Cerise frowned, smoothing her hand across her skirt. “Of course not.”
“We have Aiden,” Kader said. “Our powerful, beautiful boy. A blessing to both our lines. To despise our time together is to regret Aiden. And I most certainly don’t.”
“You just use him,” she spat.
Kader raised an eyebrow, then spoke pleasantly. “You just use him.”
Cerise reacted as though he’d slapped her. Then she looked at Aiden, her eyes a little wild. “I would never …”
“Except …” Ocean whispered, interrupting. “Except what about the hair, and the —”
“Enough,” Cerise snapped. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“What she will soon come to know,” Kader said, “when she heads into the study after our chat, or even if she waits until she goes back to the Academy, is that hair and nails aren’t used by witches to fortify wards. Not Myers witches.”
Cerise’s power rippled through the room, as if it might have been tasting each of us. It had been simmering since the negotiations started, but now it licked at my ankles. The third eye on her forehead blinked lazily, then disappeared.
Kader’s expression went hard. “Sign the contract, Cerise. I will give you anything to save my life, to stop you from destroying everyone else in this silly, spiteful —”
“You’re the one who’s threatening everyone!”
“What did you think would happen?” he asked. “That I would let you murder me? Steal what is rightfully mine? And then what? When I’m dead? I should let you dismantle my cabal, everything I’ve worked for a lifetime to achieve?”
“I would never —”
“Never what? Use Aiden to anchor a spell so dark that even I can’t break it? Bespell your daughters toward violence?”
Cerise didn’t answer, but her power withdrew, filtering back into her.
“At least tell me you know how to break it,” Kader said.
“Of course I do,” Cerise said, lying.
Lying.
I didn’t even have to be touching her to know. I glanced at Aiden, noting the dawning look of horror in his eyes.
“In principle,” Cerise added stiffly. “It will take time and a ritual. That is why I asked Ocean and Sky to join me.” Her gaze shifted to Aiden. “I’ll need Aiden as well. Possibly all of you.”
Then she stood and crossed from the room.
Without signing the contract.
Ocean cast a wide-eyed gaze around at all of us, then specifically at Aiden. He nodded to her, holding out his hand. She practically leaped up from the couch to take it.
She kissed her brother on the cheek, then spoke too brightly. “I’ll set the table for lunch.”
No one replied as she hustled off into the dining room, then passed through to the kitchen.
“Interesting. First strike from the witches,” Isa said. “Again. When we’re the dark sorcerers.”
“They have more to lose,” Kader said. Then he stood and walked out of the room without another word. He crossed into the kitchen to exchange some murmured words with Ocean. Then he left the house through the laundry room.
“Can you see the ties?” Aiden asked Khalid. “The bespellment on the younger witches that Father mentioned?”
Khalid frowned. “I see bonds, as expected. They are blood related.”
“And from me to them?”
“Cerise to you. Of course.”
Aiden hummed thoughtfully. “So … nothing out of the ordinary. Just the familial ties?”
Khalid sighed. “I haven’t examined them closely.”
“Maybe you should?”
“Without permission?”
Aiden grimaced. “How close do you need to be?”
Khalid glanced at Isa, sneering, “Shall I help the youngest set the table?”
“Making yourself useful?” Isa said archly. “Why not?”
“Well, she might try to poison me. Again.”
His brothers ignored him. But as Khalid crossed by me, I spoke quietly. “If you can see magic, can you manipulate it?”
He smirked. “If you can take magic, can you use it?”
Damn sorcerers and their question-for-a-question games. I gave Aiden a look over his brother’s shoulder. He quirked his lips at me with a lift of his shoulders.
“If you feed me a spell, I can cast it,” I said, half-lying. Because if I took enough magic, over and over again, I could also gain abilities such as healing, strength, and speed. “But I can’t take your magic and then cast another sorcerer spell with it.”
Khalid grunted thoughtfully. The similarities between the brothers were so striking that it was becoming impossible to not pick up on them. Between Sky and Ocean as well. But even though we Five had been raised together, trained together, the same didn’t hold true —
Khalid was watching me, too closely. Standing in my space.
