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T he sudden height was dizzying, especially after navigating narrow, enclosed spaces for so long. Evelyn looped her arm through Kirat’s and tried not to look down. The floral-scented air whipped through her hair, wilding her waves and turning what little order she’d had into full disarray. Javier hummed to himself as he flew.

“How many times have you been here?” Evelyn shouted to be heard above the wind.

“Just the once before. They were very welcoming then, too.”

“And Javier?”

“He works for the owner of Zone 17. Her name is Millie.”

“Is he… real?” Javier stopped humming, and Kirat looked slightly concerned. Evelyn rushed to clarify. “I mean, of course he’s real, but has he always been a ladybug? I’ve never met one that could talk before.”

Javier answered before Kirat could. “I am technically a construct. A blend of magical and mechanical life. I am real in the sense that I exist. If by real, you meant ‘natural,’ then the answer is, of course, no. Ladybugs of my size and intelligence do not exist in nature. Nor do they have the required physical structures to converse as I do now.”

“Thank you for explaining, Javier. I meant no offense!”

“I took none. Curiosity is natural for humans.”

They passed the remainder of the flight in silence, broken only by Valen’s guttural gasp when Javier started his abrupt descent toward a pink and purple castle straight out of a cotton candy fairy tale. Javier landed on the perfectly manicured front lawn, and Valen stumbled down from the saddle to vomit on the grass.

“Distasteful, but not uncommon,” said Javier. “Some humans have little tolerance for the majesty of flight. Mistress Millie will be out soon. Good day.”

Valen heaved again. Evelyn pulled his water bottle from his pack and handed it to him. The castle reminded her of a certain video game princess’s castle, complete with triangle-shaped flags flying from the turrets. Evelyn understood Kirat’s reference to Glenda the moment Millie appeared at the entrance. She wore a sparkly pink ball gown with puffed sleeves and a tall silver crown on her head.

“Kirat!” she called out as she rushed across the courtyard to greet them. “My dear friend. You have returned!” She pulled Kirat into a hug before turning to Evelyn and Valen, who was swaying slightly but upright. “And who have you brought with you?”

Kirat cleared her throat, a tinge of pink in her cheeks. “These are my friends, Evelyn and Valen.”

“Welcome, Evelyn and Valen!” Millie hugged them each in turn. She smelled like a sugared rose. “What brings you to paradise?”

“Evelyn is experiencing some difficulty exiting New Orleans, and we’re trying to secure her safe passage out of the area through the Dark City.”

Millie frowned delicately. “Difficulty leaving the city? What do you mean?”

Valen stepped up. “Someone doesn’t want her to leave. We don’t know who. But they put up a magical barrier that’s keeping her from crossing city limits.”

“How unfortunate. Poor you! Magic wielders can be very disrespectful of personal boundaries, I’m afraid. Just because they can doesn’t mean they should, as you know. How can I help? Though I must warn you, I have limited knowledge outside of paradise.”

“I am taking her to Second Mother.”

Evelyn looked from Kirat to Millie in surprise. This was news to her. Kirat hadn’t explained where they were going, just that it might provide a way out. In retrospect, maybe she should have asked more questions.

“Ah, yes. Of course! She has been here the longest. If anyone knows of a way out, it would be her. Very clever thinking, Kirat.”

Kirat’s cheeks flushed pink again, and she looked down at the grass near her boots. “Thank you, Millie. I hope it’ll work.”

“And so brave of you to come all this way. You do not come often to the Dark City, if I recall correctly? You certainly do not visit me often enough.”

Valen choked on his water and fell into a coughing fit. Evelyn patted his back.

“I’m sorry, Millie,” Kirat said. “Once I see them safely to Second Mother, maybe I could come back here for a while.”

“I would love that,” Millie said, beaming. “Javier will be beside himself. You are his favorite, you know.”

Kirat appeared at a loss for words, so Evelyn spoke up. “I thought you were taking us to a way out?”

“I am. Second Mother is the only being down here who is powerful enough to break that magical barrier or tell you how to get through it. Like Millie, she functions outside of the coven’s jurisdiction. And she might know a better way out than the door I’m taking you to.”

“This Second Mother—what is she like?” Evelyn asked.

Millie’s cheery expression clouded over briefly. “She is very old.” She hesitated, looking over her shoulder as though someone was watching. “Primordial. She was here long before the rest of us came. Her zone is just… hers. There is no number, no rune locking the door. If she wants you to enter, she will let you. If she doesn’t, you won’t.”

Interesting. “Does she have a name?”

Millie’s forehead creased again. “I’m sure she does, but I don’t know it. Old as she is, I don’t imagine anyone still living has that knowledge.”

“It would be too much power over her,” Kirat managed, her cheeks still flushed.

