What Is Dark Within Me (Our Lady of Fire: Book One)

by L.B. Black

It was a ten-minute drive to the home, giving Aleja enough time to finish the podcast she’d started while pulling on her puppy-patterned scrubs this morning. As always, it was a true crime story centering on a young woman named Violet Timmons, who’d been missing for six months. And as always, it made Aleja remember the last words Violet had left on her voicemail. Hi, Al. I’m going on a quick solo hike near the falls. If I’m not back in a few hours, assume Bigfoot is trying to make me his forest bride and swoop in for a rescue!

Scrying mirrors were made of pure jatrite silver; a rare and expensive material only found in the other realms.

Aleja’s mother had disappeared the moment her daughter’s hair began growing in—a shade of dark red unusual even among witches. To the Ruizes, this red hair was a reminder the devil still had one more of them to take, and this quiet child seemed marked for him.

One: Violet seemed upset the week before she disappeared, though she usually celebrated the yearly anniversary of her remission from lymphoma. Two: Violet’s car wasn’t found in the parking lot of the trailhead she’d claimed to be heading to. Nor were her backpack and camera. And three: There’d been no mention of the occult items Aleja knew should have been strewn throughout Violet’s home when it was searched by the police. Either the cops were keeping it quiet, or they’d been removed beforehand. Perhaps by Violet herself.

“You should be careful when you search for what is missing. You will find something, even if it’s not what you were looking for.”

Aleja sighed, crossing her legs carefully so as not to disturb her grandmother’s creation. “Can you not do the cryptic stuff today? I’m pretty sure I’m bleeding to death in a park right now. Oh my god, the podcasters are going to have a field day with this. Maybe Violet and I will get a joint special.”

grimoire.

“Go, witchling. See if you can find out why your friend was so keen to meet the Diabolus Society.”

“What does any witchling who summons a hellhound want? Information about Nicolas and the Dark Saints. She wouldn’t light the black candle and I didn’t have the answers to her questions, so she left me locked up, in case she needed me later.”

Aleja whirled to find a beautiful woman with dark curls holding a silver tray. A bowl of soup steamed next to a chunk of rustic bread. Beside this was a chunk of roast with crisp black edges paired with a plate of small potatoes.

Thanks

The Dark Saints. The Knowing One’s wicked servants. Personifications of humankind’s most awful and vicious traits.

“I’m not trapped here, mija. Well, I suppose I am, in a sense, but it’s by choice. I was dying when Nicolas came to me. Heart failure. I would have been gone within weeks, but he offered to bring me here. I couldn’t keep watching over you and Paola in the physical realm, but I could visit you in dreams whenever I liked.”

oh hes morally graaaaaayyyyy HOT

“He couldn’t save my life, but he brought me to a place where I could still watch over my family. He turned Sarita into a flock of crows, so she could fly far away. I hear she’s back in Seville. And you never met Raul, but he was suffering too. We had no words for depression in those days, but I feared what would have happened to him should he be left untreated. Nicolas sent him to the Court of Golden Sands, in the realm of the fey, where the best of their mind-healers conduct their research. As far as I know, Raul still lives among them.”

She was back in a place of red and orange, like the color of the sky when there was a distant wildfire.

Sigh

When it was over, Nicolas was supposed to be punished and stripped of his Otherlander powers. To be forced to live a human life and die as a mortal. But instead, you took the punishment that was meant for him.”

A Spell to Quell Your Anger Don’t. Open your mouth. Scream. Break something precious, but only if it belongs to you.

“So we’re going to ignore what just happened?” Aleja didn’t mean to speak so bitterly—no, scratch that, she did. “For now? Yes. You’ll want to as well once Amicia’s influence has faded. And if one day you change your mind, you’ll have to ask me. Not in innuendo. Not in sly touches. You’re going to look me in the eye and you’re going to ask me.”

sir yes sir

A Spell for Grieving Plant a single sprig of rosemary in a clay pot. Place the pot in the shadows. Do not water your sprig, even as it shrivels. Imagine it is the force of your grief that causes the plant to sag, to brown, to shed. Let yourself weep for this small life. Let yourself weep and weep and weep.

Aleja wondered if the heaviness in her gut was mourning. Her past self had no grave, no monument where those who knew her could sit with their memories. There was just a painting—Persephone with her hands stained red. A gift that had never been given.

“Your memories don’t make you who you are. You’re still brave and annoyingly persistent and have no qualms about putting me in my place. You’d still do anything—anything at all—if it kept your friends safe. You still love art. Your eyes soften when you look at a painting, as if they’re losing focus. But they’re seeing beyond the canvass and into everything the artist was trying to express, and you listen.”

“No. You’re still a villain. But maybe I want to be a fucking villain too.”

“You don’t understand what you do to me, Alejandra. I have waited centuries to have you by my side again, and I would wait an eternity longer.”

He whispered something else in a language Aleja did not understand, but that seemed to settle the woman behind the locked door in her mind. The woman she realized was Our Lady of Wrath, Our Lady of Fire, the High General of the last war between the Hidden Ones and the Astraelis.

“I must warn you about how we were before. Obsessive. Monstrous. Otherlanders do nothing halfway.”

“So, finish the job. Destroy me,” she said.

Im hooting

The smile Nicolas tried to hide was obvious. “What?” she asked. “Nothing. You reminded me of her for a moment.” I am her, Aleja wanted to scream. I don’t have her memories, but I am her.

“It’s you,” she whispered. “I’m afraid so,” Liam—no, Roland—sighed.

Screaming crying throwing up

She would be the worst kind of hypocrite if she claimed she wouldn’t have done the same to help those she loved; she had lit the black candle to get to Violet, and people were dead because of it.

“I know you didn’t just call my wife a cunt, Roland. Apologize.”

“Look at the difference between this place and the outside world. This is what the Astraelis offer,” Roland continued. He turned slightly, as if to address the humans cowering in their homes. “A life free from disease, hunger, and conflict. An endless life. And the one thing required? An offering, every few years. One life to save that of many.”

“Are you hitting on me now?” “Sure, if you’re open to it.” “The village is on fire, Nic.” “That’s never stopped us before.”