Chapter 21
T wo minutes.
Five, at most, before brain damage set in. I’d read that somewhere. Or maybe I’d seen it in a movie.
“Hurts, doesn’t it?” The curse talker smiled with demonic mirth. “It’s not so much the lack of air right now, it’s that you can’t move, can’t lift yourself to reach for your next breath. The frustration must be unbearable.”
Panic spiraled through me; my head rocked back, eyes watered. Drool dripped from the corners of my mouth. I shut my eyes and tried to picture myself floating on a tranquil ocean, but thoughts of sharks sinking their teeth into my throat took over, leaving me worse off.
“You should be feeling lightheaded but also so very heavy,” he whispered. “I’m toying with the idea of allowing you to take a breath. Wouldn’t it be nice to take a deep, delicious breath? You’re so weighed down right now. It would be just the thing to relieve that weight on your chest .”
My chest was encased in concrete, and my head was on fire. I wasn’t floating, I was torpedoing to the bottom of that tranquil ocean, an anchor buried in my gut.
“Is it getting dark yet?”
Black spots burned into my vision. His face went wavy then oozed back into focus. Seconds, minutes, hours, years had gone by. Or no time at all.
“ Don’t panic. Let it happen, ” he commanded. “This is the only measure of kindness I’ll extend to you, an innocent in my war against your mother, your father, and the gravedigger demon.”
I stopped shaking. An odd lethargy fell over me along with a strange curiosity. The feelings ballooned until I began to feel like a bystander rather than a participant in my own death.
There was a loud noise in another room of the house—I couldn’t tell in which direction. It registered with me vaguely, though it didn’t feel important.
Justice shot to his feet and ran for the door. He didn’t say a word, just left me there to die alone.
I thought about Ida and Fennel and Cecil. I thought about the park. About Ronan.
We only had a couple of kisses. How unfair.
My lids slid slowly shut.
I wish we could’ve made love. I’d have shown you exactly what your favorite thing about me was, wolf.
I floated somewhere between alive and dead, in a nowhere space where pain was real and not real, where reality bent at strange angles, where my soul teetered on the tiptoe edges of the spirit world.
Crash!
A furred fist appeared directly above my head.
It had punched through the window, through the boards. A flurry of splinters rained down, getting stuck in my hair. A snout poked in, sniffed, then dipped as if to point at me. It retreated, and the furred fist returned.
Ronan?
The hand opened, showering dirt onto my face and into my mouth. I recognized the taste. Siete Saguaros soil.
The fist disappeared again. It didn’t return.
Not Ronan.
Mason.
Of all the dirt in this dust bowl of a county, the wolf had to bring me the one that didn’t respond to me.
Blackness swirled into the edges of my vision in swoops and curls, inky ghoulish fingers tickling the corners of my eyes. The nightmares I’d had after having my head plunged into Hades had nothing on this moment.
Please , I begged the soil. Tears poured down my cheeks, mingling with drool and creating mud that slopped down my neck. Please don’t leave again. Please don’t let me die.
My vision failed then, the room going as dark as midnight.
Please .
Fire.
Stinging fire.
The mud dried into dust. I blinked my vision back and watched the dust lift, vaporize, and sink into me. I swallowed the dirt on my lips, and power coated my trachea, raining into my stomach and misting into my lungs.
And then I could breathe again.
I sucked in a breath, coughed. Another. Hacked until I threw up. I fell on my side away from my sick, narrowly missing the hilt of the bone knife sticking out of the wall. I wheezed in clean, beautiful air.
The return of control over my body was a double-edged sword. All commands were nullified, so the panic I’d been forced to suppress, the searing agony as blood flowed back into stiff and numb limbs, and the pain from my head wound hammered into me.
I screamed.
Power roared through me. I crunched dirt with my back teeth, felt my molars heat up and sparks of power sting my gums.
I held up my hands, turned them this way and that. A sparkling silver aura coated every inch of me that I could see. It was the color of my magic, but I’d never seen it look like this.
Not even before Mom died, when I’d been my strongest.
Justice burst into the room. He was gasping and sweating. When he saw I was breathing, he scowled and opened his mouth.
“ Silencio .” I slammed him with the spell I’d been spooling in my brain since I’d gotten my breath back, and it thank the goddesses, it worked .
It was a chanted spell, something I’d learned from Abuela Lulu when I was little. A spell so simple I wouldn’t have been the least bit worried about using it—outside of the obvious bodily autonomy concerns—before my magic had started to fade. And now, here I was rejoicing because I’d been able to get it to work.
Without missing a beat, the curse talker charged me.
I whispered another chant, a shortcut version of a much longer, more involved one that Mom had taught me. It had come in handy many times over the years, especially when dating.
“ Freeze ,” I said, coating the word in magic.
He halted, his hands held out like claws, inches from my face.
“Not so fun to be on the other side of this, is it?” I croaked.
It probably would’ve been more badass to say all this while on my feet, but I didn’t trust my legs. I barely trusted my hands. The one thing I did trust, though, was the magic that buzzed through my blood.
“I want your real name, curse talker. Not that BS about justice and vengeance.”
