How I wish I had that much confidence in anything. I certainly don’t have it in Finn.
“Will you answer me one question?” I ask.
“Anything.”
“Why you?”
He steps back as if I’ve slapped him. “Why did they pick you to lead? Ruler of the city seems like an awfully big role for an eighteen-year-old.”
His eyebrows furrow together. “They didn’t pick me. I picked them to help me.” He accentuates every word, makes sure they’re implanted in my skull. “Truth is, I’ve been planning this for a long while. With you by my side.”
Maybe it’s the way he looks at me—so filled with purpose and rage and misplaced reverence. How right he believes he is. This isn’t the boy who brought my brother home drunk last year—the boy I’ve always wanted him to be. William’s voice breaks through the roiling panic of my thoughts.
Run.
“I’ll never rule by your side.” I turn on the heel of my borrowed shoes and sprint as quickly as my aching legs will carry me in the direction of the Callahans’.
“Frances!” Finn runs after me and grabs me roughly by the elbow.
“Don’t touch me!” I swing my arm to throw him off.
“Frances, Frances, stop,” Finn huffs. “Just… enter through the back door. They’ll have someone posted at the front. And take out Jack first. He’s the most powerful, but he does his best magic with metal, so get the knives out of reach as quickly as you can. He always keeps a dagger in his breast pocket.”
I struggle against his grip, try to wiggle through. I don’t understand what he’s doing. What he’s saying.
“Jack is the blond one. Frances, focus. The blond one—”
“Why are you telling me this?” I snap at him.
He opens his mouth, then closes it. For a breath he looks like the boy who knit me mittens. With a sad sigh he shakes his head slightly and takes off running in the other direction.
I’m confused as I watch him leave, but I have no time to dwell. I just run and run and run all the way to the Callahans’ brownstone. I pay no attention to the people of New York, who look at me, scandalized, as I sprint down the street. It’s nearly fifteen blocks, and with each step I imagine the consequences of not making it in time, of Judge Callahan with a bullet in his skull, or generous Mrs. Callahan, dead in her fine drawing room. I have no money for a petty cab or the subway; my only choice is to push past the burning in my legs and pray I’m not too late.
I approach the brownstone from the back alley. Finn could have been lying to me; he’s good at it. But the particular sadness in his eyes makes me believe he was telling the truth.
I climb their back garden wall. A single flickering gas lamp set into the back of the brownstone illuminates only the porch, so I jump to the ground blind. Gravel crunches as I land roughly. My right ankle collapses under me with a sharp twinge. I swear under my breath but hop up as quickly as I’m able. I have no time.
I run through the garden, thinking of Oliver and vanilla ice cream and baseball and secret smiles and embarrassed glances.
Please, please. Please.
Without Mrs. Callahan I would never have learned to sew. My brother cared for Judge Callahan, and that is enough for me. I won’t let them be murdered in their home.
When I get to the French doors, I find them locked. I whisper “briseadh” out of habit, but nothing happens. My magic is all but gone now—I can feel the hollow it’s left in my chest.
I try the kitchen window next. I grasp the cool metal of the sill and give it a shove; the window rises without resistance. I sigh in relief and wriggle through the gap. It scrapes my shoulder and snags Finn’s borrowed sweater.
Finn was correct: there was no one guarding the back of the house.
The relief is short-lived. There are muffled voices arguing from down the hall.
I haven’t been inside this house since my brother was alive.
Limping a little, I race into the parlor and find the blond named Jack and the tall James standing over Judge Callahan, Mrs. Callahan, and Oliver. Their hands are tied behind their backs, and they’re all on their knees. Mrs. Callahan is weeping. The judge looks furious. Oliver is trying to calm his mother down, which is hard to do with a rag shoved in his mouth. His panicked eyes go wide at the sight of me barreling into the room.
Oliver has lived at Columbia since starting school—I hadn’t expected to find him here. The sight of him tied up devastates me.
“What’s Finn’s girl doing here?” Jack sneers.
“Let them go. I demand it.” My voice sounds stronger than I feel.
“And why would we do that?”
“Finn’s orders.”
The boys share a look. They mutter something. The smaller one shakes his head. “You’re a liar.”
There’s no point in arguing with them. “Fine, then because I’ll kill you if you don’t.” I don’t want to mean it, but if it came down to it to save Oliver, I think I could.
The boys exchange another glance, and Jack takes a step toward me.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” I bluster. “You’re going to remove the dagger from your breast pocket, or I’ll snap his neck.” I gesture to his companion with a jerk of my chin. “You know what I can do.” I hope they don’t call my bluff.
He reaches into his jacket slowly. Every one of my senses is on high alert. He drops the dagger to the floor, and as quick as I am able, I bend down and pick it up. I clutch the knife tightly and point the blade toward Jack, who looks at me with disdain. His companion looks a little more out of his depth. If I had to guess, I’d say this was his first home invasion.
“Untie them,” I demand.
