Chapter 29
Hell hath no fucking fury.
But the ghosts around Celia Sinclair were rabid as she clawed her way through the gate.
First fingers, then wrists, then elbows, then all of her, incandescent.
Molten. Making her way through the smallest of cracks.
It should have been impossible—physically there was no way she could fit.
But this was death, and this was rage, and this was rebirth. She felt like a goddamn phoenix.
No silver lighter needed.
She’d made her own way.
With Biz, of course. The spirit of the other young woman was flaming beside her. She didn’t look like any of the other ghosts, half sketched and hollow with hunger. Elizabeth Ellington was full of fire. She was even brighter than she’d been on the Seek and Find’s dance floor.
“NO ONE MURDERS ME AND GETS AWAY WITH IT!” Her howl stormed through the desert temple.
Or my father.
This thought sliced through Celia as soon as she saw Vincent Cain. He looked so detached from the destruction that rent the room—his safari suit unwrinkled, his boots barely stained with blood. He was holding Nour’s wand.
Celia burned even hotter when she saw who the instrument was pointed at.
Ezra hung between two stone sphinxes, his chest heaving. His outline glowed.
Alive.
He was alive.
And the miracle might not hold.
“VINCENT CAIN, YOU WILL RUE THE DAY YOU EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT BUYING ME THAT ABSURDLY GORGEOUS ENGAGEMENT RING!” Biz flew down the steps, heedless of the spells the three Ageless Ones were hurling at the rest of the dead…
unraveling any souls that tried to escape the gate.
She sailed down the avenue of sphinxes, her white linen dress as wide as albatross wings.
Vincent cried out when she landed on his back, solid enough to sink her phantom fingernails into his neck.
They had the same chipped lacquer as the dead girl’s.
The same shade as her fiancé’s blood.
The man’s scream curdled. He whipped around, bringing Nour’s wand with him. The ivory shape clashed into Biz’s soul, and the edges of her gown began unraveling into mist.
Celia would not stand back and watch.
Not this time.
She felt so weightless, without her knife made of fallen stars or her father’s lighter. That could be snuffed out. But this?
This holy, hellish rage?
Through the corner of Celia’s eyes, she could see the flames licking off her arms as she ran, throwing herself at the magician. Nour’s wand jerked back as the pair fell to the floor—slipping through the thin stream of Ezra’s blood. Smearing red everywhere. The physicality took Celia’s breath away.
How many times had she dreamed of this?
But it was real.
It was happening.
The smell of iron and burning and this bastard’s cologne brought all her senses to a searing point. Her fire-laced hands went for his throat.
“You cursed my father!” She screamed. She squeezed. “You killed him!”
The skin of the Apex’s neck began to blacken. Shock crossed his face, followed by something darker.
Celia shifted just in time, so that the ivory wand didn’t catch her about the head, but her shoulder instead.
The blow was more powerful than it should have been.
He wanted Celia off. Her flames fought back, smarting about the wand, raining sparks down on Vincent Cain’s formerly flawless suit.
Tiny orange embers began eating away at these clothes, until they were just as charred as his throat.
The magician screamed. Or, tried to. Celia could feel its force, building, building, beneath her burning fingers.
The second strike of the wand snuffed out the fire of her left arm. This sent her tilting. For all of this deep-seated revenge, Celia knew she was no match for the Apex. Not in a one-on-one battle…
“Why?” she croaked, trying to buy herself time. “Why did you take him from me?”
“It was nothing personal, Miss Sinclair. He challenged the Order. Challenged me. If I hadn’t nipped those threats in the bud, he would’ve made a proper mess of things.
” Vincent rubbed at his throat, blood and char streaking everywhere.
His masque began to heat with some horrible spell.
“Looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. ”
“SHE’S NOT AN APPLE, YOU STUPID SOD!” Biz came swooping back, slotting her misty form between Celia and Vincent. “WE’RE NOT FRUIT FOR YOU TO CHUCK OR SHELLS FOR YOU TO STUFF! WE’RE PEOPLE!”
“You’re in my way,” the Apex said coldly.
He raised the wand for yet another strike.
A cry rang out, but it didn’t belong to Vincent or Biz.
Ezra!
When Celia dared a glance over her shoulder, she saw his figure. Still suspended, but brighter. Blazing. As if someone had lit a fuse that trailed the entirety of the scholar’s body—then more.
His magic reached through the sphinxes’ teeth.
Cracks as jagged as lightning spread through the statues.
They detonated.
Celia threw up an elbow to protect her face as sandstone exploded into a cloud of grit.
Ezra Bright was ready to fight.