He blinked. My spell, unlike his, allowed for twitches and blinks without express permission. I wasn’t a fucking monster.
“Yeah, I know I put a silence spell on you.” I cocked my head to one side. “There are other ways of conveying the information. Speaking of which, is that a cell phone in your pocket?”
If looks could’ve murdered, I would’ve been lying on a satin pillow in a pine box.
I used the wall to help me climb to my feet. My legs shook, and it took a solid minute for me to feel comfortable taking a step, but I managed to shuffle to him. I reached into his pocket.
The phone was mine. The lying bastard hadn’t handed it over to the alpha after all. He’d wanted my password for his own use, whatever that was.
I patted him down as best I could. There was nothing much on him. No wallet, no phone, only a set of car keys.
The keys jangled as they hit the floor. I kicked them away and used my dying phone to call Sexton. If anyone might be able to tell me who this guy was, it was the gravedigger demon. I put the phone on speaker, because this felt like a conversation best had out in the open.
He answered on the first ring.
“ Witch Betty . How … unexpected. I thought we’d agreed you’d deliver the mandrake Sunday night. It is two a.m. on Monday morning. While it is not my custom to do business at this late hour, I’ll make an exception for you.”
I’d half forgotten about the mandrake, though I was pretty sure at least a third of my headache was from Meredith’s scream.
“I’ve got the man who was following me here, and I want to know his name. The problem is, he’s a curse talker, so I can’t allow him to speak—or move.”
Justice’s face suffused with blood. Sweat rolled from his temples and soaked into his shirt. He looked ready to stroke out.
“What did this stalker say his name was?” Sexton asked, the ice in his voice bringing down the temperature of the room.
“He told me it was Justice, and he told someone else it was Vengeance. So, you can understand why I don’t believe anything he says.”
“Betty, you need to tread carefully.”
“Why? Who is this guy, and why does he hate my mother, you, and me?”
“His name is Lucien Chevalier,” the demon said, on a deep sigh.
“Lucien Shevaleeyay? Never heard of him. Who is he to you?”
“He is … my grandchild.”
“ What ?” If he’d told me Lucien was the man in the moon, I wouldn’t have been more stunned. “What the hell? Why is he here? What’s going on?”
“Betty, cease your ranting.” The frost in his tone finally reached me. I shivered. “Understand this. Lucien is dangerous.”
“I know. He just tried to suffocate me.”
Sexton let out what sounded like a curse, though it was more a groan than a word. “Tell me where you are so I may retrieve him.”
Drool rolled out the sides of Lucien’s mouth, tears of fury ran down his face, and the vein in his forehead pulsed. Was this how I’d looked when he’d commanded me not to breathe?
“All I know is I’m a few miles east of La Paloma—and that’s if I trust the word of a Pallás wolf.” It occurred to me that I could trust Mason a little. After all, he’d dumped my soil on my head, even if he hadn’t done anything else to help.
“Turn on your GPS,” Sexton said. “Lucien may be blocking me from finding you through paranormal means, but I can still use human technology.”
If Lucien had been furious before, now he was apoplectic with rage. He’d gone a disturbing shade of purple and wads of white spittle formed on his lips.
And then … he moved.
Left hand. Only an inch or so, but that small movement brought a triumphant smile to his florid face.
A delicate gold chain was suspended between his index finger and thumb. A gold circle, half the size of a penny and one eighth the thickness, dangled from the chain.
It was a godsdamn La Paloma coven charm. To activate it, one had to recite a chant specific to the bearer. The chants were long and nonsensical. Every word had to be perfect—and it didn’t have to be spoken aloud. As long as you formed each word in your head, it would power the charm.
A Margaux Ramirez special.
One of these days, I was going to kill that witch.
I was halfway through a spell when he leapt onto me, sending us both skidding into the wall. I saw stars when my head hit the plaster.
“Betty?” Sexton’s voice sounded far away.
The magic from my soil was still churning inside me. I panicked, and it responded, accelerating my blood flow. With an unnatural burst of energy, I rolled back, felt for the blade he’d sunk into the wall and yanked it out.
Lucien’s hand covered mine, crushing my fingers against the hilt, wrenching the dagger away from me. I kicked out at him, chanting the whole time. I finished the spell, knowing it wasn’t strong enough to hold him, knowing he had the charm and the dagger on his side, knowing it might be the last thing I’d ever do.
“ Freeze .”
The spell worked, but it was a mixed blessing.
He collapsed on top of me, his forward momentum and perfect aim plunging the blade into my chest, right above my heart. I screamed, though it came out as little more than a gaspy, gurgling squeak. I tried to pull the dagger out, but the pain when my fingers touched the hilt stopped me, and I let my hands drop to my sides.
My spell fell a second later. Lucien’s body jerked, and he pushed away from me, the witch charm now wrapped around his wrist. He looked me directly in the eyes as he wiggled the chain free, raised it above his head, and swallowed it.
Oh no .
He strolled calmly to the cell phone and picked it up.
“Everything you hold dear is gone, demon,” he said.
He ended the call and dropped the phone.
