Chapter 39
C HAPTER 39
AUDEN
A sick thud sets my teeth on edge as I crash to the garden tiles, the real Lavinia Blackgate and the reanimated body of my grandmother tangled together in a crushing slide. The terra-cotta shatters on impact, road rash pebbling our skin in a searing sting.
Over my head, a jagged shard of Elemental power shoots from Ursula’s outstretched arm on impact. I can’t follow the trajectory, but if it’s hit its mark and freed Wren, I only hope I’ve given Evander enough time to make a difference.
Our momentum fragments as Lavinia cuts Ursula loose. The body of my grandmother skates to the side, a puppet discarded, right into the base of a browning topiary. With full control of her limbs, Lavinia wedges herself on top of me, pinning my thrashing legs with her weight and leverage. She jams my hands together in a pinpoint over my head, her own charged rabbit’s foot relic smashed between her palm and mine, burning my skin like an iron left on high and steaming.
Trying not to scream, I bite down so hard I taste the copper and salt of blood on my tongue.
Lavinia looms over me, a small sound of appreciation at the pain she sees on my face, and my stubborn—albeit useless—determination to hide it. A necklace strung with what appears to be an actual human eyeball swings wildly over the hollow of my throat, the blurry proof of her heir’s X scar visible, red, raw, and angry in the background. The real Lavinia’s face presses in, ropes of dark hair shading it in a frame of shadow as her pale features contort into a vicious grin. She stinks of damp—mold, decay. Death.
“Auden Hegemony, I’ve missed that smug face of yours.”
I unhinge my jaw and form the best smile of my own that I can under the circumstances, trying to keep my pride intact. “You could’ve seen it whenever you liked. I’m always available for tea and polite conversation.”
“There’s the problem. I will never have anything polite to say to you.” That grin widens. “And I’m going to make sure you never have anything to say to me ever again.”
I can’t have her making declarations like that.
I buck and writhe beneath her, trying to slide her weight to no avail. Worse, Lavinia lowers her center of gravity, her torso folding into mine, upper body shifting so that one forearm and rabbit’s foot relic pin both my wrists now. To leverage it, her face is so close that the velvet swell of her cheekbone slides against mine, her breath hot on my neck. For a heartbeat, I think she might kiss me—or bite me, perhaps—but instead, she cuffs her freed hand against my throat.
Death magic surges through me, a smoldering, fetid tide, amplified by a pea-shaped talisman smashed between her palm and my skin. A feral shout tears from my throat as her magic dissolves the skin surrounding my windpipe like ash-black acid—
A screaming force plows into Lavinia.
Her hands lose purchase on my throat and wrists as she’s rolled roughly to the side in a blur of movement and cracking of tile. Gasping, I push myself onto my elbows, trying to skitter away, gain purchase, move .
Before me, already upright, is Lavinia with both hands windmilling forward at a figure holding her roughly by the hair.
Ruby.
Lavinia claws blindly, unable to right herself to see Ruby, let alone manage a direct hit. Ruby dislodges the hand stained black from where it had been tangled in the girl’s hair. A glint of metal flashes in that freed grip and then she’s stabbing at the closed fist of Lavinia Blackgate.
In the same moment I realize Ruby is slashing out with a butter knife, I understand why.
Ruby hits her mark, Lavinia’s balled grip flies open and a marble-sized bone fragment plinks onto the garden tile and rolls away.
“Auden!” Ruby yells, just as Lavinia kicks out, clubbing Ruby in the knees and sending them both rolling into the dinner table.
I scramble to my feet and dive for the bone shard. It wedges itself into a weedy gap that’s formed between the edge of the tiles and the fountain. I scrape my fingers in the crevice and pick it up. As soon as it’s between my thumb and forefinger, I glance up to see Lavinia barreling toward me, blood streaking like rainwater from shallow cuts spotting her hand.
Thinking fast, I call the murky water from the fountain’s basin and funnel it into a jet stream straight for Lavinia.
The high-powered spray blasts her back, and the Death witch lands in a heap, her skull dashing against the stone tiles with a crack. She moans but doesn’t rise as I tear my gaze away, wedge the shard beneath my heel, and stomp.
The bone fragment shatters to dust, a jet-black plume of magic rising from the snow-white powder like shimmering smoke.
“You asshole !” Lavinia shrieks, trying to sit up, blood streaming from a cut above her brow and into an eye. “That was my master!”
