Farah was woken by the midday sun streaming through the grotty windows of the warehouse. Despite its warmth, there was a permanent and inescapable draught that caused goosebumps to rise on her bare arms. The weight of another body beside her flattened the springs of the old mattress down to the ground and she groaned in discomfort, her limbs twisting the thin white sheet that covered their naked bodies as she turned over.

The weight belonged to Filix. He lay sleeping beside her, his thick eyelashes casting crescent-shaped shadows onto his high cheekbones, his mouth agape as he dreamed. Instinctively, Farah reached out and traced a pointy fingernail across his scar. It was invisible most of the time, hidden by his black hair, but never when he slept. The raised skin was a sharp silver in the daylight, contrasting with his dark complexion as it curled around his hairline and stopped just below his ear. She still did not know how he had gotten it.

Her touch disturbed him and his eyelids fluttered open without warning. He caught her wrist in a swift, defensive motion and looked at her dead in the eye. It seemed impossible that he had been asleep a moment ago. "Do you mind?"

"No," she answered, her voice thick with sleep. His hand relaxed, his fingers curling through hers for a moment. Farah watched the way the movement caused the tattoos snaking around his forearm to ripple. They were nothing but black, dotted lines framing a skeletal hand clutching a rose, but as the light danced across his contracting muscles, they looked alive.

He pulled her closer by tangling his legs with hers, a small smirk curving against his lips as his eyes darkened with lust. As their lips were about to meet, the warehouse door swung open, causing them to jump apart. Farah clutched the sheet to her body as Filix sat up, exposing his lean torso.

Farah's mother marched into the warehouse without waiting for invitation, her heels clicking against the concrete. She held a stranger in her grip, a knife pointed towards his neck. He couldn't have been much older than thirty, though from the way he trembled with wide eyes he may as well have been a child. His eyes were golden: a Locator.

Filix eyed the Locator hungrily, standing up despite the fact that the only thing he wore was his black boxers. He didn't appear to care. "Have you brought us something to play with, Shar?"

Shar seemed not to have heard Filix, her gaze sliding over him and falling on Farah. "Since it is clear that neither of you are in much of a rush to find my daughter, I thought perhaps I would take matters into my own hands."

She pushed the Locator towards them and he stumbled, almost falling head-first onto the mattress.

"Clearly," Shar continued, marching to where Farah and Filix's clothes were strewn across the grey floor, "I have interrupted something. Get dressed."

She threw the clothes at them, waiting expectantly. It had been months since Farah had seen her mother last, and yet she stood in front of them as though she was as at home here as they were, her fingers tapping against her hips impatiently.

Farah obeyed, pulling her dress over her head quickly and standing up, uncaring if the Locator sitting on the floor saw something he shouldn't. Filix did the same, pulling on a pair of black jeans and a t-shirt, though he did not seem to be in any rush to cover himself, his movements slow and laboured. His hair stuck up at all angles, curling at the nape of his neck and framing his face in tangled knots, and yet somehow Farah still felt her lips tingle with the memory of kissing him.

"How did you know about Devan?" Farah asked, flicking her hair over her shoulders in an effort to tame it.

"Do not mistake my absence for stupidity. When, exactly, were you going to tell me?" Her voice was sharp, her eyes narrowed as though she was scolding a child.

"I didn't see it necessary. I'm certain she will come home soon enough."

"It's under control," Filix spoke in an arrogant drawl as he zipped up his jeans and untucked his black t-shirt. "I gave Farah until the end of the week."

"I am in no mood to wait." Her attention turned back to the Locator and she motioned him up.

He obeyed, fear glittering in his eyes. "Please—" he began.

Shar interrupted before he could choke out another word. "Shut up."

"Why does it matter so much?" Farah questioned, watching as her mother threw a rucksack onto the mattress in front of the witch. "This wouldn't be the first time Devan has made her own rules. She'll come running back as soon as she realises she has nowhere else to go."

"Your sister needs to learn her place," Shar snapped. She turned her attention back to the Locator. "Are you going to sit there all day or are you going to start the spell?"

"I need something of hers," he stammered. "Jewelry,  a hair brush ... anything that belonged to her."

Farah slid an onyx ring off her index finger and threw it down at the witch. It landed in front of him on the mattress and he eyed it, raising an eyebrow at her in question. Shar and Filix mirrored his expression.

"It was hers," Farah shrugged, "until I decided it was mine."