I held his gaze, asking again. “If you can see a spell, such as the bespellment Kader claimed Cerise holds over Ocean and Sky, can you manipulate it?”
Khalid glanced at Isa, then Aiden. His brothers didn’t react. “Maybe,” he finally said.
“It’s a bluff,” Isa said. “Father is fishing, poking holes. Trying to figure Cerise out.”
“Her magic is different,” Khalid countered. “Stronger, rawer. Its tenor has shifted since she lived at the compound.”
I glanced at Aiden for confirmation.
“I wouldn’t know,” he said.
“Aiden would have been too young,” Isa said. “And then you didn’t see Cerise for … what? Eight or nine years?”
Aiden nodded grimly.
“It could mean nothing,” Isa said. “A witch’s power only grows with age, and Cerise has been living in the bosom of her coven for decades.”
I thought about bringing up the flowers beside my bed. And the unusual third eye I’d seen on Cerise’s forehead, again. But I kept my mouth shut. That was a conversation to have with Aiden, once I was certain it all meant something. And Isa and Khalid’s intentions were still unclear. Isa would strike at Aiden in a second if he thought he could gain anything by it. And if Khalid could see magical bonds that the rest of us couldn’t, then I had no doubt he could anchor them. Manipulate them.
Khalid raised an eyebrow, silently taking us all in. No one shared anything of what they were thinking. Then the middle brother strolled off toward the kitchen.
Aiden slid his hand along my back, leaning into me. Isa looked pointedly away, reaching for the untouched pile of papers on the coffee table.
“Isa,” Aiden said quietly, tugging a black leather notebook from his breast pocket. “I’d like you to look at something.”
Isa straightened, leaving the unsigned contract on the table. “You made a breakthrough?” He frowned, presumably displeased that he hadn’t been involved in whatever he thought Aiden had figured out about the leeching spell slowly killing Kader.
“No.” Aiden held his notebook out, open to a specific page. “I’m worried about something different.”
Isa took the notebook, scanning the page. “Is this what your little witch is working on?”
“Yes.”
That was surprising. I had no idea that Aiden had shared anything about Opal with Isa.
The older sorcerer smirked at me, as if guessing my thoughts. “We’ve been discussing appropriate remuneration for … what happened before.”
“For kidnapping Opal?” I asked.
“That was Ruwa.” Isa spit the words, barely holding on to a sudden spike of temper.
My tone became low and deadly. “You would have used her, sorcerer. In a second, to save your own neck.”
“I would have, most assuredly.’’
“And for that matter,” I snarled, “that teleportation spell was ridiculously stupid.”
“I thought we were all about to die.”
“It could have killed Aiden!”
“Yes, well, he refuses to have his forgiveness bought too.”
“It never should have worked. Never should have transported you out of that dimensional pocket at all.”
“Ah, but you are wrong there, Emma. It worked — but only because I took Aiden with me.”
I glanced at Aiden. Then the final pieces of the puzzle clicked together. “The runes you used to cross into the dimensional pocket in the first place.”
“Yes.” The dark-haired sorcerer smiled tightly.
“And you put them on Christopher,” I murmured, recalling the power I’d taken from the clairvoyant that day. Recalling holding on to Ruwa’s magical tie … holding … holding as the dimensional pocket tried to swallow us, keep us.
“Yes.” Aiden placed his hand on the small of my back.
I locked my gaze onto Isa again. “You might be able to shift blame to Ruwa for everything else, as well as your own lack of spine —”
“Or a misfiring binding,” he interjected smoothly.
“But you left the rest of us there to die.”
“How was I supposed to know that you’d save us all, amplifier?”
“Well,” I retorted, “you know it now. So how can you possibly believe Opal would ever forgive you, no matter what remuneration you’re offering?”
“Oh, it’s not the little witch I’m worried about,” Isa said blandly. “She has years to gain enough power to seek revenge, if she so wishes. It’s you.”
I blinked.
“And Aiden,” Isa added as an afterthought.
Aiden snorted. “The spell, Isa.”
