Being possessed by a familiar isn’t all bad. I mean, it comes with some pretty impressive abilities. Don’t get me wrong, Isabelle can be a major pain in my ass at times. But she’s also hyper-aware of our surroundings.

Annabelle! Watch out! Isabelle screamed, her voice echoing from within my mind. A split second later a figure stepped out in front of my Camaro. I slammed the brakes, cranking the wheel hard to the right. Spraying gravel struck the underside of my car. A thud against the passenger side quarter panel suggested that I’d failed in my attempt to miss the moron who’d stepped in front of the car.

“Are you okay?” I tilted my head. It was my graduation party, but Ashley was the one who had too much to drink. Just a few minutes earlier she was singing, loudly, to the tune of “Sweet Child O’ Mine.”

I’m partial to the oldies. But now, she was unresponsive. I grabbed my phone and paused my playlist, silencing Axl Rose mid-shriek, before punching the lump of flesh that vaguely resembled my sister in the shoulder.

“Huh?” was Ashely’s only response before rolling back over in her seat. She wasn’t going to be of much help in this situation.

She was fine, relatively speaking.

It took a second for my mind to recognize what had happened. I’d hit someone! Shit…

I reached for the door handle, praying that I hadn’t killed anyone.

Wait, Isabelle urged. There’s something unusual here…

“You mean, of the supernatural sort?” I asked. Ever since my family had been attacked by a few supernatural baddies when I was nine, my sister and I had become a sort of two-girl paranormal investigation team. We were damn good at it, too. And we’d seen our share of insidious creatures. Whatever this was, particularly with Isabelle’s powers at my disposal, I was sure I could handle it.

Yeah, Isabelle said. But I don’t recognize its aura… this is something new.

New wasn’t a word typically used to describe anything supernatural. Most of the things we encountered were ancient, predating human history. “What do you mean by new?”

It’s not like anything I’ve ever encountered… at least not recently.

“Is it human?”

Sort of…

Sort of human was my jam. Most of what we encountered—vampires, zombies, demon-possessed Ouija boarders, ghosts—they were all sort of human. At least they’d started that way.

“If it’s human at all, I can’t leave it on the side of the road,” I said. “We have to help.”

Just be careful, Isabelle said. With your adrenaline pumping this hard, I don’t think I’d be able to take over if things get nasty.

Isabelle was the source of my power. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t helpless when I was in charge. I could access most of her abilities. They were just turned down a bit. And I could only access her magica in limited quantities. I was more than capable in most circumstances, but it was nothing compared to the kick-assery we were capable of when Isabelle held the reins. Letting her take over came with a cost, though. It was hard to maintain. A little emotion, something startling, and I’d be back in charge, only with a raging headache that would leave me useless, like a pile of mush, for the next several hours.

Still, I could handle most of your run-of-the-mill supernatural nasties without much problem. Not to mention, whatever it was didn’t appear to be moving. Its body was lying prostrate about ten feet in front of the car.

I nudged Ashley again, but she still hadn’t regained any of her wits.

“Think we could use some healing energies to sober her up?” I asked Isabelle. Ashley didn’t have any powers herself, but she was hella resourceful in situations like this. When it came to magical trinkets and shit like that… not even a Shaman could do better. And she’d learned from the best of them.

Not the best idea, Isabelle said. I’d hate for you to blow your load before we know what we’re facing.

I chuckled a bit since I was reasonably sure Isabelle had no clue what blowing one’s load actually meant—she’d been born a slave girl… owned by my ancestors, in fact. You’d think that would make things awkward between us, but we’d been together long enough that the “past” wasn’t so much a barrier to our relationship as the present. Isabelle’s phrasing aside, she had a point. Trying to sober Ashley up would take more power than you’d think. Healing spells were tricky. It wasn’t the degree of healing that took the most power, it was how extensive the injury was, how much of the body was affected. In most instances. A single hole blown in the chest was easier to heal, frankly, than trying to purge someone’s entire system of alcohol. Isabelle wasn’t wrong. It might take every drop of magica I could access to pull it off. And I still might fall short.

I took a deep breath. “Well, here goes nothing.” I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the door. The crunch of gravel beneath my feet seemed louder than I’d expected. When you’re nervous, almost every sound is amplified.

I approached the body. I almost hit myself for thinking “body.” You speak of bodies when someone is dead. Experiencing the real-world edition of I Know What You Did Last Summer wasn’t how I hoped to spend the next few months.

I cautiously approached the… person. “Sense anything more, Isabelle?”

Not really… I mean, this is pretty weird.

“What do you mean?”

The aura… most of it is average, normal human. Typical teenage male stuff, a lot of hormones.

“Not anything I can’t handle.” I chuckled. “But he’s alive?”

