She was so pale and still, like Hamlet’s Ophelia, her hair tangled with weeds, her clothes “heavy with their drink.” They had almost pulled her “from her melodious lay to muddy death.” I remember the scene from the play from when I studied it at school.
And yet she was the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Persephone, who had to spend six months of every year in the Underworld. Does that make me Hades? No, I pulled her out, back into the land of the living. I literally brought her back to life. And something happened when she looked up at me with her big brown eyes. For a moment, I hadn’t been able to breathe.
“How is she?” I ask the nurse.
“Who?”
“Persephone, the girl I pulled out of the river?”
“They’re treating her now. They’re giving her external rewarming, and active core rewarming with warm fluids, and monitoring her closely.”
“Can I see her?”
“Maybe later. Let’s get you stable, first.”
My phone rings, and the nurse nods as I gesture at it, then goes out and leaves me to it. I answer it, “Macbeth.”
“Mac? It’s Damien.”
I lie back, tucking an arm under my head, looking up at the ceiling again. The father of Alex, who’s one of my best mates, Damien is in his mid-fifties, and he runs a group that Alex and I are both part of. I’ve known him since I was seventeen, and I trust him more than anyone else in the world.
“Hey,” I reply.
“I’ve been trying to call you,” he says. “Are you okay?”
I smile. “Alex rang you?”
“He did. What happened?”
I tell him about seeing Persephone’s car going into the water, and diving in to save her. “It was close, though. I nearly didn’t get there in time. She’s got moderate to severe hypothermia, and they’re treating her now. And what’s weird is that there were wolf prints in the snow around the river.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t just a large dog?”
“Give me some credit. I know the difference.”
There’s a long silence, and eventually I say, “You still there?”
“Did she actually stop breathing?” Damien asks.
“Yeah. I had to give her the kiss of life.” My mind lingers briefly on the memory of her lips beneath mine.
He blows out a long breath. “Okay.”
I frown. “What’s the problem?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Damien…”
“Every action has consequences, Mac. You know that.”
“Yeah…” I puzzle over his words. “What are you saying?”
He hesitates, and I imagine him pacing the floor of his study, over at the Crux. “If she was supposed to die,” he says slowly, “and you brought her back to life, that balance has to be kept.”
I go cold, and it’s nothing to do with the river. “What do you mean? Someone else has to die in her place?”
“I’m sorry, Mac.”
“Holy Herne. Who?”
“I don’t know. Someone she’s connected to. It’s the way it works.”
Anger sears through me, and I sit up. “What was I supposed to have done? Leave her in the river? I’m a police officer; I help people. It’s what I do. She’s only young. She doesn’t deserve to die. I’m not going to feel sorry for saving her.”
“It’s done now, Mac,” he says calmly. “Don’t worry about it.”
I am worried, though. “So what were the wolf prints?”
“Sometimes demons can sense those who are close to crossing over. They patrol to try to stop them reaching the Higher Realms, to attempt to drag them into the Lower Realms. Maybe this wolf tried to get to Persephone and, when it failed, it went after someone else.”
“Gods, what have I done?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he repeats. “We’ll keep an eye on her friends and family. Who knows, maybe we’ll be able to do something to stop it happening.” He sighs. “Are you all right?”
I lie back down, irritable and unsettled. “Well, my temperature’s thirty-three degrees and there are parts of me that are very unimpressive right now. I think my balls retreated up into my ribcage.”
He gives a short laugh. “Seriously, you’re going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine. I’m just glad I got her out.” I think about the way the car came around the corner and crashed into her. “Damien, do you think there’s a chance it wasn’t an accident that her car went into the river?”
“What do you mean?”
“The other car. It just drove off. I don’t know… I’ve just… got a feeling.”
Damien’s the last person to scoff at intuition. “It’s possible.”
“Why would someone want to kill her, though?” I can’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt the beautiful young woman I rescued.
He hesitates again. “I might have the answer to that. But if I tell you, you must swear to keep it to yourself.”
Now I’m intrigued. “Okay, I promise.”
“She’s a witch,” he says.
My eyes widen. “You know her?”
“I know of her. She’s a member of Kimi’s coven.”
“She’s a Crow?”
“Yes. She and her twin sister are both members.”
My jaw drops. At one point, when I pulled her out of the river, she said, “Oh Goddess,” but I thought I’d misheard.
Kimi is Damien’s wife, my friend Alex’s mother, and together she and Damien run the Crux, the central coven in England, based not far away, on the other side of Exeter. Kimi is a powerful witch, and Damien is a shaman. I know they’ve taken part in a battle against the forces of darkness in the past. Today they also run smaller local groups, training others in the art of magic. Kimi runs the Coven of Crows, a group of trainee witches, and Damien heads Herne’s Hunters—training young men to be shamans.
“You can’t tell her you know,” Damien warns. “Everyone who does magic has the right to keep it secret until they choose to come out of the broom closet.”
“I know.”
“I mean it, Mac. And you can’t tell her that by saving her life, you’ve endangered someone else.”
I grit my teeth. “All right, I get it. I’ll just check in later, make sure she’s all right. I gave her some healing, but she was slipping in and out of consciousness.”
“No, keep your distance. You must not get involved with this girl. You’ve upset the balance enough already.”
I run my hand through my damp hair. If he was anyone else, I’d tell him to stick his declaration where the sun doesn’t shine. But Damien is one of my oldest friends, as well as my superior, and I respect him more than anyone else. “All right,” I say reluctantly.
“Good,” he replies. “Call me later.”
“Okay.” I hang up.
I scowl at the ceiling, then sit up, swinging my legs over the bed.
The nurse comes back in and glares at me. “Lie down,” she says. “You’re not going anywhere until your temperature is back to normal.”