“I th-think you’re v-vastly overestimating how much your grandpa values me,” I wheezed.
“Don’t call him that,” Lucien said.
“Look, I d-do the odd job for S-Sexton, but that’s it. We’re not close.”
“The odd job… You really don’t know, do you?” He tried to laugh but couldn’t seem to muster the humor.
“Know what?”
Two fast steps and a knee bend had him at my side. “Before I drive this blade deep into your heart, I’m going to give you something you won’t get from the gravedigger demon—the truth.” He grasped the hilt of the dagger.
I screamed, this time with my whole body. The pain was beyond this world.
When my screams had faded into gasps and sobs, he lowered his mouth to my ear. “ You’re his grandchild, too.”
He twisted the blade and jammed it deeper until the pain of the wound and the pain of his words were indistinguishable from each other.
Rock bottom.
Hair’s breadth from death.
Fading.
As I teetered on the tightrope between alive and dead, I thought of my mom. Her lithe, elegant hands sifting through soil as she taught me the magic that would sustain me for life.
We’d had a thorny journey together, but when I thought back to it now, I saw how the good and bad twisted together like ivy vines, both of us clinging to the same wall, climbing in different directions.
Abuela Lulu popped into my mind, the hem of her Mexican Puebla dress dusty from tending to her plants, her creased brown hands tracing symbols in the earth as she shared the basics of what would form my understanding of our magic.
My grandmother had taught me the earth connection spell, and took great care to note that her grandmother had taught it to her, and she’d been taught by her grandmother before her.
The history of the Lennox witches, our lineage as varied as it was strong, flowed through the blood of my veins. Every witch more powerful than the preceding one, a line of women whose strength wasn’t only in magic but a bloodline that hadn’t been broken in centuries. Nothing had ended our line, not zealots or witch trials, colonialism or isolation, not even the subjugation of our sex and the machinations of our enemies.
My blood stirred; the soil I’d absorbed was markedly weaker but still with me. I just needed to connect with it again.
But that had always been the problem, hadn’t it?
Tears rolled down my temples and puddled in my hair.
Mothers, I need your guidance. I don’t know how to do this. Please help your daughter .
As if the words had conjured power, and perhaps they had, my blood heated to boiling. I welcomed the sting. The magic that had been thrumming beneath my skin for the last few days made contact with the Siete Saguaros soil and became a frothing, roiling, turbulent thing. A beautiful thing.
A deadly thing.
The dagger grew hot in my chest, searing my insides.
“What the hell?” Lucien jerked his hand away and wheeled back. On his palm was a raw, red burn in the shape of the hilt.
Power exploded from me in a lightning burst—it shot from my pores in pinpoints of fire and flooded from my mouth, my nose, my ears. A pale, quicksilver light beamed from the wound, pushing the dagger, and the pain, out.
The weapon clattered to the floor.
Lucien dove for the blade as if it were a race. As if my broken, bloodied body had a shot at beating him to it.
Magic spun around me like a child’s top, forming a whirlwind of dirt and dust and loamy soil.
Lucien gripped the hot blade, raising it high above my chest. He shrieked through clenched teeth, hand shaking, face purpling with rage.
The tip of the dagger broke off, the blade cracked lengthwise, and then it all crumbled into dust. It merged with the rest of the soil whipping around me, until I could no longer see even a trace of the chalky calcium bits, only the rich brown of healthy earth.
“ Stop breathing .” Lucien stared directly into my eyes, his own bulging with rage. He put what looked like the full force of his curse talking ability into his voice. “ Die, witch .”
The command had no effect.
The dirt devil picked up speed. It made scratching, scrabbling noises as it scoured the walls, floor, and ceiling in the small room.
“ STOP breathing ,” he screamed. “ DIE !”
The soil raged, going from dirt devil to windstorm to cyclone in the space of a breath. It sandblasted the paint off the walls and ceiling, leaving first masonry then wood studs behind.
I lay in the center of the storm, untouched. Not as much as a hair on my head had stirred. Neither had any of the curse talker’s commands affected me.
Thank you, Lennox mothers.
Lucien screeched what I assumed was another death order into the storm, but his voice was carried away along with his clothing, along with his hair, along with his skin. His blood mingled with the cyclone, painting the floor and the rooms beyond this one crimson.
I held up my hands and called to the soil.
“ Return .”
At the sound of my voice, the winds wound down until only a weak dirt devil remained.
“ Phone ,” I croaked the word, putting power behind it.
The soil formed a scoop that picked up my cell phone and gently laid it on the floor beside me.
“Thank you.” I was unsurprised to see the screen was shattered. After all, I’d just created a dust storm strong enough to scour the meat from a man’s bones.
Breathing through the pain in my chest, I whispered a supplication to the goddesses that the phone still worked. I scrolled to settings, taking care not to slice my finger on the broken glass, turned on my GPS, and sent a message to the only name in my emergency contacts.
Bring help .
The phone went dark—or maybe it was my vision.
The last thing I saw before my eyes slid shut was the picked-clean skeleton of Lucien Chevalier, jaw bone on the floor beside his skull, mouth agape in an eternal expression of shock.