Chapter 2

Tansy Paxton sat in the hospital waiting room, her hands wrapped around a cold cup of coffee, Wanda Patterson beside her, as they both awaited news on Laci Valentine. The leader of the Cauldron Coven forced herself to practice her breathing exercises, doing her best to remain calm and not blame herself for another member of her coven getting hurt. They had just buried the young witch, Rose Tillery; they did not need to mourn another one of their own.

Wanda continued to sit there, sipping her third cup of hot tea as she studied the other people in the waiting room. At first she babbled on about random topics, her nerves getting the better of her, her talking a way to control her agitation somehow. Eventually, however, when Tansy wasn’t such a willing conversationalist, the older woman drifted into silence, her legs crossed at her ankles as she drank cup after cup of tea. Tansy knew she should help the other woman, but her own regrets consumed her, making her useless to be of any comfort.

They were still unsure who stabbed Laci, and it confused Tansy who would even want to hurt the young woman. She was the sweetest, meekest person Tansy had met in a while. The attack on Laci made little sense to Tansy, at least not since Laci gave up her old life for a purer path. They were lucky Renny Saunders had been walking downtown when she was and found Laci only moments after the attack. A gutsy move on the attacker’s part, stabbing Laci in broad daylight in the middle of a busy street. Downtown Harbor City was always thick with pedestrians as they ventured from one specialty shop to another, sometimes buying, but most often just browsing the oddities they could find and basking in the ambiance of the downtown area.

Tansy wondered if Laci’s stabbing somehow connected to the attack on the coven at the cemetery a couple of nights ago during the Recapturing Ceremony for Rose. It was too close not to be, she thought. But what would the dark elves gain from killing Laci? Tansy stared at her cup of coffee, the dark liquid cold and bitter. And what about what I saw that night once I returned home? How do I make sense of that vision? Nothing seemed to make sense anymore, to feel normal, not since Laci walked through the door at the Murky Cauldron over a month ago. Since then, Tansy had seen things she had only read about in books. Not that she didn’t think those things were real before—the faerie realms, magic, ghosts, demons—she believed in them very much. She taught others to believe in them. She had just never seen them until recently, and even then, they were solid beings, real creatures, even if some of them were evil. Yet, could the unsubstantial exist as well? Was that what she had seen that night in her bathroom? Rose’s ghost? She thought it merely a hallucination due to the fight earlier. Now, however, she wasn’t so sure.

Tansy’s body hurt like hell. She never expected to be battling gargoyles tonight. The Recapturing Ceremony was supposed to be a simple ritual, pulling Rose Tillery’s life force, her power, from her grave to share her essence among the other witches of the Cauldron Coven. The ceremony wound up being a trap, however. Luckily, Rhychard and his coshey, Kree, were there to help save them all. It was a battle, but one they won. Another battle within only a few days. The sad part was that a portion of Rose’s power was lost to them, scattered on the night wind. Some of the witches had been reached, but not all, because the gargoyles attacked in the middle of the transfer. All of that potential, lost.

Tansy closed her eyes as she leaned on her bathroom counter, blowing out a deep breath. This was not how the night was supposed to go. But what did she expect? They stood up to evil, and evil never lays down quietly. Rose Tillery paid the ultimate price.

Tansy knew she needed to get to sleep; she was worn out, exhausted, but a shower was necessary, not only to wash away the grime of the fight but also to scrub away the feeling of loss and failure. She turned to the shower, flipping the water on to instant boil. Peeling off her clothes, she stepped into the hot spray, the scalding water beating her pale skin. Hanging her head into the stream of water, she allowed it to wash away the screams of earlier that night, the cries of the gargoyles as they flew in to attack, the sounds of Rhychard screaming and Kree growling. It didn’t work, however. The racket just continued to echo in her head. She couldn’t shake the images. She probably never would.

One of Rhychard Bartlett’s last statements had been for Tansy not to worry about the witches finding the Unseelie; the Unseelie would find them. Tansy worried about how true that statement was. She entered the Warrior’s world, and now creatures she only read about in books were attacking her. There were no regrets. There were no other options, but to step in and fight to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. Yet, now that she was in the battle, she needed to get her witches prepared for future conflicts with the creatures of the Void. She highly doubted the Unseelie would go away. I really do miss you, Rose.

“I miss you, too.”

Tansy jerked her head up, water spraying everywhere as she yanked the shower curtain open. Standing next to her bathroom sink was Rose.

Mother and daughter shoved the door to the waiting room open, snatching their attention, shattering Tansy’s memory. Jayden Valentine rushed over to where they sat, her face a mask of anguish. Her mother walked behind her, a worried look on her face.

Panic gripped Tansy’s heart. “What happened? Is Laci okay?”

Jayden’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I’m not sure, to be honest. She went through some sort of attack, her body jerking all over the bed, even to the point of ripping open her stitches. It took the nurses a while to calm her down and wake her up.”

Maria Valentine walked over to a chair beside Wanda and sat down, wringing her hands as she rocked slightly in the chair, the concern for her daughter clear on her face. Tansy couldn’t blame the woman. It was bad enough someone had stabbed Laci, but Maria had just gotten her daughter back, having lost Laci to the streets and a pimp named Jerome who forced Laci into a life she never wanted in order to spare her younger sister.

“When Laci woke up,” Jayden continued, “she said she saw Rose. That she was in trouble somehow. How is that possible?”

Tansy shrugged. “Probably just the drugs,” she said. “Laci’s been under a lot of stress lately, and with the attack and Rose’s death so recent, her mind probably just latched onto her image to anchor her and give her some comfort and a distraction.”

Jayden shook her head, her dark bangs swishing across her forehead. “No. Laci swears it wasn’t that. She saw Rose, actually saw her and talked with her.” Jayden wrapped her arms around her waist as if she had suddenly caught a chill. “It wasn’t like a vision or dream. It was more like a nightmare.”

Tansy stared at Jayden, unsure of what to think or what it might mean. Rose stood by her bathroom sink just a couple of nights ago, an ephemeral image floating there and smiling at Tansy. Rose said nothing else except that she missed Tansy as well before she faded from sight. However, could that vision connect to what Laci saw? A couple of weeks ago, Tansy would have shaken the whole thing off as just grief and fatigue, but with everything she had seen in the past couple of weeks, nothing was out of the norm. “Take me to her,” she said.