Page 54 of Whispers of Wisteria (The Garden of Eternal Flowers #5)

A voice whispered in the back of my head again. I couldn’t go to sleep now.

I needed a necromancer.

“Gloria,” Maria was saying, “we’re going with my plan. They’ll probably be back soon. You should wait—”

“We can’t do that.” Gloria’s refusal rang with desperation.

I looked at her.

Her pale wrists were coated with blood, an injury from her imprisonment, and her golden eyes flashed with barely restrained panic.

Her focus remained on Maria and Ada. “Please don’t ask,” she said.

My head still spun. It was taking me too long to recover.

I couldn’t be the one to help us. I couldn’t run away. Instead, I was going to have to trust a wolf.

I didn’t have the best history with wolves, although Matheus hadn’t murdered me. So there was that.

Gloria’s clenched fists were pressed into the ground by my side, and her tension mounted. It was slow, but I was finally able to brush my fingers across her hand.

The older woman looked at me so quickly that her hair fanned around her. “Bianca?”

Please shift.

I dropped my hand back to the floor.

“You’re okay!” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

Well, ‘okay’ was debatable.

Still, Gloria was shaking, and quite frankly, it was disturbing to see an adult—at least one older and more responsible than you—panicking. That didn’t tend to instill much confidence.

Still, she had to shift. She had to know this.

So why was she fighting it?

‘Because she can’t.’

The realization caused my breath to catch.

Mu was still there, so faint that I could barely discern him in the distant recesses of my thoughts. But at least, with this answer, came understanding. The looming darkness vanished.

The room spun, and the ground pulsated under me. My fingers burned where they’d become coated with Gloria’s blood.

I’d felt this energy before.

The Cole family. It smelled of burning flesh and left an iron taste in my mouth. The edges of it prickled at my skin like a low, humming current.

She’d been cursed, and they had something to do with it.

It made sense. It was clear that she had a particular aversion to them. But right now, that wasn’t important.

Could I break the spell?

Gloria jerked when I grabbed her left wrist. However, it took only a second for me to realize that I’d never be able to break it, not even at my fullest strength.

“Bianca, it won’t work,” Gloria sighed, placing her right hand over mine. “It’s blood magic. We’ve been trying to break it for a long time, but there’s nothing that can be done. I’m never going to be able to shift.”

Her words sounded like a spell, and Maria and Ada’s arguments faded at Gloria’s statement.

Blood magic.

My attention was pulled to the place where our skin touched. My fingers were stained and sticky with dark crimson.

“That’s why we need another plan.” Gloria looked back at the others. “I might be able to do something before they’re shifted, but once they’re changed I can’t stop them. I won’t be able to challenge them in the way that matters.”

She was already spiraling into excuses and apologies, but…

That didn’t make any sense.

Fae controlled witches and magic and stuff—that’s what everyone said. So why did it feel like something was blocking me?

It almost seemed like it was Gloria herself, even subconsciously.

How to get past that, though?

My breath caught.

We need a necromancer.

Not me personally—even though technically, I kind of did too—but Gloria.

‘That’s right.’ Mu sounded distant. ‘Do you remember?’

The full moon shone bright in the clear sky. The water was dark, and the salty air whispered across my face. A wave beat against the sand, crashing over the boulder where we’d sat.

Just the two of us, in this secret place of ours.

Shui—my private, silent assassin who hardly spoke to anyone—was complaining about Tu’s involvement in his personal affairs.

This was his most constant gripe.

“He doesn’t even realize,” Shui said bitterly, tossing a rock into the water. “He’s too busy lecturing everyone about ethics. He’s not seeing his weakness.”

I hummed and looked at the sky. It was late, and I was too tired to run interference between Tu and Shui tonight.

Not that Tu cared what Shui thought. He hardly paid attention to the world around him. The witch had his plans—his morality—and was slow to move on them.

It was my most constant annoyance.

But I would trust and endure.

“And what might his weakness be?” I asked vaguely.

It didn’t really matter. We all had them.

A witch could outsmart a fae, for example, if the witch planned well enough. And a fae, commanding intent, could win against a shifter.

I’d be surprised if Tu hadn’t considered this before.

No one was all-powerful.

“Blood,” Shui replied, frowning. “They bind their rituals in blood. They make it the core of the spell. He should be grateful for my benevolence.”

Blood.

Shui touched my arm. “Mu?”

How did I not see it before?

Necromancers ruled over blood, and the practice of necromancy itself pulled from the essence of a person. Other methods were acceptable, and items could be used, but the ideal was the purest, untouched part of a person: their blood.

Witches used blood all the time.

I laughed. “Are you going to tell him?”

“Let him figure it out himself,” Shui grunted, crossing his arms. His mask was pulled under his chin, so his self-satisfied smirk was clear. “I’ve told you because I like you the most. Are you going to tell Jin yours?”

“I don’t think so,” I repeated, then added in a whisper, “He needs to tell me his first.”

That was one I hadn’t figured out yet. What was Huo’s weakness against Jin?

