Cast into Darkness Read online

  Cast into Darkness

  Janet Tait

  WOOLLY RHINO PRESS / SAN DIEGO

  Copyright © 2014 by Janet Tait

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First Printing, April 2014

  Kindle Edition ISBN 978-0-9915396-1-1

  Woolly Rhino Press LLC

  8885 Rio San Diego Dr. #237

  San Diego, CA 92108

  www.woollyrhinopress.com

  Cover by Damonza

  For John, who has always believed in me.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  From the Author

  Chapter One

  A blaze of iridescent light, brief as a camera flash, lit the darkness outside Cornell’s Kiplinger Theatre green room.

  Kate Hamilton bit her lip. “Great. That’s the last thing I need.” She made for the sliding glass door, hustling in her heavy muslin skirts past a pair of fellow students stumbling over lines they’d had down pat last night. Performance nerves. Not that she was immune. But the play wasn’t what made her heart thump so hard in her corseted chest.

  She slid the door open and peered into the shadowy expanse of elm trees lining the building. No students hurrying home after a late-night study session. No cars rushing by on College Avenue. Nothing but the distant gurgle of Cascadilla Creek and chirp of a few crickets.

  Maybe the flash was nothing. Still, as much as she’d like her family to show up for one of her plays, using an uncloaked teleport spell and letting its oh-so-conspicuous burst of light be seen by Normals violated the Rules of the Game.

  And if the caster teleporting here wasn’t someone in her family, then the Rules weren’t the only things likely to be broken.

  She should call her security team—report the incident and let them deal with the hassle. But following protocol would get her pulled from tonight’s show faster than she could say “Dad has control issues.”

  Oh, screw it. Kate walked outside, the heat sticking her dress to her skin the moment she passed from the air-conditioning into the warm May night. She followed the line of the building toward where she’d seen the flash, her ivy-covered path barely illuminated by the faint light of an overhead safety bulb. Despite the warm night air, goose bumps rose on her arms. The cool scent of pine wafting over from the forested gorge a dozen feet away did nothing to calm her nerves.

  A pale blur reached out of the blackness. A hand yanked her against the wall, scraping her arm hard across the stucco.

  “Ow. Dammit.” That stung. She gazed up into her twin brother’s agitated eyes. “Brian—”

  “It is you. Good.” His red hair, darker in the moonlight, fell in wild waves over his sweaty forehead. A large bruise colored one cheek. Something—blood?—splattered his white oxford shirt, hanging half tucked into designer jeans. And his eyes, while as blue as hers, shone with secrets she couldn’t begin to fathom.

  “Where did my buttoned-down, debate-team-leading, straight-A Harvard student brother go? And when did he get replaced by a refugee from a B-grade action movie?”

  “Keep it down,” Brian said. “They’ll hear us. I thought I’d lost them a few jumps back, in Nairobi, but…”

  He let her go. She rubbed her arm and squinted up at him. The little quiver at the corner of his lips, the way his hand rapped against his thigh—it was clearly twitchiness from casting too many spells. Paranoia might be the price of channeling magic through the human mind, but it was a bitch to sort out the truth from a caster’s delusions.

  “Is someone chasing you, or are you just spell-tweaked?”

  Brian glanced over his shoulder, toward the tree-covered wilderness of Cascadilla Gorge. Then he turned back, and the frantic look in his eyes eased. “Not sure.”

  She brushed his face. The bruise looked new. “Who were you fighting? The Makrises?” Maybe it was another battle in the centuries-long Game between her family and their rivals—both clans of magical casters who fought a shadow war to control the world’s powerful elite from behind the scenes.

  He winced at her touch. “No time to explain. I need you to do something for me.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a ball of red silk wrapped around something small. “Keep this safe.”

  She swallowed the tight lump in her throat. “What is it? Something you got on a mission?”

  He hesitated. “It’s an artifact. Old. Powerful. Can’t let another family get it.”

  “And you’re giving it to me? I’m not part of your little Game.”

  “No one will suspect you. Don’t say anything to Dad or anyone else.”

  “You can’t go all secret agent on me and expect me not to talk.”

  “That’s what I’m asking.”

  She took a step back. “No. I have a life here. Friends. I’m not going to let you and all this magic crap screw it up.” Again.

  “Kate, please. I don’t have anyone else.” He glanced at the trees behind him, then back at his sister. “Will you?”

  “Who’s after it?”

  “They’ll be chasing me, not looking for you. You’re off-limits.”

  The only advantage of being a Null. “You’d better be right.” She held out her hand.

  Brian set the silk bundle on her palm. The covering slid off its top, revealing the artifact underneath. The round white stone lay nestled in its bed of crimson. It glowed with a hint of green and thrummed in time with her racing pulse.

  I shouldn’t be able to feel it. Not through the fabric.

