Page 44 of Will It Hurt?

I blinked. “Is that the horror movie where those guys go into the Swedish forest and die in the end?”

“That’s The Ritual .”

“Oh.” I paused. “Then what are you talking about?”

“ The Retractare is a spell. And the fact that you don’t know that doesn’t bode well for me.”

“Is that Latin?” I asked. “Because most of our spells are written in a mix of old Scots and Tamil, which is a language derived from—”

“Dravidian people. Yes, I know.”

I’d gotten so used to explaining the roots of my culture that her knowledge surprised me.

“Well…” My fingers stole beneath my beanie to scratch my scalp. “ Not that I’m offering to help you or anything, but if you explain the concept of this spell, I can find the equivalent in our spellbook.”

I thought I saw her lips tighten under the streetlight.

“It’s a spell used to retrieve the vanquished from the other side.”

I paused. “That’s certainly not something we’ve ever been taught.”

“It’s a forbidden spell. ”

“Well, that much is obvious.” I angled my head in question.

“According to a friend, any wytch can perform this spell,” she stated, eyeing me intently. “They just need to be strong enough.”

A single snowflake fell on my forehead. I swept at it irritably.

“You’re really overestimating my powers if you think I can perform a forbidden spell—”

“What if you—

“—and that I would even want to expend my powers for someone like you.”

“I’ll make it worth your while.”

“Money?” I scoffed. “You think you can sway me with money after trying to kill me?”

“Then what do you want?”

There was something in her voice—low, rough like a match dragged across sandpaper. It wasn’t a question, not really. More like a demand wrapped in velvet, sharp enough to draw blood but soft enough to make me rethink saying no.

It wasn’t fair, the way she wielded her stillness and silence. It pressed against me heavily, just like the way her chest had pinned me to the wall in the Christmas market.

“Nothing.” The word emerged as a rasp and I cleared my throat. “I don’t want anything from you, vamp.”

“Jinn,” she said. “My name’s Jinn.”

“Well, Jinn, sorry to disappoint—” I paused, then changed strategies. “Actually, no, I’m not at all sorry to disappoint my would-be murderer, but I don’t have the capacity to help you.”

“You won’t even try.”

There was something about the way she said those words—overcome with grief and sadness and… something deeper. Something much more painful .

Guilt reared its fucking ugly head, eclipsing all logic. Gone was the obvious argument that I was only doing my bloody job. In its place was a sadness for someone who was clearly grieving a loved one.

Motherfucker.

Could I undo what I’d done? The question gnawed at me with teeth sharp enough to shred my skin. All those vamps, all those undead, slipping into oblivion… Could I actually bring one of them back?

The concept was a strange one. Once vanquished, a vamp stayed vanquished.

At least that was what the High Coven had preached.

Not once had they hinted at the possibility of bringing one of them back into our world.

But that could simply be because they prohibited the use of forbidden magick under any circumstances because of past incidences which we weren’t allowed to discuss.

I scratched my scalp again and regretted it when I brushed the open wound.

“Even if I wanted to,” I began hesitantly. “I don’t know if I can. That’s the honest truth.”

“Trying is still better than nothing.”

“This is too much pressure—”

She broke out of her stillness to reach into the underside of her coat. A metal card case appeared between her fingers.

“If you change your mind,” she said, sliding a card from the stack. “You can reach me here.”

I watched her warily as she slid the card into the letterbox that had been built into the brickwork of the front gate, and slowly backed away. There was a tiny clink as the hard edges of the card made contact with the metal.

“Well, I’ll think about—”

When I looked up, she was gone. Only the imprint of her wingtips remained on the ground, outlined in the snow .

I glanced at the letterbox. It hovered on the perimeter of the wards, possibly on the other side of safety. Had she done that on purpose? So I would be forced to abandon the magick that protected me from predators like her?

But what would be the point of asking for my help and then killing me? Or was this all the ploy to draw me out?

But it would only take a second. One tiny second to pull open the mailbox and retrieve the card.

Was that a second too much? I knew better than anyone else how quickly the undead could move…

Fuck it.

I inched forward, my boots crunching in the snow, and wrapped my fingers around the brass handle, pulling it out. The card lay atop a pile of letters none of us had bothered to retrieve.

My fingers curled around it just as a shadow fell over me. A palm encircled my forearm, pinching into the puffed coat. A scream swelled in my throat.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Maia demanded, pulling me back into the safety of our wards. “You promised you’d be safe!”

I glanced at the card. It was thick and stark white with a string of numbers in the middle. I didn’t know my killer well, but I thought the stern lettering suited her.

“Don’t worry,” I said, trying to pry myself loose from Maia’s grip. “She doesn’t want me dead. She can’t have me dead.”

Maia’s gaze narrowed. “What does that mean?”

“It means,” I said, turning the card over so that Maia could see the phone number. “She needs my help. ”

Chapter Nineteen

Aisla

The unexpected proposal willed away any lingering notion of sleep. I lay in bed, grateful for the softness of the feathery blanket on my sore muscles as I turned the plain white card over in my palm.

