Chapter 37
C HAPTER 37
AUDEN
Hunched down and moving fast, Evander and I arrive in the tearoom, following the direction of the footsteps one floor above.
We melt into the shadows, feeling our way along new fissures in the old walls, spidering out like veins from the parquet to the stamped gold tiles of the ceiling. The portraits of dead Hegemonys, including our fathers, watch wordlessly as we arrive in a crouch beneath the bay windows that bracket the doors looking out onto the garden.
They’re paned in a diamond pattern, and leaden—the dominant style within the manor. With any luck, the repeating shapes and the natural shadows from the ceiling created by the terrace above will provide us enough cover for a good view.
Gripping the sill, I slowly rise until only the top of my head and my eyes are exposed to the glass. Evander and his giant-ass shoulders are wedged in next to me.
To my far right, the long dinner table and debris therein. To the left of the table is Ursula’s shroud… which doesn’t look right. It’s misshapen, anemic somehow. Like it was dropped and damaged.
Scanning farther left, I see why.
My breath catches in a gasp at the exact same moment Evander hisses, “Fuck.”
There, standing as tall and imposing as she did every day of her life, is Ursula Hegemony.
The woman who was our grandmother is facing away from us, hands open at her sides—loose, supple, ready to draw her magic. From this angle the blood staining her temple, matting her hair, splattered down her neck and onto her dress is unmistakable. It wasn’t the blow that ended her life, but it was the last chance she had to shed blood as a living being.
Next to her, Hector and Sanguine Cerise huddle, as inseparable as they were in life, basically overlapped. From behind, their kill-shot wounds aren’t obvious, but big, bold arterial blood stains every one of their fingers, a threat, a sign.
Death magic.
I didn’t know it could do this. Amplify their magic through a corpse? Yes. Manipulate a body? Yes. Animate it? Okay, why not? But if these particular people are animated it’s for one reason only…
To use their magic.
Magic dies with the witch, yes. But if a living witch is powerful enough to wake them from the dead, she’s powerful enough to wake their magic with her own. Marsyas isn’t just animating three corpses, she’s going to conduct her magic through them.
They’re marionettes with all the powers each had in life.
As if waiting at attention for orders from their general, all three corpses stare ahead.
Ruby and Wren are still magically imprisoned, and at the apex between them, hands thrown wide like an orchestra conductor and face split with a knife’s-edge smile, is Marsyas Blackgate, in the flesh.
Movement from the left.
A figure steps beyond the staircase banister and into view.
I should’ve guessed. I should’ve known. Maybe deep down I did—because this time I don’t gasp when I see a dead woman walking toward Marsyas.
Luna Starwood.
Free of her shroud and trailing white linen, Luna is gaining ground much faster than I’d ever seen in life. Her usual careful advance isn’t supported by another human, and it’s been sped to a run. She ambles forward like a touched-down tornado, bobbing and weaving with such uncontrolled care that I expect her to fall into a shattered heap, wheels still spinning like a car overturned.
She hurtles toward Marsyas as if called.
From behind her comes a laugh—the second set of running footsteps, this one the amused jog of a kid playing keep-away with a puppy in the park. Trailing, but not helping. Not in the way Infinity always had. The shadow moves with a fluid confidence I don’t recognize until the figure casting it comes into view.
Dark hair, pale skin, long lines, and a stiff sort of self-indulgent pride reflected outward in a pout.
“Lavinia,” I breathe.
Evander curses softly. “Where’s Kaysa?”
It’s a crucial question. Where there’s one Blackgate, there’s another. Evander wasn’t wrong, these girls have been kept like offshore funds for the past decade, but they’ve also always, always been kept together.
I scan the garden, scrutinize every ragged topiary, the fountain and its stagnant water, the measure of the walled hedges on either side, paper-thin and yellowing at the edges. No one else.
Two Blackgates, two imposters, four dead witches.
Marsyas greets her true firstborn granddaughter not with praise for the magic she’s wielded to break Luna’s shroud and animate the woman, but with criticism.
“What took you so long? She was right upstairs.”
