Chapter Forty-Two
There was magic in the air of Los Angeles. Too much magic.
Katherine could feel it lingering in Sunspot’s dining room, leaking in through every door, every window, every crack in the foundation.
It prickled against her skin in tiny shocks, each a spur to her anxiety.
She paced back and forth across the space, unable to sit still as she waited.
She wanted to run out, but she needed every advantage against Sylvia that she could get, and that meant getting Sylvia to meet her on her home turf.
Finally, the door opened.
Sylvia looked … normal. It was eerie, seeing her standing there in a T-shirt and leggings, her face flushed and her hairline dotted by beads of sweat. Like she’d just gotten back from a run.
There was no moment of shock or fear at seeing that Katherine had escaped her prison.
Sylvia simply walked past her, moving to the bar and surveying the bottles of alcohol that lined the wall.
She went for one of the most expensive ones there—a Glenfiddich that retailed for upwards of five hundred dollars.
Sylvia had bought it for Katherine’s twenty-fifth birthday celebration.
She’d decked out the room with fairy lights and disposable cameras and they’d drunk until half the bottle was gone.
The hangovers the next day had been bad enough that the rest had sat untouched for years.
“Want one?” Sylvia asked, her tone calm. She clearly had no fear about what Katherine might do. Not with the power running through her veins, crackling through the air like lightning.
Katherine nodded. She perched on a stool across from Sylvia, watching the delicate lines of her hands as she poured.
“God, it’s a scorcher out there,” Sylvia said, sliding Katherine the drink and then taking a long sip from her glass.
“How many?” Katherine’s voice was low, rough.
“I don’t know. A lot.”
Katherine’s hand tightened on her leg. She knew what the pulse she’d felt had been—power bouncing off the memory of the unsettled magic left in her body.
For anyone with more than just a memory, the pulse would have been catastrophic.
Kids whose unsettled power normally wouldn’t have bloomed until puberty were now unleashed.
Kids who had no hope of keeping their newfound magic in check.
Kids who would do things they had no control over. Kids who would never be the same.
Sylvia had created an army of accidental killers.
And a world of settled witches who would need to turn to her to figure out how to manage the chaos.
Katherine’s jaw clenched, her teeth grinding.
“You don’t have to hide it,” Sylvia said. “I know you’re mad.”
Katherine didn’t trust herself to respond.
Sylvia seemed significantly colder than when Katherine had last seen her.
Her speech was without affect, her normally lyrical voice flat.
Her body, on the contrary, was all energy.
She alternated between pacing back and forth and jiggling on the balls of her toes, her fingers tapping against her glass the whole time.
“I don’t see why, though,” Sylvia continued. “This will be good for those kids, in the long run. They’ll be able to take care of themselves. They’ll be strong. They’ll be powerful.”
Katherine reached for her drink. She took a sip.
“This’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to them.”
Katherine tightened her hand around the cup, feeling the cool glass on her palm. And then she smashed it on the bar.
Shards of glass and droplets of alcohol sprayed into the air. Katherine grabbed a thick piece of glass and stabbed it into her right hand. She yanked at her power, pulling at the dregs of it so she could—
Sylvia hit her so hard with a ball of magic that she slammed all the way into the back wall.
Katherine’s vision went black. When it returned, she saw Sylvia stalking toward her, drink still in her hand. She towered over Katherine, taking a sip before resting it on a nearby table and bending down to Katherine’s level.
“Did you really think that would work?” she taunted. “Did you think your half-assed little spells would be enough to take me down?”
Sylvia leaned in, her face inches away from Katherine’s. This close, Katherine could see that her eyes were bloodshot. Her skin was paper white, ice-blue veins bulging against her forehead. Katherine couldn’t tell if it was just her vision, but it seemed like Sylvia was almost swaying.
Sylvia placed a hand on Katherine’s leg, digging her fingers into the flesh. “You’re just a sad, lonely little girl,” Sylvia snarled. “I don’t know what I ever saw in you. You were never going to be strong enough to do what it takes to survive.”
Katherine stared past Sylvia, watching the bright lights reflecting through the windows over the bottles in the bar.
“Maybe you’re right,” Katherine said. “Maybe you are stronger than me.” She tightened her fist, letting the glass dig further into her palm.
“But there’s one difference between me and you.
” She pushed herself up further, so she could look directly in Sylvia’s eyes.