“Right.” Evelyn thought for a moment. “Do you think she’ll help me?”

“No idea!” Millie’s bubbly personality returned in full force. “If she wants to, she will. You’re an interesting sort of witchling, you know?” (Was she imagining things or did Millie just look at her satchel?) “Interesting is good when meeting the Second Mother. Interesting is everything.”

“We should go.” Valen had recovered from his coughing fit.

“Oh, of course! Let me refill your water supply.” She blinked, and it was done. “And of course, point you to the nearest rune.” She gestured beyond the castle. “It’s just over that hill. Kirat remembers the way… don’t you?”

“I remember.” Kirat bowed awkwardly. “Thank you for your help, Millie.”

“My pleasure! Don’t forget to come back!”

After they’d said their goodbyes, Kirat led them around the castle and over a mossy green hill to what looked like the foot of a mountain. She waved her hand over a small outcropping, and a passageway appeared.

As soon as they exited Zone 17, the tunnel walls around them started to shake with a deep rumble that vibrated up through the soles of Evelyn’s boots. Kirat’s eyes widened.

“She knows we’re coming.”

Just as Millie had described, the entrance to the Second Mother’s lair was marked only by a thin outline of an arched doorway. There was no rune, no automatic entry.

“How do we get in?” Evelyn asked. Kirat shrugged.

“Leave it to me.” Valen cracked his neck and shook out his arms. “I’ll open the door.

Evelyn brushed past him to move closer to where the door should be, closed her hand around her great-grandmother’s moonstone, and mentally reached through the wall into whatever lay beyond it. She let her mind search the murky void, seeking without direction, waiting to be found. She barely brushed the edge of something and suddenly a door appeared in the stone wall of the tunnel. The same size and shape as the outline, it was actually a set of double doors, arched to a point where they met in the very middle. The wood was dark and old and covered with flaking purple paint. Its brass door handles were worn smooth with time. Evelyn reached out to touch one, but the doors creaked open a few inches on their own.

“Enter, child.”

Chills raced down her spine, and the hair rose on the back of her neck. The voice… had she heard it aloud or had it spoken in her head? One glance at Kirat and Valen told her they’d heard it, too. Evelyn grabbed one of the brass door handles and pulled open the door. She was past being timid. Time was running short, and if Second Mother could help her escape, then Evelyn had to speak with her. There were no alternatives left to choose from.

She stepped through the door to find herself in another large cavern. It was so dark that at first she couldn’t see her own hand in front of her face. Water streamed down the walls to pool across the floor. Steady drops fell from the ceiling of the cavern to plop audibly in the puddles below. It smelled damp and surprisingly earthy but there was no stench of rot or death.

“Over here, witchling.”

She heard Kirat and Valen move in behind her, slow and cautious in their movements. Evelyn followed the direction of the voice. Their torches did little to dispel the deep gloom. The darkness was so thick it fell over the air like velvet, dampening noise and making her ears pulse with her own heartbeat.

“Come closer.”

Fresh chills prickled down her back at the proximity of the unfamiliar voice. Her moonstone glowed warm in her clasped hand. The floor under her boots changed from wet stone to spongy wood. She stepped up three steps to stand on a narrow porch of a thatch-roofed cottage. The walls appeared to be the same time-softened wood of the steps and porch.

“Enter. I have been waiting.”

Evelyn pushed aside the hanging curtain that served as a door and ducked through the opening. Inside, a fire glowed warmly and beside it sat an old woman clad entirely in ragged black robes. She rocked slowly in her chair, long nails clacking against each other as she twisted and braided a length of silver cord. It coiled around the legs of her chair and across the room to disappear in the shadows.

“Sit.”

Evelyn sat gingerly on the edge of the second rocking chair, teetering on the verge of a fight-or-flight response. Mostly flight. Terror was an icy river in her veins, and she shivered despite the warmth from the fire.

“Will you not speak to me?” The old woman’s eyes were closed as she worked. Blood trickled from beneath her eyelids to trace rivulets down her weathered cheeks. More red dripped from her ears, coating the sides of her neck and creating slick, wet clumps in her long, matted hair. She had red half-moons of scabbed skin where her cuticles should be, and her long nails were torn and jagged.

“I… I’m sorry,” Evelyn managed. “Are you hurt? Do you need help?”

She laughed, a gravelly, disused sound in the small hut. “No, child. I am as I was created and as I will always be.”

“But you’re bleeding.”

“As I was created and as I will always be.”

“Oh.” Evelyn took a steadying breath. “My name is Evelyn, and I?—”

“I know who you are, witchling. And I know why you have come.”

“You do?”

Second Mother grinned, toothless. “I do.” Her nails stopped clacking. “It has been years beyond counting since I felt that power. Nasty one. Old to you, though young to me.”

