when one’s entire existence was bent to the selfish desires of the self, when the soul was exchanged for the mindless drive to survive. Real lives were ruined in the wake of these ugly caricatures of power. Kisten’s soul lost just as he found the strength in himself, Ivy winding the noose tighter in her attempts to find peace. Darkness wouldn’t cover this up. I wanted the room bright. Bright with a savage truth so that it would never be consigned to the shelter of the earth.
“Rachel?” Ivy asked, and shaking, I tapped a line. It touched me, tearing my thin aura like a flame. I went down on a knee, but gritting my teeth, I stood, letting the pain flow through me, accepting it.
“Celero inanio,” I shouted, giving the force an outlet of a black charm gesture. I’d seen Al do it. How hard could it be?line roared into me, pulled by the charm. Agony flamed, and I convulsed, refusing to let go of the line as the spell worked. “Rachel!” Ivy shouted, and I fell back at the white-light explosion in the middle of the room. My hair blew back, then shifted forward as the air in the room burnt itself out and new rushed in to replace it. Like heaven itself, the glory of fire burned white, a tiny spot of black at the center of my rage.fell to my knees, eyes fixed on the doorway and the hard stone going unnoticed as my knees bruised. And then Ivy had me. Her arms cushioned me, and I gasped, not at their icy softness, but at the sudden cessation of pain from the line. She had me again, and her aura protected me, filtering the worst of it.
“You stupid witch,” she said bitterly as she held me. “What the hell are you doing?”stared up at her, the line cool and clean in me. “Are you sure you can’t feel anything?” I questioned, not believing her aura was protecting me from this.
“Just my heart breaking. Let it go, Rachel.”
“Not yet,” I said, and with her arms around me, I pointed at the hellhole. “Celero inanio!” I said again.
“Stop!” Ivy shouted, and I screamed as her hands left me and the pain bent me double. I gasped, feeling my lungs burn. But I couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t done yet.cot burst into flame, a glowing haze of orange hovering over it, looking like a body contorting in torment. The blood on the floor was a puff of black that whirled up as more air was sucked in to replace that which was burnt. Ivy’s hands found me from behind, and I took a clean breath as the pain was muted and I could bear it again.
“Please don’t let go,” I said, tears of pain and heartache trickling down, and I felt her nod.
“Celero inanio!” I cried again, my tears evaporating as they fell to make glittering sparkles of salt, and still the rage burned in me, pulsing in time with my heart. The ley line streamed in like vengeance, burning, trying to take me with it like a mindless flood. I could smell my hair starting to burn. The scrape on my cheek felt like fire.
“Rachel, stop!” Ivy screamed, but I could see the sparkle of Kisten’s eyes in the flames, smiling at me-and I couldn’t.shadow darted between me and the roaring inferno. The heat beat at me as it blinked past. I could hear Edden swearing, and then the stone door shifting. A sliver of cool shade touched my knee, crept up my leg, and kissed the edge of my cheek. I leaned into it as the band of white vengeance narrowed. My balance left me and I collapsed. But I held on to the line. It was the only clean thing I had.gave me a little shake to bring my attention to her. Her eyes were black with fear, and I loved her. “Let go of the line,” she pleaded, her tears burning as they hit me. “Rachel, let go of the line! Please!”blinked. Let go of the line?tunnel was plunged into darkness as Edden finally got the door shut. A wave of cold air burned my skin. My eyes slowly recognized the outline of her face as she held me. Edden’s silhouette grew more defined as a red glow became brighter, showing where the wall was thinnest, at the door. My fire still raged behind it, and the glow of the heat lit the tunnel with a soft haze.’s shape stared at the door, his hands on his hips. “Sweet mother of Jesus,” he breathed, then drew his hand back when he went to touch the lines the spell had etched in the door. I could see the bright ring of the charmed circle of iron embedded in the door. Radiating out from it were black threads making a spiral pentagram with arcane symbols. In the middle was my handprint, and it was molding to the spell, making it wholly mine. No one would open the door again.
“He’s gone! Let it go!” Ivy shouted, and this time, I did.gasped as the power shut off, jerking as the cold swarmed in to replace the heat. I clenched in on myself, whispering, “I take it. I take it. I take it,” before the imbalance could strike me. Tears leaked out through my clenched eyes as I felt the ugly black slither over me like a cool silk sheet. It had been a black curse, but I had used it without thought. Even so, the tears weren’t for me: they were for Kisten.apart from my rasping breaths. My chest hurt. It felt like it was burning. Nothing flowed in me. I was a burnt-out shell. Everything was silent, as if the sounds themselves had been turned to ash.
“Can you stand?”was Ivy, and I blinked at her, unable to answer. Edden leaned over us, and I cried out in pain when his arms slipped between Ivy and me, raising me up as if I were a child.
