Chapter 4: Three Wishes - The Shadow of a Vicious King

POV: MAX

The kitchen lights flicker overhead as my fear bleeds into the wiring, the way it always does when I’m upset or cornered. Whatever is here is already too close, encroaching on the sacred space I was taught to guard.

“Show yourself,” I repeat.

“I can’t. I’m a ghost.”

I scoff at the absurdity of that statement, my knuckles clenched at my sides. “A ghost? I’ve lived here for more than a decade, and this house is not haunted.”

“Not the house, no. The lantern.”

I look at the lantern again. It gives off no light, yet draws my eye all the same. It’s beautiful in a way that makes my skin prickle, one of a kind, crafted with a care that borders on obsession. Ancient. Pristine. Danger often wears the guise of beauty. For a fleeting moment, I wonder if I should smash it and destroy it, before remembering that I already did.

“I used to live here too, you know,” the ghost says, sounding a little tense, as though he followed my train of thought. “In fact, I stayed in this house for about four decades before Mabel sent me to Devi. I suspect that was around the time you moved in.”

The dejected baritone sends chills down my neck. Whereas the intruder’s bite of power is barely noticeable, his otherworldly voice carries the weight of his presence, and the more he speaks, the more I can feel him. The bite of his magic is unfamiliar, unlike ours, and different from Devi’s, too. A brand I’ve never tasted before, yet oddly soothing.

I blink at the empty living room, trying to pinpoint the ghost’s exact location. The air in the center of the room feels warmer, charged with static electricity. I’m almost certain he’s there. The hairs on the back of my neck rise as I inch closer.

“Mabel and Devi know about you?” I ask.

“Yes. They exchange my lantern back and forth every few years.”

Another of Mabel’s secrets, and one that shifts my stance entirely. She might be secretive to a fault, but she would never have allowed some dark spirit to linger in these halls. This house is sacred to her.

Assuming he’s telling the truth.

I hold a hand out in front of me, my fingertips tingling. “Are you there? I think I can feel something.” I gesture toward the warm patch of air.

“I am.” His voice trembles with emotion, tinged with wonder. “I’m right here.”

The tip of my finger buzzes like I’m pressing into hot jelly, never meeting anything solid. The strange sensation spooks me, and I jerk my hand back. “What do you want?”

I can’t get distracted. This might be a trick, a way to lure me outside the house.

“You woke me up when you smashed my lantern last night. I saw the monster that attacked you. Are you alright?” he asks, sounding genuinely concerned.

I bite my upper lip, dangerously close to bursting into a nervous fit of laughter. The ghost wants to know if I’m alright. I pick up the lantern in the middle of the table and turn it over, examining it from all angles. A ghost living in a lamp…

Energy shifts from the lantern, tickling my fingertips, and heat engulfs me in a blast of hot air. The bronze piece rings a bell now that I’m handling it. I recall seeing it among Devi’s antiques, tucked in the back corner of her tea parlor, and my brows raise.

“Are you a genie in a bottle? Should I make a wish?” I joke.

“Maybe. What would you wish for?” he asks.

The warm undertone of the question riles my anxiety up to a hundred, because I’m tempted to answer.

The truth simmers on my tongue. Most days, I wish I’d never been a witch at all. I wish my mother hadn’t been killed by the Reds, that she hadn’t been a witch herself. It sounds harsh, ungrateful even, so I’ve never spoken the words aloud. But if it weren’t for Mabel and Devi, I’d leave this life for good. And after what happened to Aunt Kerri, I’m even more convinced of that today than I was yesterday.

I’d wish to be someone different, someone who didn’t have to hide, to lie, to scheme. Someone worthy of love.

“Erm, let’s see. I’d wish for last night not to have happened, for everyone I love to be safe and alive, and for the monsters beyond the glass to stay the fuck home forever,” I blurt out instead.

“I’m sorry. I can’t grant wishes, but if I were a genie in a lantern, I’d gladly serve you.”

The ghost’s sheepish tone is almost charming. I’m either being cajoled into a trap, or the invisible spirit Mabel has been keeping secret is flirting with me.

I catch a smile before it surfaces and cross my arms over my chest. “Then why did you ask?”

“I was curious.”

I move to the kitchen to boil a simple antibacterial healing poultice, chatting with my new friend as I gather what I need from the cupboards. A block of beeswax, a jar of powdered clay, and the kettle go on the counter. The softened wax and clay will form the base of the ointment.

“Since we’re asking blunt, personal questions, when did you die?”