"Alright," Filix yawned, running a hand through his tangled hair and nudging the Locator with his bare foot. "Let's find her."

The Locator pulled a map from his rucksack and a couple of blue candles, lighting them with a lighter he had kept in his pocket. It took more than a few attempts for his trembling fingers to find the wick, causing Shar to let out an impatient huff. He didn't dare meet her eyes as his pale face was finally illuminated by candlelight, and he placed the ring at the corner of the map,  holding his hand out to Shar. Farah couldn't help but notice old scars etched into his palm. "A locator spell of this nature requires blood."

Shar crouched and nicked his lined flesh with the tip of the blade, watching intently as he winced. Beads of red oozed from the wound and onto the map. The Locator was pale as he curled his fist around the ring, his blood coating the silver metal.

"I need the name. The one she was given at birth."

"Devanshi Ali." Shar's voice was taut, her lips pursed into a thin line. Filix looked surprised but, when cast a harsh glare by Farah, said nothing.

The Locator nodded, his face almost as grey as the walls of the old warehouse as he began to chant in a wavering voice. 

"Per lucem terrae,

Peto videre Devanshi Ali ubi est nunc et fuit.

Ostende mihi viam,

Per sanguinem meum, ut clavis."

By the light of the earth,

I ask to see

where Devanshi Ali is now and has been.

Show me the way

Using my blood as your key.

The candles flickered, casting shadows across the Locator's face as his eyes fell shut and he repeated the chant. The blood looked as though it had soaked through the map, but as the spell continued, it began to shift, following the lines across the spaces of green. It curved past Chester, where Farah had last seen her, and then up to Wales before looping back on itself. Something in Shar's face changed, but it was gone before Farah could decipher what it was. Then, when the blood dissipated altogether, her black eyes flashed with anger.

Farah frowned. The map was completely clean, free of the blood that had trailed across it a moment ago.

"Where is she?"

The Locator looked at a loss, opening his mouth and shutting it again. He shook his head. "I ... I'm sorry, I don't know."

In an instant, Shar had flung the map across the room and pinned the Locator against one of the pillars, the blade, already stained with his blood, pressed against his throat again. "I will not ask again. Where is my daughter?"

"I don't know!" the Locator shouted desperately, his cheeks wet with tears. "I could only track her to Wales. I think ... I think she is protected."

"By another witch?"

Farah shook her head, a flicker of dread turning her bones cold. If Devan had another witch protecting her whereabouts, it meant that she wasn't planning on coming home anytime soon. Neither her mother nor Filix would accept that.

"Yes," the Locator gasped as she pressed into him harder. Filix watched, licking his lips as sweat pooled down the witch's forehead and soaked into the collar of his shirt. "Yes, another witch. I can't help you if that's the case. I'm sorry."

"Is that the truth, love?" Filix asked, crossing his arms over his chest in amusement. "Because if it is, we have no use for you—and you don't want to know what we do with witches we have no use for."

"I can't break through a Protection spell," he sobbed. "Please. Please, just let me go. I'm sorry."

Shar rolled her eyes and threw the blade to Filix. Filix caught it, smiling now. "Do with him what you will. We're done here."

The Locator cried in protest, but they were no longer listening.

"So what now?" Farah stepped forward, the floor cold against her bare feet. "How will we find her?"

"You better figure something out, hadn't you?" Shar smoothed down her clothes—a long black blazer that covered cigarette trousers and a high-necked jumper—and ran a relaxed hand through her hair. It was like Devan's: all curls that were difficult to tame. Her features were sharper, though, crueler, like Farah's. "I'll be in contact."

Filix nodded. "Oh, don't worry, Shar. We'll find her."

"I trust you will."

With that, she walked away, her heels clicking against the concrete and the metallic slam of the door echoing like that of a prison cell. Filix turned to Farah, his features dark with familiar anticipation. "Ladies first," he ordered, passing the blade to her. "Just don't kill him. I want him to burn with the rest of them later."

Farah took the blade and sized up the witch. He was still sobbing, still cowering against the pillar. She scowled at his weakness, unsurprised when he pulled himself to his feet and tried to run.

"Dolor," she muttered under her breath. Pain.

The Locator fell to the floor as he reached the door, writhing against the invisible shadows she had summoned. She walked towards him, clutching the hilt of the blade with eager hands.

"Let's have some fun, shall we?"