Sylvia’s grip tightened, magic starting to burn at the tips of her fingers, singeing Katherine’s skin.
“I learn from my mistakes.”
Katherine kicked at the same time she cast, dislodging Sylvia’s arm from her leg and rolling to the side just as her magical flare shot into the air above her, shooting through the roof of Sunspot.
And then a car blasted through the wall and slammed right into Sylvia’s chest.
Sylvia’s body flew backward across the room, hitting the bar with a loud crack. Fiona whooped as she slid out of the driver’s seat. “God, that was just as cool as I imagined it’d be.”
Katherine tried to laugh, but she was too out of breath for much sound to come out.
Fiona heard the attempt and rushed to her, helping her off the floor.
They looked over at Sylvia, who was slumped against the bar.
Her body had fallen to the floor in a crumpled heap, blood from a cut on her temple running over her closed eyes.
Katherine couldn’t tell if she was still breathing.
Katherine brushed a piece of drywall out of her hair. “What happened to ‘I promise I’ll stay in the car, Katherine’?”
Fiona gave a faux innocent shrug. “Oops.”
Katherine rolled her eyes. She’d realized, when she was downstairs staring at her friends and rescuers, that they were right—she couldn’t do this alone. Even if she’d been at her full magical strength, Sylvia was going to be too much for her.
But despite that acknowledgment, Katherine was still Katherine, and she’d made her friends promise to help in a way that kept them as far from the actual action as possible.
Tess was off clearing any potential collateral damage out of the nearby buildings—and, because Katherine was in a benevolent mood, getting Byron out of harm’s way as well.
(A decision she was already regretting.) Fiona, who had come up with the brilliant idea to use her car as a battering ram, was supposed to live out her Grand Theft Auto dreams and then get the fuck out.
The twinkle in her friend’s eyes when she agreed to that should’ve been Katherine’s first clue that this would happen.
“Fine, you can stay,” Katherine said to Fiona. “But promise you’ll stick behind me.”
“Aye aye, captain.”
The damn twinkle was there again, but Katherine knew there was nothing for it. She kept the piece of glass angled in her hand as she walked toward Sylvia. Fiona, for her part, did at least stay a few steps behind her, pulling her caster into her hand.
Katherine was a foot away by the time she was able to spot the low rise and fall of Sylvia’s chest. Relief squared off against regret.
She heard the soft hum of a knife cutting into skin. Katherine looked at Fiona, raising an eyebrow in question.
“Take however much you need,” Fiona said. “Do your body-locking spell and make her walk down to the cell. We can throw her in there until we’re able to get the big guns.”
Katherine shook her head, pushing away Fiona’s palm. “It won’t work,” she said. “The wards in there couldn’t hold unsettled magic. We have to…”
But Katherine couldn’t get the words out. The faces of the three deaths she already had on her conscience danced in her mind’s eye. Adding another to that list—adding Sylvia to that list—would put Katherine in a hole no amount of therapy could get her out of.
She shouldn’t care. Sylvia had done awful things. She wasn’t a victim. She had lied, fought, killed.
But staring at her lying on the floor, her breathing shallow, Katherine couldn’t help but pity her.
She knelt down, pressing her finger against Sylvia’s wrist to feel her thready pulse. Fiona rested a hand on her shoulder.
“You don’t have to do this,” Fiona said.
“Who else will?”
“Noctis. The cops. She’s not looking too hot—maybe she’ll kick it herself. There are options here, Katherine. You don’t have to make yourself a murderer.”
“I’m already a murderer.”
Fiona huffed. “Please don’t make me give the not-everything-is-your-fault speech again. My vocal cords are exhausted.”
Fiona knelt down beside Katherine, clasping their hands together. “Just do a spell to knock her out and wait for the authorities to come. You don’t have to keep cutting out pieces of yourself to solve every problem.”
Katherine paused a moment. Her mind was going in a million directions, memories of all the years she and Sylvia had spent together running side by side with the betrayal of the last few weeks.
Sylvia had broken the law. Broken Katherine’s trust. Broken the fundamental thing in her that believed people could still be good.
Part of Katherine wanted to kill her. Wanted that further bit of proof that every soul was a black, rotted thing.
Part of her wanted to cry.
That part could wait.
She cut into her palm and raised her hand. She wouldn’t kill Sylvia. She would knock her out and wait for the authorities to come and punish her through the proper channels.