Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
“Grace!” Emmy’s scream was a vendetta and a lament, so full of anguish, she hardly recognized it herself. “Grace Eloise Montgomery!”
Emmy stalked through the thick smoke, narrowly avoiding the ever-growing black flames, but every cursed soul had already fled
Stratton Mansion, Grace included.
Emmy could not feel the night air on her skin, could not hear the wailing fire bells, the screams of the ordinary folks as
they fell to their knees at the sight of the devil’s fire on Fifth Avenue. She searched the staring faces until she found
the Windsors. Her gaze locked with Grace’s aunt’s, and Emmy did not bother to hide her devastation. Let Mrs. Windsor see what
her niece had wrought. Let her watch as Emmy evened the score.
But Grace was not beside her. Grace was a rat. And rats scurried from disaster. Rats hid in corners, waiting for chaos to
pass. Far enough to avoid detection. Close enough to return to gather the spoils of the fallen.
She found Grace in an alley.
Upon seeing Emmy, Grace lifted her hands just as she had when she’d hurled Jack’s flames at Emmy, using the relic to bridge
his gift from a distance. But no flames erupted.
Because Jack Fontaine was dead.
Confused, Grace stared at her flameless hands before her gaze snapped to Emmy. To the knife she was holding. “That’s Oliver’s,”
her voice wavered.
Emmy hadn’t even realized she’d grabbed the knife. Jack’s blood still stained it. “He’s dead.”
“What?” Grace knew Emmy well enough to know she spoke the truth. She staggered back, tears lending her blue eyes an air of innocence.
“You ruin everything!”
“Give me the relic.” Emmy hardly recognized her own voice, the unnatural calm in it. Grace had taken and taken and taken.
But the relic had been Jack’s. He’d given it to Emmy.
“Or you’ll stab me, too?” Grace screeched. “Do you see how insane you are?”
Emmy lunged for her. She managed to slash Grace’s arm with Oliver’s knife, leaving a thick red trail down her bicep. Grace
screamed as she ducked away, pressing her hand to the bleeding wound.
Emmy lunged again, but the red slash on Grace’s arm was knitting itself together. Papa’s gift—protecting Grace once again.
With an inhuman scream, Emmy swung the knife. But Grace dodged it with ease. Scooping a loose brick off the floor, she transformed
it to a knife of her own.
She was using Emmy’s own gift against her. Papa’s gift against her. And Emmy would rather die than let her have them. “My
father would be ashamed of what you’ve become.”
“He was practically my father, too.” Grace kept her head high. “And he’d be proud of how strong I’ve grown. How hard I’ve
worked.”
They stared at each other. Each holding a knife they did not know how to wield.
Each with a dead lover in the burning ballroom behind them.
“Don’t think I won’t do it.” The knife in Grace’s hand elongated, turning a brilliant silver that glittered in the unnatural
glow of the hellish flames.
“Go ahead.” Emmy kept her own knife firm in her hand. “You’ve already taken everything else from me.”
Because Jack was dead. Their plan had failed. Everything had failed.
“As if this is my fault? You’re the one who couldn’t just let me have a patronage, even though I needed it much more than you!”
“A patronage?” Emmy could hardly believe her ears. “You’re justifying everything you did—because you think you deserved a
patronage?”
“I did deserve it,” Grace snapped. “Look how the Society needs my conjury. My gift makes their lives more convenient. It makes their
illusions last longer, their existence safer.”
“If you’re so sure, then why go through the trouble of sabotaging me?”
“Because I knew you would try to take it from me, just like you’re doing now! You can’t stand not being the best!”
“What are you talking about?” Emmy exclaimed. “I always rooted for you, just as hard as I rooted for myself.”
“You rooted for me as long as I was behind you.” Grace swung the knife, keeping Emmy back just as she tried to sneak closer.
“Teachers gave you higher marks. You made sewing for Mrs. Feinstein a competition, then rubbed it in my face when you finished
more pieces. You had to make sure everyone back home liked you more.”