Silence.

“Is that a painful subject? For a ghost? I’m rambling here. You’re the first dead person I’ve ever met.”

“Not painful, no. In fact, I have absolutely no clue how I died. I can’t remember.”

My brows raise. “Didn’t you ask Mabel?”

“Of course, but she always refused to speak about it.”

Typical Mabs.

“Maybe it’s a trait all ghosts share—maybe forgetting one’s death is better for the soul,” I muse.

“If only it were just that.”

“Mm?”

“I don’t even know my own name.”

The admission comes out rushed and shameful, but also bitter. Names and magic go hand in hand. Either my ghost is lying, or he’s truly a lost soul—stripped of self-awareness, magic, and hope.

“That’s brutal. What does Mabel call you?”

There’s a pause before he answers. “Nothing, really. But Devi called me ‘E.’”

My brows knit together. “Just E?”

“Yes.”

“E for Evan? Elliott? Edgar? What should I call you?”

“Just E is fine.”

“Alright, Just E. I’m Max. If I were to believe you and take all this ghost shite on the chin, what are my chances of leaving this house and staying alive?”

“I wouldn’t advise you to leave. Not for a while,” he says quickly. “Those monsters looked creepy as fuck.”

Good answer. Whatever he is, he’s not meant to lure me to my death.

The liquid begins to bubble faintly as I stir, a warm, earthy scent curling upward with the steam. I add a dash of sage, rosemary, and mint to give it a pleasant scent and strengthen its cleansing properties. The herbs blend with the wax and clay, turning the paste a purplish green. Before turning off the gas, I crush the blood fern stems in a garlic press, letting their dark sap drip into the blend until the clotting resin thickens it.

“Have you ever seen anything like the monsters from last night before?” I ask.

Mabel keeps so many secrets. Maybe those creatures are a common sight in the gardens, though I doubt it.

“No. Never.”

I scrape the warm poultice onto a sheet of parchment paper, spreading it thin before sliding it into the fridge.

“What is that for?” E asks.

“It’s a salve for my wound. I’ll apply it morning and night, and it should heal within days.” I slip my phone out of my pocket and drum a nervous rhythm against the black screen. “Now… Any suggestions for what I should tell my boss about missing work today?”

I don’t wait for E’s answer.

“I have to call the hospital and my fiancé. Be a dear and let me do that first. Afterwards, we can figure out who you are, or at least whether you mean to help me or eat me.”

A full-bodied laugh chimes in the air, warm and rich and impossibly sweet. The vibrations ripple across my skin, and heat blooms in my cheeks. Whatever power E mastered in life, it still clings to him now, woven into the very fabric of his spirit.

A flicker of doubt gnaws at the back of my mind. Am I trusting him too easily? After everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve lost, I should know better than to engage with someone I cannot see. Especially since he won’t give me his name. Yet… I can’t bring myself to believe that a magic this bright could belong to something evil. I know evil. I’ve seen it twice now, in different forms. Evil scratches along my bones like claws on a blackboard, and E doesn’t have that effect on me.

Plus, he’s a male. There are no males in the Red Forest, and what I saw in my memory—a man teaming up with Reds to slay my mother—is highly unusual. I’ll trust my ghost for now, until he gives me a reason not to.

I dial Lachlan’s number first, feeling a little self-conscious about swindling my fiancé in front of my new friend.

“Morning,” I say quickly.

“Morning, beautiful. I just got on the train.”

Hearing his voice after the night I had feels eerie. His familiar greeting soothes my nerves, yet the life we share feels impossibly far away—like a dream I woke from the moment that first monster stalked out of the mist.

“That’s right, you were leaving for London today. When does the conference start again?” I ask.

“We’ve got registration and cocktails tonight. Guy tried to highjack my presentation last minute, but he’s no expert on operating theatres⁠—”

E’s energy creeps closer, as if he’s right there beside me, listening in. I lose track of Lachlan’s words, goosebumps prickling my skin. Beneath that first sizzle, a cottony warmth spreads along my right arm, climbing to my chest, my neck, my cheeks—like I’m standing in front of the window, bathed in soft morning light.

“—never going to matter. Can you believe it?”

I missed most of that and cringe.

“Are you alright, luv?” Lachlan whispers.

“Yes, just tired.”

“That’s right, you spent the night at the hospital. What happened?”

With Lachlan, the script is well-rehearsed: whenever I have a witchy emergency, I tell him the hospital called. But in this case, since I have to stay at Mabel’s house, I’ll use option number two and tell him she’s having health issues and needs help with the family real-estate business.

