Paisley grumbled.
I gave her a look. “You aren’t even supposed to be here.”
She tilted her head and blinked at me prettily. She’d been watching TV again. Cartoons, specifically. And learning to mimic the characters’ expressions.
Ocean appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, drying her hands on a tea towel. Grosvenor stepped just past her, then leaned against the wall. He had his rune-marked tiles in hand, slowly shuffling through six of them.
“You know I’ll take your guesses over anyone else’s sureties,” Aiden murmured.
I nodded, then tried to piece together what had been bothering me for days. “It’s the … if Cerise isn’t pulling power from Kader and using it for herself, then where is she getting all the power she is using? The youth spell alone …” I glanced at Aiden. “Witches generally age well, but …” I shrugged.
“It would be dependent on the type of magic that witch is using,” Isa said. “But I wouldn’t think, given that we can’t even begin to untangle whatever Cerise has done to Kader, that whatever power she might gain from it would translate well into magic that could be utilized that way.”
I nodded. “Exactly. And then there’s the spell she hit me with in the kitchen.” I rubbed my chest, then caught myself doing so. “There isn’t much magic that I haven’t been exposed to …”
“No,” Kader said, far too proudly. “There isn’t.”
“The Myers coven is one of the oldest,” Aiden said, after sending a dark look his father’s way. “Not a founding member of the Convocation, but they joined soon after, I believe. Their coven archives must be extensive.”
“You haven’t seen them?”
Aiden shook his head. “Only a few private collections. So Cerise could have tapped into something old, and powerful.”
Kader was still looking at me expectantly.
I met his gaze coolly. Then I spoke. “And then there’s the mood altering that’s going on.”
The sorcerers all frowned — excepting Kader, who nodded once.
I settled my hand on Aiden’s arm, because I wasn’t certain how to articulate the next part without it sounding like some sort of accusation. “If anyone else had tried to hurt Paisley unprovoked, and then attacked me instead, we would never have gone upstairs and had a nap.”
Aiden blinked. Then he said slowly, “It was a misunderstanding …”
I glanced at Ocean, who’d been in the perfect position to see everything in the kitchen. “Was it?” I asked quietly.
Ocean lifted her gaze from the floor, looking at me, and then at Aiden. Then she looked at Kader. “I want to hate you.”
“Understandable,” the elder sorcerer said benignly.
“You are evil, and you deserve everything coming to you.”
Kader set his napkin on the table, spreading his hands wide. “This is not in dispute.”
Ocean looked back at Aiden, her eyes swimming with tears. “If we make it through this … I don’t want to go back. I want to transfer to the North American Academy.” She twisted the tea towel in her hands, waiting.
Aiden frowned. “Students transfer back and forth all the time. I’m sure it can be arranged easily.”
Ocean nodded, looking much younger than eighteen. Then she raised her head, looking directly at me. “She … my mother had more than enough time to not cast that spell. Emma was clearly standing there for more than enough time for it to register.” She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t an accident.”
“A test,” Kader said, quietly smug.
Aiden exploded out of his chair, hands slamming down on the table as he snarled at his father. “Only you are a big enough bastard to go around testing people … manipulating magic and fucking with DNA to meet your goals.”
“What goals?” Kader asked, unfazed. “Living forever?”
The quiet question hung in the room, Aiden towering over his father.
“Aiden,” I said quietly. “It felt different when we were away this afternoon. Off the property.”
He straightened, looking down at me.
“It felt content …” I struggled to express any sort of intimacy, given the audience currently facing us. “And not in a forced way. It’s been difficult to maintain our equilibrium since Cerise arrived.”
“Since I opened the letter,” Aiden said, correcting me.
“But it’s been worse since Cerise stepped through the wards.” I thought about mentioning the third eye I’d seen on Cerise’s forehead, about asking if it was normal for a Myers witch. Then, deciding I didn’t want to complicate the discussion any further than it already was, I looked at Kader instead. “What’s your end game? I assume you want to be amplified?”
He shook his head, looking grim for the first time.
“We would have already asked you,” Grosvenor said, still leaning against the wall. “Right away. But anything extra we pump into Kader actually speeds up his … decline. It’s his own magic that’s sustaining him.”
“If it comes to it,” Kader said. “If it comes to me against Cerise tomorrow at dawn, I’ll ask then, amplifier. To keep the damage contained …” He glanced at each of his sons in turn, then nodded to himself.
“What about the death curse?” Aiden asked, his tone still a low growl.
Kader sighed and stood up slowly. “It might still come to that. Certainly even you can’t begrudge me taking my murderer with me.”
“You threatened the entire Myers line!” Aiden snarled.
“It’s too late for that,” Grosvenor said. “The intensity of the leeching spell has doubled, even tripled since Cerise arrived.”
“What?” Khalid said. “I’ve been checking —”
Kader waved his hand. “And I’ve been compensating. Grover, if you would see me to my room.”
The curse breaker stepped closer to the elder sorcerer, but didn’t touch him. Kader slowly crossed toward the kitchen.
“Cerise Myers is wielding magic that none of us thinks she should be able to wield,” Isa said incredulously. “And we’re going to help her?”
