Page 18

Chapter

Seventeen

O ff .

Like a football on a tee at the thirty-five-yard line. Laces out.

“Why? No, no, no.” Words kept falling out of my mouth. I was so shocked I couldn’t make them stop.

Desmond’s head swiveled to the left in the direction of Carolina and Aldrich.

I’d left them vulnerable. Not that they didn’t deserve it, but—I stared down at Gordon’s severed head—not like that. I couldn’t be responsible for that.

There was no time to chant. I had to do something. Fast.

The charm Margaux gave me kicked in, and her face suddenly popped up, blocking my vision. I forced the vision to minimize and threw power behind the word, “ ?Levántate! ”

My body convulsed as magic pulsed out of me.

Gordon Lu’s dead body was instantly expelled from the ground. I sent a silent supplication to the goddesses that Carolina’s live one had done the same.

Aldrich’s predicament was more complicated. I had to have him in my line of sight to counteract his spell, and I wasn’t stepping off this concrete step. Not until I had Bronwyn and Margaux, and certainly not for a man who’d tried to kill me.

Besides, the spells I cast on them both would wear off in an hour. If Carolina got him out of here, he’d live. I couldn’t worry about them anymore. She’d chosen her path and he his.

I flew through the doorway, mindful of any spells. There wasn’t anything in the front room, but when I tried to enter the kitchen, the dregs of one hung in the atmosphere.

“Fennel, what do you think? It’s either broken or a trap. I can’t tell which.”

He sauntered up to the edges of the spell, sleek black tail straight out, ears up. His eyes lit green for a beat then returned to their normal gold.

“ Meow .” He waltzed into the kitchen, head high, and leapt onto the counter by the sink. Swiped his tail in a “come on in” sort of way.

“Cecil, be careful. Let Fennel take the lead in here since he?—”

I’d been about to say, “since he isn’t carrying gods know how many explosives in a backpack,” when pain streaked across my chest, throttling my next words.

Margaux was awake, and she was in terrible pain. I shouldn’t have been able to feel it, but she’d conveyed the emotion behind it so vividly, my body had been shocked into thinking I could.

“That way.” I pointed in the direction of the room I was certain held the witches. I recognized it from when I’d been held there. My stalker’s dried blood still decorated the walls.

Fennel paused in front of the doorway. Again, his eyes greened then returned to normal.

He nodded, and I rushed inside.

“I knew you’d make it,” Margaux rasped.

The witches were lying on the bare floor in the small room. Margaux’s face was bloodied and swollen. Bronwyn looked even worse. Her entire body appeared to be one big, inflamed bruise.

“Your sacrifice wasn’t necessary, Margaux. It didn’t help me find you one bit.” I bent over Bronwyn, felt for a pulse. It was strong. Thank the goddesses. “How do we wake her up?”

“Don’t know.” Margaux coughed, winced. “I’m sorry, Betty. I’m used to doing things alone. I was wrong not to include you in my plan.”

“Yeah, well, we can hug it out later.” I brushed a lock of Bronwyn’s hair away from her face. “What do I do to help her?”

“If I knew, I’d have done it already.” She tried to sit up.

Cecil brought her a pain charm. Maybe I should’ve had him start crafting a personalized healing charm for her when she was at the house, but how was I supposed to know she’d go rogue and get herself beaten up?

I shook Bronwyn. “Come on, wake up.”

“I think the Weret-hekau Maleficium might have the antidote spell. Desmond asked me about it before knocking me out.”

“I know. I was there, remember?” I whipped the charm she’d given me over my head and shoved it into the back pocket not occupied by the blade. Margaux’s point-of-view minimized to the size of a stamp then disappeared.

Outside the house, a woman screamed. It was abruptly cut short.

“Carolina,” Margaux said. She sounded sad.

My urgency kicked into high gear. “I can’t carry both of you out of here—hell, I don’t know if I can even carry one of you. I might be able to use my levitate spell to carry Bronwyn, but I’d have to concentrate on it until I get her to the car and that leaves me open to attack by whatever the hell Desmond has morphed into.”

“It’s the book,” Margaux said. “It’s cursed him.”

