A Book of Spirits and Thieves

“The mark I give you now,” Markus said, “binds you to my society. It will also free you from any human ailments you may have previously been susceptible to. No disease, no sickness, for as long as you remain one of my trusted members. This is my gift to you.” He continued to trace the dagger across Adam’s forearm in a precise pattern—a circle, or was it a triangle? Farrell had closely watched as it had been cut into his own arm three years ago, but he couldn’t seem to recall what symbol it was. The memory was a blur.

Bright red blood dripped to the stage floor. With every drop, the charge of magic pulsing through the gathered members strengthened. The air itself seemed to shimmer with it.

When it was done, Markus pressed his hand against the wound. White light began to glow around his hand, and when Markus let go of Adam, the wound had been completely healed. It left no scar.

“There,” Markus said. “You are now one of us.”

Adam looked down at his arm with amazement. “Thank you.”

Once again, Farrell thought back to the night of his initiation. His fear, his anxiety. His doubt. There he stood before everyone, with Connor in the audience, watching and worrying, just as Farrell did for Adam tonight.

He’d seen the grimness on Adam’s face upon witnessing the execution from only steps away. His little brother knew he’d just made a serious commitment to a society dedicated to saving the world from evil. That what they did here was important. Necessary.

Farrell had already seen behind the first curtain.

Now he’d been chosen to see what hid behind the next.





Chapter 6


MADDOX



“I know one thing. You’re going to help me get back home.”

Right after the spirit girl said this, she’d vanished into thin air, leaving Maddox turning around in circles, confused by everything he’d seen and heard, until Livius barked at him that it was time to leave Lord Gillis’s villa.

Thankfully, it seemed as if the strangely dressed girl had only been a figment of his imagination.

It was entirely possible that such hallucinations had been caused by Maddox’s not getting very much sleep lately. He’d recently begun having nightmares. Always the same one, too—the horrific experience of seeing his first spirit.

The shadowy creature moved toward him in the dead of night . . . chilling his heart the closer it came. Maddox pulled his blanket up to his nose as he stared out with horror at what approached him, lit only by the flickering candle on his bedside table.

It had black eyes so dark and bottomless he was certain they could devour his soul.

“Help me,” the horrific thing screeched.

Maddox screamed and screamed until the spirit withdrew from him, as if in horrible pain, and faded into the shadows. His mother was at his side a moment later, pulling his small body into her arms and holding him tightly until he stopped sobbing.

“You’re stronger than any creature of darkness, my sweet boy,” she whispered. “These troubled spirits . . . they’re drawn to your magic, like nightflies to a campfire. But they will never hurt you. I promise they won’t.”

He wasn’t sure it was true, but her promise helped him be brave.

By the time he turned twelve, Maddox had learned that he had the ability to trap the dark things that visited him in the night in silver containers that he would then bury deep in the earth.

“Why can I do these things, Mama?” he asked her one evening when she was in the middle of making a potato and pheasant stew. The pheasant had been killed by the man she’d recently claimed to have fallen in love with. Livius was very handsome and seemingly full of enough kindness, charm, and wit to get him through the door of their cottage and into Damaris Corso’s bed.

“I don’t know.” It was her constant reply whenever he asked, but somehow it always rang false to him. He sensed that she did know something, although she refused to say what it was. “But you must tell no one of your magic. Other people wouldn’t understand like I do.”

However, it was Damaris who confided in Livius about her son’s abilities a year later. Afterward, Livius had shown them his true self, which was made up almost entirely of greed and deceit. He was an opportunist and a con man hiding in their village to escape the moneylender he owed.

But he decided his luck had finally changed as soon as he learned Maddox’s secret.

Once Livius discovered that real hauntings were rare and that noblemen who believed their villas were plagued by spirits were quite common, he began to rely on Maddox’s ability to summon shadows to trick customers who were made gullible by fear. And it was a very good trick: No one ever doubted Maddox’s abilities as a vanquisher of dark spirits.

The day after they left Lord Gillis’s villa, Livius took Maddox to the local festival. With the crowds so large that it was impossible to estimate their numbers, it appeared as if all citizens who lived within a twenty-mile radius were there to celebrate the goddess’s fifteenth year of ruling Northern Mytica.

Maddox was just an infant when the two radiant and powerful beings first came to Mytica, but he’d heard all the stories. He’d lived his entire life under Valoria’s rule.

Two goddesses made their home Mytica. One in the North, one in the South.