Two men walk up to the statue carrying a woman between them. They lay her on top of the stone waves. Another two men carry a second woman and lay her beside the first. They’re still alive, but they seem to be barely conscious. The four men stand guard, two on either side of the statue. When they train their weapons on the women, I realize with a jolt that these men are guardians. Into the view of the mirror steps a witch hefting an axe in her hands. She nods first to the men on the right and then to the men on the left. “We thank the Guilds for their assistance. You have helped to make this possible.” She walks to the statue, looks down at the women, and then up at the trident. The man holding onto it appears to go rigid. The trident glows. The witch calls out, “From the magic of the depths to the magic of the heights, with blood from one side and blood from the other. Together with the greatest power nature can harness, we shall tear this veil asunder.” Then with a barbaric cry, she swings the axe down onto the first woman’s neck. I gasp and clap a hand over my mouth as blood gushes down the side of the statue. The witch moves to the second woman. As she cries out and brings her axe down again, I clench my hand in a fist over my mouth. Then bright white light obliterates everything.
The vision is over.
“That … that was horrible,” I whisper. “And those guardians just watched.”
Mom swallows. “And this,” she says, picking up the third mirror, “is what Tamaria Saw.” The vision begins with a view of the outside of a tower, but it quickly zooms in, flies through a narrow window, and focuses downward. On the round floor of the tunnel is a writhing mass of bodies. Hundreds of people, all tied up and screaming. The vision rushes down, flitting past people, focusing on individual faces. “Not that one,” a voice says, and a person is pulled free. “Not that one either. Didn’t I tell you not to use the special ones?” A man is pulled free, and then a boy with tattoos on his face, and a crying woman, and a girl with—gold hair? My heart leaps into my throat as the vision pulls back and up, and I watch as a great boulder roughly the same shape and diameter as the inside of the tower falls with blinding speed and crushes the mass of screaming people. In a flash of light, everything turns white and disappears.
I breathe out slowly. “That … that was me. As a child. And that man with the glowing eyes. Was that Draven?”
“Yes,” Ryn answers from near the curtain.
“So this was all supposed to happen during Draven’s time, but it didn’t.”
“No, it didn’t,” Mom says. “Something must have changed. Or perhaps many things changed. But if Ryn hadn’t rescued you from the Unseelie Prince, you might have ended up with all those people at the bottom of that tower. And if Draven hadn’t been killed, then this vision might have become reality.”
“But it didn’t, so what use are these visions to Amon?”
Mom lowers the mirror onto the bed. “I think he believes that this could still happen. He probably thinks that if he can bring all the right elements together the way they are in this vision, then he can bring down the veil at any time. There’s nothing to indicate that it was restricted to that specific time in history.”
“But … how could he ever get all the right elements together? I assume that lightning bolt came from Draven, and he’s … well, he’s supposed to be dead.”
“I don’t know,” Mom says. “All I know is that Tamaria showed up out of the blue several months ago. I don’t know how she found me. I’ve had nothing to do with the Seer life or the Guild since I left. I went to business school and then I ended up as a librarian at Wilfred because I just wanted something quiet. I thought I’d hidden myself perfectly, but she managed to track me down.
“She told me a man had approached her about the visions the three of us had. A man who knew Amon. He wanted her to tell him exactly what she’d seen, and he also wanted to know where he could find Elayna and me. She refused to tell him anything, and eventually he left. She searched for me because she wanted to warn me. She believed this man was trying to piece together the information from all three visions so he could bring about this fall of the veil.
“I told her she should never have come. What if this man was tracking her and now he knew where to find me? Anyway, she left, and I lived in fear for several weeks. But nothing happened, and I forgot about it. Then that man broke in and fought you, and afterwards you mentioned the name Tamaria, and I knew. I knew that’s why he’d come, and I knew he would be back. That’s why we had to move. And that’s why I finally let you join the Guild. I knew we were no longer safe. I wanted you to spend as much time away from home as possible, and I wanted to know you could properly defend yourself if you were at home when he broke in again. I’ve always hated the Guild, but I had to put that aside knowing you’d be safer there.”
“And in the end, the Guild is exactly where they abducted us from,” I say quietly. “How is it even possible,” I ask as I begin to think these visions through, “for two realms that overlap to suddenly exist in the same space because magic is no longer separating them? Would they kind of … meld together? Would one destroy the other?”
“Hopefully we never find out,” Mom says. “But do you understand now why I didn’t want the Guild to know what I’d Seen? They helped with everything you saw in those visions. And even though many guardians would have tried to stop it from becoming reality if I’d shared the vision with them, I didn’t even want to put the idea into anyone’s mind in case that’s what caused the entire thing to come about.”
I lean my hip against the bed. “Do you think that’s how it works sometimes? The act of trying to prevent something is what causes it to happen?”
“Yes. Maybe I’m wrong, but I do think that.”
“I wonder if it’s at all possible,” Dad says, frowning as he stares at the mirrors, “for someone to actually make these visions become reality. The consequences would be unspeakable.”
