Chapter 21
C HAPTER 21
RUBY
“Your impulsivity is going to get us killed, Kaysa. ”
Wren scrunches up her nose. “Or exonerated, which is what just happened, may I remind you. Impulsivity isn’t the same thing as stupidity.”
As the Hegemonys dealt with the body and Infinity settled Luna back inside, the Cerises announced that we shouldn’t waste time and split up to search for the master relics. To wit, they’d piled into a tank of a black SUV and hit the two locations available via the single access road marked on the north side of the grounds: the Field of Stars and Shadrack’s Lookout.
They probably had room for us in that massive thing, but we told them we’ll hit the two locations we’d been assigned as part of Auden’s group before everything went south—the Pool and Horace’s Last Stand.
We’re alone now—which means I have a chance to lay into Wren about her apparent death wish .
I sigh, words loading on my tongue as we navigate the artfully crafted flat stones that curl down the drop from the manicured garden and lawn of Hegemony Manor to the unkempt wilds of the land beyond. Wren has skipped ahead, fingers trailing along the delicate ivory skin of an Aspen when she pauses in her descent long enough to lob one more preemptive strike before I deepen my attack.
“I knew what I was doing.”
My sister’s tone is fierce and the look in her eyes purposefully cutting. This is how it goes with us—I try to protect her, to teach her, and am summarily rewarded when her shame lashes out, going for the bone in an effort to avoid any unfair correction from her big sister who can do no wrong.
“Wren,” I whisper, “I know you think you’re the best actress in the county, but you can’t out-act the truth. What if they’d asked you point-blank if you were really Kaysa Blackgate? We’ve all seen those lie-detector scenes on TV. They start with known facts to set a baseline. What if they’d done that and simply asked your name like the Cerises suggested? You would’ve failed .”
And failing in this case means punishment at the hands of people who hold their own investigations, trials, and executions without an ounce of constitutional oversight.
Wren seems to have chosen to give me the silent treatment in answer, skipping down the last three steps to a patch of dirt that has three thin ribbons of trail snaking off into the scrub and columbine. Right in the middle, there’s a wooden sign with a list of destinations on it, very much like the more official-looking ones in Rocky Mountain National Park.
Three of the six locations we need to search—the Pool, Horace’s Last Stand, Little Bear Den—are listed among a jumble of other destinations, along with various mileage. Wren checks the trail against the grounds map on her phone—we all took pictures instead of opting to carry a full map—and heads down the middle path, stomping footsteps kicking up puffs of dry dirt, pine needles, and navigating pellets of deer poop. When I catch up, she’s finally decided to answer me.
“Ruby, they’re witches, not cops. They wouldn’t have done that because they think their magic is infallible.”
“For all we know it is infallible.”
I snag her wrist and tug her to a halt. Wren doesn’t fight me, though she brazenly pretends I’m not right in front of her, annoyed expression pointed toward the crests and crevices beyond. I shove my own frustrations down—she won’t look me in the eye? Fine. I’ll force her to listen.
“Your impulsivity is a pattern . A dangerous pattern. One you’ve had from the beginning. You said yes to Marsyas and got us in this mess. You abandoned me in the reading room instead of thinking it through. And now you played Russian roulette with a type of magic that could’ve…” I lower my voice as much as possible, “outed both of us.”
Wren is as still as stone. Somehow that hurts more than if she’d flinched. Her lips thin as her gaze flicks to my face, hazel eyes hard as amber.
“But I didn’t .” She’s emphatic. “And now they won’t try to truth-spell us again. I saved our asses, and nobody thinks we did anything. You’re welcome.”
“The cost was too great! Not just the potential outing, which we’re lucky we avoided—”
“ I avoided for us.”
“You avoided, yes, but if Marsyas didn’t do it, now that we’re not scapegoats, we’ve blown the artificial cover of the real killer. That could make us targets . We could’ve just enraged the real killer.”
Wren tosses her head back in exasperation. “I’ll take rage over the magical punishment for a murder we didn’t do. There’s no ‘I told you so’ in the afterlife.” She throws herself forward, leaning in now, arms wide and bangs swinging. “We need to do all we can to make sure that no one thinks we murdered Ursula by the end of the next, what, thirty-eight hours? What I did just now went a loooooong way toward opening a window and airing out that stupid cloud of suspicion over us after Marsyas jetted. You can’t argue with that.”
“I can’t,” I admit. “But the punishment for Ursula’s death isn’t the only danger here, and we need to respect that. I know there’s the X factor of Marsyas being the killer, but we have to ignore that. It’s best to assume that one of these people is the murderer and that they’d do it again in a heartbeat to keep punishment off the radar.”
