Page 64

Brenda’s eyes gleam at me, and I can’t believe what she’s saying.

She’s been lost in her own world with her journal since we stepped out of the memory, and I don’t get it.

Everything feels even more hopeless. I put so much faith into seeing this through for my mom, that this memory-walk would give me all the answers I needed and I could then hand that info over to the authorities or whatever. But instead I feel hollow and drained.

“You want me to do the Ritual,” I say flatly. “To volunteer to be a cornerstone, because some prophecy says my family line is the only key to fixing it?”

“No!” Brenda gasps. “I mean yes, do the Ritual, but not—that’s not what I mean, and I can do it, too, I want to—”

“Okay, so even more pointless, the two of us sacrificing ourselves to buy Los Angeles a few more years of peace—that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard in my life .

” I bite out the last few words. Mom worked so hard on this project, and I only have a fraction of her work left and just this memory to get started.

I think I can rewrite the Ritual to actually solve the mana surges, but that could take years.

“We just learned that the Ritual doesn’t work ,” I say. We need to start over. This is going to be a monstrous undertaking, and I’ve barely started to think what kind of focus objects we’d need. I want to do away with human cornerstones altogether—so we’d need to charge focus objects for forever.

I’m so tired. I can barely think right now, I feel so numb. Seeing Mom again was like having my heart starting to heal and then ripped open afresh, like losing her all over again.

I can’t plan anything, I can’t do anything. I just want to go home.

“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” Brenda says, insistent. “We can save the world! All we have to do—”

“No,” I say, clutching the supplies bag to my chest. “Don’t you get it?

If I participate, I’ll die for nothing .

In a few years, they’ll get another bunch of suckers to do the same thing, and they’ll die, and the world will continue to get worse!

It isn’t going to change!” I throw my hands up in the air in frustration.

Brenda stares at me. Her cheeks are bright red and her eyes are shining, big tears welling up. “It is changing, though! Every day. Every day people are—people are fighting to make it better.”

I shake my head. “It’s just getting worse. People—people are selfish and cruel and they can’t be trusted. You said it yourself, the problems in your world, they’re all caused by people, same as mine. Even if we fight to change it, it’s all stacked against us.”

Brenda reaches for me, hands closing over my own.

I can’t tell if it’s a gesture of comfort, because it feels like she’s trying to convince me that she’s right, and she isn’t listening to me at all.

What I need is time—to dismantle the current spell matrix and rewrite it anew, and maybe, just maybe, with enough work, I can replicate what Mom was intending to do.

“I believe in you,” Brenda says. “I believe in us. You aren’t going to do this alone, I’m right here,” she says with a soft smile. “Let me help you. We can do it together.” She squeezes my hands.

The memory of Jìngyi begging her love not to sacrifice herself is still fresh in my mind. If Clarabelle had just done her spell as intended, if Jìngyi hadn’t followed her—if their great love didn’t exist in the first place—none of this would have ever happened.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” I say. “Look, I appreciate you, but you don’t get it. You’re not from here—”

Brenda takes a step back and raises her eyebrows at me. “So you think I can’t do the Ritual because I’m not a proper mage or whatever?”

“No,” I cry out. “I mean you—” I think about the first time I saw Brenda, all bright eyes and hope and her multipoint plan.

I can feel every emotion I’ve pressed down deep into my core start to burst out of me in trickles and then in torrents.

“You don’t get it. My entire life, everyone has always talked about what an honor it is to be a cornerstone, and the Chosen One would save us all, it was always my mom—I thought she figured it all out, and this memory would show us how , but it just gave us more proof of how everything is broken! ”

I can’t stop now, and I’m shaking as the words keep coming in an angry flood.

“You see this incredible future all ready for you; you have this whole plan mapped out for college and everything is always sunshine and roses for you!” I’m shaking, anger rushing through my body. “I’m not you, Brenda. I can’t just make big plans and expect them to work.”

I stopped having a future years ago. And it’s all I can do now to live up to Mom’s legacy.

“I don’t just expect my plans to work.” Brenda shakes her head indignantly. “It’s about believing in them, and I thought you—you liked my plans and liked that about me.”

“Plans don’t always work,” I say quietly. “Look what happened to my mom.”

“If we do it right,” Brenda says slowly, “the prophecy could come true—and it would be the last Ritual.”

My mouth falls open. I’d expected this from strangers on the street, people who didn’t know me at all, people who didn’t—who didn’t care about me , the person.

I didn’t expect this from someone I’d just started to trust, someone who I felt was fitting into a place in my life in a way I never expected.

I guess it was too good to be true. I give Brenda a bitter look. “I thought you were different, you know. I thought you liked me for who I was, not just—a tool to get something done.”

Brenda’s eyes flash, hot and angry. “That’s not what I—” she scoffs. “You don’t even want to try?”

“It’s not going to work!” I exclaim. “I’m so tired of everyone giving me these impossible expectations all the time! I don’t want it, I never wanted it, and I can’t do it!” My heart pounds, blood thundering in my ears. “If you believe that I should, then maybe you should just go!”

“Maybe I should !” Brenda huffs, her cheeks aflame.

She doesn’t apologize, doesn’t take back anything she’s said about the prophecy or me or the Ritual—she just walks away into the night without looking back. My heart feels like it’s being squeezed into a million pieces, shattering on the floor.

I’m so angry: at Mom for dying; at Dad for letting her go; at the council; at Jìngyi and Clarabelle; at everyone who’s ever expected anything of me; at Brenda for saying she understood when she really doesn’t.

I don’t want to do something that doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t feel like enough, to buy time—I’d want my life to count for more than that.

I can’t believe she doesn’t understand this.

Brenda takes a few steps and pauses under a streetlamp. I think about going after her. But I can’t believe she’s refusing to see my point.

I let her see me be vulnerable, be weak, and I trusted her with my feelings.

I should have known better.

There’s no one in the world who can give you what you want. You have to take it. There’s no one in the world that’s going to care about you the way you want or need. And it’s better not to try because you’re just going to get hurt.

Brenda’s hair flutters in the wind, and she looks tense as she’s trying to figure out what she’s doing next.

I watch her back like I’m memorizing it, like I’m seeing it for the last time.

She breaks into a run now, her feet propelling her into the night, and then she draws a symbol into the air and disappears in a little pop .

Well.

She did say she and her friends have tried some basic spells so far, but hearing it is one thing, and seeing it confirmed is another. Brenda isn’t just learning basic spells; she’s using advanced control to do intermediate spells without a runebook.

There’s been a part of me that was thrilled about showing her my world, that wide-eyed awed look she gave me when she first learned about magic.

Now she doesn’t need me anymore.

Jìngyi’s heartbreak at losing her beloved was nothing like this, though. There were end-of-the-world circumstances out of their control.

This is just Brenda and I falling apart.