Isa glanced back at the notebook, shaking his head. “It’s gibberish.”
“Flip the third rune and invert the fifth.”
Isa narrowed his eyes, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a tarnished copper pen. He clicked the top. A ballpoint. I’d never seen a sorcerer use ballpoint.
He winked at me. “Less spillage. Makes traveling much smoother.”
“He spells the ink while it’s in the cartridge,” Aiden muttered. With a hint of envy in his words?
“And you can’t?”
Aiden twisted his lips. “None of us can. Not even Kader.”
Isa waved offishly, pen in hand. “It’s a minor talent.” Smirking, he returned his attention to Aiden’s notebook, writing, working something out. “You’ve left the arm off the seventh rune and the forward slash from the thirteenth?”
“I’m not an idiot,” Aiden said.
Isa continued working. Then he paused, blinking at the page. “A containment spell?”
“I think it might be.”
“You had them research the vessel?”
“The inscription suggests it holds the remains of a family member.”
“Necromancer?”
“One would assume,” Aiden said dryly.
Isa studied the notebook again, his pen hovering just above the page. “Have you cracked it?”
“I’ve been a little busy.” Aiden rubbed his hand over his face. “What are the chances that two witches and a necromancer in their first year at the Academy are going to be able to crack it?”
“Nil. No chance. But …”
“But?” I said.
Isa and Aiden both looked at me as if they’d forgotten I was in the room.
“Trying might have consequences,” Aiden said.
Isa nodded, pulling his own notebook out of his breast pocket. “I’ll work on it a bit. I’m not sure your witch has transcribed it perfectly.”
Aiden shook his head. “Of course you will.”
“It’s a powerful spell, then?” I asked.
“I’ve never seen runes used in this combination,” Aiden said.
“It’s not sorcerer wrought, though.” Isa sat down on the couch and placed both notebooks on the coffee table — his on the right, open to a blank page, and Aiden’s on the left, opened to the runes he’d gotten from Opal. He started transcribing those runes into his own notebook with painstaking precision. “The use of thirteen symbols points to witch casting. But it’s necromancer in origin … is the vessel round? Square?”
“Oval,” I said.
Isa grunted in acknowledgement, attention thoroughly fixed on the spell. “Were the runes separated or slightly touching?”
I glanced at Aiden. I hadn’t managed to get a good enough look at it.
He pulled out his phone. “I’ll send you the picture I have, but it’s only one angle.”
Isa also pulled out his cell, making sure it was on, then setting it on the coffee table. “You need to warn your witch off.”
Aiden grimaced, tapping his phone and sending the picture to Isa. It appeared on the other screen. Isa tapped to accept it, then leaned over to peer at it, zooming in.
“I asked Opal to send more pictures,” Aiden said, then he looked at me. “But I couldn’t figure out how to ask her to back off in a way that wouldn’t actually encourage her.”
Isa laughed quietly. “Of course not.”
I was wringing my hands. I hadn’t even realized I was doing so. And they were cold.
Aiden touched my arm lightly. “Isa’s right. This is a complicated, multilayered spell —”
“Or it’s possibly nothing,” Isa interrupted. “Runes pulled from an old spellbook maybe, but applied by a novice. Aiden had to transpose two just to get a hint that it might be a containment spell. But the fledglings aren’t sorcerers, and they certainly aren’t training under Kader Azar.”
I hadn’t heard young Adepts referred to as fledglings before, but I got the gist. “Opal’s specialty is dream walking, not runes,” I said. “And Jack Fairchild specializes in —”
Isa’s head snapped up. “Fairchild?”
“Yes,” Aiden said grimly.
“And the family of the necromancer? How many generations do they stretch back?”
Aiden nodded toward the picture on Isa’s phone. “Old enough to have possibly contained a chunk of a great-grandmother’s soul in that vessel.”
“What does it matter?” I asked, feeling exceedingly stupid that I wasn’t picking up all the nuances of their discussion.
“The Fairchilds are an old witch family,” Aiden said. “Very powerful.”