“Of course we do! Of course they will! We’re in danger! I heard you the first time this morning when you completely overreacted.” She launches herself toward me, jabbing me in the ribs. “But what I think is that you don’t get that everyone is in danger. Heck, Ursula wrote it right into the rules—they’re not supposed to use magic against each other. She knew things would get ugly.”
God, she’s right.
Wren’s full mouth twists, knowing she’s managed to touch on something I haven’t considered. “I’m not an idiot, Ruby. I know what I did was a gamble. Yes, the killer might want a scapegoat or two, but you know what they want more than that? The title. Don’t forget that either.”
There’s triumph in her voice and carriage.
“You’re treating this too much like a game, Wren.”
“It is a game. A screwed-up game, but I was right, and with apologies to grumpy, hot Evander, it is one. The prize is the title. The murder of Ursula was a means to an end, a starting gun.”
I snag her wrists again, the metal pieces of our bracelets clacking while the rabbits’ feet bump. It’s stupid but at this point I feel I can only get her to listen by grounding her as much as possible in the here and now with actual, physical me, standing before her. “Yeah, but we’re not players. We were never players.”
“That’s not true. Marsyas brought us in.”
“As decoys, as pawns, as two replaceable targets to sub in for her granddaughters who are so irreplaceable, they’re hidden away on another continent!”
My sister grins at the frustration in my voice.
“And we need to know why .” Wren wriggles completely out of my grip. “And before you suggest sneaking back into the house and paging through books, let me point out even you know deep down that actually talking to these people is far more efficient.” She points down the trail. “Let’s get out there and see who wants to win.”
My heart quivers, tips, plummets.
“Fine.” I bite my lip. “But if we’re going to do that, we should follow the Cerises. They’re the only ones we know for sure are out here already, and therefore the ones we can learn from. Who knows when the Hegemonys and Infinity will start searching.”
Wren slaps a hand against her thigh, triumphant. She’s so excited in fact that she doesn’t complain about how it would’ve been nice if I’d come to this conclusion when we could’ve hitched a ride. Instead, she sweeps past me, crunching over rocks and hopscotching over thick tufts of scrub to off-road to the trail leading to the Field of Stars and Shadrack’s Lookout. “There you go. Thank you for seeing it my way.”
I follow and when we’re shoulder to shoulder on the trail and angling to the northern corner of the estate, I reiterate, “But we’re not just talking to them—if the conditions are right, we need to observe these people in a situation where they don’t think they’re being watched or overheard. It’s not so much what they will tell us as what they will tell each other when we’re not around.”
Wren’s light attitude has returned, quick as a pendulum swing. She elbows me and winks. “I think you’re underestimating what someone will tell me, sis.”
Oh, for heaven’s sake.
“Please tell me you’re not going to flirt with anyone upright and breathing. You’re going to give them the wrong idea.”
Her face breaks into the picture of exasperation. “Who said I’m giving them the wrong idea? I genuinely like some of them. And do you not recall that I rated everyone a nine and above on my own personal attractiveness scale before we even set foot beyond these gates?”
“I can’t forget that.”
“And I can’t help that flirting is my superpower. I’ll get us some good info.” She raises a finger and boops me on the nose. Jesus Christ. “ And the more these people like me and feel that I like them, the safer it makes me—and you.”
“Not if one of them has a jealous streak.”
“There’s not enough time to get jealous, Rubes. I’m the least of their worries.”
“Yes, but you’re the most of my worries.” I twine our pinkies together—reckless because I’m skating too close to using our sister promise code too often this weekend. But with all that’s on the line, it’s just… I can’t not do it. “Wren—”
“I’m trying to make sure in my own way that we aren’t murder material. Okay. Please, just—you’re older, and you’re less impulsive and whatever.” It’s a whisper—not exasperated, not bratty, but full-throated, pointed, sincere, if not quiet. And though she jabs me in jest at herself, her eyes are serious and maybe a little sad. “But I have my strengths too.”
I kick a small rock and it skitters off the trail and into the underbrush. “I know.”
“Let me use them. Without second-guessing or mom-ing me. I might not be doing things the way you would do them, but that doesn’t mean they don’t work. It doesn’t mean we aren’t a team if we do things our own way.”
She’s right. She is.
Still, I slip my hand into my tights pocket. I present the butter knives I retrieved this morning. “Look, just before you do anything else your way, take one of these.”
