I don’t know what those are.
I tamp down on the surge of impatience that rolls through me. She’s just a little girl, after all. How can she be expected to understand what she sees?
They’re pictures, sweetheart, just like you said. I concentrate really hard on forming an image of my marks in my head—the symbols of Isis and the sebas that decorate the different parts of my body. Do any of the pictures look like these? I ask her.
For long seconds she doesn’t answer and my fear grows. Shelby!
I’m here. I’m looking. More silence, then, Yes, Xandra! Yes! There are a bunch of symbols like that on the wall across from me. Only they’re bigger and there are more of them. She must be concentrating really hard, because suddenly a picture comes back to me—one of midnight blue walls covered in hieroglyphics in varying shades of gold and silver.
My first good look at them has the tablet tumbling from my suddenly lax fingers and crashing to the hardwood floor. I stare blindly at it for long seconds as more and more images bombard my brain. Some of them come from Shelby, but the majority come from my own memory.
I know that room. I know that room. I. Know. That. Room.
I clutch at the wall for support as everything realigns in my head, all the jagged puzzle pieces shaping and reshaping and fitting together in a whole different way.
Close doesn’t count.
Curly black hair.
Green eyes.
Witch.
Blood magic.
Smells like chewing gum.
Close doesn’t count.
The words echo in my head, the cruel female voice that I first heard say them replaced by another tone. One that’s just as hard, but less psychotic sounding.
Close only counts in horseshoes.
No prizes for close.
Close doesn’t count.
No, dear goddess, no.
I start to run then, flying down the two flights of stairs and into the kitchen. The Peg-Board near the garage door has a bunch of keys on it and I grab for my dad’s. Then I’m out the door and flying through the huge garage, looking for the car that my dad keeps exclusively for use on the ranch.
I climb into it, fumbling the keys into the ignition before I’ve even got the door closed.
I’m in a panic now, so freaked out that I barely remember to open the garage before putting the car in reverse and backing out.
Then I’m speeding down the ranch road that will let me out onto the main highway in about seven minutes.
It can’t be. It can’t be. It can’t be.
The words run through my head like a mantra, one that picks up speed and urgency with every repetition. I’m flooring the gas pedal, which is making the SUV bounce like hell over the rugged dirt road. But I barely feel the bumps. I’m too caught up in my fear that I’ll be wrong about all this—and my absolute terror that I might be right.
I’m so lost in thought that I nearly plow straight onto the highway without looking. At the last minute I slam on my brakes, and narrowly avoid being creamed by an eighteen-wheeler blasting past.
Heart in my throat, I tell myself to concentrate. To slow down. But in only a couple of minutes I’m back up to ninety miles an hour. Right now the only thing that matters is getting there. Finding out the truth.
Please, goddess, let me be wrong. It can’t be her. It just can’t be.
And yet, there’s a part of me that already knows it is. The sorrow is a crushing weight on my chest . . . and on my soul.
I press down harder on the gas pedal. The SUV growls, but the needle on the speedometer continues to climb.
I’m about halfway to Ipswitch when a blinding surge of heat flashes through me, the power of it slamming me back against the car seat so hard that I give myself a headache. The blast of heat is followed almost immediately by the shakes—a precursor to the convulsions I can already feel building at the base of my spine.
Horror works its way through me, along with the insidious knowledge that I’m too late. Someone’s already dead—either Shelby or the man being tortured in the next room. I’m so scared, so empty, that I don’t even try to reach out to Shelby, to connect. If she’s dead—if I didn’t make it in time—I don’t want to know. Not yet.
The first convulsion hits me and I start to seize—which is pretty much the worst thing that can happen when I’m speeding down a dark, winding road in the middle of the night. But I can’t stop. One person might be dead, but that means that one person is still alive. I can’t let her kill again. I can’t fail again. I just can’t.
Using sheer will alone, I battle back the convulsions. Flat-out refuse to give in to them. It’s a million times more painful than seizing on my kitchen floor was—and that was no picnic—but somehow I manage to do it. Flames ripple under my skin, but they never actually break out, and slowly, torturously, I get them—and everything else ripping through my body—under control.
At least until the compulsion hits. It wraps itself around me, pulling me forward. Faster, faster. Pulling me into the abyss of darkness that waits for me at the end of this rabbit hole to hell that I’ve fallen into.
Finally, I’m there. I pull into the driveway and stumble out of the car, punch-drunk on the powerful vibes that fill the air all around me. I’m so wrapped-up in getting into the house, I don’t even bother to close the SUV’s door behind me before I’m lurching up the front walkway.
The closer I get, the more the power hums over me, through me. The compulsion is a live wire now, shocking me with every step, every breath, I take.
I stumble on a rock, fall flat against the door with a resounding thump. The powerful vibes in the air around me stutter and for a moment, it’s like the whole world around me is holding its breath. Then the magic surges hotter and higher than ever.
That’s when I know for sure. This isn’t a bad dream, isn’t a mistake. Murder has just happened here. Dark magic. Blood magic is happening still.
It’s been under my nose the entire time and yet I’m still shocked, still traumatized, when the front door swings open and I meet my aunt’s eyes, gleaming with an unholy light.
Thirty-two
“Xandra.” Tsura is lit up from the inside, the power she’s just ingested making her all but glow as she looks at me in confusion. It’s strange how doing something so vile can make her so beautiful. It’s not supposed to work that way.
But then again, none of this is supposed to work this way. Because only in a turned-around, upside-down, fucked-up world would I be standing on my aunt’s doorstep minutes after she murdered a man and used dark magic to claim his power.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
I have absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
“Xandra, darling, are you okay?” She reaches a hand up as if she’s going to feel my forehead but stops at the last second. I’ll never know if that’s because I lurch away or if it’s because she realizes that she’s glowing. And that, no matter how much she wants to pretend it is, that just isn’t normal.
“Can I come in?”
“Of course.” She doesn’t hesitate and I’m suddenly assailed by doubts—and hope. Maybe Tsura hasn’t done the things I think she has. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong.
But the moment the door closes behind me, I know that I’m not. The stench of death is all around us, similar to what I smelled beneath the Capitol grounds, but worse. That’s when I realize that it’s not only death I’m scenting. There’s fear here. Panic. Someone is still alive.