Emmy gaped at her. “And that gave you the right to ruin my life?”
“You had the doting father. The bigger flat. The adoration of the whole damn building. But the Society was mine. And you knew they were going to pick me. That’s why you had to try to outdo me, figuring out a way to make gold at the last minute.” Grace
blew a stray hair out of her face. “Well, guess what, Ems: for once in our lives, I won.”
Like hell she did. With a wild cry, Emmy lunged again, but Grace turned her wrist, and the weeds at Emmy’s feet grew, tripping
her. Earth conjury. An earth conjurer was near.
Emmy’s pulse quickened as she scurried to her feet.
“I wanted a patronage just as much as you did.” She could not best Grace physically, but she could try to keep her talking.
“I worked my entire life for it.”
“But you didn’t need it. You had everything you wanted already, and I had nothing.”
“What are you talking about?” Emmy exclaimed. “You know my roots. You are my roots!”
“There’s poor, and there’s daughter-of-a-whore poor.” There were real tears in Grace’s eyes now. “Your mother took better
care of you in the eight years you had together than mine did my whole life.”
Emmy stared at Grace. That, at least, was the truth.
“And Papa—that man would have done anything for you.”
“And you too.” Emmy’s voice shook tremulously. Now was not the time for her anger to abandon her. Not when she was hanging
on by a thread.
“I outdid you, for once. I had the guts to do whatever it took to get into the Society. And now look at me.” A smile broke over Grace’s
tear-stained cheeks. “I am a Windsor now. You never could have accomplished what I did.”
“You did nothing,” Emmy snapped. She had to goad her, had to keep her talking. “If I’d been born a Montgomery, I would have climbed even higher.”
“You think you could have sacrificed me to ensure you’d get picked?” Grace barked a laugh. “You think you could have watched Papa get shot and not let a single tear
fall? Or convince rule-abiding Lizzie Windsor to sneak into Mistfield in the middle of the night, ensuring she’d be there
when it went up in flames? Spreading those flames yourself to make sure she never told a soul?” The long knife in Grace’s
hands morphed to a rifle. “And you wouldn’t have the guts to finish this. Once and for all.”
Emmy stilled as Grace lifted the rifle, hands trembling.
She’d do it. And perhaps that was fitting. Jack had died by Oliver’s hand. Now Emmy would die by Grace’s.
Grace’s gaze snapped behind Emmy, her expression so horrified, Emmy risked a glance.
Mrs. Windsor stood at the mouth of the alley, the invisibility ring in her palm. Just as Emmy had hoped.
So stunned was Grace, she didn’t see Emmy charge, knife poised to strike. She didn’t take her eyes off her aunt until Emmy
drove it into her forearm.
They both tumbled to the ground, along with the rifle. Grace managed to fire it, and blinding pain tore through Emmy’s stomach.
Shot—she’d been shot.
With a scream, she tore at Grace’s neck, yanking the two chains that hung from it. The wrong relic came free. She yanked again,
but the chain Jack had made her did not relent. Grace tried to roll away, but as soon as Emmy’s finger grazed the coin’s cool
surface, she envisioned its chain as thin as a strand of hair.
It snapped free.
“Give it back!” Grace shrieked, but Emmy scurried away with both relics. Grace tried to throw herself at Emmy, but the weeds
grabbed her by the ankle, laying her flat.
Mrs. Windsor still stood at the mouth of the alley, palms raised, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Auntie, please! She stabbed me!” Sure enough, blood was seeping out of her forearm. It was an impressively deep cut. Emmy would savor that, at least.
“Emmy!” Jimmy sprinted into the alley, not giving Grace a second glance. “You’re bleeding!”
Jack’s dead, she tried to say, but she choked on the words.
Jimmy’s hands fluttered over her stomach, and Emmy tensed, waiting for the pain.
“We need to get you to a hospital,” Jimmy was saying, but Emmy was too dazed to hear him. One hand still grasped both relics,
but with the other, Emmy hugged her abdomen. Her dress was torn, and blood coated her fingers as she prodded her skin, but
there was no wound. Not even a slight one.