I run through the details of Mom’s horrible vision again. A tower, a witch, an axe, someone from this realm, someone from the human world, a spell that’s probably not too difficult for any witch to discover, a trident statue, and a powerful bolt of lightning produced by the guy who happens to not be dead.
Yes. Someone could definitely make this happen.
“We’ve been told we can take Victoria home,” Ryn says, walking back into the cubicle. I hadn’t noticed he’d left. “Cal, you probably shouldn’t stick around much longer, not unless you remain concealed. You never know when a healer might walk in here.”
“I know. You’re right.” I take Mom’s hand again. “I’m sorry I can’t stay.”
“It’s okay, I understand. I don’t want you having to project an illusion the entire time and then accidentally slipping up because you’re tired. Besides,” she adds with a groan, “I’m sure there are several guardians waiting to question me about the vision I refused to show them so long ago.”
Worry clenches my insides. “Just questions? Or will it be something worse?”
“I don’t know. But I’m not a child anymore, so I should probably stop hiding.” She takes a deep breath that sounds just a little bit shaky. “Whatever the consequences are for running from the Guild all those years ago, I’ll face them now.” She attempts a smile and adds, “Hopefully one day I can be half as brave as my beautiful daughter.”
“Mom …” My throat tightens and unshed tears ache behind my eyes.
“Okay, enough of this,” Dad says. “Let’s be positive. Everything’s going to be fine. Soon you’ll be home,” he says to Mom, “and you can admire the redecorating mess Calla made of the guest bedroom.”
“Hey, that was some of my finest work,” I protest, allowing a smile to mask my concern. Mom chuckles, but I can tell it’s half-hearted.
I say goodbye to the two of them. Then I remind myself to be as brave as Mom thinks I am as I hurry downstairs and out of the Guild. Chase and I have work to do if we’re going to stop Amon from turning these horrific visions into a reality.
CHAPTER
> THIRTY-ONE
“My mom woke up!” I say as I run into the study where Gaius and Chase are bent over a map.
They both look up. “That’s wonderful,” Gaius says.
“She showed me her vision. And the other two visions as well. The ones from the two Seers who are supposedly in that lighthouse by Kagan City.”
“Wait, hang on.” Chase holds his hands up. “Are you serious? You’ve seen all three of these visions Amon is after?”
“Yes. And now you’re about to see them.” I turn around and focus on the space above the center of the room. “I wish I didn’t have to watch these again, but here goes.” I project my memory of the three visions into the air. I want to look away from the horrible details, but I don’t think that would work. So my eyes stay peeled for everything: the split in the sky, the beheaded women, the writhing bodies about to be crushed. When I’m done, the three of us stand in silence. A dragonwing snapping pod smacks closed around a bug. Chase rubs a hand across his brow.
“It’s a little bit horrifying to know that I could have made that happen,” he says eventually. He clears his throat. “But now we finally know what we’re trying to stop.”
“I know this is asking a lot,” Gaius says, “but could you show us again?”
So I do. When I’m finished for the second time, Chase squints at the empty space and murmurs, “Angelica knows.”
“Knows what?” I ask. “That my mother woke up?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was something else, but when I spoke with her a little while ago, I sensed some kind of excitement in her.”
“But how could it be this? Even if there are healers at the Guild who are actually working for Amon or Angelica, they’d then have to get to Velazar Prison to pass on the message. It would take a few hours at least. And she can’t know that we spoke about Mom’s vision. No one else was there to see it, and Ryn put a sound shield up around us.”
Chase paces around the room, swatting various hanging plants out of his way. “I don’t know. She’s happy about something, and that’s not good for us. We need to stop this before it even begins.”
“Wait,” I say. “Just wait. Is it actually possible? Do you think Amon could force you to provide that lightning bolt of power?”
“I don’t plan to let him do anything of the sort, but I wouldn’t put it past him to find another source of power.”
“Like what?”
Chase looks at Gaius. “Good question.”
Gaius scratches his chin. “Why did all those people have to be crushed?”
“Another good question,” Chase says. “And I know what you’re thinking. Is that the power that was harnessed?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask them.
“It’s not important right now,” Chase says. “Let’s start simple. That statue. If we destroyed it, would that stop all of this from happening, or could any stone statue take its place?”
“You might be onto something,” Gaius says. “That isn’t just any statue. I’ve definitely seen it before. It’s … oh, I know it. Um, um, um. Oh!” He snaps his fingers. “The Monument to the First Mer King.”
“‘From the magic of the depths,’” I recite. “So does this monument have some kind of power?”
“I believe it does. It stands guard over the entrance to the mer kingdom.”
“Then I’m guessing the merpeople wouldn’t take too kindly to us destroying it,” I say.
“We can organize some kind of extra protection around it while we inform the mer king of the threat,” Chase says.
“Okay. So where exactly are we going?”
“Um …” Gaius clicks his fingers another few times and looks at Chase. “It’s in some subterranean river, isn’t it? At the mouth, where the river meets the ocean?”
“Don’t look at me,” Chase says. “I didn’t do my schooling in this realm.”
“It wouldn’t have helped if you had,” I say. “We learned all about the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, but barely anything about the lesser royalty. I’ve never seen this monument before.”