  Holding the stone brought back childhood memories: tracing spell charts in her uncle’s study, touching a jeweled talisman singing with power, clutching her mom’s arm as she whisked them both away to Rome, London, or Miami faster than the beat of a hummingbird’s wing.

  Being tested for magical aptitude…and failing.

  Shit. Getting involved with magic again is a bad, bad idea. She made to shove the glowing thing back at him, then saw the desperation in his eyes. Brian’s the only one who’s ever been there for me. She sighed and stuffed the silk-wrapped parcel in her pocket.

  “Make sure not to—” Brian said.

  “Touch it? I remember the Rules.” Sort of. Don’t let the Normals see you do magic—lik
e that applied to her—and don’t involve noncombatants in the Game. Oh, and don’t handle magical artifacts with your bare hands.

  “I’m not certain how this thing works yet. Just be extra careful.” Brian gave the scrape on her arm a gentle touch. “Sorry. Let me fix it for you.”

  “Don’t bother. You’re twitchy enough. No point making you worse.”

  “Healing you isn’t going to make a difference.” Eyelids fluttering, he traced a spiral on her skin with his fingers. He chanted quiet, guttural sounds. The abrasion disappeared, and along with it, the pain.

  She shot him a wry smile. “Thanks. ’Course it wouldn’t need fixing if you hadn’t gotten all spell-tweaked in the first place.”

  He shrugged. “Hazard of the job.”

  Kris Stevens’s deep voice boomed from the green room. “Anyone seen Kate?”

  He’d kept his promise to come to the show tonight after all, but her stomach did a flip-flop at the realization that he was only yards away. He couldn’t find Brian here, beaten up and hiding in the trees, with no car, no explanations. Kris Stevens was a Normal. He didn’t know casters even existed, much less that his girlfriend belonged to a family full of them. And Brian—along with the rest of her kin—had no idea she was dating a Normal.

  Kate gave Brian’s arm a squeeze. “I’ve got to get back. The play’s about to start. You need to go before someone sees you. You’re breaking too many Rules as it is.”

  Brian kissed Kate on the cheek and glanced around. “Love you.” He chanted a few quiet words and traced a rapid pattern against his thigh.

  “Don’t forget to cloak your—”

  He vanished, and the light from his passage flashed across the sky like a beacon.

  “Teleport spell. Dammit.”

  Kate took a deep breath and walked onto the stage.

  Everything disappeared except her role. She no longer felt the heat of the lights or the nervous flutter in her stomach. Every line of the Nurse’s dialogue floated off her tongue as if the words came from her soul and not the playwright’s pen.

  His name is Romeo, and a Montague;

  the only son of your great enemy.

  This was her magic.

  Once she stood back in the wings, she peered out at the audience, squinting to see past the glare of the stage lights. No sign of Dad, but then when has he ever shown up at one of my performances?

  She spotted Kris: third row, unruly brown hair combed back. His six-foot frame looked relaxed for once as he leaned back in his seat, the confident set of his shoulders making the generic white shirt he wore seem like Armani. She’d stolen a peek at him during her scene—his intense gaze had been locked on her, ignoring the interplay between Benvolio and Mercutio at the other end of the stage. She’d almost dropped a line.

  She wished Kris could see her in a real role. Not the Nurse—Juliet. Kate was meant to play the ingenue, the star-crossed lover. The role with a chance of winning the Faculty Performance Scholarship.

  Instead, the role had gone to Brooke. She glanced backstage at the bleached blonde who’d somehow beaten her out for Juliet as the girl heaved her overstuffed corset at Friar Lawrence. Her lip curled up. She wandered in to audition at the last minute and snagged the role right out from under me. What did I do wrong? I nailed the lines, the emotion…the only thing I don’t have is the cleavage.

  On the set, the stagehands performed their illusion, switching the streets of Verona for Juliet’s bedroom. Kate stood behind the painted plywood, ready to speak her few lines from offstage while Brooke stumbled over every one of Juliet’s famous words.

  “O Romeo…um…Romeo…wherefore art…er…thou, Romeo? Deny thy, um, father and refuse, um, my name. Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn, uh…my love and I’ll no longer be a…a…um…”

  “A Capulet,” Kate stage-whispered. Brooke shouted the line down to the stage floor below, leaning so far over the rickety railing that she wavered, about to fall on top of Romeo and burst out of her corset.

  A shot of panic twisted Kate’s stomach. She reached out from behind her wooden partition and yanked Brooke back right before the wooden railing snapped in two.

  After curtain call, Kate washed the caked-on makeup from her face and tossed away her gray wig. That and a quick brush through her hair transformed her from a frumpy nurse back into an ordinary freshman, one with skin that burned way too easily and hair that never seemed to gleam with quite the brilliant red of her twin brother’s. No time to change clothes, not with the stone to worry about. She’d go to the after-party in costume.

  Kate swung open the door of the green room. The place overflowed with faculty in polo shirts, student actors—half in street clothes, half in Elizabethan getup—techies dressed in black, headsets hanging from their necks.