The polished silver glints in the high morning light and Wren skids to a halt, incredulous. “Are you kidding me?”
“You’re the one who just pointed out that everyone is in danger. They have magic. It’s not unreasonable for us to have something too.”
Wren smooths a lock of hair behind her ear. “I could make a joke about bringing a knife to a gunfight but I won’t because technically they can’t use their magic against Lavinia and Kaysa Blackgate.”
Now I’m the one rolling my eyes. I snatch her hand, open it, and press the metal into her palm. “Take the knife.”
“It doesn’t go with my outfit.”
“Wren—”
“Kidding. Kidding. There’s a hidden pocket.”
A half hour after we descend into a thick tangle of firs knitted together along a stream bed, I check the map on my phone, zooming in to gauge the distance from the house to where we are now. Based on what I gathered in the discussion of potential locales in the study, the Field of Stars is a sort of moraine park carved between mountains by a glacier ages ago. What’s left is a low-lying oasis of knee-high grasses; soft, loamy soil; and a stiff swath of stream shallow enough for fly fishing.
I point to the flat red girth of a large boulder about thirty feet ahead. “The trees should end on the other side of that big fella.”
“Good. I was worried we were going to miss them.”
“Still might. There are four of them searching, and they had a head start.”
“And a car.”
“And a car.” I echo and pick up the pace, shutting off my phone in the process to conserve battery.
We skirt the boulder and, indeed, the trees begin to thin, a brightness rising in the distance—the promise of a wide-open destination. I can just make out the rolling golden green of wild grass when there’s the unmistakable sound of a door slamming shut and an engine revving, drowning out an exchange of words.
“Aw, shit,” Wren mutters, and we both start jogging.
But as we hit the trail’s end, I’m sure I hear anger in the nearing voices and my gut pings. I skid to a stop, cuffing Wren’s arm and pressing a finger to my lips before tucking us both behind a knot of spiny trunks. Her brow furrows, but she gets the hint and doesn’t say a word.
In the clearing is the black SUV. Hector is at the wheel, window rolled down. Clad in their matching tracksuits, the twins stand side by side and empty-handed. A small backpack is dumped at Ada’s feet. If Sanguine’s there, I don’t see her. Hector glares down at Hex with a look so cold I nearly shiver.
“You will, and that’s final, my son. End of discussion.”
“But Papa—”
Hex’s voice dies as Hector raises a hand. If there weren’t several feet between them, he might have slapped his son across the face. Even at their current distance, though, it’s clearly a threat.
This is not the debonair family man we’ve seen.
“That’s what I thought,” the patriarch growls at Hex, before turning the stern set of his jaw to his daughter. “Ada, I trust you will keep your brother on task for me, yes?” As he speaks he makes a point to tap his forearm—right in the location of the tattoos we saw Hex use for last night’s spell.
Ada’s fingers graze her own sleeve.
“Yes, Papa.”
Hector pats the car’s doorframe with a hollow clang, slips on a pair of aviator sunglasses, and the blacked-out window rolls up. The engine revs again, and the twins must take this as a sign. Hex shoulders the pack that had been at Ada’s feet, and she blinks at her phone before pointing at a trail that disappears into the trees away from the Field of Stars, and in a completely different direction from the other site the Cerises had planned to check first—Shadrack’s Lookout.
Hector reverses in an arc, turning the massive car around, and disappears down the service road in a cloud of beige dust and the creak of tires on packed-down ruts.
When they’re gone, Wren whispers, “I knew Hector’s father-of-the-year act was as fake as Sanguine’s dye job, but what a turd. How can you be that aggressively asshole-ish to your kids while wearing ridiculous matching outfits?”
“We can hardly judge anyone here for acting differently in private than in public,” I say, accent stripped away, leaving my flat, Midwestern pronunciation unabashed. “But I’m more interested in what he said. What does he want Hex to do?”
Wren bites her lip. “What is ‘Hex isn’t to be lugged out of Winter’s room for a second time’ for three hundred, Alex?”
“It’s a possibility,” I say slowly. “But I don’t think that’s it.”
I click on my phone, pull up the map, and tuck the display between us. With a finger, I pinpoint where we are now, and what’s around us. Whatever path Hex and Ada are on is unmarked, but much of the land is now. My finger stubs along the webbing of marked lines. “Look, if we head back up the trail, we can take this connector and we’ll be parallel to them. Maybe we can come across them farther down and pretend we ran into them by accident?”
Wren socks me on the shoulder and beams. “Aw, sis, look at you, setting up the exact scenario where I can use my strengths. How supportive.”