Ink & Fire: (A Havenwood Falls Novella)
R. K. Ryals
For those who know the power behind words.
Words are mighty warriors that can shake mountains even when whispered.
By that sin fell the angels.
—William Shakespeare
Prologue
Danger rises in the darkness. Shadows weave in and out of nothingness, the Infernum a screaming mess of imagined pain, for the fear of pain is often much worse than the actual hurt.
Distorted, faceless creatures march through an empty space filled with evil intentions. Trapped, they beg for mercy.
In the midst of chaos, a man’s face appears, as beguiling as it is dreadful. Hair the color of midnight, dark eyes touched with crimson, and a hard face lined with smoke and madness stares into emptiness.
The Infernum swallows its prisoners whole.
But not for long. Not for one of them.
“The time has come.” Lips curl in a sickening smile, a forked tongue darting out to taste the air.
Chapter 1
My aunt once told me that anything I ever needed to know about life I could find in a Van Morrison song. Apparently, she’d experienced all of her firsts to his music: first date, first kiss, and her first time losing her virginity. I say first because my aunt is continually losing her virginity. Something about taking it back and starting over every time she feels let down by an experience. At forty-eight years old and after a recent less-than-satisfying encounter, Eloise Sinclair is now a virgin again.
Hanging turquoise beads click click together as Eloise exits the back of her new age shop Into the Mystic, cradling a steaming mug, the contents smelling suspiciously of mugwort and bourbon. The mugwort is for enhancing her psychic abilities. The bourbon is for her nerves.
A long-sleeved purple tunic swings against polka-dotted leggings as she approaches me, wisps of auburn hair falling into perceptive brown eyes. “The Pen Is Mightier Than the Sword.”
She raises her mug at me. The Van Morrison song title is all it takes. I’ve heard way too much of my aunt’s music playlist. She’s relating my life to the song.
“Do your clients enjoy translating Morrisonese, or is this just for my benefit?” I grimace at the song choice. “Wrong one for me.”
“You assume.”
“If this is about the meeting I have at the plaza this afternoon—”
“It’s about your fate,” Eloise cuts me off cryptically.
My family makes deals with destiny, usually other people’s. It pays the rent and the utility bills. The mugwort and the bourbon, too. For prices ranging anywhere from one hundred to three hundred dollars an hour—all depending on the type of reading—my aunt Eloise can discern a client’s future, past, or present.
She is psychic. I am, too. Only, my abilities come with a curse. A rather inconvenient one.
Eloise studies me over the rim of her mug, her gaze raking over my loose brown hair and makeup-less green eyes before dropping to my solid navy sweatshirt and skinny jeans. “You couldn’t have tried a little harder for such a momentous occasion?”
I glance down at myself. “For picking up a set of keys?”
“Hmm.”
My gaze roams over the shop, careful not to linger on anything too long. This shop and the basement apartment downstairs are home. For the last twenty-three years, it has been everything. The purple walls, the brightly painted bookshelves stocked with new age books, the scarf-covered tables littered with candles, the glass cases full of jewelry and crystals, the mauve and gold chaise lounge, the stuffed blue-checked chairs, the herbal tea counter, and the beaded curtains leading to the basement stairs and the back of the shop all wail at me. Memories have a way of making inanimate objects speak.
Or maybe I am just super emotional.
“Did you ‘hmm’ at me?” I ask, following Aunt Eloise to the front door.
She flips over the open sign, arches a brow, and hmms again.
Outside, the morning sun sweeps like spilled pastel paints down Eleventh Street, the rays turning the light dusting of snow on the shop rooftops on the other side of the square into glitter. The sun brings the stores—Backwoods Sport & Ski, Howe’s Herbal Shoppe, and Tragic Ink—to life. Like a necromancer raising the dead. Darkness touched by light.
I have a lot of experience with darkness, with beasts, and with life. That’s what happens when your psychic abilities are tied to evil.
Eloise calls what she does spiritually guiding people’s lives.
I sentence them to damnation.
Spiritual writing, my aunt calls it. Communication from the dead translated through written words. It all sounds so harmless.
I was barely old enough to write when I scribed my first message. Wide-eyed and excited, I handed the note to a man in town, the words u will die and deemuns will feest on ur sol scrawled in crayon. As if this was a completely normal thing for a gap-toothed five-year-old girl to do. As if I was delivering a winning lottery ticket rather than a death sentence.
Turns out, people don’t like knowing when they’re going to die. They like even less knowing their souls are indulgent treats for demons.
The man cried. I didn’t come out of my room for two days.
Worse yet, he was a mortal, and he died.
That night, the Court of the Sun and the Moon came for me, everyone solemn-faced and full of regret. A world of secrets was revealed—secrets about the town I lived in and the people I loved. Havenwood Falls, Colorado, is a sanctuary for people and creatures with supernatural abilities. It’s also home to mortals. Oh, and ironically, demons, but not the kind of demons that like me. Not the soul-sucking terrible horrible creatures that I seem to channel.
The rules of our town are simple: protect the secret and don’t kill the mortals.
At five years old, I was off to a bad start.
My aunt pats me on the cheek, breaking me out of my thoughts, her hand warm from the mug. “Hmm.”
Nothing good ever comes from Eloise’s hmms.
Snatching her mug, I gulp down the mugwort and bourbon. For the nerves, not the mental enhancement.
“It’s a house,” I say. Not just any house. My house. My first house. A place all my own, completely book-and writing-free. That’s a lot more difficult than it sounds.
Words are everywhere. On television, clothes, signs, groceries, phones . . . the list goes on forever. I’ve trained myself to look at things without actually looking at them. If it’s possible to avoid my “gift,” then I do it.
The bell at the front of the store dings.
“You’re not going to want the chamomile or candles,” Eloise says from behind one of the displays. She doesn’t have to see the customer to know why she’s come. “It’s oolong tea and a charged black tourmaline crystal for you. Trust me. You have all kinds of negative energy attached to you, and it is not good for your health.”
At least her gift doesn’t kill people.