suffer any more than he has already, just by surviving this long.’
Octavian flinched and took a step back. Noticing the movement, Tori glanced up at him. Her copper eyes held no apology, only pity.
‘You should go.’
There were things he wanted to say, small comforts and reassurances, but he knew if he spoke now it would be to ease his own heavy heart. Instead, he glanced once at the others gathered around
the clearing on the hill – most of them studiously minding their own business – then he nodded to Tori, turned, and started back down toward the barn and the parking lot beyond.
At the bottom of the hill, people were buying apples and early-season pumpkins while their children were drinking cider and eating fresh-baked donuts at picnic benches and begging for a hay
ride. But as Octavian passed amongst them, the first raindrops began to fall, and the sky rumbled with thunder, still distant but coming closer.
The storm had arrived.
The rain drove the mourners indoors. Most of them abandoned the orchard quickly, though the witches were not so intimidated by the storm. The elements were the glory of nature,
and the earthwitches both worshipped and took their magic from them. But still they were only human, and on a day of gray sorrow, none of them had any desire to be drenched in cold September
rain.
Tori and Cat were the last to leave the clearing, the last to stroll down through the apple trees toward the barn below. Their earthcraft was nothing compared to Keomany’s, but they had
magic enough to keep the rain from touching them for a few minutes. With the storm coming in so quickly and so unexpectedly, most of their customers would be leaving, and so would their friends.
Tomorrow they would all gather to celebrate the equinox together, but today Tori and Cat wanted only to return to their home in the grounds of the orchard, make strong coffee, and wrap themselves
in a warm blanket, trying to forget that Keomany would never return to the bedroom they had given her in their own house.
Back on the hill, rain pattered the leaves of the trees and the wind picked up, shaking their branches. Overripe apples came loose and fell to the ground, rolling before being caught in the
ragged grass or in ruts in the earth. Lightning flashed, turning the sky white, and the thunder that followed it shook the hills and echoed along the small valley.
A large, perfect apple fell from the new tree in the clearing the witches had left. It did not roll. Strange winds worked against the gusts of the storm, swirling along the newly rejuvenated
soil of the clearing, picking up dirt and grass and stones and all of the ashes that the earthwitches had sprinkled onto the ground during their ceremony. Small shoots worked their way up through
the earth, roots that seemed to clutch at the apple, plunging through its skin and flesh in search of the seeds within, inspiring them to send out shoots of their own. Impossibly.
The ash and soil and other detritus of the autumn harvest spun about in that unusual wind, collecting around apple and root, growing and taking shape, sculpting and building something new.
For Gaea was threatened, and she would not weep for her daughter.
New York City, New York
Charlotte still hadn’t quite gotten used to waking up in daylight. It shouldn’t have been that difficult; only seven months had passed since the sadist who called
himself Cortez had turned her into a vampire. She remembered life before death very well. But in the time she had spent with Cortez’s coven before running away, he had gotten into her head in
a way that no one ever had before.
Really, there were no such things as vampires – at least not in the way the movies had always portrayed them. They were blood-drinkers, yes, and they had evil in them, but their true
nature was much more complex than that. Vampires were human beings who had been afflicted with a kind of supernatural infection before being killed, a taint that
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