Lavinia raises a brow; though the movement is subtle, she truly seems surprised by the swift admonishment. She schools her expression. “Looking for Auden. I can’t wait to play.”
A chill runs up my spine.
The real Lavinia Blackgate hasn’t forgotten our animus childhood relationship.
Marsyas is completely nonplussed. “You’ll have your turn with him soon enough—with all of them soon enough.”
This is the second part of the plan.
Six on three. But the Blackgates have our dead on their side.
“Will four be enough?” Lavinia asks, gesturing to the corpses standing at attention. “Shall I retrieve the driver to give us an extra body?”
Marsyas is fussing over Luna, getting her situated with the three other zombies she’s raised—there’s no other way to put it. Fear spikes in my veins as Lavinia huffs out a deep sigh of annoyance at the lack of immediate answer. She turns on her heel for our exact location—on a mission to head straight through the tearoom, down the stairs to the kitchen and attached root cellar.
Fuck.
Evander hits the tile, flattening himself as best as he can. I, meanwhile, press myself against the wall, knees drawn to my chest. My heart pounds, sure Lavinia saw the ghost of our retreat in the glass as she turned to approach.
Over the pounding of my heart, I count her footsteps—futile in that I don’t know how many it takes to get to the door, only that she’s taken ten steps in our direction… when they stop.
“No, no, we need to keep our door open.” I frown. Door? “If we need a non-magical body, there are two waiters in the grass. You can make them fresh. Hurry, hurry, there’s not much time.”
Immediately, the pitter-patter of Lavinia’s return taps itself out against the tiles. I count twelve steps this time before there’s a pause on the tile. I motion to Evander, who follows along only to whisper, “Portal. Driver.”
A bolt of horror rips through me.
The driver is the door.
Marsyas didn’t kill him for the keys. She killed him for convenience. They used the driver’s body as a pass-through—a trapped door into, and potentially out of, Ursula’s lock-down spell.
Evander nods, disgust pooling in his own eyes at the recognition on my face.
Together we slowly return to our previous positions, peeking over the edge of the sill.
Lavinia is beside her grandmother now. She clutches something in her grip, and Marsyas’s hands are full. I can’t see the contents, but knowing what I do about Death magic, they likely have relics within their palms to amplify their power.
They’ve used the dead as a door.
They’ve shattered the victim’s shrouds.
They’re waking dead witches and using their power.
None of those things is normal, and yet they’ve done all of them at the same time.
A stone of fear drops in my gut. My mouth goes dry. Evander’s secret and the scale of what they can do crash into me at once.
“They have the Death master.”
Evander inhales sharply.
“That’s it, that’s how they can do these things,” I whisper.
Evander gives the slightest of nods but touches a hand to my wrist. A signal to quiet. A signal to watch.
I do.
As Lavinia arrives at Marsyas’s side, the old woman flashes the contents of her hands.
Bones, white as chalk. The box containing Cleopatra’s heart. The vile of Nostradamus’s blood.
The don’t just have the Death master. They have all the masters, save one.
“Ursula, my dear,” Marsyas addresses my grandmother’s body, “let’s rid Wren of her relic, shall we?”
“Which one’s Wren?” Lavinia asks, as Marsyas calls my grandmother to her like a fish on a line. Marsyas gestures to the turning, running form of Wren.
Lavinia pins her attention to Ruby, and her sunlight prison. “And what’s this one? Robin? Kestrel? Peregrine?”
“Ruby.”
“Well, that’s disappointing.”
“Not everyone has a vision,” Marsyas tuts, as if she wasn’t named after a flute player who got himself flayed alive by Apollo. “Come help me with dear Wren.”
The final relic— our relic—is still cupped in Wren’s hands.
If they can magically coerce Ursula into breaking that spell, they’ll hold all the master relics. All they’ll need is the ring around Evander’s neck and that will be that. The Blackgates will control the Four Lines.
And all we’ve fought for, all every Hegemony before us has fought for, will be over.
Evander’s hand on my wrist tightens. His eyes darken under heavy brows.
He doesn’t have to say anything to give this order, this direction.