Jack takes a few steps toward the Callahans while I keep the silver dagger trained on him. I’m so focused on Jack that I don’t see James lunge at me until his knife is at my throat. It’s a kitchen knife, less elegant than the pretty dagger I have in my hand, but the sharp edge still bites into the skin at my throat.
Damn it.
“Drop the dagger,” Jack demands as he rises from untying Mrs. Callahan’s wrists.
I don’t have time to think. I plunge the dagger into James’s thigh. He screams and drops the knife at my throat. With the very last drops of my power, fueled by pure desperation, I magick the knife up off the floor and into my left hand. The whole thing happens in the space of seconds. James howls in the corner, trying to stanch the bleeding in his leg, and Jack stands frozen in the center of the parlor.
I take two steps over to him. I grip the handle of the kitchen knife, my fingers wrapped tight around it. Then I draw my arm back, and with as much momentum as I can muster, I punch him as hard as I can in the temple, the blunt end of the knife’s handle hitting the soft spot. The blow lands. He crumples to the floor. James goes down just as easily.
It was a trick William taught me a long time ago. He told me if anyone ever gave me trouble, one sharp blow right to the side of their head would knock them out. I’ve never tried it before this moment. I can’t believe it worked so well.
I run to the Callahans and saw through their ropes with sloppy panic. I don’t know how long Finn’s cronies will stay unconscious, and I’d really like to avoid killing them.
“Thank you, thank you!” Mrs. Callahan cries when I remove the rag from her mouth.
“No time!” I exclaim. I free the judge and Oliver next.
“Frances, what are you doing here?” Oliver asks me with equal parts awe and fear.
“Finn—” I begin like there’s any possible way I could make him understand. Something akin to hurt crosses Oliver’s face. “I’ll explain later—tie them up.”
Oliver and the judge make quick work of Jack’s and James’s wrists and ankles, but Oliver barely takes his eyes off me, stealing worried glances between knots. He and his father haul them over their shoulders and lock them in the hall closet, leaving me and a weeping Mrs. Callahan in the parlor alone.
“Why aren’t you calling the
police?” she sobs. I rub her back in half-hearted circles, but I don’t answer her. I wouldn’t know how to begin telling her that the magical secret society her husband belongs to has been taken over by a group of young magicians, and we can’t call the police because we don’t know whose side they’re on.
Oliver and his father return to the parlor a moment later. “My dear girl,” Judge Callahan booms. “You have saved us.”
I’m still out of breath from the fight and the run over. “There’s been a coup. Most of the Sons’ council has been killed. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t open the door. Leave in the morning if you can. I have to go.”
“Wait!” Oliver calls after me. “If you’re leaving, I’m going with you.” The cuffs on his fine white shirt are a tiny bit too short, exposing rope burns around his wrists.
“No you’re not.” I push past him. I have to get back to Haxahaven, and I don’t have time to explain.
“No.” He steps in front of me. “I’m no longer accepting that as an answer. I’m not going to let you disappear on me again promising to explain something later. I’ve done what you’ve asked of me, because I will do anything you ask of me, but… Jesus. Frances, please let me help you.” He sucks in a deep breath through his nose and closes the space between us in two lengthy strides. “You don’t have to do this on your own.”
There was a time when I would have collapsed into his arms, but Finn has taught me what trusting people can cost. “You don’t owe this to William. Let me go.”
“William?” Oliver asks in genuine surprise. “This isn’t about William, Frances. And it’s not about owing anyone anything. I mean…” He shakes his head in disbelief as his eyes pierce through me. This is a different Oliver than I’m used to. This is assertiveness and truth and determination wrapped up in years of history and tenderness. He steps even closer, his hand lifting my jaw so my eyes meet his own. “This is about me and you.”
My face glows hot. I file his words away for later. But he doesn’t know who I am now. What I’ve done. My heart aches the more his eyes bore into me. I can’t stand what he might see if he stares a second longer. I turn away from him.
“How far is the train from here?”
A brilliant smile spreads across his face. He snatches an overcoat from the coatrack in the living room. “I have a Cadillac—it will be faster. You can show me the way.” He shrugs the coat over his broad shoulders.
Oliver ignores his mother’s cries, begging him to “Stop. Wait! Think about what you are doing,” as we race out of the house and into the dark night.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The drive to Haxahaven seems to take three times as long as it usually does. For the better part of an hour, I’m bombarded with horrible visions of my friends being tortured and killed.
Over the din of the engine Oliver speaks just once, breaking the silence between us. “Is it true what those boys said?” he shouts.
“What who said?” I’ve heard so many boys say so many things.
“That you’re Finn’s girl?” He keeps his eyes focused on the road.
I’d laugh if I weren’t so laden down with dread. “No, it’s not true.”
It’s so brief, I could be imagining it, but I’m fairly sure he smiles.
I make Oliver park the Cadillac a ways down from the circular drive, so they don’t hear us approach.
“Stay in the car,” I hiss at him.
“Fat chance,” he replies.
