Dangerous Creatures(8)

“Every last one. You hearin’ straight? Because I want to be perfectly clear. You. Kill them. For me.”

Lennox stared down the tracks. There was nothing but darkness.

What choice did he have, really?

When it came right down to it, there was only one answer. There was always only one answer. He sighed. “I’ll do what I can.”

The words sounded strange in his mouth, as if someone else was saying them.

“I take it that’s a yes?”

“If only in the name of family honor.”

The Necromancer smiled, raising her hands. “My family thanks you.”

Lennox looked repulsed. “I meant mine, not yours. Don’t flatter yourself.”

“But our families were so close, Lennox.” The voice echoed through the Tunnel. “Almost hard to tell where the one ended and the other began.”

Not for me, thought Lennox.

He tossed the empty matchbook down to the tracks. Six letters were printed on the crimson cover. One word.

SIRENE.

Above the tracks, the girl slumped to the ground like a rag doll. The old man was gone. As many times as he’d seen it, Lennox was still unsettled. He waited just long enough to make sure his Necromancer was coming out of it.

She would be sick in the morning. Sick, and stinking of cigars. He’d have to work harder to make her forget this one. Maybe put a little something extra in her paycheck. It wasn’t her fault she was particularly good at communicating with dead psychopaths, but it was one of the reasons she was so valuable.

Another occupational hazard.

Lennox walked away, disappearing into the deeper dark. There was always more darkness waiting for him. He’d lived his whole life in the shadow.

He couldn’t help but spread it around.





CHAPTER 4


Learning to Fly


By the time the last burnt marshmallow dropped into the fire, no Mortal or Caster was still awake to see it. The two hybrid Incubuses watched in protective silence as their four friends slept around the campsite.

Ridley could hear them murmuring as she drifted off to sleep. Her last waking thought was of Link, just to know he was there.

Like the old days.

After that, Ridley’s dreams were filled with old memories. She wasn’t thinking of good-byes or boys or rings coming from the embers. She couldn’t know that plans much more dangerous than any fire—and infinitely stickier than any marshmallow—had already been set in motion.

How could she?

Instead, she slept on, dreaming of things that were far eerier than a ring. Even eerier than an unknown Cast—forever Binding a Siren, a Natural, a Keeper, a Wayward, and two Incubuses—under a full summer moon in a Caster county.

A full moon was for making magic.

Magic and memories.



A little fair-haired girl sat tucked between the twisting branches of the oldest oak on the grounds of the infamous Ravenwood Plantation, reading a book that was even older than that. She hooked her scrawny legs around a bark-covered branch thicker than her waist, but all the same, it wasn’t really the safest spot for either a little girl or a big book.

“You know you’re not supposed to be reading that, Rid,” a girlish voice called up from below.

“Baby,” teased Ridley, without looking up from the book. “You know you’re not supposed to change your own diaper.”

“Auntie Del’s going to skin you when she finds out you’ve been stealing things out of her closet again,” Lena, with a dark mess of curls and bright green eyes, shouted up from the safety of the grass beneath the tree.

“Tattler,” said Ridley, flipping another page. “Where’s your tail?”

The pages were so enormous, they brushed against her faded blue jeans when she tried to turn them, nearly ripping. The book’s spine was almost as long as hers.

“Your funeral.” As she spoke, Lena flung herself down on the grass, sliding a notebook and a pen out of her pocket. She pulled the cap off the pen, flipping to a clean page in her book with a sigh. “Well, go on. What’s happening now, Rid?”

“There’s a ship, Leanie-Beanie.” Ridley twisted a blond ringlet around one finger absentmindedly.

“Don’t call me that. And?”

“And three mermaids. Only they’re not mermaids, because they have wings. And they’re singing—at least, one is. And another one is playing a kind of strange flute. And the last one is playing a little gold harp.”

As Ridley watched, the figures on the page moved through the story, exactly as she had described.

“Go on, Rid,” breathed Lena, bright-eyed. “Tell the rest.”

A ship came into view. A ship with sails. Surrounded by waves and rocks.

“There are sailors. And they come to visit the mermaids. They think the mermaids are the most beautiful creatures they’ve ever seen. I think they want to marry them. I think they’re in love.”

“Eww.” Beneath the tree, Lena giggled. “And now?”


“Now the mermaids are singing more loudly. Can you hear them? Close your eyes.” Ridley closed her eyes. Beneath the tree, her cousin Lena did the same.

“Can you?”

Lyrical music blew up from the pages of the book and into Ridley’s face. It grew louder and louder, filling the whole tree with harmonies, until the branches began to shake and the leaves fluttered to the ground beneath it.