“No shit.” I started to run my hand through my hair, remembered I’d pulled it into a ponytail, and stopped myself halfway. “To hell with it. No more indecision. I’m doing it. Cecil, get ready to defend us. Fennel, come help.”

“I can help, too.” Margaux rolled over and feebly tried to push herself up.

Fennel sat beside her and swished his tail .

“Yeah, right. If you can walk, that’ll be the biggest help. Cecil, get over here. We need to talk strategy.” I glanced at the doorway.

The gnome was gone.

Oh no.

“He’s going to kill us, isn’t he?” I said to Fennel, who replied with a shrug and another swish.

Margaux replied, “Desmond? It certainly appears he’s going to try.”

I didn’t bother correcting her. It was an understandable mistake. So many people were trying to kill us right now.

“ Levántate ,” I said.

Nothing happened. The magic that had been thrumming beneath my skin had gone silent.

“Shitty, shitty timing, magic.” I tried to pick up Bronwyn, but her body was stiff and unyielding and though she wasn’t big by any stretch, dead weight was dead weight.

Margaux had finally managed to rise to her elbows. “What’s wrong?”

“The same thing as always—my magic.” I began to chant.

“Stop that,” Margaux said, in that imperious, commanding tone that hit me like nails on a chalkboard.

“Don’t interrupt. We have to get her out of?—”

“ You are an earth elemental ,” she yelled. “Your birth was a miracle of magic, and your power is unstoppable. Why are you reverting to taught magic again? That’s a coward’s way out. Fight for your power.”

“I don’t have time to fight all the things I need to and fight the soil, too. There’s no time.”

“Don’t fight against the soil, fight with it. Why didn’t you take down Desmond before coming in here?”

“You didn’t see him. His eyes went all black, and he did this Taylor Swift stage elevator thing.” I waved my hands around to illustrate what I meant. “He freaking rose from the soil like a, like a… ”

“Like an earth elemental ?” She shot me a look of disgust. “And what did you do? Run?”

“Yeah.” I scowled. “Into the house. You know, to save your ass.”

“Doing a fine job of it,” she muttered.

There was no time, and she kept throwing attitude at me, and I was too distracted to help Bronwyn, and Carolina had gone disturbingly quiet, and Cecil was probably slapping TNT spells on every wall in the house, and Desmond had to be incoming, and I’d had all I could take from this damned woman.

“Godsdamn it, I’m trying to save our lives!”

“Your mother was an earth witch so powerful other witches begged her to mentor them, including that fool outside. Your abuela was the same. Both Lila and Lulu poured everything they knew into you, and this is what you’re doing with it?”

“To hell with you, Margaux. I don’t need a fucking Ted Talk right now.”

“Goddess, Betty, you ran to the house from the soil—your element. You ran from the thing that makes you strong.”

“Only after he kicked Gordon Lu’s head off. Off . Margaux, you didn’t see it.”

“Gordon, Carolina, and Aldrich made their choices,” she said, but the look in her eyes told me the news had cut deep. “You need to make yours.”

“I am. I’m trying to chant, and you keep interrupting me.”

“Are you really this stupid?”

I wanted her to shut her stupid mouth. I wanted to lash out at her with words and fists and magic. My fingers itched to wrap around her throat and choke her silent.

Because she was right.

“Is Desmond the only earth witch here?” she asked, her voice softer now. “No. He’s not. He’s lazy and craven, Betty. Two things you’ve never been.”

Bronwyn made a soft, snuffling sound. Fennel sat down beside her, his tail wrapped around her wrist, green eyes glowing gold .

“Lila told me once that she was considered the most powerful earth witch in the Lennox lineage, which very likely made her the most powerful earth witch in this world. And yet, she believed your power had eclipsed hers when you were barely a child. That when you finally found your soil and gave yourself fully to it, you would do things she’d only dreamed possible.”

Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. “She was just a proud mom.”

“Yes.” Margaux slid all the way back to the floor, her strength gone. “A proud mom who understood her daughter’s worth.”

“ Betty, it’s lonely out here. ” Desmond’s voice, deep and unhinged, slithered through the small house. “ Come outside and play with me.”