Time to make our move.
But before we do, Evander does something I don’t expect.
He removes the chain. Holding the two pendants tight in his grip so they won’t clink, he drapes the necklace over my head in one smooth motion. I gape at him, but he mouths, Misdirection .
The Blackgates will expect Evander to have it. Either by pure educated deduction, or by magical means in manipulating bodies that once were people who saw Evander put the ring on the chain he wears around his neck.
Something gathers in my throat.
This is everything he’s ever wanted. And yet here and now Evander is entrusting me to keep it safe. To keep the Four Lines safe.
I want to hug him, but I can’t. So, with a minuscule nod I slip the ring, key, and chain beneath the collar of my T-shirt.
He drops to a crawl, and I follow him, moving under the window to the double doors. They’re diamond-paned like all the rest, and what I wouldn’t give for some solid wood in this very moment. Still, Evander and I have plenty of practice in conducting wordless conversations on the lacrosse pitch. We know exactly how to create an offensive attack the other side won’t see coming.
They’ve raised the dead, but we’ll defend the living if it’s the last thing we do.
He places a hand on the lever, ready to open the door as silently as possible. But before he does, he motions with a fingertip. Left. Again, I blink in recognition.
When he wants to be, Evander is as loud as a freight train, stomping and smashing and acting out everything he doesn’t tend to say with words. But when he needs to be, he’s as silent as a shadow. Two sides of the coin, Evander Hegemony.
One eye on the Blackgates as they turn their attention to Wren, I slip into motion behind him.
Evander pulls the lever, smooth and slow, and the catch releases from the doorjamb. With a second hand bracing the movement of the door, he opens it slowly, pauses, and peeks into the night.
I wait, my heart hammering in my ears as my body presses into the floor.
Evander shuffles into a silent, crouched walk, and I follow, slipping behind him and to the left as planned. We’re completely in the open, with only the shadows from the terrace above as cover, for about two yards until we make it to the destination Evander had planned: the wet bar erected for the dinner party.
He gets behind it safely, but the moment I arrive, I’m in trouble—there’s not enough room. There should be enough space for both of us to safely crouch unseen, but the Saturday night’s bartender is flat on his back beneath the bar, passed out in the same vegetative “quarantine” as every other member of the staff. There’s a pillar behind the bar and we can’t simply nudge him out of the way. Worse, his feet are sticking out beyond the bar, and will most certainly draw notice if we try to roll him.
Good thing we have a magical solution for that.
Reaching for my magic, I layer the bartender in the same spell I used on the dead driver that first night to keep Hex from noticing the body as I approached with the girls I now know as Ruby and Wren. It isn’t perfect, and the daylight will make it more easy to detect if anyone is looking, but it’s what I have. The moment the man is covered, I roll him, giving myself enough room to wiggle under the bar sideways.
Obscured and, it seems, unnoticed, my heart begins to slow, and my ears again rejoin the action happening only feet away.
The dead risen.
Three of the four relics in Marsyas’s hands.
And where the hell is the final Blackgate?
Or is it final Blackgates ? What if the girls’ mother, Athena, is here too? Four women looking for revenge upon, and control of, the very organization that took their shared love. Father, husband, son, heir—Marcos Blackgate.
I can’t make out anything from where I’m at, but I think Evander can, pressed against the opposite corner. I funnel all my attention on what I can pick up with my ears.
The merry tinkle of the fountain.
The rustle of wind in the trees in the rising day, pine, and birdcall deep within.
Then, something I don’t expect.
“Papa! Mama!”
Hex. Ada.
Running feet chase their panicked screams on that wind. Again, they yell.
“Where are you?” Hex’s words are desperate, breathless—spoken with lungs fueling a full-on sprint.
“Are you there?” Ada this time.
Running feet. Steps skidding to a tripping halt. “Papa—”
The word dies on Hex’s lips.
I don’t need to see it to know what’s happening—Blood magic from beyond the grave.
Evander curses so quietly only the ghosts and I can hear it.
Now we don’t just have a fight, we have a rescue mission.