“One of the three founding families of the Convocation,” Isa said, going back to transcribing. He appeared to be copying the rows of runes, but slightly differently each time. “Which is ironic.”
“Why?” My voice came out reedy. I instantly hated it, hated my reaction. I dropped my hands, clenching them instead of wringing them. “Never mind. I’ll contact the school. I’ll have them confiscate the artifact.” I might not have been able to fix everything, or even anything, with Aiden’s family. But taking care of Opal was something that I could do, wanted to do.
Aiden smiled at me gently. “That won’t work.”
“It will only make the relic more beguiling,” Isa added, not looking up.
“They’re barely teenagers,” I said, feeling myself getting exasperated.
Aiden touched my arm, gently. Again. But it was Isa who spoke.
“And what were you doing at thirteen, Emma?”
I opened my mouth to retort coldly — after which I thought I might just run the sorcerer through with my blades. I’d already delayed doing so for too long.
“What were Aiden or I doing at thirteen?” Isa glanced up at his youngest brother.
Aiden just nodded. “Khalid nearly lost his hand at twelve.”
Isa snorted a laugh, closing Aiden’s notebook and handing it back to him. “You nearly lost an eye around the same age.”
Aiden grimaced ruefully. “Demon summoning gone wrong.”
His brother straightened, notebook and phone in hand. “What were you trying to do?”
“Teleport a cake out of the kitchen.”
Isa threw his head back and laughed. The warmth of it sounded genuine.
Aiden huffed, glancing at me. “Isa saved my ass on that one. It took the scratches months to heal.”
“The pus stank.” Isa gave me a glance. “You
were lucky Kader wasn’t around at the time.”
That wiped the smile from Aiden’s face, and he looked at me sadly. “Yes, we were lucky to be mostly beneath his attention then. But not everyone was.”
Isa looked at me for a moment. Then he nodded, stepping toward the hall. “I’ll be in the study.”
Ignoring his brother, Aiden turned to me, lightly grasping my shoulders. “Opal’s relic is likely nothing. First, necromancers or not, I can’t believe that Emily’s family would leave anything dangerous within her reach. And second, if it takes Isa more than a minute to work out the spell, then it will take two witches and a junior necromancer … years.”
That last exaggeration was accompanied by a smile, solely for my benefit. To soothe me.
“Okay,” I said. “But if Isa works it out and it’s serious …”
“I’ll go to the Academy and take it from them myself.” He kissed me to seal the deal. “Meanwhile, I’ll drag my feet with helping Opal with the runes. We are a little busy.”
I nodded, still feeling unsettled. Then Aiden threaded his fingers through mine and we wandered back into the kitchen to help Ocean and Khalid set the table.
Grosvenor and Sky returned with lunch more quickly than I expected — grilled turkey burgers on whole wheat Kaiser buns with perfectly melted Havarti, crispy fries with a garlic mayo dip, and Caesar salad. Kader and Cerise left the rest of us to eat. And as we did, easy chatter filled the dining room instead of malicious magic.
I spent the rest of the day wandering from one task to another, making my presence known throughout the house and property. Playing referee — and feeling somewhat disappointed that no one stepped out of line. Even if I was going to admit that only to myself.
Through it all, as far as I could tell, whatever beguilement had tried to get hold of me the previous day didn’t try to reassert itself.
Sky and Ocean spent the bulk of the afternoon brewing tonics in the kitchen, deeply mining Christopher’s collection of dried herbs and various wildflowers from around the property. The magic they concocted smelled calming and sweet, rather than nefarious, so I didn’t stop them.
Cerise and Kader didn’t leave their rooms.
Aiden and Grosvenor spent the bulk of the day fortifying the pentagram in the loft, replacing the obsidian stone with carnelian as Kader had suggested. The carnelian stones had simply appeared in the study overnight, transported onto the property by way of the runed spell Aiden had etched into the desk. Khalid had inspected each one, clearing them for use. Aiden was pissed about accepting a gift of that magnitude from his father, but he wanted the pentagram ready as soon as Cerise signed the contract. So he let it go and used the stones.
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