I can’t exactly share with him that my wolf shifter Aunt was abducted and most likely killed by faceless monsters.

So I lie.

“It wasn’t a patient, exactly. Mabel had been dealing with intermittent abdominal pain, and I managed to get her in for a CT. They took her appendix out overnight.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Is she going to be alright?”

“Yes, she’s awake now and doing better. They should discharge her tomorrow morning. I’m going to rest a bit and call you back later, alright? I might take a couple of days off work to take care of her.”

I thought lying to Lachlan would be harder, but it slips out as naturally as breathing, like when I was a teenager, brushing off the real reason I flinched at mirrors to the school therapist.

“You’re a darling. She’s lucky to have you. I’m heading into a tunnel, but I’ll see you when I get back, alright?” he answers, oblivious to my treachery.

“Alright. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I hang up.

“You’re not married to this man, right?” E asks in a soft, breathless tone.

I flash my however-many-carat diamond ring. “Not yet. Hence the word fiancé.”

“And you’re staying here for a couple of days?”

His voice brims with something purer than joy—hope. The loud subtext of the word is that I’m staying here with him, and I get the sense that my new ghost friend is an incredibly lonely soul.

I click my tongue, wrestling with a mix of disappointment and anger that isn’t E’s doing. “Looks that way.”

I call the hospital next, informing them of my absence for the next couple of days. I haven’t had a family emergency since I started medical school, so they shouldn’t mind so much.

The mundane thoughts jumble together, and the tension in my ribs acts as a circle of fire, slowly tightening. Fuck. Aunt Kerri is dead, and I’m in mortal danger. The disconnect between that reality and the absurd necessity of planning my absence from work knocks a shaky breath out of me, and I brace myself against the kitchen island.

I’m right back to that night in the pantry. Right back to that young girl who was living a life of hide-and-seek. I swore never to go back to that, but destiny had other plans.

I graze the burgundy mark of the Bloodraven coven on my arm, the patch of skin red and prickly since last night.

“That mark. Mabel has one exactly like it,” E says. “What is it? It looks painful.”

“It’s a bloodmark in the shape of the Bloodraven crest. It’s usually much flatter and darker, but yesterday, after the attack, my brother Nick sent a warning to all other coven witches through this bond we share, a signal to go to ground and break their mirrors in case of a large-scale attack.”

“Clever.”

A chill scatters goosebumps across my arms. “As our leader, Mabel uses it to communicate with us, but I haven’t felt her since last night.”

No soft tickle to indicate she’s alright or an ice-cold warning that she’s in danger. Nothing at all.

“Do you think she might have been attacked, too?” E asks softly.

My throat is tight and painful as I nod and sit on the purple corduroy sofa, hugging a pillow to my chest.

What am I supposed to do if Mabel never comes home? She didn’t prepare me for this.

In the back of my mind, I can’t help wondering if she knew this would happen. She sees the future every once in a while, and asked me to be more involved in coven affairs the last few months. Her warnings that I not put too much importance on my upcoming wedding, that it was foolish to link my life to a mortal, echo in my mind.

What if she asked me to learn the ropes because she knew she wouldn’t be around for much longer? What if I lost my only shot at asking her all the questions that have been haunting me for years?

I can’t let myself dwell on such scary, soul-destroying thoughts—that I lost my adopted mother and will never see her again. I can’t let myself believe that. I have to believe she’s just stuck in some safe house or another, one of the many places she keeps, and that she can’t use her magic to keep from giving anyone a chance to track her.

A terrible migraine throbs at the back of my skull, and I rub my neck, trying to will it away. “This sucks. I’m stuck here, doing nothing but worrying about how Mabel will get back. I don’t even know where she went or what she was doing. All I can do is wait and hope she decides to show up.”

“Yes, she’s very opaque. And stubborn,” E adds.

I nod. I can’t spend the day watching TV or reading. I have to do something.

“Today, you and I, we’re going to dig for answers,” I announce, the itch at the back of my neck taking on a life of its own.

“You want us to go through Mabel’s things?” E asks.

Great minds think alike. “You can pass through walls, right?”

“Yes.”

A wicked, genius idea worms its way into my brain, and I discard the pillow to the side, sitting on the edge of the sofa. “Then you’re going to help me break into the attic.”

The attic has always been off-limits. When Nick tried to sneak in as a teenager, Mabel gave him a scolding worthy of Ragnarok. It’s about time I figured out exactly what she’s keeping up there, and why she doesn’t want us to know.