I’d memorized the eleven numbers neatly printed on the back. The matte finish on the pad of my thumb was powdery.

Who the hell still kept business cards? Even actual business people would have switched to digital business cards… Right?

The edge of the card rasped across my thumb.

Jinn.

I wondered if she’d chosen that name knowing the meaning behind it.

Jinn were believed to be horned, bearded creatures who existed to frighten the ever-loving crap out of the living.

They were prevalent in Arabic and Islamic cultures for being wily little things that tried to harm humans in innovative ways by twisting their words or playing pranks.

In simpler terms, they were tricksters from another realm.

But there were good jinn, too. Magnanimous genies, for example. Or a kind of obedient household pet that helped its master keep a tidy dwelling.

If she knew the meaning behind her chosen name—because, of course it had to be a chosen name—what did that say about her? Was it a Jekyll and Hyde situation? A walking contradiction?

Maybe she was like a coin with two sides? I’d witnessed the side that tried to kill me, so perhaps there was a more normal side I could tap into if we were to work together.

Absolutely not!

I heard Maia’s yell in my ear. She’d spent the better part of an hour giving me a lecture on why this was a horrible idea. At the time, I’d thought it was funny how all her reasonings ended with me being dead in a drain, but now I wasn’t so sure.

Money was a surprisingly useful bargaining tactic. I found myself wondering just how much she would offer in return for my services. And if I would get to keep the money even if the spell didn’t work.

The latter was likely, but…

Trying is still better than nothing.

Her words echoed in my head, the hint of desperation coming through clearly. And although I had never been particularly soft for pleading words or a grieving face, I felt something twist inside me.

I had a very real hand in vanquishing Belle, and that asserted a confusing need to set things to rights. Especially if Jinn insisted that it was some kind of impulsive mistake.

And, I supposed, if there was one day a year when I could genuinely trust my magick, it had to be the solstice.

The winter solstice boasted a Cold Moon this year.

It wasn’t a rare occurrence—I’d seen it happen a handful of times in my thirty years of existence—but for a few hours past midnight, when the moon was stark and full, wytches all around the world felt magick simmering in their blood.

The phenomenon was commonly known as Moonrising, and many used it as an opportunity to cast spells that required more powerful magick than they were usually capable of .

I’d never once made use of the Cold Moon to cast more than warding spells. Brodie, Maia and I would reinforce the wards that our ancestors had put in place around the property.

I had never been tempted to try to do more. After all, as an Eclectic, no one expected me to do anything other than simply exist.

I supposed I could challenge myself to cast this spell to see how far I could stretch my magick…

…and get paid in the process.

But that only left me three days to figure out what this Retractare spell was.

Sleep eventually took over, muting the thoughts that looped endlessly in my head. Whether it was restful or not was debatable, but when I awakened, it was to the feeling of dread.

It wasn’t the most pleasant way to start my day. My pulse quickened, a tightness wrapping around my chest.

The gnarled fingers of the sycamore outside the window shivered in the icy breeze, tapping against the side of the house.

In the distance, the printer in my office whirred and chimed.

An assignment.

That explained the dread. The sound of the printer was enough to force my sleepy mind to race ahead of reason and jump face-first into the reality of neutralizing another undead’s existence.

I sat on the edge of my bed, cradling my head in my palms.

Ah shit.

I forced myself to breathe, to count the seconds up to sixty then backwards to zero. And yet, the dread refused to dissipate .

My limbs were weighed down with lead as I crossed the narrow hallway and trudged up the stairs to the attic. The door stood ajar, the swivel chair turned towards me as though waiting for my weight to press down on it.

I fell into it with a muted oomph and the back of the high-backed chair collided with the desk, rattling several things on the surface.

Whatever, I thought, reaching for the carefully printed papers.

Fifty-five year old vamp from the borders requesting neutralization in a week’s time.

As I read through the bland document that dictated the death of yet another not-so-living being, I came face-to-face with the realization that I hated my job. The repetitive and hollow cycle of neutralization drained me more with each passing day.

My fingers scrunched the corner of the pages, but I couldn’t bring myself to crumple the document altogether. Looking at the neatly typed words felt like yet another nail in the coffin of my dwindling motivation.

Had I ever cared about the job? Did I ever feel a sense of purpose in what I did?

Perhaps. Not that I took any pride in being a neutralizer, but because I carried a legacy built by Laxmi women. I was a part of something more through my job. But even that little spark was gone, suffocated under the relentless grind and watching the pain in the undead’s eyes.

A deep exhaustion settled over me, seeping into my bones.

Why was I giving so much of myself to something that left me empty? Was this how I wanted to spend my days? Looking into people’s eyes as they died, internalizing their pain and pretending like it didn’t affect me?

Motherfucker .

Maia was right.

I needed help. I needed out.

When I picked up the rotary and dialed the numbers I’d memorized, I vowed I would ask for the biggest sum imaginable. Partly to inconvenience the vamp, but also…

To pay for my freedom.