Papa’s conjury. It had healed her, somehow, but Emmy couldn’t feel the coldness of a bandage bridged with his gift. Come to think of it, Grace hadn’t put anything on her wounds, either. Nor had she turned one of her rings or touched a bracelet.
And Grace was still bleeding from where Emmy had cut her. But Emmy was healed.
Rose was able to make it only with my help, Grace had boasted outside Clarity Hall.
Grace, who had stolen the pages from the Fontaine grimoire after Rose’s death.
“Your father didn’t gift you a relic when he died.” Emmy was shaking now, her entire body trembling as she stared at Grace,
who was still struggling against the weeds. “You made it from my father’s bones.”
Through her tears, Grace still managed to snarl at her. “He was my father, too.”
Emmy blinked, hardly registering the Society guards gathering in the mouth of the alley. Mrs. Windsor waving them over to
Grace. Jimmy’s gentle tug on her elbow. More insistent now.
Rose’s relic gave amplifying conjury to whoever touched it. And Grace’s—no, Papa’s relic—gave healing conjury to whoever touched it.
Emmy took off toward the burning mansion.
Jimmy was yelling after her, but Emmy was already throwing the door open, hurtling herself back through the hidden entrance.
Smoke burned her eyes, coated her throat, but Papa’s conjury healed her instantly. Waving her hands, Emmy transformed the
air around her, courtesy of the other relic. Rose’s.
And despite everything, it felt good, the power coursing through her once again.
She climbed the stairs two at a time, tripping over her skirts. The smoke was deathly thick in the ballroom, but Emmy waved wildly, searching the floor, her conjury clearing the air a few feet at a time.
She tripped over legs, black flames licking through charred skin, and let out an aggravated scream. It had to be Oliver. Fontaine
flames did not burn the wielder.
Digging deeper into the brume, Emmy swung her arms about, willing the smoke to thin.
And there was Jack, beside Oliver. How long had he been gone? Five minutes? Fifteen?
Emmy removed her pathetic attempt at bandaging his throat and pressed the relic with her father’s remains atop the gory wound.
“Come back,” she pleaded, squeezing her hands against both sides of the wound, willing Papa’s gift to thread it back together.
Jimmy was beside her now, too devastated for Emmy to bear. “Ems . . .”
“I know it seems impossible, but if there’s any chance . . .”
The bruises on Jack’s beautiful face were fading now, as if an invisible eraser had dabbed them away. But his throat was still
torn open, and as the seconds ticked by, nothing changed.
Papa had made a dead heart beat again once, after two minutes. But it had been much longer than that, and whatever fragment
of his magic the relic contained wasn’t strong enough. Not unless—
Grabbing the relic off Jack, Emmy lunged for the nearest flames. She cupped her hands around both relics and, squeezing her
eyes shut, dipped her hands inside the black fire.
The pain was incredible, unbearable, but Emmy refused to remove her hands, no matter how much Jimmy screamed, no matter how
much she screamed. Fontaine flames forged relics—and maybe, just maybe, it combined them, too.
When she could bear it no longer, Emmy pulled her hands from the flames. The metal still seared her palms, but the two coins
were now one dripping, glinting amalgamation.
By the time she laid it on Jack, her burnt hands had already healed.
“Please come back. Please.” He needed to be as alive as he was when he launched himself off the cliffs. As alive as he was before he revealed something
conniving, or when he purposely made her mad. As alive as he’d been when he was trying to be brave: You have transformed me more than you intended.
Jimmy gasped.
Jack’s throat—it was knitting back together, and Emmy knew better than to hope, but—color was returning to his cheeks. With
her pulse thundering through her veins, Emmy pressed her ear to his chest, but it was still silent. So she begged God. Papa.
Rose. Whoever else might be listening from wherever came next, to let Jack return to her.
They’d had so little time together. And there was so much she hadn’t told him.
Jack’s lashes fluttered against his cheeks.
Thump.