“Your help?” And then it was as if a lightbulb had gone off in my head. I looked down at the Cleri below and saw that now, standing beside each of them, were their parents. Not quite as they’d been before, but shining brighter and just a little bit blurry so their features weren’t entirely clear. By this point, Fallon, Jasmine, Sascha, Peter, and the others were barely holding on to the freezing spell and had turned most of their focus to the ones they’d thought were gone forever. They seemed as surprised to see their parents as I was, but no one moved from their spots.
Out of everything in the book, we’d chosen this particular spell as our last defense against the Parrishables because it was meant to invoke the power of our ancestors. Allow them to work their magic through us, so we could be a force much bigger than we actually were. There was nothing in the spell book that had said we’d actually be visited by our family members. That they would appear to us in person. This was a surprise.
Since we were all focusing on the spell to invoke our ancestors and their power, the magic we’d been doing to keep the Parrishables at bay began to dissipate, and as a group, the Parrishables began to gain use of their limbs again. But as soon as they saw the glowing outlines of the Cleri on the porch, they slowed to a stop on their own, confusion on their faces. Then their eyes moved up to the roof, where I was perched. They began to point in surprise and talk in hushed whispers as their gazes fell just behind me. I hesitantly looked back and saw that my mom and I had been joined by dozens of other figures. Each was radiating light and there was a wide range of time periods of dress. And then I recognized two faces.
Bridget and Christian.
“We’re all here for you, honey,” my mom said, as if reading my mind. Maybe she had. It didn’t matter. What did matter was that every one of my relatives was standing behind me, ready to take down the enemy that had plagued us for centuries.
My mom reached out her hand and I took it, and then I let Bridget take my other hand. The current of electricity that flowed through our bodies was severe, but this time I knew what to do with it.
The Cleri members below me were all doing the same thing, and the gesture seemed to be intimidating the Parrishables. As I watched, they began to take steps backward, their interest in attacking us waning. Samuel’s face had gone from smug to angry as soon as he’d seen who’d joined our fight.
“No!” he screamed, losing his composure for the first time since I’d met him. “I killed you! I killed all of you!”
“Haven’t you ever heard of things coming back to bite you in the—” I began to ask. Only, I’d barely gotten the sentence out of my mouth before Samuel was hurling a spell my way.
“Hadley!”
Just as I was bracing myself for the blast of Samuel’s spell, a figure threw itself out in front of me, taking the hit instead.
“Do it now.” Bridget’s words found their way to my ear and I knew I had to listen to her.
“Exterminus departo!” I screamed as loudly as I could, feeling the power rush through me and head straight for Samuel.
The spell hit him square in the chest and there was an explosion that looked like a pile of fireworks going off. Sparks rained down on us and left the air filled with smoke. Wait, not smoke. I reached my hand out to see what it was.
Ash.
I shuddered to think what that meant, but forced myself to look through the haze to see if it was possible. Could it really be over? Struggling to see through the dirty air, I realized it was true. Samuel was gone and there was a blackened spot on the ground where he’d been standing.
As the Parrishables began to come to the same realization, they started to back out of the yard, rushing to get as far away from us as possible. I thought about sending a few stunning spells their way but decided it would be wrong to hit them when they were retreating. Instead, I turned to my mom to exclaim over what had just happened.
But she was gone.
Looking around frantically, I saw that they were all gone. Vanishing at the same moment that Samuel had, it seemed. I was alone again, with no one left to watch after me.
Except that I wasn’t. Because there was someone still lying at my feet. Someone who had jumped in front of me in order to save me from being hit with Samuel’s spell.
And that someone was Asher.
Chapter Thirty
It took Sascha over twenty minutes to pump magical energy back into Asher after he’d been depleted of it by Samuel’s spell. Luckily, it turned out that the magic had only grazed Asher’s shoulder, and he hadn’t received the full force of the hex. We guessed this was the only reason he wasn’t dead right now. Once I’d seen that the Parrishables were leaving as quickly as they could, I had knelt down next to Asher and found that he wasn’t breathing and performed CPR on him until the others could reach us.
Jasmine said that I was yelling the whole time, screaming for Asher to “wake the hell up!” Her words, not mine. I can’t actually remember what I said out loud, but I know that in my head, I was pleading for the universe to give me more time with him. The thought of losing another person I cared about was too much to bear, and I knew that with the fight over, I’d have more time than I wanted to process all the loss I’d been through lately.
But as I watched, Sascha brought Asher back. I couldn’t see anything physically happening, of course, since the magic was all internal, but his cheeks started to gain a little color and finally he opened his eyes and stared straight into mine.
“Did I ever tell you that you’re drop-dead gorgeous?” were the first words out of his mouth. Then he flashed me that sideways smile of his and I nearly jumped him with joy.
But I restrained myself and rolled my eyes instead. “Boy, do you know how to sweet-talk a girl,” I said sarcastically, but took his hand in mine. We both knew what the other had done. That we’d chosen to help our families over each other, but we also knew it was the right thing to do. Now the plan was to make him a part of that family by welcoming him and his sister into the Cleri as official members.
Not that this news went over well with everyone in the coven. True to form, Fallon complained for hours about it, threatening to leave if we invited traitors into the group. But then Asher showed Fallon a few spells in private, ones that they refused divulge to me, and suddenly Fallon was Asher’s biggest fan. He began to follow Asher around like his minions did him, and I realized how much he was probably missing his dad. Not that his dad was unusually powerful, but he and Fallon had had a really great relationship. Now that Asher was the oldest male witch in our coven, Fallon seemed to need someone to look up to. And Asher was happy to oblige now that the immediate threat against his sister was gone.
Speaking of, we’d found Asher’s sister, Abby, wandering around in the woods behind the cabin after having been abandoned by one of the Parrishables in his haste to flee. She’d barely said ten words to me. In all fairness, she hadn’t said much to Asher either, but according to him, she was always on the quiet side. I could only imagine how being kidnapped and held by a magical lunatic who killed your parents would cause you to retreat even further into yourself. In fact, I admired her for even being able to function after all she’d been through.
Still, I hoped Abby would eventually let down her guard and take the time to get to know me. From what Asher said about her, I think we’d really get along. Things were likely to get better once there was a little distance between us and what had happened with the Parrishables.
There was no concrete evidence to show that Samuel and his coven were gone for good, of course, but we all believed that he was gone for now. The threat of war was over and we could go back to our regularly scheduled lives. Whatever that meant.