“Eww. Why’d he’d have to make it so weird?” I asked, sniffling.

“He’s always been weird,” she replied. “Creepy little bastard.”

“Hearing you call Desmond Mace a creepy little bastard might actually be the most surreal part of all of this,” I said.

“Truth’s the truth,” she murmured.

“ Now I see why you and Mom got along.”

“I loved her,” she said simply. “She was my friend. As you well know, I don’t have many.”

“ Betty, come out here. I won’t hurt you .” Desmond laughed. and the house shuddered.

In the moonlight streaming through the window, I saw her eyes slide shut. “He doesn’t own this property. This isn’t his soil. As far as I know, he only chose this spot because he knew you’d been attacked here and assumed it would be the last place you’d look.”

“What? How did he know that?”

She smiled. “I may have told him.”

“Margaux, what the hell? I wouldn’t have found this place on my own.”

“And yet you did.”

“With help .”

“Which you found. ”

I threw up my hands. “When did you do all this? You were knocked out.”

Her eyes opened a crack. “Not the whole time. And when I fully awoke, the spell had been broken—by Desmond or maybe I hadn’t performed it properly, I don’t know. It’s taken me all this time to renew it. My strength is … not good.” She closed them again.

“ If I have to come in there and drag you out, I won’t leave anyone else alive ,” Desmond yelled.

“Don’t you dare die on me, Margaux.” I dropped my tote on the floor beside her still form. “Fennel, stay with them for as long as you can, but don’t get caught. And don’t let Cecil get caught, either.”

“ Meow ?”

We might not speak the same language, but I knew exactly what he was asking. “Margaux’s right. I have to face him. It’s the only way we’re getting out of here.”

I left the room and slogged my way to the living room through an atmosphere as thick as mud. My knees were watery, and my hands shook. I’d been scared for my life before—recently, in fact—but I never got used to it.

Margaux’s words spun through my head. “A proud mom who understood her daughter’s worth.”

The front door hung by a single hinge. I stared through the crooked doorway and into the overgrown yard and the fields surrounding the house. Everything was withered and dry and dead.

But the soil beneath it was alive. It didn’t belong to Desmond or me, which meant we’d be on equal footing with it.

I blew out a nervous breath and peered out—right, front, left.

The handle of the dagger in my back pocket caught on the splintered frame, and I jerked back, thinking it was someone grabbing me.

A little on edge?

I slid the weapon from my pocket and flipped it over in my hand. A Mara blade, or “dagger of confusion.” The weapon was supposedly powered by the death of a fifteenth-century monk, though Beau thought otherwise. Because they were so common in the paranormal world, he believed the daggers to be spelled by mages, not a long-dead monk. Either way, the blade confused blood cells, brain waves, and the spirit itself. With the right spell, it also disrupted magic.

Plus, it was sharp as hell and capable of doing as much damage as any other knife.

The rat alpha’s words popped into my head. “The three witches tried to put him in the trunk, but none had the strength to lift him. They were only able to drag him into the back seat. One of them wielded a blade.”

Was this the blade the witches had used on Ronan?

I wrapped my hand around the hilt and pictured driving it straight into Desmond’s chest. Carolina’s. Aldrich’s.

Gordon’s.

An emotion I didn’t understand gripped me. It was like rage and sorrow crammed into a little schadenfreude wrapper. Gordon was dead. He’d chosen a path that had brought him to this, sure, but it didn’t feel that simple.

What it felt was senseless.

The wind kicked up, blowing dust through the open doorway. It hit me with a sizzle, instantly reigniting my magic. It hadn’t dissipated, hadn’t died—it had been … banked, like a slow-burning campfire.

I held up the blade, stared at the gleaming edge. Magic buzzed through the thing, sending sparks of heat into my palm.

Wild. I’d powered it with my magic. Now I could sink this dagger into Desmond and watch his magic crumble. It would be easy to kill him. One flick of my wrist, and it would be over. I wouldn’t even have to leave the safety of the front step.

Safety of the front step? When had a slab of concrete become safer to me than my element?

