Shifting Summer (Mane Shift Book 2) by Laura Bickle

Author:Laura Bickle [Bickle, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: urban fantasy, paranormal romance, witches, shifters, contemporary fantasy
Publisher: Syrenka Publishing LLC
Published: 2021-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Renan slapped the mirror from the wall. It landed on the floor and shattered into hundreds of pieces. The fragments of glass seemed to seethe with smoke and then go still and reflective. Those pieces seemed inert, reflecting what they should, without a fearsome shadow behind them.

“What the hell was that?” I breathed.

Starr stood back, her hands pressed to her throat. I noticed that she’d drawn evil eye protective sigils on each one of her painted nails. “I think...that was a manifestation of the curse. It feels like it’s getting stronger.”

Starr backed up and sat on the edge of her bed. At that moment, she looked like the little girl I once knew. She was in her old room, surrounded by dried out paints and mason jars full of brushes. The purple paint on the walls had faded in the sun, and the dress mannequin was swathed in a sparkly black fabric. A line of white Christmas lights twinkled halfheartedly behind her, half the bulbs burned out. Everything was dusty and outgrown. Everything but her fear of the dead, the fear she tried so hard to hide.

I sat down beside her, stretching out my wounded leg. “Hey. Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah it just—startled me. I mean, I sometimes see the dead in mirrors and the bottoms of teacups and stuff...but that’s when I concentrate and ask for it to happen. This just...burst right out.” She shuddered, and I rubbed her shoulder.

Anger lanced through me. Nobody screwed with my little sister. Not curses, not evil spirits, not anything. I hobbled to my feet and yelled at the rafters: “Serapis, you piece of ectoplasmic garbage! You leave my little sister alone.”

The atmosphere thickened, growing oppressive as a dense fog. I stifled a shudder and lifted my awl in my right fist, where it glimmered like a dagger. Starr’s bedroom door swung shut, and I could hear Halley and Dalton pounding on it to get in.

“Come get some, you tepid excuse for a curse.” Rage boiled in my throat. Starr grabbed my shirt and tried to get me to sit back down. I knew better than to provoke a ghost. But this wasn’t a ghost minding its own business in its own house, accidentally crossing paths with the living once in a while. This was an evil spirit that was an interloper on our land, and I was sure as hell gonna show it who was boss.

The pieces of the mirror rattled on the ground. They shivered and tried to come back together, as if magnetized..

“No,” Renan barked. He waded into the mirror fragments and stomped on them with his boots, trying to break them into glittering mirror dust.

But he couldn’t get all the pieces. Splinters of broken glass flew into the air and launched themselves at me and Starr. I shoved Starr to the bed and slashed at them with the awl. Pieces of glass prickled my skin, but the arc cut by the awl broke some of the pieces, sending them clattering to the ground.

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