The Untangled Cassie Black

by Tammie Painter

  "Are you sure you don’t want to join me?" Devin made the offer with complete sincerity. "You’re the coldest bitch I ever met." I glared at him, wishing his head might explode. It didn’t. Wish in one hand, and all that, right? "No? Well, if you insist."

  The Mauvais looked at Alastair. With his attention distracted, I dared to glance in the same direction. Alastair’s stare was fixed on me. Wounded regret filled his eyes. I mouthed, "I’m sorry."

  I don’t know if Alastair saw or registered my words before the Mauvais shouted a command. Like lightning from the sky, a flash of light momentarily brightened the room.

  Light that struck Alastair in the side of the head.

  43 - THE PROPHECY

  MOMENTARILY BLINDED BY the burst of light, I didn’t see Alastair go limp. But I did hear the thud of his body hitting the dirt floor. I was already bent down, my throat tight with remorse. I crawled toward him, my good fingers stretched out to rake up the absorbing capsules nearest to me as I went.

  "Cassie, watch out!" shouted Tobey. Knowing what body parts of mine the Mauvais liked best, I snatched my hands to my chest just as the Mauvais’s foot came down.

  Still gripping the capsules I’d picked up, feeling my magic inside them flowing back into me, I flung my arm out. I threw a Shoving Charm that should have been strong enough to hurl the Mauvais across the room, but he only staggered backward, knocked slightly off balance. I glanced at my hand. From between my fingers, I could still see the pulsing purple light of the capsules. The magic was entering me, my palms buzzed with the energy seeping in, but it wasn’t shifting quickly enough.

  It didn’t stop me. I jerked my hand out again, trying a Binding Spell this time. Even if it might only be strong enough to tangle his feet up a bit, I needed to keep the Mauvais back. Tobey might have the strength to slow the Mauvais, but I doubted he had enough power to kill him. Hell, he might not even know any killing spells. We certainly hadn’t gone over them in our lessons. Besides, if I was meant to believe some stupid prophecy, seeing Devin Kilbride sent to his grave was all on me.

  But first, I needed to get out of the Mauvais’s reach. As much as I hated being anywhere near the thing, I ducked behind the chair and scooped up the absorbing capsules that had rolled into the furrow behind the rear legs.

  Once in position, I peered around the contraption. I couldn’t see Tobey. Had he fled? Had he gone to tell the others I’d let Kilbride kill Alastair? The Mauvais, for his part, was bending over to collect his own crop of purple capsules.

  Relying on my old favorite, I let a Shoving Charm fly. It didn’t have its usual force, but it was enough to smack the Mauvais in the back of the knees, forcing his legs to bend. Thrown off balance by desperately trying to keep hold of his violet treasures, my hit sent him toppling to the floor. He hit his head when he landed, but Merlin be damned, it didn’t knock him out. In fact, the tenacious bastard still held tight to the absorbing capsules. If he pulled in all the power contained within that cluster of magic pills, he would have enough strength not only to do in Portland, but all of the Pacific Northwest with the snap of his fingers.

  Not knowing my reach, fearing my magic wasn’t charged up enough, I dragged myself toward the Mauvais, hoping proximity would make up for any loss of magical oomph. I readied a Stunning Spell. Dear Merlin, let it do more than my Shoving Charms had.

  But before I could act, I heard footsteps running in my direction. Everything in me demanded I cast the spell before it was too late, but I hesitated. Then, blocking my direct line of sight and spell to the Mauvais, were a pair of maroon-red Doc Martins. The left one lifted then came down hard, lifted again, and came down once more. And with both of these heavy-soled stomps, came a gut-wrenching scream of pain.

  Did I ever say I couldn’t stand Tobey Tenpenny? You must have misheard. He had crushed first the Mauvais’s right hand, then his left. Knowing exactly how that felt, the Mauvais’s squeal gave me far too much satisfaction. I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t great at empathy. Especially not when it came to murderers.

  "The prophecy," grunted the Mauvais.

  I stood up and aimed my Stunning Spell at Kilbride’s head. His hair stood on end briefly and he swatted at the air like someone batting away a fly. I looked again at my hand. The purple still refused to fully fade. Gandalf’s beard on a stick! What were these? Bargain basement absorbing capsules?

  But just as the pills weren’t returning my power to me with any sort of haste, neither had they boosted the Mauvais’s magic. And his hands could no longer hold the capsules to gain more. Plus, I’d bet that pain was really throwing him off. I know mine was.

  I stepped out from my mad scientist shelter. Tobey might know how to break hands and perform a few spells, but he wouldn’t have the power to do an Exploding Heart Charm or anything handy like that. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I did either, nor did I have any idea how to perform a killing spell, but I had to at least try to fulfill that poorly-rhymed prophecy.

  I hadn’t taken two steps before Tobey, my idiot cousin, bent down and grabbed the Mauvais’s hand.

  "Tobey, get back!" If he was touching the Mauvais when I attempted the Exploding Heart Charm, the spell would affect him too. Even if it didn’t kill him, it would leave him with permanent cardiac damage.