“Yes,” Kader said.
A one-word order.
The elder sorcerer clamped a hand on Grosvenor’s shoulder. Ocean cleared the doorway, hovering by the table. The two sorcerers crossed through the kitchen and then out of the house.
“Why trust Grover?” Khalid snarled, speaking to Isa and Aiden.
“Grover isn’t going to try to kill him,” Isa said.
Khalid glanced back and forth between his brothers. “I’m not going to try to kill him!”
Neither of them responded.
Shaking his head, Khalid grabbed a roll, then took off through the house and out the front door.
Isa calmly added some salad to his plate and started eating.
Paisley had scoured the chicken carcass of every bit of meat, and was now eyeing the second chicken. Aiden leaned over, grabbed the platter, and slid it across the table to the demon dog. She smiled at him, reaching out with a tentacle and caressing the back of his hand.
“You’re welcome,” he murmured.
“Aiden,” Ocean said quietly. “You know that Mom was appointed keeper of the Myers coven archive about a year and a half ago, right?”
Isa’s lettuce-laden fork paused halfway to his mouth. Then he set it down and turned to look at the young witch. “Do you know the spellbook she’s using? Have you seen it?”
Ocean shook her head. “I don’t. I don’t even know if it’s connected. I don’t know anything else, actually. I’m … I’ve just been listening to you all …”
“And putting things together,” Aiden murmured.
She nodded. “And after I spoke with Emma last night … I …” She twisted her hands in the tea towel again, so tightly it had to be hurting her. “I still don’t know why I brought the poison. I didn’t have enough money, so I had to trade my medallion for it.”
Aiden frowned. “Your grandmother’s protection amulet?”
Ocean nodde
d, chin quivering.
“Why?” he almost howled. “It was priceless. Irreplaceable. Alchemists are so rare, and …” He caught himself, blowing out a harsh breath instead of whatever else he wanted to say.
“I know.” Ocean looked at her brother, setting her shoulders defiantly. “You know I love Mom. But I don’t think that … murdering Kader? And, like, maybe really hurting you to do it? That’s not right.” She whispered the last few words.
Aiden scrubbed his hand across his face. “I’ll need the name and location of your dealer. I’ll get the medallion back.”
“Okay …”
“Right,” Isa said, sliding his chair back. “Myers coven archives. Let’s see what I can dig up about the collection. It’s in Paris, yes?”
Aiden nodded.
“What do you think you can find?” Ocean asked. “Before dawn?”
“Well …” Isa smiled grimly. “It’s not as though any of us are going to be sleeping, so you’d be surprised.”
Aiden scrubbed a hand across his face. Then, touching me lightly on the shoulder, he followed Isa from the room, heading into the study.
Ocean blinked at me, then at Paisley. “So … pie?”
“Yes,” I said. “Help me clear the table.”
As the three-quarter moon rose, Cerise was pacing out a large circle in the orchard grass, in a kind of clearing alongside the immature apple trees that Christopher had planted in the early spring. She was slightly too close to the chicken coop for my comfort, about halfway between the house and the road.
Though Aiden had sworn that the Myers witches didn’t condone blood sacrifice or black magic, Isa was still trying to figure out what might be buried in the coven’s archives — and what spellbook Cerise might have excavated from there. But none of us were certain about anything.
Maybe not even Cerise herself, depending on what kind of power she was playing with — or what slowly killing Kader was doing to her, magically.
Normally, not having everything perfectly worked out wouldn’t bother me. Except I wasn’t the one in the line of fire. Aiden was. I didn’t know when I should step in — or even whether I should — if things went sideways. Draining or killing Cerise could lead to Aiden’s death, because the spell she was working was anchored through him. And draining or killing Kader could also lead to the same outcome — through Kader’s death curse, if he had enough power left to pull something of that magnitude off.
I didn’t exist comfortably in limbo. So as Ocean and Sky joined Cerise and Aiden in the orchard, laden with supplies, I decided to distract myself from pulling out my blades by walking the perimeter of the property with Paisley.
Aiden was on the other side of Cerise’s paced-out circle when I left. He didn’t look up from whatever his mother was saying, the two of them conversing in French.
The evening was balmy, though I’d thrown on my cashmere cardigan to counter a light breeze that stirred my hair. I made it to the northwest corner of the property, well out of earshot of anyone but Paisley, before I gave in to the impulse to call Christopher. The note he’d given Paisley had directed me to his texts from earlier, all of them an update on the hunt for Bee.
Apparently, Samantha had some contact they were trying to arrange a meeting with to look at the magically fried information she’d stolen from the compound. That sounded completely off mission to me. But again, I wasn’t Christopher’s keeper. The clairvoyant’s messages had also reiterated his warnings — and his frustration that he wasn’t seeing more of what was unfolding with Aiden’s family.
It made sense that if I couldn’t feel any hint of Christopher’s magic in the blood tattoo on my spine, then he couldn’t feel me either. The distance was clearly muddying his visions.
It was a completely irrational thought, but if it were possible for flesh and bone to feel empty, then that was exactly how my upper spine currently felt.
Paisley passed in and out of the ever-deepening shadows as we turned to cross along the fence, heading east.
