by Mary Hughes
The cricket familiar behind Ryder chirped, “He didn’t lie. He got creative with the truth.”
The anklet’s cutoff began to ease. Gabriel’s power started wicking back, but he didn’t relax. Emma’s arms trembled, waiting. Her nostrils were white, keeping her panting breaths quiet. “Pfft. I knew all along Edge was the Singer who betrayed Noah and Sophia.”
Ryder bridled visibly. “First, outing your wolf-whore sister was the act of a patriot, not a traitor. Second—” he shot his wand beside him, directly at Emma, “—drop.”
The bust leaped from her hands, hit the hardwood floor, and shattered.
The pale shock in her face made Gabriel want to enfold her in his arms and comfort her.
But she held it together, glaring at the Enforcer, emerald eyes glittering. “That third plate. My mother was expecting you this morning, wasn’t she? And this afternoon you showed up at the pet shop with her.”
“Not with her. I don’t know why she was at the pet store. I was there because I’d heard a magical boom and managed to peel off that leech Linda Blue long enough to investigate. But early this morning, yes, your mother’s home was a convenient, private place to meet Edge. Your brother has been very useful as a criminal informant.” Ryder’s smile was gloating.
“You turned him on his own pack.” She pointed an accusing finger.
“Oh please,” the cricket chirped. “Like his pack ever did anything for him.”
“He volunteered,” Ryder said. “Gave up Sophia in return for release from prison and a few magical gewgaws. And in exchange, I got to put Light’s sister on the chopping block—which I knew would get Light here, where I could torture him. But, Emma Singer, you! You have done far more than your brother to destroy Gabriel Light.”
She winced.
“Your doing the nasty with him means I have enough to nail him for eternity.” He laughed then, a true villain’s cackle to Gabriel’s ears.
Her face drained of all color. “I almost wish my brother had managed to sell me back to Bruiser.”
The Enforcer’s cackle cut off. “He what?”
“Ryder, enough.” Gabriel circled around, intent on moving between the witch and Emma. “Leave Emma and my sister out of this. It’s me you want.”
“Exactly. It’s you I want—suffering. You, helpless in jail, knowing your sister is rotting in another, is the sweetest revenge. But if you’ve figured out a way to escape jail, well, I’ll simply have to kill you. A pity you won’t suffer for as long—but you will suffer more intensely to make up for it. Because before you die…” He brought out a jail talisman and pointed it at Emma. “I’m going to kill everyone you’ve ever loved.”
Gabriel leaped between them, readying every bit of magic the limiter allowed to shield her.
But Ryder only smirked and swiveled his arm to aim the talisman mid-room. “You thought I’d start with your sex toy? Hardly. I’m killing your sister first. Your parents are dead, Light, thanks to me—and your sister soon will be too.”
Gabriel sucked in a breath filled with ice. What fuels such hatred? Had he really been so horrible to Ryder when they were boys? “Why are you doing this?”
“Because you deserve it. You ruined my life. The whole damned Light clan ruined my whole family!”
“One little magic fair doesn’t wreck a whole family—”
“That soul-sucking fair was only a single steaming pile in the shit-storm you Lights heaped on us. I was Council-bound, destined by birth to regain the glory of the Shootingstars.”
From the hallway came a feeble, “Who writes your dialog, dude?”
Gabriel’s shoulders eased somewhat. If Pan was snarking, he’d be okay.
Himself, on the other hand… “You want onto the Witches’ Council, right. What’s stopping you?”
Ryder’s body trembled, rage evident in every line of his body, his face. “You utter ass. These days it’s not just having the right family. You have to go to the right college and that means the right high school—and that depends on everything back to day-fucking-care. And there you were, head potion boy and best in wand-making and the shining example held up by my teachers every day of the prison that became my ‘oops, where’s the soap’ life.”
The cricket squeaked, “And that’s before he actually met you in middle school.”
Forget shielding. Gabriel readied himself to do whatever it took to get Emma out of this alive.
