Tastes Like I Want To Forget

The Uber ride was a sequence of flickering streetlights and rain-slicked pavement as the driver headed away from the polished galleries of downtown Asheville and toward the industrial rot of the river district.

Anna leaned her head against the cool glass, the hum of the tires lulling her into the jagged history of her own life. Before the stability of Stein College, her life had been a blur of grey bus stations and flickering neon signs. She remembered the early years;the frantic, whispered commands from her mother to hide your eyes and hold your breath.

They had been shadows, moving from shelter to shelter under a rotating carousel of stolen names. Anna had learned to pick locks at seven and pick pockets at nine. She’d learned that a girl who didn't exist couldn't be caught.

The change had come on her sixteenth birthday in the form of a pigeon with eyes too intelligent to be bird-like. It hadn't brought a letter; it had brought a heavy, wax-sealed dossier.

Maternity Papers. Her mother’s father,a Warlock of immense power and even greater spite,had finally died. In his wake, he had left a legal labyrinth that established Anna Elara McKinnley as his sole heir. The McKinnley name was a shield of old-world magic that the wolves couldn't easily pierce. The inheritance came with conditions: a monthly stipend, a small, shielded apartment, and a mandate to attend Stein College until her twenty-first year.

It was a gilded leash. Her grandfather hadn't loved her,he had never met the "half-breed mistake",but he had hated the idea of his bloodline’s power being lost to the dirt. The magick had claimed her, providing the resources to survive, but only if she stayed exactly where the wolves could almost reach her.

Three more days, she thought, watching the scenery turn into rusted warehouses and overgrown lots. Then the trust dissolves. Then I get the keys to the vault and I vanish.

The Uber pulled to a stop in front of a nameless, boarded-up storefront that smelled of damp earth and sulfur.

"You sure here is where you wanna be, miss?" the driver asked, checking his locks.

"I’m sure," Anna said, stepping out into the biting wind.

She didn't need to suppress her wolf,the moon would take care of the internal heat,but she needed to kill her scent. If Killian or his Alphas caught even a whiff of the predator beneath her skin, they wouldn't just claim her; they would execute her for being a hybrid abomination.

She also needed something darker. Something to break the "Pull" on Sophie. The Alpha's mark on her friend was like a hook in a fish's mouth; Anna needed a way to file the barb down before the Solstice Gala turned into a permanent cage.

She pushed open the door of the shop. A bell chimed, but it didn't sound like metal. It sounded like a low, warning growl.

Inside, the air was thick with jars of dried herbs, vials of iridescent liquids, and the heavy, metallic tang of blood-magic. Anna walked straight to the counter. She didn't have time for pleasantries. She needed to become a ghost, and she needed to do it before the moon reached its peak.

The interior of the shop felt like stepping into the lungs of an ancient beast,warm, heavy, and smelling of things that had been dead for a long time.

Behind the counter sat a woman who looked like she was made of wrinkled parchment and silver wire. She squinted as Anna approached, her head tilting with the twitchy curiosity of a bird.

"My, my," the old woman wheezed, her eyes darting across Anna’s face. "You’ve got a strange hum to you, girlie. Like a radio caught between two stations. I can’t tell if you’re a storm coming in or a fire going out."

"I just need the list," Anna said, her voice flat. She slid a piece of paper across the scarred wood.

The shopkeeper’s gnarled fingers traced the items: Mandrake root, silver-pressed salt, and wolfsbane distillate. She looked up, her gaze sharpening. "A heavy scent-masker. Planning on walking through a den of lions, are we? What did you say your name was, dearie?"

Anna didn't answer. Instead, she reached out and tapped the counter. She allowed a tiny, microscopic thread of her magick to unravel;just a gentle tug of influence to refocus the woman’s wandering mind. But the effort was harder than she expected; her internal wolf, agitated by the coming moon, surged against the leash.

For a heartbeat, Anna’s chocolate-brown glamour shuttered.

Her eyes flashed a brilliant, electric McKinnley blue,a color like the center of a gas flame.

The shopkeeper gasped, her hand flying to her throat. She recognized those eyes. Everyone in the arcane community knew the McKinnley blue. "The council... they said the line ended. They confirmed the bastions had fallen. Such a loss... the greatest Warlocks of the century, snuffed out because one headstrong lass fell for a beast."

The old woman’s eyes filled with a mix of pity and awe. The McKinnleys had been the royalty of the magic world until Anna’s mother had "tainted" the blood. To the Warlocks, they were a tragedy; to the Wolves, they were a threat.

"The herbs," Anna prompted, her voice cold. "Please."

The woman moved quickly then, her tongue stilled by a mix of fear and reverence. She gathered the vials and the dried roots, wrapping them in brown paper with trembling hands. As Anna slid a thick stack of cash across the counter, the woman reached into a glass jar and pulled out a small, shimmering piece of violet rock candy.

"For the road, sweetling," the woman whispered. "A little sweetness for a hard journey."

"Thank you," Anna said, slipping it into her pocket.

She walked out into the biting Asheville wind and slid back into the waiting Uber. The moment the door clicked shut, she pulled the candy out. She could see the faint, shimmering weave of a Veritas spell clinging to the sugar. One bite and she’d be singing her life story to the Uber driver.

"Nosey," Anna muttered, rolling down the window and tossing the candy into the gutter. "Everyone wants the truth until it burns their house down."

She watched the industrial district fade into the rearview mirror. A bitter chuckle escaped her. Part of her-the lonely, five-year-old part, had once dreamed of being part of the Warlock community. She had imagined a world of libraries and elders who would teach her how to tame the lightning in her veins.

But they hadn't wanted her mother. They had turned their backs when Elara McKinnley was being hunted, citing "purity" and "protocol" while her mother bled. The Warlocks were just as cruel as the Wolves, only they used silk instead of teeth to tear you apart.

The thought twisted in her chest like a serrated knife. She didn't want their world. She didn't want the Wolves' world.

She just wanted to be Anna. And in three days, she would finally have enough money to buy the only thing that mattered: a life where no one knew her name.