“ Betty, where are you? ” He sounded close, but Margaux’s voice in my head sounded even closer.

“…you ran to the house from the soil—your element. You ran from the thing that makes you strong. ”

With a shake of my head for the possibly stupid decision I was making, I drove the Mara blade into the wall and twisted hard, breaking it off at the hilt. Magic dispersed in a puff of gray smoke, and the thing became nothing more than a plain old, busted knife.

Beau was right. Definitely mage magic.

Another gust blew into the house, this one carrying even more dust. I bit my lip against the urge to scream as the red-hot grains dug into my flesh before vaporizing and being absorbed. Overheated blood flowed through me, the magic so hot I traced its progress through my veins and knew the instant it hit my heart.

I belonged to my element, and it belonged to me. There was no need to keep my feet on the step, no need to brandish a spelled weapon. The soil wanted me to use it. It was angry about the foul magic and bloodshed Desmond had brought to it—raging.

“There will be more carnage,” I warned it. “He can’t be allowed to walk away from this.”

The wind whipped soil—and power—into me, and I spared a second to wonder if Gordon’s spirit were close, helping it. He’d been an air witch, after all. A weak one, but perhaps that mattered less in the next realm.

“ There you are. Decided to stop hiding? ”

Desmond’s clothes were soaked with blood. I hoped it was only Gordon’s, but there was simply no way that could be true.

No wonder the soil was angry.

“Yes,” I replied. “I’ve decided to stop hiding.”

“ Good .” His wide, weird smile pinched into a narrow line.

I stepped off the front step and into the dirt, my bare foot landing beside Gordon’s head. Revulsion moved through me in a wave, and I had to choke back the urge to throw up.

“Desmond?” I cleared my throat. “Why’d you kill your coven? You went to so much effort to take it from Margaux only to kill your loyalists. I don’t understand.”

“ Witches are a dime a dozen. I’ll find more. Besides, why would I want the loyalty of people willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder? They served their purpose, but I could never trust them, just like the coven mother couldn’t . Not that it matters,” he said, his voice back to normal. “Once I lost the wolf, it was over for me in La Paloma. If Margaux doesn’t take me out, the wolf alpha will.”

“ Lost the wolf?” My stomach squeezed. “Ronan Pallás?”

“Yeah. Like you don’t know.”

“I thought Alpha Floyd ordered the coven to get rid of him. Isn’t that the deal you made? The cursed grimoire for the life of his son?”

“Yeah. You and my bitch wife sure ruined that , didn’t you ?” His voice was all over the place now. Was he losing control? I couldn’t decide if that was a good or bad thing.

“Don’t blame Maya. The only thing she’s guilty of is believing you weren’t the bag of horseshit I’ve always known you were.”

He ignored the insult. “That being said, you’re also the only one who can help me.”

“Help you, how?” I was a little surprised he was talking so much. Desmond hadn’t seemed like the monologuing type.

“Alpha Pallás might be inclined to overlook allowing his son to get away if I offer up the corpse of his worst enemy as a replacement.”

Like I didn’t see that one coming.

Bending down to scoop up a handful of dirt would be like firing the first shot in a gunfight, but this was as good a time as any to do it. Desmond was full of woe for himself and whatever power he’d been using appeared to have dimmed again—at least in his voice.

“Don’t move,” he said.

I froze. What the hell? Was the guy a mind reader or was I projecting my thoughts?

The answer was neither. Desmond wasn’t looking at me. He was staring into the overgrown alfalfa field to his right.

This was my opportunity, and I wasn’t about to squander it. I bent over, intending to grab a handful of earth, when I noticed that I’d already sunk into the ground up to my ankles .

Margaux’s voice echoed inside the walls of my head. “ Don’t fight against the soil, fight with it. ”

“Who’s out there?” Desmond called into the knee-high grass. He wasn’t looking at me anymore. He truly didn’t consider me a threat.

Good.

I didn’t chant, nor did I use a power word or a spell. I didn’t grab a magic-imbued blade or a potion or a charm. I didn’t call out to Cecil or Fennel for help.

Instead, I called to my element from a place buried so deep inside myself I hadn’t known it existed.

And it answered.