I, too, was curious to hear an answer to this question. I was also curious what baddies were, but I thought I could figure that one out on my own.
“We don’t need to beat them with strength,” Alexandra said. “We’ll do it with what we’ve got.”
Aurora picked up her pole arm and swung it through the air with such grace, she appeared to be dancing with it.
“I’ll go with what I know, thanks,” she said.
“Don’t be like that, Rory,” Marshall said. He went to the center of the room, where Caleb was working, and began sorting through the glassware there. “Between the five of us, we’ve probably got a pretty good brain.”
Aurora looked at him over the top of her glasses.
“We can outsmart them,” Alexandra said, her voice stern.
“I don’t know, Lexi,” Aurora said, still not convinced.
“Aurora may have a point,” I offered.
Alexandra turned to me, a look of shock on her face. “Don’t tell me you’re on Rory’s side, too.”
“I do not know how you will fare against my father,” I said. “He has not lasted this long by being a foolish creature.”
“Enough infighting!” Alexandra shouted.
Everyone stopped their tasks and looked to her.
Alexandra looked to Marshall, then to Aurora.
“I know I’ve put a lot on you by asking you to help me here,” she said to her friends, the words quick from her lips in anger, “and I know I’ve kept a lot from you. But I need you to trust me on this.”
Marshall set down the vials in his hand. “Why have you been keeping things from us? Maybe Caleb was right . . . Are we just your shopping team?”
Alexandra sighed, then pointed to Aurora. “When Rory got knocked out . . . it made me realize how serious it was that I was putting both of you in danger. More and more. I couldn’t take that. I thought maybe I could do it all. So if there was danger involved, I turned to Caleb. It didn’t matter what happened to him.”
“Gee, thanks,” Caleb said, returning to his mixing.
“You know what I mean,” she said, exasperation in her voice now. “You were a stranger. Arcane things are what you deal in, what you freelance in. You’ve chosen the dangerous life. Marshall and Rory? This was all forced upon them.”
“First of all, nobody forces us to do anything,” Aurora said. “We do things because we want to . . . or in Marshall’s case, because I tell him to.”
“You don’t understand,” Alexandra said. “It’s not just the danger. There are certain things that I don’t want you to have to do.”
“Like what?” Aurora asked, the girl getting heated herself.
I stepped forward. “Like Alexandra’s having to take the life of her brother,” I said.
Alexandra and Aurora both went quiet for a moment, then Aurora spoke. “Is it true?” she asked.
Alexandra nodded. “I killed Devon,” she said.
“No,” I said. “You killed what had once been your brother.”
Alexandra looked serious. “I did what needed to be done. For the safety of all of us.”
Much of the anger fell away from Aurora, and she walked to Alexandra. “So you just beat him down?” she asked, impressed.
“Not quite,” Alexandra said. “I had a little help.”
Marshall and Aurora both turned to me, but I shook my head. “It was not I,” I said.
Slowly, they turned to Caleb, who took a moment to wave, the smile on his face causing me to feel a desire to remove it from his face.
“In all fairness,” he said, “all I did was leave her a little gift. She’s the one who decided to use it.”
“Okay,” Alexandra said. “So technically it was Bricksley who reminded me I had the damn thing on me, but I’m glad it was I who did it and not any of you. If I’m going to be a part of this life, I need to be ready to do such things. I know that now. It’s why I’ve dealt with Devon and Desmond Locke, and now there’s only one other person I need to contend with.”
“Kejetan,” I said.
“And his followers,” I said. “I’m sick of living in fear.”
“Don’t worry,” Marshall said. “I’ve got plenty enough to go around for all of us.”
“You should be scared,” Alexandra said, going to the table. She reached into her coat pocket, threw her notebook down next to a stack of books and mixing vats. “This isn’t going to be easy, but if we play this smart, we can end this . . . tonight. Putting Devon out of his misery was difficult. But Kejetan and his men?” She pointed to the empty containers that Aurora and Marshall had brought with them. “We’re going to have to do a lot of alchemy first.”
Twenty-eight
Alexandra
The calm of the ocean all around me should have been soothing. Given the plan fixing itself in my brain, however, I found that the silence only creeped me out.
Stanis stood a silent sentinel at the bow of the small boat, his eyes fixed on the dark horizon where the shape of the distant but familiar freighter steadily grew larger at our approach.
I shivered and pulled out my notebook to go over the spells Caleb and I had worked out.
“This quiet is killing me,” I said to him. This far out at sea, away from the city and other ships . . . Then it struck me. Something about how the boat was moving seemed . . . off. I turned to look at the back of the boat, where Marshall and Rory were. “You’re not actually running the motor engines, are you?”
He smiled. “I don’t have to,” he said. “The biggest problem with working for the Servants of Ruthenia was their having a floating home—the freighter. It’s never in one place at the same time.”
Rory laughed from where she stood by several air tanks and stacks of bucket-sized containers. Her pole arm rested against the boat’s wheelhouse as she pounded the palm of her hand around the lid of one of the containers, securing it.
“Of course their ship is always on the move,” she said. “Those Ruthenians wouldn’t dare return to their docks. Not after the trouble we caused for them last fall.”
“Trouble?” Caleb said with a smile. “Do tell.”
“We had tracked them to a slip out in Brooklyn,” I said. “Rory might have gotten a little . . . kicky . . . with some of them.”
“And,” Marshall spoke up from where he was looking over the back of the boat at the silent engine, “I got a few of them myself.”
“You?” Caleb asked, unable to stifle his laugh. “Rory’s a dancer with a pole arm. What’s you’re weapon of choice?”
“I . . .” Marshall looked defensive, but it fell away and his voice went quiet. “I hit a bunch of them with books I was throwing, thank you very much. I even drew blood. Those corners can be pointy and lethal at high speeds, you know.”
Caleb’s face was full of suspicious doubt.
“It was actually quiet impressive,” I whispered, leaning in to him.
Marshall went back to peering over the side of the boat. “So if you’re not running the engine, and you don’t know where to go,” he said, “how is this boat taking us there?”
Caleb lowered his notebook. “Kejetan’s freighter is never in the same place twice, so in order for me to get there, I had to get creative. I’m friendly with a few of the Village witches who owe me a favor or two after a job I did for them, so I incorporated some of what they could teach me into creating an arcane binding that’s also alchemical.”
“Like when Alexander bound Stanis to my family?” I asked, looking at the front of the ship to the stone-still gargoyle in question. “He set up rules when he created him. I set up a few simple ones to keep Bricksley from destroying the house when I’m gone, but that’s about all I really grasp of binding. So tell me, how the hell do you set rules to bind a boat?”