Ah hell, she did love him. Loved him so much, but it was wrapped up in all of it, so that she couldn’t separate the pain of loss from those feelings, couldn’t heal enough to take him back. It was too late. She knew this shit; he was just stirring it all up again.

That jagged ache was back in her throat, so she started to hum a lullaby. Theo made a contented noise in his dreams. Her chest tightened as she imagined such a contented noise coming from a baby, her baby. The lullaby had its own magical properties, taking her mind to the secret that meant more than anything. The only thing that could have meaning for her now.

Raina and Derek were wrong if they thought she didn’t understand what she was doing. She knew the path she was taking was fraught with wrongness, but it was also right. Besides which, once a certain point was reached on a wrong road, there was no turning back. Darkness sure as hell didn’t offer exit ramps.

She picked up her Dr Pepper. She’d infused it with a mega-pack caffeine boost, enough to send a herd of strung-out elephants stampeding a village, and now she took half of it down in one go. She had no interest in sleep, or dreaming. True nightmares weren’t about fears. They were about the things lost that could never be gotten back, no matter how much the heart cried out for them.

TO SOME DEGREE, MOST SERIOUS PRACTITIONERS OF THE Craft studied the areas in which Ruby was proficient, but she’d pursued academic study to a level most never did. Initially, she’d applied herself so diligently to please her mother.

You have no natural ability, dear. No use whining about it. It always seems to skip a generation. But study hard, and you’ll prove yourself useful to others who have it. Great magic users need invaluable assistants, after all. Perhaps you can also teach beginning novices, those starting their Craft studies. After all, those that can’t do, teach.

Mary Night Divine had been an exceptional Seer, one consulted by magic users the world over. She’d maintained a mundane facade as a fortune-teller to neurotic high-profile stars. That paid the bills for their expenses, including a home in Monterey. A home she and her shy, awkward daughter rarely visited, until Mary had contracted severe dementia in her early forties, an unexpected development likely connected to her gift. She’d drowned herself in the tub when she was forty-three. Ruby had found her.

Soon after, it was discovered that Mary had wanted all her assets liquidated, and the money ejected from a plane over the Nevada desert during the Burning Man gathering. The will had been written in her thirties, when there were plenty to testify she had been of sound mind. A relative statement, Ruby had realized. In the document, she simply stated, “My daughter needs nothing further from me.”

All the assets included the contents of the house, so Ruby was left with nothing but her few books, her clothes and some personal items. She’d been the indispensable shadow behind Mary, handling all the domestic chores and tedious magical preparations so her mother could apply herself to the higher arts of her particular gift. The salary Mary had given her was little more than a stipend to cover a restaurant meal or the occasional clothing need. As a result, she didn’t have any money set by.

Fortunately, she had Raina and Ramona, friends she’d met in the years on the road with her mother. Through letters, calls and the occasional visits when Mary’s entourage was passing through, those friendships had stuck. Ramona’s contacts secured Ruby the job at Witches R Us, and she soon proved her worth there, in spades.

Though she’d begun studying to please and serve her mother, a natural desire to learn, to embrace that knowledge, had unfolded over those years. Mary’s prediction that she could help “beginning novices” was an understatement. There was no aspect of the Craft Ruby didn’t know. The things that drove witches with natural talent crazy, she could do effortlessly. The proper way to charge a potion, how to combine difficult ingredients correctly, how to read between the lines of a grimoire and make a spell even more effective. She could teach experienced witches how to get more out of an energy raising, enough that the spiral could light up the night sky with its charge. She just couldn’t channel the energy herself. But the energy fascinated her, and she studied the underlying science of it via any text available on the subject, and met with metaphysical theorists to learn even more.

So in no time, she acquired the reputation of being an excellent teacher. So excellent, it had moved her out of her mother’s shadow and she’d begun to grasp at a nebulous idea. Did Ruby Night Divine have the courage to be more than what her mother thought she could be? Derek had said Ruby’s lack of confidence was the only thing blocking her from her true gifts. Then Ruby got pregnant. Overnight, Derek’s viewpoint had been hammered home like nails in a cross.

The first time the power made its presence known was when she was infusing a simple cold remedy at Witches R Us. It was a low-level magic use, little more than positive thinking. Power had sparked from her fingertips, shattered the vial. The liquid contents lit up like reactor fluid, and a flower sprang out of the middle of it, the charge resurrecting one of the herbal ingredients.

