The Darkest Midnight. R. A. Finley

of ice at the edges, but nothing insurmountable. Southern Oregon could be cold but not so severely that there wasn’t the chance of a feathered visitor. And there were always ravens. The ones here never left, unlike some—or rather, one in particular.

      Along with a sudden bitterness, she swallowed the last of the coffee, rinsed the mug before setting it in the drainer.

      Cormac wasn’t truly a raven, although he had taken that form when she’d seen him last, thanks to his being half Sidhe, an Otherworldly being she’d known little about at the time.

      He’d been his usual self (or what she assumed was his usual self) when she’d gone running to him and embraced him for all she was worth, so glad that he was alive—that they had both survived. And then he’d pulled away, transformed into a bird, and left her to stand alone on what only minutes before had been a battlefield with its dead and wounded scattered all around her.

      As always, she pushed those thoughts, those memories aside. No good came from thinking of that night—or of him. No purpose served.

      She bundled herself in coat and scarf, then pulled a quirky knit cap over her shoulder-length auburn hair on her way to the back door. Her gloves and keys were on the table in the breakfast nook. The latter looked particularly cozy with the sunlight streaming in through the mullioned windows. She used to enjoy sitting there with coffee and toast, with Lettie apt to join her before they headed out. Now it was simpler to eat at the kitchen counter if she bothered with breakfast at all.

      At the door, she paused to look around the garden with a more security-conscious eye. Even if Cassie’s threats were not a constant in the back of her mind, her friends had warned her to be vigilant for additional reasons. The power she had gained would not go unnoticed, they’d said. She should expect to be visited by anyone from the mildly curious to the outright hostile. But not this morning. The small yard, so crowded with life in the spring and summer, was empty and still.

      Bracing herself, she called on her newfound Sight—the strange and still-developing ability to see things beyond the usual scope. So far, she had only learned how to look for magic use: When there might be energy fields, she supposed they were (she didn’t understand it all very well...yet). But it was something magical, at least, that she could do without risk.

      Across the yard and extending up like a magical dome, the protection wards shimmered, translucent and faintly colorful like a giant soap bubble. She ought to be safe from house to garage, and from there in her car with its own protection wards, the few blocks to her parking spot behind Eclectica.

      Putting away the Sight—it helped to think of it like a pair of glasses—she stepped onto the back porch. Her breath was a visible plume. Her muscles clenched with cold.

      Not anxiety, she told herself before she took another quick scan of the area and double-locked the door. And then, feeling like an overcautious fool, she made her way down the three slick wooden steps to the yard.

      At the crack of a twig high in the neighbor’s cedar, she startled and nearly dropped the keys. She looked up in time to see something move along a branch. Shadowed and obscured as it was by the draping needles, she couldn’t make out its shape or even color. And then, with a soft flapping of wings, it took off from the far side of the tree, out of sight. Raven? Gone, in any case.

      She told herself not to dwell on it.

      In her first weeks back, she’d driven herself all the more crazy by seeking out Cormac at every turn. Every unfamiliar face and especially every raven had held a possibility she had longed for. And each time—each and every time—she’d had to acknowledge his continued absence. An absence that was most likely permanent.

      It had become too painful, and so she had forced herself to stop.

      Stop looking, stop hoping.

      Yet it was hard, and sometimes she relapsed.

      Her hand went to her pendant, found it no warmer than it should have been from laying against her skin. It was an odd looking thing, the representation of a gorgon; and it was an imperfect safeguard, too, as had been recently revealed. But Thia still took comfort from it. It might not detect or ward off every danger, but it had done well enough against a certain individual. And it had been a gift from Lettie.

      Chilled, she hurried down the short path to the garage, quickly shut the door behind her to lean against it while her heart pounded.

      To think she used to walk to work at all times of the day or evening with hardly a concern. Now she scurried like a frightened mouse across a fenced-in yard in order to drive.

      To think she used to believe that magic was nothing more than fantasy and wishful thinking.

      Sure, when Thia had come to set up and run Eclectica’s online store, Lettie had explained certain practices: Don’t allow an opened Tarot deck to be sold; make sure that the wolfsbane remained in the locked case and never went to anyone not on the approved buyer’s list; and so on. But Thia had thought it part of her great-aunt’s whimsical hobby. Perfectly harmless, like carrying around a rabbit’s foot for luck and not walking beneath a ladder.

      How wrong she had been.

      Pushing off the door, she walked around Lettie’s older-model Datsun to the driver’s side. The hinges creaked, as did the springs when she settled into the worn bucket seat. Habit had her reach for the button on the remote clipped to the visor. She lowered her hand, took a deep breath.

      Little things, they’d instructed. Start with little things.

      She closed her eyes, gathered what Abby called “the energy of intention,” while envisioning the newly repaired garage door.

      White with three horizontal segments and a row of tiny windows along the top. A system of tracks with a cable and pulley. She waited until she could feel the substance, the reality of it all—along with the uncomfortable prickle as the Cailleach’s power moved from her bones to gather at her palms. Then, with a slight upward sweep of her hands, she pictured the door lifting.

       Slowly.

      The storage shelves along the walls began to rattle, but she couldn’t risk taking a look.

      The door, lifting. She needed to maintain the image, the feel of it. She needed to—

      Something hit the ground with a loud pop of glass and scattering metal. Thia’s eyes flew open as, behind her, the garage door crashed down.

      Terrified, she watched more and more things topple from shelves that continued to tremble. Glass jars of nails and screws fell to shatter on the cement floor while a tool chest rattled toward the brink.

      She hadn’t called back the power.

      She’d lost her focus, but was still sending. Oh, God. Forcing her eyes closed again, she struggled for calm as—by the great crashing sound of it—the chest dropped. Her hands made another gesture, this time an inward sweep with thumbs and third fingers touching, before she settled them in her lap in a meditative pose.

      “To me,” she said, fear and frustration turning what should have been an order into a soft-voiced plea. “In me.”

      Gradually she felt the power reverse course, no longer flowing to her hands but from them, back into her bones—where it could remain, as far as she was concerned, for the rest of her days, never to be called upon again.

      As the undirected power dissipated, the shelving settled and she let out a relieved breath.

      She couldn’t ignore the power, she knew, much as she wanted to. Couldn’t hope to let it lie dormant forever. There were people, Otherworldly and otherwise, who would go to great lengths to take it or try to use it through her.

      In the last couple of weeks she had become better at controlling it, so it no longer shot out at unexpected (and invariably destructive) times. But that wasn’t enough. She needed to be able to wield it or she’d remain a danger to everyone.

      She