  But Tobey wasn’t listening. From the wood-beamed ceiling cascaded chunky flakes of glittering snow. Tobey glared at the Mauvais with a scowl that was both fiery with hatred and icy with determination. Was that what was making it snow? I mean, the look was sending shivers through me, and I wasn’t even the object of his scorn. First time for everything, right?

  "You?" the Mauvais muttered.

  I don’t know what Tobey was doing. Was he trying to freeze the Mauvais? Had he learned the Confounding Charm? I hadn’t taught him it, but he’d had it performed on him so many times recently maybe that left him with some residual knowledge of how to use it. Regardless, something had frozen the Mauvais in place. He wasn’t struggling to get away. He wasn’t lifting his free hand to throw a spell. He was just staring back into Tobey’s eyes and muttering, "You?"

  Tobey nodded. He wrenched the Mauvais’s arm until it bent at the elbow, then forced the Mauvais to push his own hand against his forehead.

  My cousin, my Untrained cousin, in a voice that was full of primal anger growled, "Previous."

  The Mauvais screeched. A flash of light flared from his hand, giving his head a momentary halo-like glow. His body went limp. Tobey Tenpenny then flung Devin Kilbride out of his grasp like a dirty tissue.

  I strode over. Awed shock doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. The black bird. Not me. Not a starling. A raven. Tobey Raven Tenpenny. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Instead, I just remained stunned with admiration.

  "When did you learn how to do the Previous Charm?"

  Tobey, breathing heavily, but wearing the beginning of a proud grin said, "Grandad used to let me do it as a kid to give me the impression I could do magic. I mean, not with a killing spell, just with like a Floating Charm to make a banana levitate or something simple like that. I completely forgot about it until you asked Rafi about it. Is he—?" He gestured toward Kilbride’s body.

  There was no reason to ask. The Mauvais was at our feet, not moving, not breathing. Just as the Previous Spell Olivia used on me had re-enacted the Drying Spell and evaporated a few cups of tea, the last charm the Mauvais had performed was to kill Alastair.

  But unlike the Drying Spell, Tobey had not added the words non persona, which meant the Mauvais’s last magical deed reverberated back on himself. It was a good thing he’d been so willing to kill Alastair, I mused with morbid cynicism.

  "Alastair," I said, my senses snapping back together as I whipped around.

  Alastair’s body remained at the base of the support column. His chest didn’t rise. His fingers didn’t twitch.

  What had I done?

  44 - AFTER THE
FALL

  D-SPELLS DON’T reverse, after all, I thought numbly. How had Mr. Tenpenny been so wrong?

  A hand rested on my shoulder.

  I turned around and buried my face in Tobey’s chest. He tightened his arms around me. I’d completely forgotten my broken ribs and the pressure made me cry out. Tobey eased his hold. A good sob was just working its way up into my throat, when Tobey’s arms tensed again.

  I pushed back and punched my good fist into his chest.

  "That hurts, you idiot. Ribs?"

  But Tobey wasn’t paying any attention. He was looking in the direction of the support column.

  "Cassie, look."

  I didn’t want to look. All I could think was that, like the hydra of Greek mythology sprouting seven heads for each head Hercules chopped off, seven new evil wizards had sprung to life to take the Mauvais’s place.

  Tobey gripped me by the shoulders and turned me around. Tired of fighting, not wanting to face the Mauvais again, I resisted at first. Then the scent of chocolate wafted over me. And of raspberries.

  "I can’t believe you let him kill me," said a groggy voice.

  I surged forward, each rib feeling like it was breaking into a couple hundred more pieces. Despite the pain, I threw my arms around Alastair. His arms went around me, one at my waist, the other around my upper back. Instead of hurting, it energized me. And when his lips met mine, well, that worked far better than the strongest dose of ibuprofen.

  Tobey cleared his throat. Alastair and I broke the kiss.

  "You killed me. You really let him kill me," Alastair said, keeping hold of my good hand. His voice was still weak, but during the kiss, I’d pushed some of my magic into him and his eyes now bore a glimmer of strength they hadn’t had before. You know, before I murdered him.

  "Only for a little while," I said, "I wasn’t about to let the Mauvais leave this room alive. I needed to distract him if I was going to have any chance of achieving that."

  "Please don’t use me as a distraction ever again."

  "I’ll keep it in mind."

  "Does this mean your parents—?" Tobey asked.

  I nodded. The Mauvais using that D-spell to kill Alastair had put my parents out of range. The killing spell on Alastair had reversed, the cities would rebuild, but my parents would remain in their stupor unless Runa could whip up some miraculous magical healing. Alastair squeezed my hand, his eyes glistening with gratitude and sympathy in equal measure.

  From above us the city rumbled, sending vibrations through the dirt floor and up my legs. In the distance, barely audible through the layers of brick and soil, came the sound of heavy pieces of metal clanging against one another, reminding me of box car hitches knocking together in a train yard. I tensed. The Pacific Northwest was prime earthquake territory and we were continually warned about the possibility of The Big One.

  "What was that?" I asked in a whisper as if, like speaking too loudly in an avalanche zone, my voice might trigger an aftershock.

  No one answered. When another crash of metal sounded, Alastair said, "The bridge. It’s rebuilding. Devin’s spells are undoing themselves."

