Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery by Kelley Armstrong & Rachel Caine & Sherrilyn Kenyon

Author:Kelley Armstrong & Rachel Caine & Sherrilyn Kenyon
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Tags: Horror, Paranormal, Dark Fantasy, Fiction, Anthologies, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781789090345
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2019-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

THE DEBT

Ania Ahlborn

The earth was soft; lush with a blanket of moss so verdant, Karolin had never before set eyes on green so fresh and alive. The color was the first thing to stand out among the features of the forest. It didn’t matter that the sky was overcast. Even without sunshine, that green was electric, almost glowing of its own accord. But the way the ground gave beneath her feet was what surprised her the most.

It feels as though I could sink, she thought, sink through the ground and into the deep below.

The forest smelled of soil and that morning’s rain. She’d been woken only an hour before by a hand upon her shoulder, her father standing above a bed that wasn’t hers in a house she’d never visited before. Karolin found it strange that the house had been empty when they arrived, nothing but old furniture and the scent of mothballs. Two layovers, an international flight, and an additional three hours of driving toward the border of Belarus, and somehow it hadn’t been enough of an effort for her grandmother Sylvia to be home when they had finally pulled up to her dad’s childhood home. But her father, Greg, had never spoken much about his mother, and this was Karolin’s first visit to Poland. She was only eleven, but she was smart enough to know that the relationship between her dad and grandma was complicated; complicated like the relationships on all of those Lifetime TV specials Karolin’s mother had once liked so much.

The dewy forest floor invited sterling-colored worms to wriggle their fat bodies across moss and dirt. Perhaps, had Karolin been a year or two older and only slightly less averse to all things girlie, she would have been disgusted by those slithery invertebrates. But she was still a kid, as her mom had reminded her on the eve of her most recent birthday, and had anyone asked Karolin to name her top three annoyances, they would have been (in no particular order): the color pink, Disney princesses, and anything that didn’t involve her red Converse All Stars—a gift she’d received from her father; a little inside joke just between them. As a matter of fact, Karolin had only worn a dress once in her relatively short life. She’d put it on so that her mom could finally see just how pretty she looked in it. Having dragged the ill-fitting thing out of her closet, she’d pulled it over her head in a fit of tears. But her effort had been in vain, because when Karolin leaned over her mother’s casket, Mama hadn’t opened her eyes. She had simply lain there, a waxen cadaver.

Everyone remembered the day their mother died, but Karolin’s recollection would always be extra vivid. Because, just hours before the accident, a room full of friends had sung Happy Birthday over a cake Mom had made herself—a semi-lopsided astronomy-themed confection covered in icing so dark it had stained everyone’s mouths a deep, zombie blue.

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