  “Hey, Hamilton!”

  She spun around at the sound of her name and high-fived a laughing Romeo, still in costume. Lady Capulet gave her a quick hug, and the last little stage-nervy tightness in her stomach faded away as the bittersweet finality of the night hit her. Tonight had been their last performance—tomorrow she had to drive home for summer break and deal with the stone, and Brian. But tonight she could still be herself.

  “Heard anything about the scholarship?” Romeo asked.

  “Nope,” Kate said. “But you should be a shoo-in. You kicked ass tonight.”

  Romeo shrugged. “Who knows what professors like?”

  Brooke, jeans slung low on her hips, silver top skimming her pierced navel, sauntered up to Romeo. “Don’t worry, sweetie. The scholarship will go to one of the leads. Of course, we can’t shine so bright without the support of the little people.” She glanced at Kate, a sly smile on her plump lips.

  Kate felt her cheeks flush. She curled her hands into fists. “That’s the thanks I get for saving your sorry butt? Twice.”

  “I don’t need a bit player to tell me what to do,” Brooke said.

  “It’s not the role, it’s what you do with it that counts.” Kate gritted her teeth. Maybe if she said it often enough she’d believe it.

  “Oh, really? What did you do so wonderfully well with your ugly old nurse that I didn’t do better with Juliet?”

  “Let’s start with remembering my lines.”

  Brooke rolled her eyes and stalked off amid laughter and the clink of bottles. Kate stifled her own laugh, then glanced up at the clock on the wall. Kris said he’d meet her backstage. She scanned the clusters of actors and techies. No luck. Had he gone outside?

  She pushed past the crowd and out the door, grabbing a beer from the ice chest as she left. A few smokers wandered off the terrace and turned the corner of the building, their smoke hanging in the air behind them like a forgotten memory. Kate hiked through the ivy toward where she’d seen Brian.

  The sooner I give the stone back to Brian, the better. Hanging onto something this magical around Normals sets my teeth on edge.

  “There you are.” Kris’s voice, behind her. It tickled her ear and made her insides go all melty. She turned, and he wrapped his arms around her, his silver ring rubbing the back of her neck. His face lit with that half-hidden smile meant only for her. A tremor of delight rose inside her as he tilted her chin up and kissed her, a long, lingering kiss that almost made her forget about Brian and his mysterious stone. Almost.

  “So…how’d you like the play?” she asked when she could breathe again.

  “Wicked swordfights. I liked you. Good job with that long speech. I’m not so sure about Juliet, though. I wouldn’t kill myself over a girl who couldn’t remember her own last name.”

  “How about one who brings you a beer?” Kate passed him the bottle from the ice chest.

  “Cold, too. Thanks.” Kris wiped a spot of makeup from her nose. “Can we take off? Some of the others are heading over to a party down on Chestnut Street.”

  Dad would love that. Good thing he’ll never hear about it. “Sure. Give me a few minutes to change. Want to hang out until I’m done?”

  They
walked inside—Kris stopping to greet one of the actors, Kate heading toward the door. She glanced back at Kris. He made his way across the room, cutting through the crowd as smoothly as a shark among a school of tropical fish. After setting his beer on a nearby table, he leaned against the far wall, took out his cell phone, and typed a text, thumbs jabbing at the keys. She hesitated, then kept walking.

  He could text anyone he wanted. She wasn’t the jealous type.

  In the women’s dressing room, Kate changed into her magenta scoop-necked tank and cutoff jeans. The last bits of stage makeup disappeared after a quick streak of a cleanser wipe, and a pucker of lip gloss and brush of mascara made her feel almost normal again. All around her, the rest of the cast filtered in from the party and started the same routine, sitting in front of their mirrors, makeup kits before them, transforming back into their everyday selves.

  She reached into the pocket of the Nurse’s dress. As she pulled the stone out, it slipped from its covering. Without thinking, she caught it before it hit the floor, the silk falling from her hand.

  A sharp shock twanged her as the stone met her fingers. She hissed, shook her hand, and dropped the stone in her lap. A quick scan of the room proved no one noticed—the other girls were all staring at their own faces in their mirrors. Typical.

  The black stone lay in her lap, waiting.

  Black? Wait a minute. The stone had glowed white when Brian had handed it to her. She reached for the artifact and paused. Her hand had stopped stinging. Brian had said to be careful, but it’s not like the thing bit her hand off.

  She picked it up. No sting, no pain at all. But the stone now burned with the same deep coal color as the beach rocks she liked to skip into the ocean back home in the Hamptons. Kate turned the artifact over, feeling slight depressions in the otherwise smooth surface. Holding it up, she stared into the stone’s depths.

  It shone with ribbons of shimmering green, rippling and flashing under the pale white light of the fluorescent bulbs. The room around her—the clink of brushes against the Formica tabletops, the laughter of the other girls, the perfumed smell of makeup remover—faded.