66 Jasper
JASPER
I watch the pot simmering on the stove. “So, you just added iron shavings? And that counteracts the unpredictability of the powdered sunstone?”
“Mhmm.” Cora dusts off her hands over the top of the cast iron pot, letting the rest of the iron shavings sink into the bubbling potion. The liquid instantly shifts from a goopy brown to shimmering mint green.
“Fascinating,” I mutter. “Where’d you learn that trick?”
She smiles, tucking a strand of her electric blue hair behind her ear.
“I found Great-Uncle Walter’s grimoire in some of Grandma Florence’s old things.
I’ve just been experimenting. Iron acts as a great binder.
For explosives especially, you need something to help control the size of the blast. Sunstone is fiery, but it’s too dangerous for the kind of blast we want.
And don’t get me started on how temperamental jasper can be,” she adds with a wink.
“Hey, watch it,” I growl, which only makes her laugh.
Okay, yes, I’m letting a nineteen-year-old make an explosive potion in my kitchen.
And, yes, I know that’s crazy. But we’re out of options and we’re running out of time.
And age is no determination of skill. Cora may only be nineteen, but she’s the best potion brewer in the coven.
Intuitive and creative, she combines ingredients I would never think to pair.
She wields a ladle the way I wield a wood rasp, or Mercy wields a needle and thread.
Which is why the coven pitched in to help her parents fund her college education.
Cora’s getting a degree in chemistry. I think she hopes to go on to grad school like Phoebe and Birdie.
I watch her dance around the kitchen, singing along to her pop music as she adds more ingredients to the potion pot.
Seeing how confident she is with her magic makes me sad sometimes.
I wanted this for Phoebe too. I wanted to see my niece powerful and full of her talents.
Not that she doesn’t have talent. Phoebe is extraordinary .
. . for a human. But her blood is Prescott.
She was meant to be an extraordinary witch.
“Incoming,” hisses the wraith, his voice filling the kitchen.
Cora shrieks, jumping back from the stove as Dáinn appears in a swirl of shadows. Dishes break and a vase of flowers goes flying as a body appears sprawled on my table. Dáinn’s shadows swirl back to reveal Frankie. And it looks like she’s been fucking barbecued!
“What happened?” Cora cries.
“She’s hurt,” the wraith rasps. “Fix her.”
“Where’s Birdie?” I bellow, my magic filling me in a torrent of anger and panic.
“I have her. Fix the witch.” With that, the asshole disappears.
Cora hurries around the island. “Frankie, oh my god!”
Pickles slinks into the room with a worried meow.
“Get Hortie!” I bark.
He darts away without hesitation, headed for the back door. Hortie is out in the vegetable garden, tending to her broccoli and cabbages.
Choking back my worry over Birdie, I focus on Frank. Dáinn said he has our human. Frank needs me now.
“This looks bad,” Cora says through her tears.
I shift into high priest mode. “She’ll be all right.” I grab Cora’s wrist as she tries to fuss with the singed scrap of Frankie’s shirt. “Go to Hortie’s bedroom and get her dad’s old medicine bag. Now.”
She drops her hands away. “Yes, sir.”
I step away too, gathering a few close supplies, anything I can reach—clean dish towels, bottles of water, a pair of scissors. I make quick work of soaking a towel in cool water, covering the worst of Frankie’s neck burns.
At the first touch of the wet cloth, Frankie flinches in pain and opens her eyes. They glow faintly white with her air magic. Her lips part as she takes weak, shallow breaths. “Is it bad?”
“You’re all right.” I adjust the lay of the cloth. “Try not to move.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’ve seen worse, Frank. Heck, I’ve probably had worse. Remember the time Joel Easton and I got drunk and tried to jump the bonfire at Cinder Pointe?”
“You’re both—idiots.”
“Yeah, well, look who’s talking.”
She moans, eyes shutting tight as I cut her out of her shirt, leaving her in her sports bra. The skin under the shirt doesn’t look harmed. It’s mainly her arm, shoulder, and the side of her face.