He is…

“But there’s something more…”

Silence.

“You can’t nod in my head, Isabelle… I can’t hear you.”

Yeah, sorry… it’s incredibly powerful, but its hold on him, its aura is separate. It’s like whatever it is had only started to try to take control of him.

“So we’re talking a possession?” I asked.

Of a sort…

I released a sigh. A simple possession. Exorcisms were one of my strengths… our strengths, rather. Isabelle gets a bit snippy when I don’t give her the credit due. I reached into my will and tried to draw enough power to expel whatever nasty creature had managed to latch itself to the boy.

But then everything went cold.

“What the hell, Isabelle?” I asked.

Sorry, I had to cut you off.

“What for?” I said, slightly perturbed.

You don’t want to exorcise something if you don’t know what it is. You don’t know what it could do, you know, once it leaves the host.

“Well, I’m a little short on options here. I can’t leave him like this.”

I reached down and touched the boy’s forehead. His skin was cold—but not “corpse” cold. I wanted to roll him off of his back and onto his side. In my experience, the last thing you want to do with someone possessed is have them lying on their back. Vomit inevitably accompanies most possessions, and ensuring that the boy’s airway would remain free of today’s half-digested dinner was a necessary priority. But the boy had just been broadsided by my car. I’d seen my share of medical dramas—I knew enough to realize moving someone with a potential neck injury was a bad idea.

He wasn’t a bad-looking boy. Probably my age, though it’s hard to tell with boys. Puberty seems to strike at different times. This boy was baby-faced with dark black skin. His tight jeans and tucked-in plaid shirt suggested he might not be entirely in-tune with American culture. I hate to make assumptions based on appearance alone. I mean, he might just have zero sense of style. But I suspected he might have been an immigrant. An exchange student, maybe. He just had that I’m-not-from-around-here vibe.

With my thumb, I gently lifted the boy’s left eyelid. I gasped.

His eyes were pure black. No iris at all. It was like his pupil had dilated so much that it took over his entire eyeball.

“Well, that’s not normal,” I declared. The possessed often have some dilation, but this was off the charts.

With pupils like that, he should have been able to see everything, even in the dark.

“Then why walk out in front of the car? I mean, my headlights were on. There’s no way he did this by accident.”

“What’s going on?” asked a familiar voice from the direction of the car.

“Ashley!” I shouted as my sister clung to the hood of my car to maintain her balance. “I’ve got this. Get back in the car!”

“No way, sis!” she said, stumbling in my direction. “Holy shit! You hit someone! You should have let me drive!” Ashley giggled, covering her gaping mouth with one of her well-manicured hands.

“Ashley, get back in the car,” I said, more curtly this time. I wasn’t in the mood for her drunken bullshit.

“Sweet!” Ashley said. “This dude’s possessed!”

Don’t get me wrong, I got my own thrill out of supernatural encounters. It was mildly addicting. But you never showed it. Not when you were sober, anyway. We were serious paranormal investigators.

I raised my voice. “There’s nothing you can do to help. Not like this.”

Before I could continue, Ashley shrieked.

Instinctively I turned to the boy. His eyes were both open—completely black.

Annabelle, get back! Isabelle’s voice practically exploded my cranium.

I leapt to my feet and jumped back a pace. Flight usually takes precedence over my instinct to fight when I don’t know what’s happening.

Before Isabelle could stop me, I released a torrent of energies at the boy.

I clutched at my chest as I coughed. I spit the blood into the bowl beside my bed. The cough. Night sweats. A fever. The same symptoms my mother and sister displayed—the symptoms of consumption. They died shortly thereafter. Rest in a sanatorium—that was what the doctors had prescribed. Now my father wanted to send me there, too. I’d be damned before they locked me up. There’s only one way out of a sanatorium if you have consumption—in a casket. Sure, these places were supposed to give us the rest we needed to get well. Bullshit. I didn’t know a single person who’d gone there and walked out alive. I was only nineteen. To hell with the sanatorium. I was too young to die.

It was the night of Samhain—the night of the dead, where the veil between worlds is the thinnest. If ever there was a time when the coven could help, it was now. Still shivering, I wrapped myself in a wool blanket, pushed open my bedroom window, and darted off into the woods. According to Moll—the witch who led our coven—any witch who contracted consumption should seek her out. Where the physicians’ power ended, she claimed hers began.

I had to move quickly. If my father discovered I’d left, he’d go to any end to track me down. And if he’d known I was a witch… If he realized what my friends and I did out in the woods… I won’t say he’d have me burned, though had I been born at an earlier time, that’s exactly what would have happened. Still, as a pious man, devout and faithful to Puritan beliefs, he’d certainly have little tolerance for my practice of the Craft.

