Ethan lashed out with his foot, catching Osborne just below the knee and sending him sprawling to the floor. Molly screamed. Ethan launched himself out of the chair and onto Osborne. He hadn’t noticed, though, that the man had pulled a knife from his belt. At the last instant Ethan had to twist to the side to avoid impaling himself on Osborne’s blade.
Osborne slashed at him with the knife, but Ethan managed to block the man’s arm with his own. He dug his fist into the bullet wound in Osborne’s arm and the man howled in pain.
“Remedium! Ex cruore evocatum!” Healing, conjured from blood!
“Molly, no!” Hester’s voice, piercing and frantic.
But it was too late. Ethan felt the spell, the pressure building in his leg. It was unfocused-she had put no blood on him. But she had conjured out of rage and fear and hatred, using a healing spell not as a balm, but as a weapon. And her casting was strong. He heard the bone in his leg snap. He roared, rolling off of Osborne and clutching at his thigh. He couldn’t breathe for the pain, and he barely noticed when Osborne got to his feet again. The thief kicked him in the head and Ethan pitched over onto his side.
“Good girl, Molly!” Osborne said. “That spell saved me.”
Looking down at Ethan once more, he reared back and dug the toe of his boot into Ethan’s gut. Ethan folded in on himself, retching, gasping for air.
He assumed that Osborne would slit his throat and turn his rage on Hester for shooting him. But it was Molly who rounded on her sister, eyes blazing, fists raised.
“Why did you do that?” she shrieked. “Why did you shoot him? He’s our father! You don’t shoot your father! You don’t! You just don’t!”
Hester cowered away from her sister, pressing herself against the wall. Her face was streaked with tears, and her chest heaved with every breath she took.
“I won’t kill for him again! Don’t you see what he’s turned us into? We’re his knife! His pistol! That’s all! And we killed every man on that ship!”
“No!” Molly said, shaking her head. “That wasn’t us! Father said so!”
Hester shook her head, swallowed. “He lied, Molly.”
“That’s enough outta both of you.” Osborne loomed over Ethan, his blade in hand. “I want him dead. Now.” He turned to his daughters. “Cast your spell.”
“No,” Hester said. “Kill him yourself.”
Blood had started to flow from Osborne’s arm again, replacing the blood Molly had used for her spell.
“Discuti!” Ethan muttered. “Ex verbasc-” The spell would have shattered Osborne’s leg, using the mullein leaves in his pocket as its source. But before he could finish it Osborne kicked him again, once in the head, and a second time in the gut.
Ethan vomited onto the floor.
“So you’ve got mullein in your pocket, do you, Kaille?”
He couldn’t answer and he couldn’t fight back when Osborne knelt beside him and began to fish through his pockets for the small pouch containing his precious leaves.
“Not much,” the man said. “But more than I had b’fore.” He grinned, turned back to the two women. “Like I said, I want him dead now. And his friend, too. No more games. No more of your foolishness, Hes. Do it, and let’s end this.”
Ethan tried to rouse himself, but Osborne placed his foot on Ethan’s throat, pressing down hard enough to cut off his breathing, but not enough to crush his windpipe. Ethan thrashed at the man, but he was too hurt, too addled. He hadn’t the strength to stop them.
Molly pulled out her knife. Hester flinched at the sight of her sister’s blade, but then drew hers as well. Her face was ashen. Molly’s outburst seemed to have snuffed out the fire within her. She cut herself. Molly did the same. Locking their gazes on each other, the women began to chant.
“Fini pulsum,” they said in unison. “Ex cruore evocatum.” Stop heartbeat, conjured from blood.
Power surged through the floor, the walls, Ethan’s body. He shut his eyes, waiting for the spell to take him. He didn’t realize what the women had done until Osborne made a small strangled noise in his throat. An instant later he gave a faint grunt.
“Father?” Molly’s voice. “Papa? Hester, what did you do?”
The pressure on Ethan’s neck eased, and the man fell backward to the floor, landing in a sitting position. Molly screamed again. Osborne looked up at the two women, his eyes bulging, his mouth open. He jerked once, twice, struggling to inhale. His lips had turned blue. He dropped his knife and clawed at his chest, then lifted his gaze to Hester and Molly once more as his hands stilled. Molly reached out to him, but Hester snatched her sister’s hand back, staring hard at her father. Osborne swayed, tipped over onto his side, and lay motionless, his dead eyes fixed on the floor at his daughters’ feet.
Chapter Twenty — Three
Molly dropped to her father’s side, crying “Papa! Papa!” again and again. She struggled to pull him upright, but he was too heavy for her and at last she fell over him, sobbing and clutching at his shirt.
Ethan pushed himself up into a sitting position. His head spun, and his stomach ached where Osborne had kicked him. But all of that was nothing compared to the agony in his broken leg.
At his first movement, though, Molly’s head jerked up. She glared at him for an instant, scrambled to her feet, and huddled by her sister.
“What do we do with him?”
“We let him go,” Hester said, her tone firm. “He’s here because of what we did to the Graystone. None of this is his fault.”
“But Father-”
“Don’t, Molly. You know what kind of man he was. Just as Mother knew. We should never have read that last letter he sent. We should have burned it with the others.”
“I wanted him back,” Molly said in a small voice. “I missed Mama, and I wanted him back.”
“I know.”
Molly began to cry again, and Hester put her arms around her sister and gathered her close.
Watching them, Ethan leaned forward and picked up Osborne’s knife from where it lay on the floor. He cut himself, glancing up at the sisters once more. Seeing that Hester was watching him, he faltered. But she closed her eyes and stroked her sister’s hair. Ethan took this as a sign that she wouldn’t try to stop him.
He put blood on his leg and spoke his spell. “Remedium ex cruore evocatum.” Healing, conjured from blood.
Molly started at the hum of power and turned to face him. But her tears still flowed and he could tell that she hadn’t the strength or inclination to stop him. He let his conjuring flow into his leg, sucking his breath through his teeth at the first painful touch of the healing spell, but breathing easier as it began to knit the bone back together.
He had to cut himself twice more to complete the healing, and by the time he had finished, he was sweating and his hands shook. At last he released the spell and struggled to his feet. Once more he turned to Hester, wondering whether she would try to keep him there.
But she was already watching him. “Go, Mister Kaille. Your friend is alive still, but he needs more than we were able to give him. Take the cart if you need it.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For letting us go, and also for saving our lives.”
She flinched at the words.
“You understand-” he began.
“Do what you have to do. You were hired to learn the truth about the Graystone. You and I both know what that means.”
He nodded, holding her gaze. At last he turned away and crossed to where Diver still lay. His skin felt warmer than it had earlier, but his face remained pallid, his breathing shallow.
Ethan lifted the younger man and slung him over his shoulders. Both of his legs ached, and they nearly gave out beneath the added weight. But he staggered to the door and out into the cool, damp night. When he left the Osborne sisters, they had sunk to the floor beside their dead father. But they were still holding each other and seemed as much at peace as Ethan could expect under the circumstances.