When Stars Come Out (When Stars Come Out 1)

“Hey, Ms. Silby,” I say with a wave.

“Shy,” she says with a nod of her head. Her arms tighten across her chest and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t like me as much as she did a week ago.

“Sorry for bringing Anora home late. We fell asleep watching movies.”

Anora’s mom raises a brow. “I’ll be sure to talk to your mother. Good night, Shy.”

“Night,” I say, rolling up the window. As I leave, I spot the red-eyed gazes of Anora’s Hellhounds in the shadows around her house.

I head back to the Compound to see Jacobi. I expect to see Malee, Jacobi’s mom, when I enter the infirmary. Instead, Natalie is sitting at his side, holding his hand.

“Where’s Malee?” I ask.

“She stepped out for coffee,” Natalie says. “I haven’t been here long.”

I watch their laced hands for a long moment. It reminds me of our childhood pre-Knight when Natalie had a crush on Jacobi. It was one of the reasons she followed us around so much. Then I think about how obsessed Jacobi’s always been with the newest technology, how he would spend hours telling me about new game enhancements he researched when all I wanted to do was play the damn thing. Standing here in this dark room with beeping machines and a silent Jacobi, I regret being so impatient with him because just as I can’t imagine living a life without Lily’s laugh and smile, I can’t imagine living without Jacobi’s techno-babble.

I would miss it.

Don’t you dare die on me.

“Malee says he woke up briefly. The medics say he has a severe concussion. He will have a long road to recovery.”

I don’t know what that means. Will Jacobi be different when he wakes fully? How will this affect his tech skills? His fighting skills? His progress toward graduation?

After a long moment, Natalie says what I’m thinking, “What if he doesn’t recover?”

Her voice sounds hollow, and the only thing I can think to say is, “He will.”

I say it like an oath, a promise that can’t be broken.

“There are things I still need to say,” she says. “I need to apologize for thinking rules are more important than friends.” She inhales sharply and I come to stand beside her. “I’m sorry for what happened with Blake and your mom. You were right. Blake never did really forgive me. She just said it. I think maybe she hoped she could believe the words one day.”

“Blake blamed the Order, not you, Nat,” I say quietly.

She shakes her head and then looks up at me. Her eyes are red and tears slide down her cheeks. I brush them away. I hate seeing her cry. “I lost Lily even before she died...I’ll never forgive myself for that,” and then she falls into me and sobs.

Sometime later, after Natalie’s tears have subsided, we leave. Shifting into our hybrid forms, we land in the clearing where I parked my Jeep after leaving Anora’s. I look at Natalie. “I want to go back where we found Lily. What if she was resurrected nearby?”

Natalie stares at me for a moment and then says, “Are you asking me to come along?”

“If you’re up for it,” I say.

She smiles. “More than ever.”

We shift and take off together. The Rayon High students chose to hide Anora in a pocket of wood near the graveyard. Guess they didn’t want to take Anora too far from where they abducted her.

We land in the field. Natalie and I pause a moment, observing our surroundings before we make a plan. Evidence of Lily’s animalistic state are everywhere—in the blood pooled on the ground where Jake fell, the Earth, torn apart by her savage attacks. It’s hard to be back here so soon, but necessary. Someone reanimated Lily’s corpse and with the graveyard so close, I’m guessing the ritual was completed nearby. All that energy from lost souls probably fed the spell.

Natalie and I split up—she heads for the graveyard and I follow a set of Hellhound tracks into the woods in the opposite direction. Their prints are deep and fierce, evidence of their desperation to reach Anora. At some point, the tracks diverge—two on the left, two on the right, and one straight ahead. I follow the tracks in front of me, thinking it will probably lead straight to the ritual site. The other sets make me think the hounds got distracted by a scent or a chase. I’ll check them later.

It’s the smell that gives the ritual location away—a mix of wax and sage and blood. Thin black candles identify the barrier of the spell, a place for the magic to gather over the body. Whoever conducted the spell hadn’t had time to remove any of the evidence.

I stand outside the circle, studying the impressions in the ground: where Lily’s body lay, where she rose and dragged her feet, awakening from an eternal sleep that should have never been disturbed. Somehow, she managed not to bother the circle of candles. I stoop to study them, they hum with a faint vibration—energy, what humans call magic. I shiver involuntarily.

It’s just another reason Anora—the Eurydice—is so important to us. The more dead on Earth means more energy—power—for death-speakers to work with. We have a name for it, death-essence: the energy of the dead.

As I step into the center of the circle, my whole body shakes and I feel cold. Something latches onto my arm and it goes numb. It’s a phantom, residue left over from the spell cast hours earlier. It takes a moment, but soon I’m free of its icy grip, though my arm is still numb, and my chest feels like ice. I look up and find a clear view to the starry sky above. There’s a full moon tonight, and I’d bet anything it shown right through that opening hours ago.