“I can see the day we met like a movie,” the other witch snarled. “Me, a little sixth-grader among all the big hairy eighth-graders. I came out of the lunch line with my tray to find a table. And there you were, holding court with the cheerleaders and jocks and eggheads. And I knew I wanted to be part of that, that despite everything my family taught me, we were equals and could be friends.” He almost shouted it. “I started over—and a bully knocked my tray out of my hands.”
“Me?”
He gaped. “You utter conceited, self-absorbed prick. No, another kid, but you pointed your wand at my tray and swoosh, everything was all right again, the perfect hero—and everyone laughed, delighted the big hero had rescued the poor little dumbass kid. My humiliation was simply a chance for you to shine.”
Sick, horrified, Gabriel stopped sucking what power he could from the surroundings.
“Then, the night of magic fair, I came over to you. Demeaned myself to let bygones be bygones. I held out my hand and offered a blood bond. Me, a blue-blooded Shootingstar, offering a blood bond to an upstart Light. Instead of slashing your palm or even bothering to prick your finger, you just shook my fucking hand.”
“I don’t remember that,” Gabriel whispered.
“Do you remember the eighth grade float, before that? One of your buddies was dating a sixth grade girl and she invited me to help work on it. I finally got to join your clique, the big group of mighty cheerleaders and jocks and potion freaks. We had to work extra to get that float done, do you remember? I even skipped class. I wouldn’t have, but you said you’d take care of it. But you didn’t—and I got an F.”
Gabriel flinched. He did remember the float incident. He’d arranged with another boy to speak with the teachers, but hadn’t followed up until too late. He did talk personally with Ryder’s teacher later and got the F reversed, and had apologized to Ryder then, but he saw now the incident had a greater impact on the young witch than he’d ever dreamed.
His fault. “You damned show-off” rang in his skull. His grandmother was righter than she knew. His whole body flooded with shame.
“You stole every show—I can’t count the number of times I was benched because of your star quarterbacking. You ask why I’m destroying you? Because you destroyed me first. You took every prize, killed my hopes, my dreams. My life as it should have been.”
With those words, Ryder stripped Gabriel to the boy he’d been.
Confident, well-intentioned—and wrong.
He wished he could melt into the floor. His legs did wobble as his insides crumpled.
His grandmother was right. His own hubris had caused this. He deserved whatever the Enforcer meted out.
The cricket rubbed its legs almost gleefully.
“No.” Emma’s light touch told him she was reading him flawlessly, as she always did. She had moved to stand beside him. “He’s wrong. You didn’t cause his feelings. Think about it. You weren’t close enough to him to injure him, to wound him, so deeply. Whatever you did, you only triggered feelings already there.”
Gabriel wanted to believe her, but it was hard, his whole body trembly and cold.
“Did you kill his parents?” She searched his face. “Murder anyone in his family, or anyone at all? Think, Gabriel.”
Think. “N-no.”
“Then why would you deserve to die? If you could make it all better for him, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes. But he’s hurting so much—”
“Gabriel, even if you held a gun to his head and shouted ‘Feel better’…it wouldn’t make a difference. Nothi
ng you can do can make him feel better, because you’re not the cause.”
Think.
At first her words meant nothing beyond sounds, mushy and echoing through his misery. And then… If I could make him feel better, wouldn’t I? Of course he would. He’d atone for his mistakes, if Ryder would let him. As he had for another boy who’d helped with the float and gotten an F…a boy who, after Gabriel squared it with the teacher, had forgiven him. In fact, they’d gone on to be good friends.
Emma was right—he couldn’t make Ryder love, and he couldn’t make Ryder hate.
Gabriel had made mistakes, but this went beyond a flamboyant young man’s unwitting slights to a sensitive boy or even derailing the boy’s plans for glory.
Yes, he’d pushed buttons on Ryder’s emotional land mines. But he hadn’t built the land mines.
Ryder had.
Carefully he said, “Ryder. I’m sorry for whatever I did that you hate me so much. But my parents didn’t deserve to die, and neither does Sophia. Let her go.”
“No fucking way. The world is better off without her. Better off without all Lights. I murdered your parents, and now I’m going to finish the job.”
