Page 6 of Sore Throat, Slight Fever

The air is wet and heavy.

A bird calls from overheard.

He snubs the cigarette out on the bottom of hisboot and stuffs it back in his pocket. He grimaces at the freshly concealed grave and then turns, making his way back to house on Graeme Lake and a youngling he very much hopes hasn’t awoken quite yet.

4

Suspended in Ether

Calliope

When Calliope Grey opens her eyes, she worries that she’s gone blind. She blinks a few times, but soon realizes it’s not that her eyes are no longer working, but, simply, that there is nothing to see. She is surrounded in impenetrable darkness. Floating in nothingness. Suspended in Ether.

The familiar smells reach her, a hint of rain and stone and the burned herbal scent of magic. Her skin is pebbled with cold, blue veins thin and delicate spreading across her shoulders and arms and down to her toes.

The Ether is a welcome surprise. She hadn’t known she could still access it—hadn’t known she still had her magic at all. She was born a witch, gifted with ancient magic passed down from generations before her,but she thought that gift had died, withered and faded as her husband—ex-husband, she reminds herself—took more than he gave. Is she healed now? Is her magic back? She searches for its warmth, a spark in her fingertips.Not quite, she thinks.

But she ishere, and that must mean something, even if her memory ofwhyis beyond her grasp for the moment. Her grandma told her that the Ether was created by the First Witch at the Beginning, centuries ago, when light and darkness twisted together into a spark of potential. It was meant to be something of a promised land, an escape from persecution, and before Calliope had first found herself there when she was thirteen, she always imagined it as an oasis, dew-drenched waxy green leaves and trilling bird calls and snakes dripping off trees. Instead she found it dark and empty, almost as if the First Witch had cleared out a room but never got around to decorating. Her grandma always said it looks different for everyone, but that it doesn’t matter what it looks like. It’s comforting enough that it exists, at all.

Regardless of how the Ether looks, it is still an untamed place, almost a wild thing itself with sparks of magic in the far recesses of the darkness, crackling like a distant thunderstorm. She’s only ever been here when something big happens, like that first time—she slipped off a tree branch, plummeting to the ground from fifteen feet above. She came out of the Ether to find her grandma wrapping her arm in gauze as herrough gravel-voice asked her repeatedly to come back.Just come back, darling, you’re safe here now.

The last time she found herself in the Ether was the night before her wedding. Looking back, she realized much too late that the Ether had actually pulled her there, as if trying to warn her about her decision to marry Maddox Grey—as if trying to keep her safe. And of course, the Ether had been right. Marrying him was an awful mistake.

Something big happened, she thinks. She can feel the niggling memory of it, so strong her fingers itch to grab it. It remains elusive for the moment, but it doesn’t matter because right now, the Ether feels like a hello. Like walking through your front door after a long journey away. She even thinks she smells freshly baked bread, black coffee, and her grandmother’s hand cream with its notes of jasmine and rose and a bit of menthol for her joint pain.

Her grandma’s voice calls out, faint, so far away.Just come back, darling, you’re safe here now.

Calliope isn’t certain whichhereher grandma’s voice is referring to. Does she mean the Ether? Should Calliope stay hidden in the cool depths of this murky, magical place? Should she run towards the sound of grandma’s voice and join her in the darkness?

But her grandma died years ago and wherever she is calling out from…well, Calliope isn’t sure she’s ready for that. She scrunches her eyes closed, willing the Ether to slide away from her, unclouding her vision,returning her to somewhere that is just as cold and dark, but real enough.

She is surrounded by the smell of damp, her back against a wall, wetness dripping down her bare shoulder. She looks down and sees a dark stain marring the whiteness of her shirt.

She has no clue how she got here. Her mouth feels too tight, like she has cotton balls stuffed into her cheeks, like they do when you’re at the dentist. She opens her mouth to slide her tongue against her dry, chapped lips. There is something metallic at the back of her throat, as if she’s swallowed a penny.

A small sound escapes her, and she freezes, listening to her own voice echo against the stone. She is alone, at least, which is some small measure of comfort as the memory of last night slowly comes back to her in bits and pieces, flashes of colors and sounds.

She shifts her hands, feeling the weight of metal press into her wrists. The magic in the cuffs flares briefly, and she can see the edges of the basement room in the soft glow of the symbols. She has the niggling thought that she should recognize them, but they’re just blurry lines.

The memory of blood comes, and she raises her hand to her belly, the manacles making the movement stiff and heavy. There was a bullet. A man. Green-yellow lights that buzzed too loud.

Blood, too red against the scuffed linoleum tile.

Herblood.

And her voice, so soft, asking to be saved.

Help.

And the cashier. Middle-aged, pale, with day-old scruff lining his jawline and dark, graying hair curling around his ears. A larger man, not the slimmest, and certainly not as lithe as the few vampires she’s met before. It’s why she didn’t initially realize what he was.

She hadn’t seen his teeth either. She hadn’t glimpsed the too long, too sharp canines, when she made her request, but she remembers them now, sinking into her neck.

The realization of that request hits her, and she jumps against the phantom of the memory, the chain rattling ominously in the dark, manacles digging into her skin.

She reaches up to feel her neck, scared but needing to know what’s there. The manacles slow her movements, but her fingers connect with smooth skin. Too warm. Does she have a fever? Is she sick? She attempts to take a deep breath, but there is an absence in her chest. She takes another breath, expanding her chest muscles, but again, there is nothing there, no air, no heart beating frantically in her ears, no tingling feeling in her fingers.

“It’s okay,” says a masculine voice in the dark—but there is something off about it, a crackle at the end that doesn’t sound quite right. Not quitehuman.

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