The phone rang three times before Christopher answered, his voice a rough growl. “Who’s dead?”
“No one,” I said.
He swore. “Why else would you be calling?”
I glanced over at the barn in the near distance. A single interior light was on, but otherwise the windows were darkened. Khalid was likely capable of seeing any magic that might be radiating from the pentagram in the loft reflected against the upper windows. But I couldn’t see the power that was sustaining Kader Azar in the same way.
“Our maker is dying,” I whispered into the phone — and as I did, I made the uncomfortable realization that something about the statement bothered me. “There was a time … a few months after your magic came back in full force, I started to realize how hard it was for you. How difficult it was going to be for you to only have me to anchor you …”
“Socks,” Christopher murmured. “I’m okay. I was always okay just with you and Paisley.”
“I know. But I … I thought about hunting him down, on the really bad days when I would find you … when I knew that we needed to keep moving. I thought about making him pay …” My voice cracked. “And now …”
“I’m here,” Christopher’s voice was warm in my ear, edged with emotion. As mine was.
“And now,” I said, “he’s just a man. And without him, without the Collective as a whole, I wouldn’t have you or Paisley …”
“Or now Aiden.”
“Yes.”
Silence fell between us, though I could hear that we were still connected. I didn’t bother voicing everything else I was feeling or thinking. The clairvoyant knew it already. He’d been with me through it all.
Christopher sighed quietly.
I was achingly aware that the tattoo on my T3 vertebra was dormant. “I miss you,” I murmured, turning south at the northeast corner of the property. The grass was shorter in this section, cropped by the cows.
“I’m heading to you tomorrow.”
“It will be all over by then. Cerise has signed the contract. She’s removing the working at dawn.”
“I don’t give a shit about the Myers witches or the Azar sorcerers, excepting one,” he said. “I’m coming home.”
“Bee …”
“Dead end. Dead.” He sighed again. “I’d hoped that if we had a solid connection, the cards or Paisley would lead us to her. But I’m sitting here in a hotel in a foreign country deluged with glimpses of other people’s lives, and I just want to be home with you, planting our garden. When does Opal come home for summer break?”
“July.”
“That’s too far away.”
“Yes.” I gazed up at the moon, then to the right where the garden sprawled with the house beyond. The main house was fully lit. “Kader did say he would help us find Bee. And if she is in trouble …”
Christopher sighed. “I don’t like him playing games with you. You aren’t …” He didn’t finish the thought, but I understood that he meant I wasn’t great at any sort of mental warfare. He was right.
“None of us were trained to negotiate,” I said quietly. “To mediate. We just took what we wanted —”
“What he wanted,” Christopher snarled.
“They,” I corrected.
“Socks …” He hesitated, as he did when working through a glimpse of the future. “Any information from Kader Azar will come with strings attached.”
“There are always going to be strings.”
“But we’re not puppets. Not the Collective’s puppets. We never were.”
I didn’t agree on the ‘never’ part, but I didn’t say so.
Christopher laughed quietly. Without being in the same room with him, I couldn’t tell if he was laughing at me or at whatever was unfolding in his mind’s eye.
“Are you in the orchard?” he asked in a whisper.
“Not right now. But that’s where Cerise is setting up the spell to remove the working on Kader.”
“Apple blossom,” he m
urmured, not necessarily speaking to me. “Rebirth. Transition … immortality.”
The image, the scent of the bouquet by my bed the previous night came back to me. Apple blossoms with dark centers. I waited for the clairvoyant to elaborate. He didn’t.
“So.” Christopher’s tone sharpened, letting me know he was speaking directly to me again. “Opal tells me that you and Aiden are getting married.”
“And did she tell you under what circumstances this was revealed to her? Via a speakerphone conversation with her principal?”
“No …”
I laughed, then quickly sobered. “I love him.”
“I know. I see.”
“I want everyone to know.”
“Okay.”
As I turned along the back fence, I decided I was done wandering. So I cut across through the long grass toward the barn. “Come home. You and Zans, if she wants.”
“She wants.”
“Then we’ll all find Bee.”
“Text me if you need me,” Christopher said. “Don’t call again. I thought you were all dead, and I … I hadn’t been there to die with you.”
“Don’t worry, Knox,” I said wryly. “None of the Five are dying without you seeing it first. Even with the distance between us.”
“Comforting, Socks. So, so comforting.” He laughed. “Sleep well.”
“See you soon.” I hung up the phone.
Paisley appeared out of the deep shadows, nudging her nose under my palm. “Christopher and Samantha are coming home,” I said to her. “Which means you don’t have to keep leaving.”
The demon dog grunted, but didn’t seem as pleased as I’d thought she would be.
“It’s all right that you couldn’t find Bee,” I said, pausing to place my hand on her broad head. “We’re going to figure out what could be blocking you, and how to sharpen that sense. Okay?”
Paisley peered at me with red-slitted eyes, as if weighing my words. Then she dropped her mouth down in a full-toothed smile.
I tucked the phone in the pocket of my dress and headed toward the barn. Paisley continued patrolling the perimeter. There was one more conversation I needed to have before dawn. In private.
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