I’d never seen the dragon beat him.

Until then, I’d keep the fae’s safe.

While I trusted my quintet, there were some things better not to keep an official record of. After all, without the threat of retribution to keep order, humans were quick to delve into chaos.

“So,” I asked, “are you going to tell me how it works?”

He glanced at me.

I leaned forward and asked, “How does a necromancer defeat a witch?”

I really wanted to know.

“Bianca?” Gloria’s fingers brushed over my forehead. “What’s—”

She gasped as I pushed myself to my knees.

There was a deepness in my movements, as if I were in water, and the pain fell from my awareness. I was surrounded by slowness and silence, and my thoughts were heavy.

I didn’t recognize this feeling. This wasn’t my magic.

Gloria was frowning at my face. “Her eyes are blue.”

“Well, duh.” Maria’s voice reverberated through my head. “They’re hazel.”

Gloria’s scowl deepened. “But Mu has always had green eyes.”

My exhaustion was distant, but still very real. I could feel it hovering over the edge of my awareness, but I moved past it.

I was sure it’d all catch up with me later.

I squeezed Gloria’s hand once more and looked at the lioness and hyena. I still couldn’t speak.

But she still seemed to get my meaning.

“I can’t shift,” Gloria responded. “I told you that.”

My attention moved to her hands—to the drying blood around her wrists. A sense of wrongness spread through me as the scent of rotten magic grew stronger, heavier, with every breath.

I sat back on my ankles and looked at my wrists. I was younger than Gloria. Where her paper-thin skin had easily torn, I barely had a rash.

However, the inside—where Jameson and then Albert had bitten me—was still bleeding slowly.

I couldn’t speak, and Gloria didn’t. I didn’t have any idea what might happen—I was running only on instinct and something I read in Brayden’s gory fairy book.

I was breathless—it had to work.

She was staring at me. Her blood had gotten on my neck and shoulder when I’d fallen against her, and I wiped it until a thin layer coated my palm.

Then I rubbed my wounds, gathering my own.

I pressed my hand to her forehead as a door slammed open.

We were almost caught. There was no time to think.

Shift.

A velvet darkness shuttered over my vision, and there was a bitter, salty taste in my mouth. Then, in the distance, was a gray light reaching towards me.

I went to it.

The blank canvas transformed into a red and black house, surrounded by trees, under a red-orange evening sky.

Leaning against the climbing ivy, her back to the brick, was Gloria.

She was younger here—a child. Her crimson hair was curled around her shoulders, and her light pink dress was torn and dirty. She was crying.

“Gloria,” I knelt in front of her. “You need to shift.”

She startled and hugged her knees as she stared at me. “Who are you?”

“I’m…” My name was on the tip of my tongue, but I paused. My skin was humming, and it didn’t seem right.

“I’m Mu,” I said.

Because Bianca, right now, was a nobody.

“You’re Mu?” Her eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. “But you’re a girl.”

A ripple of indignation passed over me. “So are you,” I pointed out.

I wanted to press further, but we didn’t have time for this. I continued my original purpose, “Never mind that, you need to shift now, okay?”

“But…” She looked at her hands. “I can’t. Mr. Cole did something to me. He said I’ll never be a wolf again.”

A chill passed through the air, followed by the heady weight of tainted magic. It wasn’t even the most potent spell in the grand scheme of things. Yet, it was binding. I could even see the thin black threads wrapped around Gloria’s small figure, holding her back.

But there was also a weakness. Primarily, if the witch used the victim’s blood.

“You can.” I knelt and waited for her to look at me. “You’re the one in charge of this spell. If you don’t think you can shift, you won’t be able to.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” She wiped at her eyes, smearing dirt across her cheek. “I’ve been trying, but it doesn’t work. I can’t break a witch’s curse.”

Internally, I groaned.

I was terrible with children to start, and this wasn’t an ideal situation. The two of us were in a memory, another realm, somewhere…

I wasn’t sure what was going on or whose power was in control right now. I was pretty much relying on guesswork, theory, and instinct.

But whatever, there was no time.

This left me no choice—I had to rely on hero-worship. Kids would believe anything.

“Just who do you think I am?” I asked, touching my chest. My smile felt feeble and lopsided, but I ventured on. “I can take care of the witchcraft. That’s nothing.”

But even if I broke the threads, which should be easy enough, this was still reliant on her.

She needed to believe.

“Gloria, you need to trust me. When I tell you, I need you to shift.”

“You’re Mu,” she said, tears drying.

“Yes, that’s right.” I felt like such an idiot.

“You can do anything.” She sat up and held her hands together.

My smile wavered, but hopefully she didn’t notice. “Sure.”

She didn’t believe in herself. But she believed in me, which still led her to believe in herself.

Whatever worked.

“Wanna try?” I asked.

I reached for the thickest thread. It was wrapped around her head, like a braided crown, but not very tightly. I was able to slip my fingers behind it.

Younger Gloria took in a deep breath, her tiny fists clenching at her sides.

I didn’t even wait for her to say, ‘Okay’, before I pulled.