The breeze coursed through the trees, casting moving shadows along the path. As the sun continued to set, the shadows disappeared—but I knew these trails well. I’d traveled them, by day or by night, many times before. Usually I’d hear singing or at least some conversation as I approached the wooded sanctuary.

But as I entered the clearing only Moll stood there, her cauldron boiling as it sat suspended over a blazing fire. It was a unique cauldron—not that cauldrons are particularly popular items. This one, though, had a unique scratch spanning its circumference. I didn’t know how it got the scratch. It was probably just a simple accident.

Still, it made her cauldron distinctly identifiable. There were witches’ cauldrons, generally, and then there was Moll’s cauldron. And using another witch’s cauldron is sort of like using someone else’s toothbrush or wearing their underwear. You just don’t do it. First, ew. But second, it’s one of those things that’s just personal, no matter how close you might be to someone.

“I’ve been expecting you, Mercy,” Moll said, a gentle smile gracing her otherwise wrinkled and weathered face. Her hair long and white, she wore a long black robe. She held her wand in her hand, and with it cast a circle around the clearing.

I coughed, spitting my blood on the ground.

“Come, dear,” Moll said. “Perhaps we can soothe your pangs.”

“I’m afraid, Moll,” I said. “These are the same symptoms my mother and my sister had… shortly before they died.”

“Are you afraid to die?”

“Of course,” I said. “Isn’t everybody?”

“Then don’t,” Moll said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t die, of course.”

I squinted my eyes. If it were so easy as choosing not to die, no one ever would. “How is this possible?”

A broad, close-mouthed grin split Moll’s face. “There may be a way, my dear. But it comes with a cost.”

“What cost is too great for one’s life?”

Moll continued walking around the circle, turning to the north, south, east, and west. Calling upon the elements of air, earth, water, and fire. “The costs, my dear, are many. But the greatest of these is your soul.”

I tilted my head. “Not much of a cost, if that’s the worst of it. So far as I know, the soul’s purpose is to carry me into heaven if I die. But if I would never die…”

“It is quite an acceptable cost, is it not?” Moll asked.

I coughed again, pulling my blanket more tightly around my body. “What does it take, just a spell?”

“The spell we’re casting, dear, is to sustain your life when the one who would give you the gift of life eternal visits you in the night.”

“Is it… a demon?”

“Oh heavens no,” Moll said. “Though some might mistake him for one. He looks as human as you are, apart from the red of his eyes and, of course, his teeth. After all, he was a human once. Many centuries ago.”

“So he lives forever, too?”

“He does, child,” Moll said. “And if he deems you desirable, he might grant you his gift.”

I took a deep breath. Living forever? I couldn’t even get my mind around the idea. “So I won’t die, then?”

“You will draw as close to death as any might. Were it not for this spell, the one we intend to perform tonight, you would not survive the transformation.”

“The transformation?”

“You do not imagine you could live forever without some manner of change, do you?”

“Of course not,” I said. “But what is the… nature… of this transformation?”

“What does it matter?” Moll asked. “Your life will endure. You will be beautiful. You will move as swiftly as an angel of the night.”

“And this spell, the one we’re preparing?”

“Quite painless, dear,” Moll said. “But if I prepare you for this gift, I trust I might continue to have your loyalty.”

“Of course,” I said. “And the rest of the coven?”

“Do not speak to them of this gift,” Moll said. “I’ve chosen you and you alone for this privilege.”

“Why me?”

“I must confess,” Moll said, “my reasons are somewhat selfish. In all my years I’ve seen few with such natural talent in our arts. I am unwilling to let you go as much as you are unwilling to die.” Moll pulled a small burlap sack from her robe and dumped its contents into the cauldron. “The only ingredient that remains, my dear, is your blood.”

“I’m coughing up blood,” I said. “Will that work?”

“Yes, dear.”

I approached the cauldron, took a deep breath, and coughed hard, a heavy dose of blood filling my mouth. I spit it into the cauldron. The boil intensified, the cauldron’s contents turning from green to red.

Moll dipped a ladle into the cauldron. “Drink it all, dear.”

As she lifted the ladle to my lips, I sipped it—it was bitter, difficult to stomach. I winced as the potion scalded my tongue and the roof of my mouth.

“Very good, dearest Mercy,” Moll said. “You must return home and take your rest. Within three months of tonight you will receive a visitor. Do not resist him.”

“Three months?” I asked. “I don’t know if I’ll even live that long…”

“The magic will sustain you for three moons. During that time, you will remain as you are—but you will not fall further ill. Your life will endure through your transformation.”

“Thank you, Moll.”

“Direct your gratitude to the goddess, my dear. And do not forget with whom this gift originated. Do not forget your promise of fidelity to our coven. I have great plans for you, still.”