“Murdered them?” Shock filled Gabriel’s lungs. “You caused their deaths, but the Council ruled it an accident.” Even in his worst dreams, Ryder’d only been guilty of malicious magic-flinging—not actual premeditated murder.
Ryder threw back his head and laughed. “That magical ‘misfire’ on the plane was no accident. I planned it to the last detail. They died because I wanted them to. Because, despite you, I have friends in high places. Oh no, be assured the little tech-magic misfire was ever so intentional. I meant to kill them, and I did.” Switching the jail talisman to his other hand, he plucked his wand showily out of the air. “Now I’ll kill you too—and your bitch—while I go take care of your sister. Council business. Seal room.”
He swept the wand in a double spiral. A force field sprang up, buzzing angrily against the walls and doorway.
Then he pointed at an innocent-looking suitcase near the bed. “Meet the instrument of your fate.”
Emma took a small sniff. When her face went white, every hair on Gabriel’s body rose.
“What the hell is that?”
Ryder’s eyes glittered. “Enough explosive to fry both of you to atoms.”
Gabriel’s fingers clenched. “The Council will have your head for this.”
“No, actually, they’ll have your head. Well, if they can find it. I’ll tell them you triggered it, throwing spells and trying to evade an Enforcer’s lawful arrest. Magic doesn’t mix with tech, after all.” He activated the small disk of Sophia’s jail talisman like he was punching a car unlock. A portal irised open midroom.
While Gabriel glared at the suitcase, brain working furiously fast, Ryder stepped through the portal, his cricket hopping in after him.
“When I return I’ll vaporize any trace of your sister’s doorway and pretend the explosion did it. Oh, as a good Enforcer, I’ll try my best to find her but sadly will fail. Unfortunately you won’t be around to tell the Council the truth. How does it feel, Light, knowing you’ll be blamed for killing your family?”
Gabriel saw red. He’d beaten himself down, practically erased himself, for this?
He channeled his rage immediately into readiness. “I would have taken it,” he said, voice very, very controlled. “For myself, I would have accepted whatever punishment you had for me. But instead you imprisoned my sister. Hurt her, her mate, their unborn children.”
Fire raced along his nerves, filled his veins. Raw power, not water or air or earth or fire, but crude, biting fury, and howling fear for his sister—and for Emma.
“And now you dare threaten the best woman in the world, and then have the gall to lay her danger at my feet?”
“It is your fault—”
“No. You’ve used me as an excuse for the last time, Ryder Shootingstar. I wasn’t the cause of your losing the magic fair, nor any of the other times life benched you. Your own sense of entitlement did that.” My grandmother was wrong. And even if she wasn’t… “Even if I had deliberately stood in your way every time you think I did, I still would not—will not—let you harm one single hair on Emma’s head.”
“Wrong again. Bitch got fur,” Ryder spat. “Exploser.” He aimed the last word at the suitcase as the iris closed.
But Gabriel hadn’t trained this long, this hard to make tech work with magic for nothing. As the iris shuttered, he countered Ryder’s “explode” command with a barked, “Tranquille.”
“He’s going to kill Sophia.” Emma thrust a pointing finger at the air that still shimmered from the portal. “We need to get to her first. Can you try the key again? Maybe I can help.”
Despite everything, that brought him a stab of joy. Shocked, threatened, and her first thought was for another person.
“Can I open it? Not when I tried to be subtle, but fuck that.”
He called on his old flamboyant self, spun up a table of air and set the journal with its wolf emblem on top. His power was minimal at best, but using the symbolism of the elements, he could—he would—do this. He splashed the journal with metaphysical water, then reached deep within, through his feet, through the crust of the earth for the fire at the very heart of the planet, and pulled it up. Sucked it through the marrow of his bones, igniting his blood with living magma.
He flung the liquid fire at the partial key. “Ouvrir!”
At first nothing happened. Emma stepped closer.
Her hand sneaked into his.
The elements. Air, water, earth, fire.
He’d forgotten one. Love.
Throwing off his glasses so hard they shattered on the floor, he let his naked gaze feast on Emma’s beautiful emerald eyes. Without taking his eyes from hers, he swept his wand at the partial key. “Open.”
