that had been neatly folded at the foot of the mattress. After looking around once more to make sure there was no danger, they left the apartment and slowly went back down the stairs the way they had come. Teresa’s gaze swept the stairwell and he saw her noting the crosses and the garlic. She rubbed at her chest again, as if her heart were aching, and he thought, Of course it is.
But he couldn’t help wondering if there was more to it than grief for all she had lost. Was she feeling the presence of the black silver? Was her pain more than regret? Was sense memory rising up inside her?
She stepped into the shadows of the narrow street and Rune came up behind her, laying both hands on her shoulders. He felt her tension and shared it.
Moonlight poured from the sky. The moon itself was nearly full. Their thirty days nearly done.
Teresa tipped her face up to the moon and let its light shimmer over her, through her. He watched as she gathered her strength, filling herself with the moon’s magic. When finally she turned her head to look at him, her eyes were clear, but worried.
“There’s something happening here, Rune. Beyond what happened to my aunt. There’s something … dark.”
A shout, scuffling feet and then a scream jolted the quiet atmosphere and they both whirled around to stare down the street. A police car, lights flashing in the night, was parked outside an apartment. As they watched, a woman was dragged kicking and screaming from her home. Even from a distance, Rune spotted the white-gold chain around her neck as two burly policemen strong-armed her into the backseat of their marked car. An old woman walking by spat at the trapped woman, and Teresa hissed in a breath.
“So,” she murmured, “the Spanish version of MPs?”
“Close enough,” Rune told her and steered her in the opposite direction of the police. They didn’t need more trouble. They had more than enough already. “Come on. Keep walking.”
“To where?”
“That’s up to you,” he said, keeping one arm around her shoulders and her body pressed along his side. “Open your mind. Your senses. Call on the moon again. Whisper a chant. Just … trust your instincts, Teresa. Open yourself to the past and let it lead you.”
“It already is,” she said softly. “I can feel the black silver. It’s like a dark hum of energy burning through my mind. Can you feel it?”
“I sense its presence. But no, I can’t feel it yet.”
“Others are sensing it, too, Rune.” She glanced around the street as they passed, noting for the first time the tight features of the people. Shops were closing, windows were shut against the night, curtains drawn, sealing people inside their homes as if they were hiding.
“It’s like the black silver is waking up.” She shivered a little in the damp cold seeping in off the ocean. “The Artifact is connected to the Awakening witches, Rune, and it knows that we’re coming.”
He pulled her to a stop, unmindful of the cursing people who were forced to go around them. An icy wind shot down the narrow passageway directly off the ocean and wrapped them both in a chilled embrace. Looking down into her eyes, he asked, “Are you saying that the Artifact is alive?”
“Not breathing, but, yeah. In a way, I think it is.” She swallowed hard and gazed off into the distance. “I think the magical energy we infused it with has somehow become … more than it was eight hundred years ago. I think it’s waiting for us to use it again. And that darkness that’s inside it? It’s spreading.” She glanced at the shadow-filled street, at the scurrying people. “Look around, Rune. The black silver is affecting everyone here.”
“If that’s true, then we have less time than we thought.”
“I know.” She took his hand and started moving.
“The closer the witches come to containing the Artifact, the more it will fight to survive. We have to go, Rune. Now.”
She sped up, her footsteps clicking against the cobblestones. Rune kept pace, refusing to let go of her.
There was danger all around them. Her aunt had nearly been killed, cops were on the prowl and there was an unknown enemy waiting for his chance. And if Teresa was right about the black silver … then the danger the other witches and their Eternals would face would only grow.
The fire that made him roared within, flames churning. His power was stronger since