“Oh shit, Rachel,” he said when I fought back a wave of nausea. “You look like you’ve got a bad sunburn.”
“It was worth it,” I whispered. My lips were cracked, and my eyebrows felt singed when I touched them. The wall was still glowing as Edden shifted into motion. A spiderweb of black was etching through the door, turning the rock silver as it cooled. It was the curse that I had spoken, slowly lightening like stretch marks as the stone cooled. The door was fused shut, and my mark would warn anyone away from tampering with it. Not that I thought there was anything behind the door now.caught my breath in pain when Edden almost tripped and my tender skin was rubbed. Ivy touched my arm as if needing to reassure herself that I was okay. “Was that a ley line?” she asked hesitantly. “You did that with power right off a line, right?”chest hurt, and I hoped I hadn’t damaged my lungs. “Yeah,” I said softly. “Thank you for cushioning it.”
“You have that kind of power all the time?” she said, almost a whisper.went to nod, then thought better of it when my skin pulled. “Yes.”memory of the black magic symbol etched on the door rose through my thoughts. So it was a black charm. So what? I might be a black witch, but at least I was an honest one.slowly carried me back to the surface, silent but for his breathing. Everyone who knew Kisten had been murdered to satisfy a political agenda was either dead or in this hallway. My love would be remembered for dying to save Ivy’s and my life. That was why he had died, not because of someone’s whim. That was who Kisten was. Had been.no one would ever say different.fourmy mom was hundreds of miles away by now, my room still smelled like her light lavender perfume, wafting up from the dusty boxes stacked where Robbie had left them beside my bed. It had been nice of him to bring them all in while Mom showed me the brochure of the apartment she had waiting for her in Portland.beside my bed, I pulled the top box to me, reading my adolescent scrawl before I shoved the box aside to take to the brat pack at the hospital later. The moving van had shown up at my mom’s house yesterday, and I was tired of packing peanuts and bubble wrap, depressed by all the good-byes. Mom and Robbie had brought the last of my things over early this afternoon, waking me up and taking me out for a bon voyage breakfast at an old-lady eatery, since by Robbie’s guess her kitchen was already in Kansas. I think we got bad service because of my shunning, but it was hard to tell unless your waitress wrote BLACK WITCH on the back of your napkin. It didn’t matter. We weren’t in any hurry. The coffee sucked dishwater, though.had been in a good mood because he’d paid for the moving van. Mom had been in a good mood because she had some excitement in her life. I was in a bad mood because she wouldn’t have had to do this if I hadn’t gotten shunned. It didn’t matter that my mother had been apartment hunting since getting back from visiting Takata. She was moving because of me. Robbie and my mom had probably landed by now, and all that remained of them in Cincinnati were six boxes, her new fridge in my kitchen, and her old Buick out front., I pulled new tape off an old box, peeking inside to find my dad’s old ley line stuff. Making a pleased sound, I stood and hoisted the box onto a hip to take it to the kitchen.pixies were noisy up front in the sanctuary as I made my way to the back of the church, and I didn’t even bother to turn on the lights as I shoved the box on the center counter. In the corner, the little blue lights on my mom’s fridge glowed. It had a through-the-door ice dispenser, and Ivy and I had been thrilled when she gave it to us. The pixies had taken all of six seconds to discover that if three of them hit the ice dispenser together, they’d get a cube, which they then used like a surfboard to skate around the kitchen floor. Smiling at the memory, I left the box and went back to my room. I’d unpack it later.entire back part of the church had a chill air about it that couldn’t all be blamed on the late hour. Ivy being out might account for some of it, but most was because we had inherited my mom’s space heater along with half her attic. The electric heater was going full tilt up front, and the pixies were enjoying a hot summer evening in January, but since the thermostat for the entire church was in the sanctuary, the heat hadn’t clicked on in hours. It was cool away from the reach of the space heater, making me shiver in my still-tender skin. Coffee would be nice, but since having that grande latte…raspberry…thing, nothing seemed to taste good anymore.of cinnamon and raspberry dogged me back to my room, and I pulled the tape from the next box to find music I’d forgotten I ever had. Pleased, I shoved the box into the hall to go through with Ivy later.was doing well, having borrowed my mom’s Buick after sundown to go talk to Rynn Cormel. I didn’t expect her back until after sunrise. She had told him about the oubliette last week, how Denon had been Art’s ghoul set to watch her until she quit the I.S., and how Art had died. I hoped she’d kept quiet about how her aura had protected me when I pulled on a line so hard that it melted stone, but I bet she’d told Rynn Cormel that, too. Not that I was embarrassed or anything, but why advertise to the city’s master vampire that you can do that sort of thing?it surprised me that her aura could shield my soul? I’d never heard of such a thing before, and a search on the Internet and in my books yielded nothing, but since our auras had blended the last time she had bitten me…I wasn’t surprised-I was scared. There was the potential here to find a way to reunite her mind, body, and soul after her first death. I just didn’t see how yet. Kisten had his soul when he died that second time. I knew it. What I didn’t know was if it was me and our love for each other, or if it had been because he had died twice in quick succession, or if it had been something completely different. It wasn’t worth risking Ivy’s soul to find out. Just the thought of her dead terrified me.third unmarked box turned out to be more stuffed animals, and I sat back on my heels as my fingers went to pick one up. My smile became sad, and I brushed the unicorn’s mane. This one was special. It had graced my dresser for most of my high school years. “Maybe I’ll keep you, Jasmine,” I whispered, then I straightened at a zing of adrenaline.. That was her name! I thought, elated. That was the name of the black-haired girl I’d hung around with at Trent’s dad’s make-a-wish camp. “Jasmine!” I whispered, excited as I held the stuffed animal close and smiled with a bitter happiness. The toy made a small spot of warmth against me. I remembered it covering a much larger area when I was younger. Happy, I stretched to set it next to the giraffe on my dresser. I’d never forget again.
