Binding the Shadows (Arcadia Bell) Read Free Page A

Merrimoth went apeshit earlier and chased us upstairs. I finally spotted a pair of glass doors. My fingers shook as they flipped a dead bolt and flung the doors open.
    A small set of stairs led to the beach. Trudging over wet sand, I slipped the bulky Lupara inside my jacket and scoured the shoreline. Lon’s golden halo hummed in the darkness. He was still hanging in the sky over the foaming water, though he’d descended a bit. If he dropped a few more feet, I could reach him . . . if he weren’t suspended a few yards out over the ocean.
    Minutes ago, the crashing tide would’ve pounded me to a pulp against the rocks here, but now the water was eerily still, silver fog clinging to the quiet surface. I plodded into the winter-chilled water. My steps left dark holes in the foamy surf. Utterly surreal. I marveled at the way the splashes around my watery footprints hung in midair, how they deepened as I waded knee-deep. Farther away, somewhere beyond Merrimoth’s house, I could hear the surf pounding: my moon magick apparently had limits.
    Lon was above me now, his black peacoat billowing at his sides like the wings of a fallen angel. I focused on climbing the rocks to reach him, a task more difficult than I initially thought. They were slimy with seaweed, rough with broken mussel shells, and it didn’t help that shivers racked my body. When I got to a point where I could stand without falling, I stretched and nabbed Lon’s ankle, then tugged. He moved a few inches. Holy Whore—it was like pulling a box of bricks out of the sky. I tugged harder and, with a series of groans, dragged him through the air, retracing my steps to shore.
    My lungs felt close to bursting and I was seriously dizzy from the amount of Heka I was using. But I knew that once I let go of the moon magick, Merrimoth would inflict some sort of insane Narnian winter across the beach. Maybe even turn us into frozen statues. Or set us on fire. I shoved Lon closer to the ground, leaning across his back, then finally sitting on him when that didn’t work.
    Screw David Merrimoth and screw Dare for calling me up in the middle of the night to bind him. As I considered whether I had the strength to wrangle Lon up the driveway and into the car so we could just get out of there, a figure materialized in the shadows beneath the stilted house.
    It was a woman, possibly fifty years old, long and lean. She was wearing odd clothing—a toga-like gray dress. Silver fog clung to her bare ankles. Her dark hair was pinned up and dusted with gray at the crown. She had intelligent eyes, cheekbones that could cut diamond, and a full, sensual mouth. French, through and through. She crossed her elegant arms with an air of superiority and smiled at me like she’d just won the lottery.
    When I realized who she was, I screamed bloody murder.

Complete shock severed my connection to the moon magick, and the woman disappeared in a flash. Newly reanimated, Lon faceplanted into the sand just as the ocean roared back to life, echoing Merrimoth’s angry shouting somewhere above us.
    My heart raced around my chest like a fox outrunning a hunter. A terrible feeling of hopelessness took root.
    Enola Duval. Never in a million years did I think I’d see her again. Gifted student of the occult and author of multiple books on magick. Infamous former member of the highly esteemed Ekklesia Eleusia esoteric society, or E∴E∴, as it’s known in occult circles. One of the Black Lodge Slayers. Number 37 in a set of American Serial Killer trading cards. On the FBI’s Most Wanted list.
    Mom.
    My mother had been gone for months, claimed by a primordial albino demon named Nivella the White and taken into the Æthyr with my father as payment for crimes they committed. Nasty crimes. Unpardonable crimes. Long before her stint as a serial killer, my mother conceived me during an arcane ceremony that invoked something big and secret and unknowable from the Æthyr inside my cells—all so that she