I soak another towel and drape it down the burned length of her arm. “What happened, Frank?”
“We were attacked.”
“By who?”
“I can’t—stop shivering.” She grabs my wrist. “Jasper—”
“It’s just the shock,” I soothe. “You feel cold because of the burns, not the wet cloths. The cool water is helping, I promise. And Hortie is coming. She’ll fix you up in no time. You know her salves are legendary.”
Groaning, she drops her hand away from me.
“I’ve got it!” Cora comes bustling back into the room, holding aloft Durbin Hastings’s old leather medicine bag.
He was a family doctor here on the island for more than five decades.
He taught Hortie everything he knew. She never made an official career out of medicine, but she can magic the wings back on a bird and make it fly like new.
“Get out the burn ointment,” I direct. “I doubt she’ll have enough to cover all these, but it’s better than nothing. Start applying it to her neck. That’s where the burns are the deepest.”
Cora nods, focusing on her task.
I pull up a chair and sit down next to Frankie, brushing a hand over her mussed hair. “Who attacked you, Frank?”
“Don’t know his name,” she replies on a panting breath. “Works for the Raven.”
A feeling like ice seeps into my gut. “What?”
“He was waiting for us—at the university. Said he was sent—for the sonar.” She turns her head towards me, wincing as Cora peels back the wet cloth on her neck and starts applying the salve.
“I know,” Cora soothes. “I’m sorry, Frank.”
The smell of the salve is sweet and medicinal, like mint and apple honey. Anything is better than the smell of my best friend’s charred flesh. I take her hand, stroking her hair again. “What did he look like, Frank? This is important.”
“Short,” she says through her shivers. “Kind of—I don’t know, Italian looking? You know, dark hair, tan skin. He was a fire witch. So freaking strong.”
Setting her hand gently down, I rise from the table and step around the island to stand before the mugshot wall. My gaze settles on one of the sketches. I jerk it from the cabinet and bring it over to show Frankie. “Is this him?”
She nods, wincing in pain. “Yeah—that’s him. That’s the guy.”
I glance down at the picture. Enzo Barsotti. Fuck, Ludmilla worked even faster than we thought. “Did you kill him?”
Tears rim her eyes and she doesn’t answer at first. “I tried. Jas—I’m so sorry—”
“Hey.” I drop down to her side, taking her hand again. “You were ambushed. You were alone and unprepared and that’s never happening again.”
“Feels like I’m dyin—”
“You’re gonna live,” I say over her, glancing to Cora. “She’ll live, right?”
Cora blinks back her tears as she smiles. “Oh, definitely. I can see the salve is already starting to work.”
At Frankie’s pained groan, I rise from the table. “I’ll get you something for the pain.”
She grabs my hand as I try to leave. “Jas, wait—”
“What?”
Her dark eyes are clear as she gazes up at me, her face a mask of pain that she’s trying so hard to hide. “She knows.”
“What?”
“The Raven. She knows we’re interfering at Homewood.”
“No, that’s not possible—”
“He knew my name,” she says over me. “Knew I was a witch. Knew I was there for the machine. Ludmilla sent him to try and get to it first. She knows she’s being lied to. Jasper, she knows.” Her gaze changes, like she’s trying to hide a different pain.
“What?” I say again. “Just say it, Frank.”
She sighs, closing her eyes. “I think the wraith sold us out.”
The cold feeling in my stomach turns to a hard rock of stone.
It’s true, Dáinn went earlier to make his report.
But he would never sell us out. I trust him.
I—I want to trust him. And he was trusting me.
We need each other. Like each other. There’s a respect there.
Friendship that could be more. With Birdie between us, I think I might want it to be more.
No, Dáinn didn’t do this. Whatever’s happening right now, he’s not the culprit. But it doesn’t change the truth. Ludmilla knows he’s been lying to her. She knows we’re plotting to stop her from getting to the grimoires. And now she knows her bonded wraith is helping us.
She knows.
Which means our window of seven days just shrank down to zero.
And now no one is safe.