Page 1 of Cast in Shadow
1
My skin prickled with the crackle of electricity in the air. The warmly dressed people wandering through the bustling fall festival didn’t seem to notice the change. Flashing lights, twirling rides, and the clamor of the crowd probably played a part in their obliviousness, but disbelief played its part too.
Every human had a trickle of magic. Almost none believed it. Fewer still knew how to use it.
So, they carried on, talking and laughing as if a wave of untamed energy wasn’t closing in.
Had I ever been this blind?
Not that could I remember. Even as a child, I’d felt it. Magic was a pulse in my blood, a whisper in the air. I just didn’t know what it was back then.
In the hundred and fifty or so years since, I’d met only a handful of other witches who could feel the timeless pull of the veil, and none who really knew what made it so dangerous.
But I did.
My earpiece crackled a half-second before Dennis’s voice came through. “Senna, what’s your status?”
The chatter of the crowd swelled as I moved through the festival’s glow without responding. A chilly breeze caught the ends of my hair and nipped at my neck, followed by a whisper of unease that had me tugging the zipper on my jacket a little higher.
“Senna, do you copy?” he asked again.
Letting out a short huff, I answered, “Yeah, Dennis, I copy. Scoping the festival now.”
“Any sign of the target?”
I scanned the crowd, noting the way the darkness was shifting.
The Alius—the demon realm—existed alongside our own, just one layer removed. A world of eternal dusk, with predators lurking just beyond the protection of the veil. A place of endless pain and hunger.
It was also the birthplace of the shadowy magic that had been popping up in my city recently. My team had spent two months tracking leads before we were able to identify the source of the summoning spells that called to those darker threads of magic. It took me another three weeks to track down the creator.
Megan Navali. Her magic clung to the ground, dark and greedy.
“I don’t have eyes on her yet, but she’s definitely here,” I said quietly. “And on that note, I’m going dark.”
“Roger that. Delta team is on standby tonight if you need anything,” he replied in his typical happy-to-help tone.
“I’ll be in touch.” I yanked my earpiece out and tucked it in the inside pocket of my jacket. As much as I appreciated knowing I had a team of expertly trained agents ready to back me up, I preferred to work alone. Especially when the job was one covenless witch.
Which wasn’t to say she was harmless. The veil, the barrierbetween our world and the next, was whisper-thin and loaded with power. And Megan had been pulling at those magical threads, calling on something she had no business playing with and doing gods only knew what with it.
I pushed forward, following her sickly energy signature like a bloodhound. I’d never seen her in person, but I didn’t need to. Witches like her left a mark. Banished from her old coven for stealing power, she should have been cut off from the magic she craved.
And yet, here she was. Stronger. More reckless. More dangerous.
I opened myself up to the world around me, letting the ripples of magic chase across my skin like a caress.
The ribbon was close. I could feel it in my blood, a subtle shift in the air like the world was coming alive on a primal level.
New witches often spoke of the witching hour as though the human concept of time had any bearing on the supernatural world, but magic had no use for clocks.
Light and dark mattered.
The veil mattered.
And the ribbon? It was an extension of the veil, feeding powerful magic from that dark realm into ours as it wove its way through the human world.
Was that shift in power the reason Megan Navali had ventured from her hiding place?
