Valley of Bones

Chapter 1

Dawn cracked over Bone Valley, spreading golden light across the miles of plains and hills, streets and buildings. As the sun crept up from below the horizon, throwing the world into brilliant day, and piercing through the crack in Alexi Malaika's blinds, her alarm gave a ringing cry. It played for a moment or two longer before stopping, waking an empty room. Minutes later it started again and from across the room, the blinds stirred. Alexi crashed through the open window, leaping across the room before the alarm could wake anyone. She slapped at her phone, turning it off with held breath. She listened for a moment to ensure no one was coming down the hall to yell at her for the third time that week. Part of her wondered why she even set the alarm – she was always awake before day break and out of the house when the alarm went off. She was just lucky no one had yet discovered her missing before dawn. She didn't know how she'd explain her early morning journeys to anyone, not even to anyone in this house.

Satisfied that no one was coming to complain about her being awake at an ungodly hour, Alexi dug out a red journal from its hiding spot beneath her mattress and settled into the bean bag chair under the window. She flipped to the first empty page and dated it, jotting down in her made-up shorthand all the things she'd learned on that morning's adventure. When she was done she skimmed it, racking her brain for anything she might have missed. There wasn't anything to link it all together, and she was growing increasingly frustrated. Early morning ventures into the graveyard across the street were becoming less and less fruitful.

She sat there for a long time staring at her notebook, willing the pieces to connect, feeling the house wake around and below her, when she heard an odd tap tap tap against her window. After a pause it came again. Urgent, not like a bird absently pecking at the glass or a twig brushing up against it in a gentle breeze. There were no trees near her window.

Frowning, Alexi stood and pushed aside the curtains. She almost gave a cry of fright, stifling it in time, but she dropped her notebook.

"Nicholas!" she exclaimed in a quiet voice. "What are you doing here at this time?" The sun had fully risen, hanging over the low buildings of Bone Valley's outer edge. It passed through his body like he wasn't there, a long rectangle of light across Alexi's rug.

"I came..." he said, flickering slightly around the edges. He looked pale, even for a ghost. "A warning."

"What is it?" Alexi leaned forward.

"Someone is coming."

Alexi glanced over her shoulder at her bedroom door.

"No," Nicholas said, his voice weak.

"Nick, get back to the cemetery," Alexi told him.

"Be careful...in the next few days..." He momentarily blinked out of sight and reappeared, shoulders sagging. Without seeming to move, he drifted backwards and turned, becoming smaller and smaller until Alexi couldn't see more than a pale smudge in her backyard.

She turned back to the door again, somehow knowing he hadn't meant someone in the house. He had used up a lot of energy to leave the sacred cemetery in direct sunlight to warn her against something. Someone. But who, and why?

A sudden pounding on her door jolted her from her thoughts. "Up! You have school!" her stepsister and legal guardian yelled from the hall.

"I know?" Alexi muttered to herself. She listened as Christine's footsteps shuffled down the hall and then stood stubbornly in the middle of her room until the clock read 7:19. She huffed. Already dressed, she yanked open her door and slid into the bathroom ahead of one of Christine's bedraggled boyfriends.

Mornings were a hassle. Alexi's parents had split when she was five and when her dad remarried two years later she had moved in with him and his new wife and two bratty children, though they had both moved out on their own after a year. That marriage lasted as long as anyone expected, and only came to a sudden end when Alexi's dad and stepmom died in separate car accidents just days apart. Christine became Alexi's new legal guardian, her biological mother nowhere to be found on God's green planet, and Alexi moved into the house Christine's grandmother had left her in her will, on the condition that they use it for a single purpose: a halfway house for wayward witches. Christine was by no means superstitious or prone to believing witches existed, and considered selling the house, until her own sister began showing signs. Almost eight years later, the house saw as many as five to fifteen witches living in it at any given time, with exactly two full baths to accommodate them. While it wasn't precisely a battle for the washrooms, Alexi absolutely despised it when one of Christine's on-again-off-again boyfriends stayed the night, because they all refused to learn the rules. Alexi got the bathroom between 7:20 and 7:30 in the mornings because she was the only one who had to get ready for school.