Lungs heaving, throat burning, and fear stinging my veins, a smile touches my lips.
My victory is short-lived.
“Auden! Watch out!” Winter shrieks.
My head snaps up.
At first I find Winter, struggling with Infinity to offload Luna, attacking them with the full force of two relics through Marsyas’s machinations. I can’t see Evander, but I hope he’s shielding Wren and attacking Marsyas at the same time. The Cerises are off the board to my left, the four of them in a wrestling match on the grass.
And that’s when I realize Winter’s eyes are drilled past me, toward the Cerises.
I shift my gaze to the other end of the garden battlefield and—
Kaysa Blackgate has finally appeared.
Charging in from the direction of the estate cemetery, a feverish grin splashed under wild eyes and flying hair.
Athena Blackgate is nowhere in sight—but the girl is not alone.
Instead of her mother, Kaysa is joined by a literal army of the dead.
Spilling over the crest of the hill to the manicured lawn are at least two dozen skeletons under her control. My father, aunt, and uncle are there, I’m sure of it. Probably Shadrack too.
Worse, Kaysa also somehow hooked a few spirits. A handful of ghosts lead the charge high above her head, soaring against the cloud-dark sky, lightning-fast bodies marked by gaping, black-hole mouths.
“Oh shit.”
The ghosts zoom ahead, diving like birds of prey.
They swarm the Cerises, directed by Kaysa or perhaps a sense of the living, to surround Hex and Ada, skipping their parents altogether. Hex is shielding his sister, who is dangerously still, his hands a blur of alternating protective shields and offensive countermoves as he fights them alone.
And then they find me.
Kaysa sends the closest pair plummeting straight at me. I toss up a shield—
The ghosts go straight through.
They flank and circle beneath my useless shield. I will my feet to run. If they’re going to follow me, they’re going to pay a visit to the woman who orchestrated this mess.
I toss back a bolt of fire, my aim haphazard as I barrel toward Marsyas—
Marsyas, who is short, but standing tall. Evander is at her feet, turning blue and kicking beneath a spell. Before her is Ursula, her long fingers cupping Wren’s shoulder. With one blitzing second, the magic prison around Wren evaporates.
My heart drops, as the girl blinks into consciousness, eyes wide and confusion twisting her features. Wren’s attention solidifies on the ghosts first, her lips dropping open as she shouts triumphantly, “I knew it!”
“Wren!” Ruby yells, hopping up from where she’d apparently been hiding behind the dinner table. She waves her hands like she’s calling down a plane. “Throw it!”
Wren snaps to her sister’s voice, her arm jutting back automatically at the order.
Marsyas lunges for Wren’s hands, but the girl is quick, dodging away. Her frozen feet stumble, numb, and she lists to the side, but not before she flings the Elemental relic over Marsyas’s silver head and toward Ruby. There’s a burst of movement as Lavinia rounds the table, bloodstained hands outstretched, angling for a fumble.
The chain and pendant with Morgana’s breath loops through the air, awkward and losing velocity with each second airborne. I aim a gust of wind at it but I’m too late, and it drops to the tiles in front of Ruby, instead of anywhere near her waiting hands.
The round ball at the end of the chain slides between the table and chair legs. Ruby shoots herself between the gap.
Then, it’s as if everything skids to a halt.
The swooping ghosts, the zombie witches, the movement of wind, and sun, and heart.
All of it is shrunken to the pinpoint of action as Ruby’s ash-stained hand closes around the final relic, and the silver ball disappears into her fist.
And then it’s in motion again.
Lavinia tackles Ruby’s ankles.
The unmistakable sizzle and stink of Death magic plumes acrid in the air as Lavinia hauls Ruby bodily out from beneath the table. Ruby bucks, slaps, fights, until Lavinia roughly dashes Ruby’s head against a chair so hard it falls over.
Triumphant, Lavinia hoists up the girl. Disoriented and weak on legs charred by Death magic, the skin festering with welts beneath shredded leggings, Ruby lists, a crimson stain blooming at her temple.
Yet the relic stays firmly in Ruby’s grip.
The real Lavinia Blackgate clamps a forearm around her captive’s middle, effectively pinning both arms and her torso against her own taller body. Her other hand cuffs Ruby’s throat. The girl’s eyes flutter open, immediately panicked, knowing, terrified.
Lavinia’s hand constricts around Ruby’s windpipe, and she gives a victorious Blackgate smile.
“Any of you move, and she’s dead.”