The journal flared with golden light. The ground beneath them trembled, building up and up until a loud crack rent the air. He glanced in the direction of the sound.
A new portal had split open into his sister’s jail, an iris elongated like a cat’s pupil, appearing near the original opening—along with a feeling of doom, skittering over his skin.
His gaze returned to Emma’s. Her face was white, her eyes big—her brown eyes. His gut chilled. The mating was undone, as Jayden had predicted. And Gabriel’s skin and nerves buzzed with that sense of cosmic doom.
Deal with it later. His sister’s life was in danger now.
Shunting aside everything but the objective, he ran to the vertical slit, catching sight of Ryder’s back a few feet into the bubble copy of the room.
The rogue Enforcer was already turning to scurry back toward the elliptical door, apparently not realizing it wasn’t his iris. “How…? Shit, doesn’t matter.” He dug a wand out of his jacket and pointed it past Gabriel at the suitcase with an, “Éclater.” Burst.
“Immobile,” Gabriel snarled in countermand.
No explosion.
The look of disbelief on Ryder’s face, if the situation weren’t so serious, would have been comical. The Enforcer shoved Gabriel to one side and lifted a foot to step back through the portal, as if he’d trigger the bomb manually.
So he didn’t see Gabriel’s sister Sophia, blue eyes wild and bronze curls frazzled, charging him from behind.
“Get the fuck out of my way,” she snarled. “My husband…you little fuck…trying to kill us…Noah needs me.”
She wasn’t that big, only five-foot-six and medium-boned, but she shoved him in the back and he tripped over the portal, tumbling out like a bowling pin. His wand hit the floor at a bad angle and cracked into a limp L.
“Yipe!” His cricket hopped out ahead of him, barely managed to avoid the falling mage.
Sophia ran headfirst into Ryder’s magical shield, bounced off, then snarled up her wand, black and sleek. “Circonstances extrêmes!” The wall of power softened before her. She struggled through and out.
Sophia’s cat familiar, a tall, buxom redhead in a black catsuit dripping armament, stepped out of the iris with a distinct crunch. She’d managed to step on Ryder’s familiar. From her sneer at the he-witch, just reeling to his feet, it wasn’t accidental. She whacked him in the back of the head then ran fleetly to the doorway, wrestled through the shield, and sprinted after Sophia.
“Guess you’re not killing my sister today.” Gabriel grinned viciously at the fallen mage. “I’ll just go report you to the Council now.”
“No… Menottes,” Ryder croaked, pointing a finger at Gabriel.
Handcuffs appeared out of nowhere, flying toward Gabriel.
Gabriel had embraced his full capabilities as both battle mage and techie guru and it felt great. He didn’t even bother with a counterword. He simply pointed his wand at the cuffs and twitched the tip in a small U-turn toward the Enforcer.
Nothing happened.
Damn it, he’d forgot the ankle limiter.
No, he hadn’t bothered to worry about the limiter, just like he hadn’t bothered with a counterword. He suddenly realized his problem hadn’t been his brilliance—it was his arrogance, which might just have lost him everything.
“Gabriel is innocent,” Emma shouted.
The cuffs stopped midair.
“Ryder Shootingstar is the guilty one.” She pointed at Ryder. “He killed Gabriel’s parents. He tried to kill us.” When the shackles still hung there, she ripped out, “You heard him admit it.”
The handcuffs spun around, sailed onto Ryder’s wrists, and locked both his wrists and his magic with a snick.
He raised his hands and stared at them. “Y-you can’t do this! These are my handcuffs.”
“No.” Gabriel gazed at Emma in awe. “They’re Council cuffs—which means they’ll lock onto the guilty party. We’re making a citizen’s arrest for the murder of my parents Lark Blue and Michael Light, and the attempted murder of Noah Blackwood, Sophia Blue, Emma Singer, and myself.”
Ryder’s joined hands dropped. He hit Gabriel with a glare, the blaze in his eyes promising death. “You can’t prove a thing.”
Emma shot Gabriel a worried glance.