He stood over the sacrificial canal, but no more blood wept from his arms. Feathers had taken its place.
Gold-indigo pinions as long and sharp as kitchen knives had sliced through the remains of Ezra’s safari suit.
All that was left was the bare strength of his skin.
Celia could clearly see how Ezra’s new wings started at the center of his back and trailed down the length of each arm, just as Nour’s had.
He also had a masque. But where his mother’s had shone aquamarine, Ezra’s was gold.
It shone far brighter than Vincent’s.
Celia grinned as she turned back to face the smug bastard.
Her smile slipped.
There was nothing there.
Nothing but sphinx dust and Biz… becoming mist. She was falling apart at an alarming rate, her arm only half visible as she pointed toward the chamber door.
“He ran. The coward!” The Bright Young Thing hadn’t moved, yet she sounded more distant with every word.
“We need to catch him before he disappears into the desert.”
Celia looked through the door, past the shattered Anubis.
The fire had settled back beneath her skin, smoldering there.
She could feel Biz, still, as well.
Sputtering.
“First we need to get you back into your body.” Celia had no idea what the time limit was with ghosts and this whole resurrection business.
Clearly, with George, it had been too late.
But Elizabeth Ellington’s corpse remained mostly intact.
The faience ankh lay on her chest, looking brighter for the browning blood there.
Her skin was almost as pale as the rest of her dress, and there were several ghouls crouched nearby in the manner of hyenas, waiting…
They skittered off when Ezra spread his wings over his sister’s body. Again, this reminded Celia of a mural she’d seen in the secret pyramid, where Nour’s feathers had covered her brother. One crucial piece of the picture was missing, however…
“Vincent stole the wand,” Celia said as she hurried to the other side of Biz’s corpse. “Can we resurrect her without it?”
“We can try.” Ezra pinched his lips together.
“Heavens! I look ghastly!” The misty form of Biz started to align herself over the dead woman on the floor, but the ankh pulsed a bright blue whenever her spirit drifted too close. “Ow!”
Celia palmed the ankh. “Hurry,” she urged Biz, trying not to focus on the ghouls that lurked past Ezra’s wingspan, or the series of black arms that wriggled through the cracks of the underworld like an overturned beetle’s legs.
The Ageless Ones’ spells fireworked around them, but one or two kept slipping through.
If Biz didn’t claim her corpse fast enough, it might get stolen by one of the cursing German soldiers.
Celia let out a sigh as Biz’s spirit settled into her body.
The relief was short-lived.
There was the familiar fae-like flicker of those Ellington eyes. Green as new. Then a tattered gasp as more blood sludged out of her chest wound.
“It hurts. Oh, it hurts!” Biz’s edges started to go blurry, so that Celia felt as if she’d swallowed too many sidecars and was now seeing double.
The rest of the chamber’s ghouls seemed to have multiplied too, watching eagerly from behind the frozen sphinx statues.
“I—I can’t live like this…” The flapper groaned, sweat springing from her wax-white forehead.
She was dying again.
Celia, desperate, placed the ankh back over her friend’s wound.
The blurring between Biz’s spirit and body seemed to stop, but her chest kept oozing.
“What are we doing wrong?” She looked up at Ezra.
Never had she seen a man so brilliantly devastating.
There was something in his gaze that hadn’t been there before—the same eternity she’d seen in Nour.
It was like staring into the heart of the sun.
“Do we need the wand?” she asked.
“The Heka-ib alone won’t save her. We need a life,” he murmured.
Both of them stared through the chamber’s door. Into the taunting dark.
“Will you stay with her, Celia?” Ezra’s wings edged out wider, with this question. “Make sure Bitty stays in her body… Make sure none of these ghouls get in?”
So much of Celia itched against this. She knew where the scholar was headed—after Vincent.
Her vengeance.
The moment every other moment of Celia’s life had striven toward.
The reason she didn’t just sink into that sun-bleached settee and stare at the water-stained roof all day the way her mother did.
Why she put pins in rich women’s hems and set out food for Calamity and pretended everything was just fine and dandy.
Because it would be. Once she ended the Apex.
Once she destroyed every single thing that had destroyed her…
It had been a life, but it hadn’t been living.
Biz had seen that.
Celia’s father had too—even from beyond the grave. My death is not worth your life.
It wasn’t worth Elizabeth Ellington’s life either.
“Yes.” She nodded and took the other young woman’s trembling hand. “I’ll stay. Of course I’ll stay.”
A brilliant gust of wind licked her hair around her face, and Ezra was off, launching over the sphinxes’ snarling heads. His feathers left faint traces of gold dust in the air, through the chamber exit. These fell glittering, over the dead and dying alike.