“Welcome home, Jasmine,” I whispered. Trent had wanted to know Jasmine’s name as much as I had, having had a crush on her and nothing to remember her by. Maybe if I told him her name, he might tell me if she’d survived-once he looked her up in his dad’s records.ought to try to mend that fence, I thought, rummaging to find a toy that didn’t have a name or face associated with it that I could take to Ford and Holly. I knew he’d appreciate something to distract and help socialize the young banshee. The two of them were doing great the last time I’d called, though Edden wasn’t happy about Ford taking sick days or setting up a nursery in the corner of his office. Not to mention the potty chair in the men’s room.grinned. Edden had ranted for an entire fifteen minutes about that.out the elephant named Raymond and the blue bear named Gummie that had nothing but happy memories associated with them, I set them aside, folding the box closed and setting it atop the other box to take to the hospital. My aura was just about back to normal, and I really wanted to see the kids. The girl in the red pajamas, especially. I needed to talk to her. Tell her the chance was real. If her parents would let me, that is.held my breath against the dust as I hoisted the two light boxes, nudging my door open with a foot and taking them to the foyer. The pixies chorused a cheerful hello as I entered the sanctuary, and Rex darted through the cat door to the belfry stairway, spooked when I dropped the boxes on top of the one already there. Her head poked back through the door, and I crouched and extended my hand.
“What’s up, Rex?” I crooned, and she came out, tail high as she sedately made her way to me for a little scritch under her chin. She’d been in the foyer when I brought the first box in, too.hum of pixy wings pulled our attention up. “Toys for the kids?” Jenks said, his wings a bright red from sitting under the full-spectrum light I had put in my desk lamp.
“Yup, you want to come with me and Ivy when we take them?”
“Sure,” he drawled. “I might raid the witch’s floor for some fern seed, though.”harrumphed as I stood. “Be my guest.” It was harder to get stuff now that I was shunned, and Jenks was already planning out a third more garden space to compensate for it. There was the black market, but I wasn’t going there. If I did, then I’d be saying I agreed with what they’d labeled me as, and I didn’t.went to stand under my coat, and I hesitated when she stood on her hind legs to pat the pocket. My eyebrows rose, and I looked at Jenks. I’d chased her out of the foyer twice now.
“Is one of your kids in there?” I asked Jenks, then jumped for the cat when her nails hooked the felt and started to pull. Her claw disengaged when I scooped her up, but I had to drop her when her back claw dug into my arm. Tail bristled, she ran for the back of the church. There was a brief shout from Jenks’s kids, and then disappointment. Having the sanctuary warmer than the rest of the church was better than putting them in a bubble.was laughing, but when I pushed my sleeve up, I found a long scratch. “Jenks,” I complained. “Your cat needs her nails trimmed. I said I’d do it.”
“Rache, look at this.”tugged my sleeve down, head coming up to find Jenks hovering before me with a blue something in his hands. If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it was a little bambino, wrapped up in a blue blanket by the way Jenks was carrying it. “What is it?” I asked, and he dropped it into my waiting hand.
“It was in your pocket,” he said, landing on my palm, and we looked at it together in the light coming from the sanctuary. “It’s a chrysalis, but I don’t know what species,” he added, nudging it with his booted toe.confusion cleared, and I took a breath, remembered Al curling my fingers around it on New Year’s Eve. “Can you tell if it’s alive?” I asked.on his hips, he nodded. “Yup. Where did you get it?”flew up as my fingers closed over it and I started for the kitchen to wash my scratch. “Uh, Al gave it to me,” I said as we passed through the sanctuary and into the cooler hall. “He was making little blue butterflies out of snow, and this was the only thing that survived.”
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