Evelyn’s hands gripped the strap of the bag strung across her chest. “Do you know what it is?”

“The book. Yes. And you want me to tell you, though you fear the answer.” When Evelyn didn’t respond, she continued. “He craved power more than most men. And most men crave it deeply, darkly, and without limit. He decided the ultimate power is that over life itself. He believed that by controlling death, he controlled life. He was a fool.” She opened her eyes, revealing irises so black they blended into her pupils and so large only thin slivers of white were visible around the edges of her lids. “But I am not a fool and neither are you, yet you bring this delicious sip of power into a den filled with power-drunk magic wielders.”

“The brave and the foolish look alike to the undiscerning.”

“Hmm.” Second Mother’s eye’s narrowed, but her nails resumed their clicking as she weaved. “Why, then, are you being brave?”

Evelyn debated internally for half a breath, then chose the truth. “I’m trying to keep this object out of the wrong hands.”

“Whose hands are wrong, witchling? And how do you know?”

“Anyone who would use it, wield it, for its intended purpose.”

“Whose hands are right? Yours?”

“No. I have no desire to keep it.”

“There is your first lie.” Second Mother seemed to grow in size, expanding to fill the small cottage. Her face was so much closer to Evelyn’s now. She could smell her breath like damp earth. “I will not forgive a second one. Try again.”

“I feel a pull, like it sings to me, but I will not keep it. I don’t want it, not at my true self. It sings, it calls, yes. But I just want to keep others safe from it. I will not use it.”

Second Mother was small again, rocking. “Its song is beautiful like only death can be. I believe you want to resist it. I do not know if you will succeed.”

“I will. I just need to get it out of the city.”

“I see.” She blinked her black eyes slowly. When she spoke, her voice sounded younger, sweeter. “You could leave it with me.”

“I won’t.”

“And if I take it?”

“You won’t.”

Second Mother hissed. “I could.”

“Yes. I have no doubt you could. But you won’t.”

“Why not?” She tilted her head to side, curious, dark eyes boring into Evelyn’s soul. “Why will I not take that delicious morsel for my own?”

Evelyn sat back in her chair to gain a few more inches of breathing room and broke eye contact to gaze into the fire licking at her boots. “Because you don’t need it, and to give in to the desire of it would be to succumb to the power of a weak, foolish man.”

She hissed again, and Evelyn flinched. It dissolved into a hoarse laugh. “Tell me your true name, witchling.”

“I won’t. I know the power of names. I’ll keep mine, thank you.”

“No fool indeed. I have no name to be used against me, you know. It is an irony that has defined my existence from nearly the beginning of time. It is why I am still here after all of forever.”

“If you have no name, why do they call you Second Mother?”

“It is when and what I was created, but not what I became.” Evelyn looked into her eyes and saw suffering. “Lilit was first. Strong. Defiant. Equal. Too much, too much. Cast out into the harsh wilderness. I came next. Created to be lesser. Safer. To produce. But desired ? Never. I was cast out, too. I looked for Lilit, but she went far from all that was known. I stayed close to watch as a third was made. Beautiful, compliant, easily manipulated. My own name was taken and given to her, the new ‘source of life.’ I became nameless, nothing, no more. Yet, funny trick—what has not lived cannot die. I never was so I could not stop being. And so I am because I am not.” Second Mother watched, apparently fascinated, as two tears traced a path down Evelyn’s cheeks. “Do you cry for me?”

Evelyn’s voice cracked when she spoke. “I do.”

“Is it pity?” There was danger in her voice.

“No,” Evelyn answered, truthful. “Empathy. I feel for you, but I do not pity you.”

“The others you brought with you—they draw closer.”

“My friends. They’ll be concerned for my safety, but they mean you no harm.”

“Does not matter whether they mean it or not.” Second Mother’s eyes flicked to the doorway, and the cottage disappeared. The fireplace, the rocking chairs, the thatched roof—all gone in a blink.

Evelyn had tumbled to the floor when her chair vanished. She got to her feet and looked up at Second Mother, now huge, towering above her in the cavern. Flames burned bright in large brass bowls arranged in a circle around them. Beyond the circle, Evelyn could see Valen and Kirat shouting at her, but no sound reached her ears.

“Please,” she said. “They don’t want to hurt you.”

“He does,” she hissed and flicked one finger in Valen’s direction. He flew backward through the open doors into the tunnel they’d entered from. The moment he was out of sight, the doors closed. Kirat watched what happened to Valen, then ran toward Evelyn. “This one only fears for you. She can stay.” Second Mother’s finger twitched again, and Kirat became frozen in place, her face locked in a mask of fierce concern.

“Now, where were we?”