At first, she thought it was the fetus. After all, she was carrying Derek Stormwind’s child. But as the power grew, whether or not the growing child was a magic user, Ruby could tell the pregnancy had activated abilities that were all her.

It thrilled her for about thirty seconds. Then she was terrified. As if summoned from the grave, Mary’s sharp voice started reciting a mantra in her head.

When I say you lack natural ability, dear, I’m not saying you don’t have any powers within you. I’m saying that you lack the ability to use them properly. If ever you show an ounce of true power, don’t let anyone talk you into using it. It’s best for you to hide it, because people in our world always want you to use power. If you do, it will only come to tragedy. I sense it, see it. And no matter what you think of me, you know my Sight is always true. Don’t try to be more than you are, Ruby.

She wasn’t an idiot. Her mother had emotional issues, a competitive streak so destructive she applied its poison to her relationship with her only child. But Mary was also a great Seer, and the words It will only come to tragedy rang with that otherworldly resonance that came through when she was foreseeing. It pulled the rug from beneath Ruby’s feet, made her feel like the small kernel of pride she’d nurtured was being punished by this reminder.

Don’t try to be more than you are, Ruby.

With each passing month the fetus had grown, that energy had as well. At times, she struggled with serious spikes, as much chaotic kinetic energy swirling around her as around Ramona. It frightened her. So she hid the power from her friends. In fact, during her pregnancy, it was the only thing she learned to do with it, cranking up her Deception potions to greater and greater levels to hide knowledge from the people who knew her best. When she had to make the harrowing foray into soul magic, for the first time in her life she regretted having friends who were so powerful a simple lie wouldn’t work.

If Derek had been there at the beginning, she knew she would have told him about the power. He made her feel beautiful, capable of so much. Plus, he would have detected it anyway. He could see through the strongest Deception spell. The main reason the soul magic had worked was the element of surprise. He never expected a friend, a lover, to use such a spell on him. Because for so long she’d had to rely on skills that had nothing to do with magic, she never underestimated the power of distraction, sleight of hand, to augment a spell.

Unfortunately, she’d forgotten that if a powerful magic user of Derek’s caliber could detect her latent powers, so, too, could another equally powerful magic user. One not blinded by love.

Asmodeus.

COMING BACK TO THE PRESENT, RUBY DASHED AWAY unbidden tears with the back of her hand, then took another liberal swig from the Dr Pepper can. She grimaced at the caffeine additive the Dr Pepper taste couldn’t completely conceal. Tears happened; she couldn’t stop them. She had no poker face, as she’d said. But it didn’t mean anything.

She started that lullaby again, imagining the soothing tendrils of it winding around her baby, keeping her dreaming good dreams. A dream where she crawled into a father and mother’s waiting arms, where a plastic shovel and bucket waited on a beach and her parents helped her make a sand castle with them. She could knock it down if she wanted, because it could be rebuilt again and again. In this dream, all she would know was how loved, how special and amazing she was.

Ruby didn’t mind giving her soul away for that to happen. She didn’t want anything else. Her baby would never know sorrow or pain, because for her, Ruby had done what no other magic user had done before.

She’d made time stop.

During that fateful, tragic night, she’d embraced her power, discovering she could keep a foot in both the Light and Dark pools, twisting their disparate forces together to create a highly effective and dangerous energy she could channel for various purposes.

She had no aspirations to serve the Darkness, with its meaningless promises of power and glory. But walking the line with Dark forces got things done. Other magic users like Derek and Raina viewed it as a death wish, since one could interact with Dark forces for only so long before being pulled into full servitude to them. To avoid that fate— or delay it— she disintegrated pieces of her soul to balance what she took from the Dark side.

In the process, she’d made herself into a formidable witch, one who wasn’t afraid to embrace her damn powers, no matter what they looked like. Or what her mother had foretold. Tragedy had happened, and nothing worse was possible.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mom. You cruel, fucking bitch. I still love you.

LILESVILLE WAS ON THE GULF SIDE OF THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE, a hole-in- the-wall town ninety minutes away from a town of any size. It looked much like the North Carolina coastal town she’d left behind twelve hours ago. Shacks crowded up around the waterfront next to homes that pulled in six figures. The town was surrounded by acres of protected wetlands and vibrant green marshes. It was a community of displaced Yankees seeking warmth, eccentric intelligentsia, native old salts and redneck fishermen. It was also bifurcated by a major magical fault line.