Without knowing how, she gathered it, commanded it, asked it to do her bidding. To counter Maximilian’s spell and render him powerless against them. To cease whatever actions he might be continuing in the field in front of the shack.
The wind swirled faster, its agitation palpable as it took its cue from Claire. It rose into the sky, twisting and turning until it was a serpent identical to the one commanded by the firstborns as Xander had taken Claire into the forest. Claire watched as it propelled itself purposefully across the sky, heading toward the smoke rising from the other ritual site.
The air was quiet in the wake of the departing spirit. But Claire’s skin was on fire, the surface of it tingling with pins and needles like her whole body had been asleep and had only just awoken.
When she opened her eyes, she was surprised to find that her arms were stretched toward the sky, her hands covered in a powdery, metallic residue that must have been the potion Allegra had mixed.
She wondered if the spirit had gotten to the others in time. If it had stopped Maximilian and Eugenia.
She looked at Xander and Allegra, still staring at the sky, but before she could say anything a drop of cool liquid hit her face. She tipped her head back as three more droplets hit her face.
A second later it was torrential. Rain streamed from the sky like a waterfall, drenching Claire’s hair and the white tunic.
She let it wash her clean. Let it wash away her fear and doubt.
When her legs finally gave out beneath her, her body falling to the wet, loamy earth, there was only wonder.
THIRTY-THREE
This is what she remembered.
The rush through the forest, her body snug against Xander’s, her head bumping against his shoulder.
The rain, still falling. Not a cold drizzle but a healing warmth, washing her clean.
Allegra’s warm hand on Claire’s forehead. Her voice: “She’s too cold.”
Sasha’s eyes, dark and worried, when she spoke. “It’s okay, Claire. Everything’s okay. You did it.”
Then, the feel of cool leather against the back of her legs, her head in Xander’s lap. His head bowed over hers, tears falling onto her face.
She reached up to touch him, her blood-streaked hand resting against his cheek.
THIRTY-FOUR
Claire had been in bed nearly a week, hardly allowed out of her room to go to the bathroom. At first, she hadn’t minded. She’d been so weak that she could hardly keep her eyes open, even after the blood transfusion she’d received at the hospital.
Finally, she’d woken up feeling different. Clearheaded and alert.
Throwing a sweater over her boxers and T-shirt, she left her room, pausing in the hallway as she wondered where her mother might be. A moment later, she headed for the ritual room.
She waited by the closed door, listening to her mother’s soft murmuring from the other side. Finally, she turned the knob and let the door swing open slowly.
Her mother was there, dressed in the white tunic, her hair long and flowing over her shoulders. Somehow the tunic didn’t inspire the fear Claire would have expected after Maximilian and Eugenia had forced her to wear it.
It was just a piece of fabric. There were stacks more like it in the store downstairs.
Even more surprising, the sight of her mother, eyes closed and kneeling in front of the candlelit altar, didn’t scare her, either.
She tried to remember why her mother had seemed so frightening in ritual when Claire was a child. Now, she looked peaceful, her face beautiful as she murmured the words to a protection spell.
Claire wasn’t surprised when she spoke without turning her head.
“Come in, Claire.” She hesitated. “If you’d like.”
Claire stepped into the room. The smell of anise hung in the air.
Anise and eucalyptus and lemongrass.
Claire inhaled deeply. Her shoulders relaxed as the scent worked its way into her body.
White candles were lined up in front of a picture of her, a powdery residue scattered across the surface of the table.
Claire turned away, scanning the room. She found what she was looking for on the mantel above the fireplace, and she made her way to it, lifting the framed photograph and carrying it back to the altar table.
She placed the picture of her mother and father, taken at some long-ago picnic, on the altar. Pilar watched as Claire reached for an unlit candle. Placing it in front of the picture of her parents, she struck a match and lit the wick, watching the flame spring to life.
She sank to the floor next to her mother, their lips moving in unison, calling on the loas to protect each other.
Claire was rocking on the porch swing, trying to concentrate on a book, when Sasha came up the walkway.
“Wow, Sleeping Beauty’s finally awake,” she said.
Claire laughed, setting her book aside. “Very funny. I needed it.”
Sasha stepped onto the porch, lowering herself next to Claire on the swing.
“Feeling better?”
“Much,” Claire said. “Still tired, believe it or not. But at least now I can get through the morning without needing a nap.”
Sasha nodded. “They said that you’re lucky to be alive.”
Claire swallowed hard. It was true. She remembered the first time she’d seen them change her bandages at the hospital, the long vertical cuts Max had made along the veins of her forearms.
Xander’s words from the forest had drifted back to her: They weren’t fooling around.
The cuts weren’t meant to eke a little blood out of Claire for their ritual.
They were meant to bleed her dry.
She took a deep breath, trying to banish the fear that always crept over her when she thought about Maximilian and Eugenia. When she thought about how their love for little Elisabeta had twisted into something dark and ugly in the wake of their grief.
“They say I’m going to be okay,” she said softly, reaching out to take Sasha’s hand. “Thanks to you guys.”
Sasha smiled. “We could say the same for you.”
After Claire had gotten home from the hospital, it was Allegra who had told her about the doll babies that had already been immersed in the potion containing her blood.
One of them had been Allegra’s. One of them had been Laura’s.
And one had been Xander’s.
They sat in silence for a few more minutes before Sasha spoke again. “How are your parents handling everything?”
Claire sighed. “I think they feel guilty. You know, that they weren’t the ones to save us.”
Allegra had told Claire the story. How Sasha and Xander had gone to their parents and told them everything after they found Claire’s bike. How the Guild had called the police and reported Claire missing instead of asking Allegra or someone else in the Guild to help find her. How it had rocked the firstborns, seeing their parents turn to law enforcement instead of the craft when they were supposedly its biggest advocates.
It was the firstborns who’d taken matters into their own hands, calling on Eddie and using Allegra’s second sight to see the sign for Loman’s Creek and the bridge Claire had been marched across by Eugenia, Herve, and Jean-Philip.
“Any word on Maximilian?” Sasha asked her after a couple of minutes.
Claire shook her head. “And Eugenia and her sons still aren’t talking.”
Once they’d gotten away from the ritual site, one of the Valcour twins had contacted their parents with the license plate of the Range Rover. The police had picked all three of them up a few miles from the site.
Maximilian hadn’t been with them.