The Darkest Midnight. R. A. Finley

of the car as the garage door rattled upward along the tracks. That was something, anyway. Yesterday she’d warped it so badly it had stuck halfway. Still, it was hard to take comfort.

      With cold air rushing in, she crunched over nails and glass shards to where she kept the broom. The last thing the morning needed was a punctured tire. Or four.

      

      Blooms Alley, Granite Springs

      He had come early, cloaked in the mist of wintry dawn, as he had every morning since the prod of magic’s insistent fingers beneath the blanket of his solitude.

      At the time, he had been gathering supplies, stocking up for the cold months ahead. The idea (what he could recall of it) had been based upon the now-failed hope of staying on the mountain until Gwanwyn. Spring. He did not like town.

      But come into it he had, every day since that unexpected prod of the Cailleach’s power.

      Fear had caused him to investigate. Self-preservation, too. Never again would he allow himself to be taken unawares.

      Never again to be taken.

      He shuddered, drew his scarf higher about his face and then quickly returned his hands to his pockets. Several fingers of his gloves lacked tips. Sunlight’s faint warmth did not penetrate the shadows between brick and metal where he had created a rough shelter of cardboard pulled from the same rubbish bin he sat behind. It and the low-level warming charm he had spell-crafted kept away the worst of the cold but not all. Comfort lulled.

      He tensed at the sound of a car.

      Unmistakably hers, with its 1972 motor in need of a tune-up. It parked in its designated spot. Six meters from the back entrance to the store; three from his cobbled together blind. With the opening of its door came the awareness at the base of his skull, much like the sensation of hairs standing on end—although, with his hat pulled low and his scarf wrapped high and tight, that was hardly possible.

      The sensation was false, but the warning was not.

      Power. In great concentration and carrying the all-too-familiar resonance of the Cailleach.

      He listened to the thump of the door’s closing, the light tread of her steps on the asphalt as she approached the store. The sounds of opportunity. In the distance from her car to the store, she was vulnerable.

      The store’s back door opened with the click of a latch and a cheery squeak of hinges. But the woman had not yet crossed the halfway point.

      His senses, already straining against the leash, surged. His hold began to slip.

      “Good morning.” Her voice.

      And then the one with the power. “Zoe, here, let me get that for you.”

      Both neared.

      He held himself rigid, hardly dared to breathe while the bin’s lid lifted. Something landed inside. Cardboard, added to the collection.

      “Thanks, Thia.”

      After the lid was lowered and the sound of their conversation assured him they were headed into the store, he risked a look. He had the merest glimpse before they stepped inside—the woman with the power and her—but it was enough to stagger. It was as if she were lit from within. If he had but one of her smiles, the ones he’d seen her give so freely to others, he would not need a spell-crafted charm to keep warm.

      Less than a minute after the door had closed, it opened again. He knew what was coming. Braced for it. Her steps were quiet. Tentative, despite this not being the first time nor even the fourth. She had been doing this for the past week.

      Paper rustled and she set something down at the bin’s front bottom corner. He would not risk breaking cover to look. Not at it, not at her. Bad enough that he continued to come here day after day.

      Somehow he had decided that her knowing that he spent time in this place was not the same as knowing why. Besides, she didn’t know who—what—he was. She thought he was a transient, someone in need.

      Because she kept leaving him food.

      The door closed. She had gone back inside, and if her routine held, would not come out again until late afternoon. There would be more recycling to drop off. More food. A sandwich and piece of fruit, typically, although yesterday there had been a takeaway container of soup.

      After ten minutes, when he was sure no one watched, he pulled in the paper sack she had left.

      An onion bagel, lightly toasted. The tinfoil covering had failed to keep it hot, but he could fix that. Two packets, a butter and a cream cheese, along with a plastic knife. Two lidded paper cups.

      One held the usual coffee. Its aroma cut through even the thickest of the area’s smells. The other cup was heavier, warmer. He sniffed at the lid’s opening, although he figured if she intended to do him harm, she would have done it before this.

      Probably.

      No. She didn’t have it in her. She was good. Innocent.

      Oatmeal. Surprised, he pried off the lid, tugged down his scarf. He had not had oatmeal in…He could not remember how long. And he would not try. That would mean thinking though the lost time.

      There was a plastic spoon at the bottom of the bag. He pulled it out, scooped up a mouthful of steaming, cinnamon-spiced wonder. His eyes closed on a sigh.

      A woman’s low, seductive voice intruded. “I believe we have something in common. Someone, rather.”

      Power, angry and dark. Malevolence wormed its way through defenses that he had worked long and hard to erect since his release from caethiwed. But his own powers were not what they were. He was fighting an uphill battle and he knew he hadn’t the strength for much of a climb.

      He tried. Would continue to try until he had nothing left. He shook as the ripples of a compulsion spell licked like the tongue of a slavering beast.

      Its fangs would not be far behind.

      “What do you want?” he managed, his seldom-used voice strange to his own ears. The cup of oatmeal had dropped from his hands. He would not have noticed but for the wet heat soaking through the leg of his pants where it had spilled. Steam rose like thin, sheer snakes. He looked at them instead of the woman.

      He had not heard her approach. Had not felt so much as a glimmer. One moment he had been alone, the next…not.

      Power and skill.

      He closed his eyes as the tremors increased. His breathing had become choppy, his panic like a living thing. Control slipped, as did his footing in his silent, impossible fight against her will.

      “Walk with me,” she said, her sickly sweet voice closer than before. She had slipped into the space between the bins.

      She bent down, level with the entrance to his shelter and looked straight at him. He felt the nip of the beast’s fangs then, the compulsion spell taking hold.

      “Follow.” She straightened, gone the way she had come. He heard her walking away.

      He stood, left the cherished gift of food smeared and scattered about. She was halfway down the alley. A tall woman with hair in a long, sinuous cascade down her back. Swaying hypnotically, it beckoned.

      He followed.

      

      Eclectica, Granite Springs

      Thia felt a twinge of guilt when she hurried through the café to Eclectica’s upper sales floor, its decorative interior gate already propped open. The