“How am I supposed to help? I can’t touch anything, not these days,” E says, a muted edge of apprehension—or perhaps regret—shining through.

“Aren’t you tired of being kept in the dark? About who you are, about what led you here?” I ask.

I only meant to leverage his help, but the words come out heavier than I intended.

“Yes,” he shoots back, no hesitation.

“Me, too.”

“What is Mabel hiding from you?” he asks.

I open my mouth, ready to serve him the rehearsed story of how Mabel adopted me, but stop. For the first time in a long, long while, I don’t have to lie.

“Only everything.” I huff a humorless laugh. “When my brother and I first moved in, it made sense for Mabs to shield us from the truth. Follow the rules, she said. Don’t do anything that could help the Reds find us. We grew up in fear, always looking over our shoulders, in case some slag with a katana stalked out of a mirror to kill us. But as adults, the answers never came.”

No wonder I want to marry a mortal and live a normal life.

“Mabel took you in when you were young?”

“Yes. Mabel found us in a pantry, severely dehydrated, two days after our mother was murdered.” Her head was cut clean off her neck, I almost add, but that detail always freaks people out. “We were twelve.”

There’s a pause, solemn and muted. “I’m sorry.”

I shrug, more habit than indifference. “Don’t worry, it was a long time ago.”

“Time doesn’t heal all wounds,” he shoots back, and my heart gives a forlorn squeeze.

He’s right about that.

I rise to my feet and check on the poultice, the paste cool enough now to use. I scoop a couple of spoonfuls onto a butter knife and grab fresh bandages from the first-aid kit.

“Witnessing something like that changes you forever. Nick, my brother, is still trying to avenge her,” I blurt out as I peel away the dirty wrap on my calf. “There’s no forgive and forget when your mother gets killed in front of you.”

“I get it. I think I’m the sort of person who held a grudge, back when I was alive. ”

I arch a brow. “You can tell?”

“Yes, but I couldn’t tell you why. Where is he now, your brother?”

“Oh, hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away, on some dangerous mission, per usual. Nick couldn’t wait to get out of Scotland. Mabel’s refusal to tell us who killed our mother—and why—drove a rift between them.”

“But not you?”

I tie the clean bandage in place with a strip of tape and press the thick poultice into the wound. “No. It’s not as though we could ever go back to Faerie, so I didn’t see any upside in a quarrel.”

“I think I lived there, once upon a time,” E says in a dreamlike drawl.

“Faerie?”

“Yes. The word always sparks this…nostalgia in my chest. You know what I mean?”

“Absolutely.”

Parts of me long for Faerie, too, even though I hardly remember any of it aside from a string of small cottages and dusty pantries.

It’s strange. I’m spilling my life to a ghost, but it’s so easy. There are no lifted brows, no tilted head in pity. The lies I’ve spent a lifetime hiding behind, the carefully-crafted stories, are useless here. It’s freeing, really, to pour my heart out without fear of disbelief or judgment.

An echo from my dream rises to the forefront of my mind. Damn you, Lillivere. We were sisters, you and I. From the sound of it, Lillivere was the one who betrayed her.

My memories of that night have never been this clear, yet I still can’t remember who struck the final blow. The katana that killed my mother might have belonged to Lillivere—or to any of the other four. Still, it’s more than I knew yesterday, as if those specific memories had been wiped clean until last night.

From the sound of it, my mother befriended a Red spy and brought her demise upon herself. A lead wire encircles my chest at the possibility. The habit the Reds have of hunting us by forming attachments and digging into the heart of who we are brings bile to my mouth. It’s fiendish and vile.

My fingers curl until my nails bite into the skin of my palm, anchoring me against the current of regret that threatens to flood me. Heat prickles beneath my collar in a flush of shame and anger I can’t separate. My pulse thuds heavy and uneven, as if my body remembers the bruise—the wretched cost of an intimate betrayal—even when I pretend I don’t.

I twist my engagement ring around my finger with my thumb. “If Mabel can’t make it home, and I can’t leave, then we’ll get answers ourselves. Are you in?”

“One thousand percent.”

Excitement chases away the dread that had festered in my blood. The time has come to tear down walls. Finally. When Mabel comes home, I can give her hell about all the secrets she’s kept from me. Then she’ll scold me for snooping through her things, for never minding my own business. I’ll welcome that anger, because it will mean she’s come home. And she will come home in one piece. Because she has to.