Mary Singer's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

By morning the bunker was quiet. Cerberus lay across the broken doorway, his three heads watching the dark. Mary sat with her empty pouch turned inside out. Not one moonlight flower remained. The battle had burned through everything. She looked at the flickering wards and knew the truth. If the larger threat came now, she had nothing left to cast. "I can't fight what's coming," she told Dean. "I'm out." Dean crouched beside her, jaw tight. He was the hunter she'd taken in, the man whose family she'd sworn to protect. He'd seen her summon a shadow cat and drop three hellhounds. Now he saw her hands empty. "Then we get you restocked," he said. "Where does a witch buy her ammo?" "There's a market," Mary said. "My uncle traded there. It doesn't stay in one place. I can find it." They left the shadow cat guarding the family and took Cerberus. Mary followed the pull she'd felt since childhood. A crooked market house waited at the end of it, candlelit, its striped awnings sagging with hanging herbs. Colored vials glowed in the windows. The doorway was too small for a three-headed hound, so Cerberus lay outside like a growling wall. Shoppers gave him a wide berth. Inside, the air smelled of smoke and dried lavender. Mary went straight to a stall stacked with bundled herbs and corked vials. She named what she needed. Moonlight flowers first. The old woman behind the counter shook her head. "Sold out," she said. "Moon's wrong. Won't bloom for a week." Mary's stomach dropped. Without those flowers, the summoning spell was useless. She pressed her palms flat on the counter. "I have people who die in a week." Dean leaned in beside her. He unclipped his knife and set a fistful of cash on the wood. "What else you got that stops a hellhound?" The old woman studied Mary's gold-rimmed glasses, then her shaking hands. She reached under the stall. She pulled up a leather vest covered in painted runes, worn soft at the seams. "Your uncle left this on account," she said. "Runework. Turns a beast's teeth. Won't summon a thing, but it keeps you breathing long enough to summon it." Mary took the vest. The runes warmed under her fingers. It wasn't the spell she wanted. It was armor, not a weapon. But it was something. She bought the vest and every herb the woman had that mattered, filling her pouch with vials and dried bundles. Outside, she pulled the vest on over her coat. Cerberus sniffed it and huffed. Dean watched her lace it tight. "Better than empty hands," he said. "It's not enough," Mary answered. She had defense now, and herbs. But the one thing that could beat what was coming wouldn't bloom for seven days. And she didn't think the threat would wait that long.