Page 155 of Malcroix Bones Academy

She stepped closer, eyes blazing. “Where was it?” she snarled. “Where did you hide it while you lived here, girl? In the garden? In the walls? In one of the statues?”

I stared back at her, biting my tongue.

When she stepped closer, I tried to lean away, but still couldn’t move.

Her eyes blazed hotter. “I had to find out from thenewspapers,like everyone else. I had to discover the truth like some filthy commoner, all while watching them leer at your indecent photo on every newspaper and magazine!”

She held up the black crystal in her fist.

“But this solves everything,” she said coldly, leaning into my face. “I couldn’t touch you without it, or G.O.R.E. would’ve known in minutes. Without the stone, I didn’t dare harm either of you, or I would have ended up in a dungeon for the rest of my life. Thanks to your mother’s friends in the Praecuri, they watched everything I did. Especially here, at this house.”

I remembered what my mother had written about the necklace in her journal. I remembered what she’d told me, all those years ago, on the plane still making its way across the Atlantic.As long as you wear it, you’re a ghost, little rabbit.”

The necklace had kept me alive. My mother had used it to keep us hidden all those years, and it somehow kept me alive even afterwards. She was right, I didn’t know how it worked, or even what it did precisely. But I knew I owed it, and my mother, my life.

Ankha’s dark blue eyes narrowed to slits.

“I have a better use for you now, girl,” she retorted. “I’mgladnow, that I didn’t manage to kill you that first night atMalcroix, because now that I have the stone, I can actually put that polluted, half-Magical body of yours to real use.”

I could only stare back at first, uncomprehending.

Then my eyes fell to the painting of Morticia La Fey. That bad feeling in my gut abruptly worsened. Weren’t there transference rituals that used the ashes of the dead?

Even their blood? The blood of relatives?

The bodies of relatives?

Their bones? With their skulls prized most of all?

“Yes.” Ankha glared triumphantly at me. “I see that school’s managed to teach you something.” Her blue eyes shone in the candlelight, and their silvery sheen looked positively manic now. “Great-grandmother always said she’d come back. She needed a body with La Fey blood. I couldn’t complete the transfer without one, and I wasn’t about to use Doric.”

I blinked at her, confused. “Doric?”

“My son,” she said coldly. “But you needn’t concern yourself about him, girl. You’ll never meet him.”

I opened my mouth, closed it, but she barely seemed to notice.

Ankha had a son?

“I’d intended to use your mother’s body, of course,” she resumed coldly. Her eyes hardened as her gaze shifted inward. “She wasn’t supposed to die that day. EvenIhadn’t wanted that. I’d made arrangements, paying a good deal of gold to take custody of her body not long after she got captured. She was to be declared dead, one of the other prisoners would be blamed, and no one would be the wiser.”

Her cold stare hardened still more.

“…But someone got over-zealous. I never did find out who.”

I felt sick. I struggled against the magical snakes, but couldn’t break their hold.

If Ankha noticed, she didn’t seem concerned.

“After Clotide died, I even considered using cousin Racyth,” she said in a brusque voice. “But then the fool got himself killed.” Her eyes gleamed with candlelight. She looked at me greedily in the dress and gold bodice. “But you’ll do, girl. Even half-animal blood won’t get in the way of the magic of Morticia La Fey.”

I wanted to believe she wasn’t serious.

Or that I misunderstood what she intended.

But I knew I wasn’t misunderstanding her.

“What was that Bones pup doing with you?” Ankha barked suddenly. “It’s bad enough you had your hands all over Greythorne’s brat, but he was always a little off, that one, so I can’t say I was entirely surprised.” Her stare grew piercing. “But Caelum Bones is blood heir to the movement. He’s the claimed right hand of Malefic Bones himself. Why in thegodswould a mage of that importance, from the oldest and most revered family in Magique, go anywhere near you? Why would he betouchingyou?”