  "How are they going to explain that one?" Tobey asked.

  "He’s right," I said. "People are dumb, but even the most unobservant are bound to notice a bridge being collapsed one minute, then structurally sound the next."

  "We should get back to HQ," Alastair said. "Are you okay?" He indicated my ribs.

  "As long as I don’t have to run, I should be fine. This however," I raised my hand, "is going to need attention." Adrenaline was holding back the majority of the pain, but the hand had already puffed up like an angry blowfish.

  Despite having a mangled appendage (again), I felt amazing. And I didn’t think it was just the surge of gooey feelings I was having for Alastair.

  I glanced around. Absorbing capsules were scattered everywhere, but they’d lost their purple glow. My magic had found its way back to me. As I’ve said before, there’s nothing like the boost you get from the return of your own magic. Although, the gooey feelings were nice too.

  Without a word to one another that it was time to hightail it, we turned our backs on the contraption, left the room, and hurried down the tunnel to the portal. I begged the magic gods for it to still be open. And at the same time, I worried what would happen if it was.

  Recalling the Mauvais’s pleasure at seeing me, at knowing I would come to him, I knew it was the traitor, not Morelli who’d made the portal. As such, I was hesitant about using it to get back. Would it even take us back, or would it send us into the hands of whoever had made it? I then cursed myself for not getting the Mauvais to tell us who the traitor was before Tobey killed him.

  Tobey killed the Mauvais, I marveled. Did not expect that.

  I explained my worries to Alastair and he assured me person-to-person portals had to go back to the original location. That still didn’t stop the nervous gurgling in my gut. Even if they didn’t expect me to make the return trip, whoever had made the portal was a strong magic. Surely they could have figured their way around tweaking the normal portal rules. As we stood before the cold, dark hole, Alastair took my unbroken hand.

  "Trust me?" he asked, and I’m not the best at reading other people, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t only referring to the portal.

  I nodded.

  We entered the portal.

  45 - LANGUAGE LESSONS

  WE DIDN’T END up in tattered shreds, we didn’t end up in a desert wasteland, and we didn’t end up in a vat of hazardous biomedical waste. I just knew I was going to have to pay for this string of good luck soon.

  After the jostling and straining of the portal, we were back in my room. I could have flopped into bed and slept for a week, but as soon as Tobey joined us, we raced down to Olivia’s office. The instant we stepped in, we were thrown into a scene right out of a book on witches’ covens. Runa, Olivia, Mr. Tenpenny, Fiona, and Rafi stood a circle and were calling out charms. Although I wasn’t sure exactly what the circle of Magics was up to, I could feel the electric tingle of an astounding amount of power humming through the space.

  Working with the careful attention of someone arranging a bake sale display, Gwendolyn was piling cakes, cookies, and other mouth-watering treats from Spellbound onto Olivia’s desk. As if impatiently waiting for the snacks to be ready, Banna stood to one side, the line of her thin lips firm as if she was resolutely focused on all that was happening.

  Alastair froze in place, his grip tensing on my hand.

  "You got the note I sent through?" he whispered. I said I did and some of the tension eased. Without having noticed our entry, Banna slipped out a side door. "They must know what they’re doing, then."

  Moving quietly to not distract the others, we made our way over to Gwendolyn.

  "What’s going on?" I asked her, keeping my voice to a whisper.

  "They’re enacting various memory charms across the globe. The cities," she said with awe, "they’re rebuilding. Does that mean—?" She cut herself off, as if speaking the words might jinx her high hopes.

  I nodded.

  Her chin wavered and her eyes brimmed with tears, but the smile on her face brightened the room.

  "With their combined strength, this shouldn’t take long, but they’ll be starving when they finish. You probably want to stay out of the way of that."

  She signaled us to follow her and we stepped out of the room.

  "So the cities are really rebuilding? Just like that?" I asked.

  "Well, not exactly just like that. Reversing a spell works most easily, most quickly if nothing that was affected has been moved. But most of the cities had already started their clean up work, which means a few bricks and beams might be flying as they return to their rightful place."

  "That doesn’t sound safe," said Tobey.

  "It should be safe enough. Every city under construction had a Knock O
ut Draft sent through the air. That was my contribution," she added proudly. "When they wake, they’ll think they had a very vivid and very odd dream. And the rest of the world who saw it on the news will have simply forgotten about that particular bit of programming."

  "But newspapers, websites, Instagram accounts. They’ll all have registered it."

  "Morelli has his team in place for that."

  "Morelli has a—?" I shook my head at the wonder of it all. "Never mind."

  From inside, the sounds of the incantations stopped. When we entered I caught a glimpse of Runa leaving out a side door with a plate of what looked like cookies. As Fiona popped an entire pink cupcake into her mouth, I briefly told them what had happened. Olivia’s brow furrowed, but she didn’t scold, didn’t tell me I’d been an overconfident moron, and didn’t call for my immediate extraction. Instead, she went on to explain just how vast this cover up and reconstruction plan extended. From HQ, a network of repair work had started the instant they saw the Steel Bridge’s girders rising up from the rubble.