“I’m sure I can find it,” Gaius says, moving to the nearest shelf and examining the spines of the books there. “Just give me half an hour.”
Chase sighs. “Internet would be so helpful right now.” He looks across the room at the cuckoo clock, which tells us it’s almost midday. “Okay, I’m calling a meeting. We can send two people on the Seer rescue mission, and the rest of us can handle this mer king monument. If Angelica does somehow know what’s going on, I don’t want any of her people getting there first. I’ll see you downstairs in an hour, Gaius.”
“Mm hmm,” Gaius says absently, pulling a book from the shelf.
Chase nods toward the door, indicating I should walk with him. “Are you in for this one?” he asks once we’re out of the study. “You can get back to your art school applications and fake identity plans when we’re done.”
“Of course I’m in,” I tell him as the same kind of excited anticipation I felt at the start of every assignment stirs within me. “I wouldn’t let you leave me out of this even if you wanted to.”
* * *
An hour later, I find myself in the area of the mountain I haven’t been allowed to explore yet. The area where everyone else who comes into this place seems to disappear to. The only time I’ve been down here was when Chase offered to show me the gargoyles, and that visit didn’t last particularly long.
I walk with Chase along a wide corridor past rooms I’m intensely curious to know more about. I hear voices as we approach a half-open door. Unable to contain my enthusiasm, I find the words “This is so exciting” slipping past the grown-up air I’m attempting to portray.
Instead of looking at me as though I’m a tiresome child, Chase grins. “Imagine if you could do this every day.” Then he pushes the door open fully and gestures for me to walk in ahead of him. I enter the room and find five people seated around an oval table. I know Gaius and Lumethon, and I briefly met the elf girl when she was posing as Chase’s assistant at Wickedly Inked. The bald drakoni man is the one I saw earlier before Chase pulled me into the storage room. Now that I see him up close, I realize he was also at Wickedly Inked the day I went there to find Chase. The only unfamiliar person is the faerie guy who crosses his arms and frowns at me.
“Thanks for coming, everyone,” Chase says as he takes a seat at one end of the table. I slip into the chair on his left. “I know I usually give you a little more notice, so I apologize for that, but we finally know what our favorite Velazar inmates are up to, and we need to intervene quickly.
“Uh, introductions first. Calla, you already know Gaius and Lumethon. That’s Ana—” he gestures to the elf “—Kobe—” the drakoni “—and Darius. Everyone, this is Calla. She knows all about the Amon-Angelica situation. Okay, so …” Chase reaches across the table and pulls one of Gaius’s maps toward him.
“Dude,” Darius says, “you can’t just bring some random chick into the circle. We deal with highly confidential stuff here.”
Chase looks up with a frown. “She isn’t some random chick.”
“Fine. You can’t just bring your girlfriend into this.”
“I’m not his girlfriend,” I say immediately.
“Whatever.” Darius turns his dark blue gaze to me. “Ana saw you go into the storage room together.”
I cross my arms. “We were having a private conversation.”
Darius snorts. “Is that what they call it these days?”
My skin heats up, and I will the flush to stop before it reaches my face. “You’re really quite rude, do you know that?”
Darius smirks. “So I’ve been told. And I’m not judging, by the way. We all think it’s about damn time Chase got some—”
“Look, Darius may be rude,” Ana interrupts, “but he also has a point. She isn’t part of the team, Chase.”
“Yes I am,” I say before I can stop to think about the words. Once they’re out, though, I realize tha
t I mean them. Of course I mean them. Why would I want art school when I could have this? Being part of a team, making plans, fighting bad guys, pulling apart dangerous plots, and saving people’s lives. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.
I realize everyone is staring at me, including Chase. I clear my throat. “I am part of the team. Chase extended the invitation, and I accepted.” I keep my gaze averted from his, though, because I’m not sure if he ever actually did extend the invitation. It was Gaius who suggested I stick around and work with him, wasn’t it?
Instead of contradicting me, though, Chase says, “Yes, sorry, I should have lead with that.” I sense a change in his voice. “Calla is the newest member of our team.”
Darius leans back in his chair, still watching me. “Well then. Since we all have our areas of expertise, what exactly do you plan to add to this team, Calla—aside from a pretty face?”
I blink at him. A second later, a manticore drops out of the air and hits the table. Shrieks and gasps fill the room as the manticore scrambles to its clawed lion feet and opens its mouth to emit an inhuman roar. Darius jerks out of the way and falls from his chair as the manticore’s scorpion stinger flashes forward to strike at him. He throws his hands up to release magic—
And the illusion is gone.
Heavy breathing is the only sound in the room. I lean back in my chair and cross one leg over the other. “I think my usefulness extends beyond a pretty face.”
Darius slowly turns his horrified gaze to me. Then he starts laughing. He points to the empty air, looks at Chase, and says, “You might have wanted to lead with that.”
Chase, the only one who didn’t freak out at the sight of the manticore, says, “I wasn’t sure we had time for dramatic demonstrations, but I see now that it was necessary. Anyway, let’s get back to the part where Amon and Angelica plan to bring down the veil that separates the fae realm from the human one.”
Everyone’s attention snaps back to Chase.
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