I hand him the elegant dagger I stole from Jack because I know there’s no talking him out of it, and he needs the weapon more than I do.
He smiles sadly. “You really think I have it in me to stab someone, Frances?”
The first sign that something is terribly amiss at Haxahaven is the front iron gate, swinging wide open. They’re here, then—that’s for certain.
Together, Oliver and I creep across the gravel drive. In the dark Haxahaven looms like a specter.
We sneak in the side door to the kitchen, like I’ve snuck in so many times before. We find it empty, benches scraped clean, like no one has been here in a while.
There is no one on the stairs, no one in the sunroom. It fills me with a deep sense of wrongness.
Then, suddenly, the sound of muffled shouting echoes through the hall. Oliver and I don’t speak, we just exchange a glance and take off running in the direction of the dining room.
There is no one guarding the doorway. Finn’s men seem to be semiskilled killers but dreadful strategists. Oliver and I linger in the darkness outside the door to the dining room, where my classmates, all one hundred of them, are huddled together, surrounded by twenty or so members of the Sons of Saint Druon.
One hundred poorly trained witches are no match for twenty well-trained Sons. Our instructors are nowhere to be found.
Out in front of the girls, just as I expected she’d be, is Maxine. The shouting I heard was her.
“We won’t go with you.” She’s screaming, and her arms are splayed out, defending the younger girls behind her. Lena is right next to her. The sight of them nearly makes me cry, I’ve missed them so much. I want to crawl to them and beg for forgiveness, but that will come later.
“Frances!” Mabel shouts. She’s the first person to spot me as I enter the dining room. The Sons of Saint Druon turn to me, the same disdainful sneering look on their faces. I recognize some of them, but not all.
“If it isn’t Finn’s little princess,” one of the Sons greets me.
“You know these men?” Maria asks from where she sits, huddled with the other Haxahaven girls.
“Shut up!” a tall boy I haven’t seen before shouts. “Didn’t I tell you little witches not to speak unless spoken to?”
I have one advantage; I’ve beaten Finn here. These boys don’t yet know I am not one of them.
“Hello, boys,” I say demurely. “Now is this really necessary? You don’t need the guns, surely.”
The men look to one another, unsure what to do.
“I thought we were friends,” I continue. My classmates look at me with horror.
“We report to Finn, not to you,” one of the men says.
“But she is Finn’s girl,” another counters.
“I don’t care whose girl she is,” the tall boy screams. “The witches are under orders to come with us. We can’t keep the teachers locked up for much longer, we need to leave, let’s just take them and go.”
My classmates cry out in a chorus of terrified objections.
I steady my breathing. They want to take my classmates away. This is all my doing, and now it’s my responsibility to fix it. “There’s no need to be rash.” I take careful steps toward them, my arms up in front of me, a sweet smile plastered to my face.
I flick a glance to Lena and Maxine. They look back at me, Maxine with rage, Lena with pity.
If I survive tonight, I will spend the rest of my life trying to make things right between us. I pray I have the chance.
Maxine uses the distraction to spring from where she’s crouched on the floor and magicks the closest guard’s knife into her hand.
Someone else, I can’t tell who, sends an antique pistol one of the boys is holding and slams it against the wall. It crumples to the floor in a twist of metal.
Then, everywhere, there is chaos. Screams and sobs. Fists connecting with eye sockets. Magic sparks and bangs. Lena and Cora spring into action, shepherding some of the younger girls to safety through the kitchen.
Oliver and Aurelia haul Ruby up by the armpits and drag her across the floor. Oliver’s hand is pressed to her bleeding shoulder; the blood spurts between his fingertips. She must have been hit in the chaos. He catches my eye in the side doorway. Go, I mouth to him. He nods in understanding and disappears into the hall.
It’s as if the Cath Draíochta has sprung to life in the Haxahaven dining room. Objects fly about. Sconces crash to the floor; books weave through the air. It’s a hurricane of magic and fear and power. There is blood on the walls. All around is th
e guttural sound of people being hit.
Suddenly a gunshot rings out.
Standing in the doorway, his smoking pistol aimed at the ceiling, is Finn. He’s wearing an overcoat, a hat, and gloves. At the sight of me, the tight line of his brows smooth in relief.
“Frances, thank God you’re safe.” I don’t share the same relief in seeing him, only slippery, bitter fear. His tone sharpens as he turns to his cronies. “Boys, is this what we discussed?”
Some of them mutter, “No, sir.”
The room smells of blood and gunpowder. Sons of Saint Druon watch Finn, and the witches of Haxahaven watch me. Oliver has returned from the kitchen. He clutches the pearl-handled dagger in his fist. He’s desperately out of his depth in a room where he is the only one who possesses no magic, though you’d never know it by the determined look in his eye.
“Boys!” Finn calls to his cronies scattered across the room. “Please remember we came here for collaboration. Magical lives are valuable. I’ll be back in one moment. No one do anything while I’m gone, or you’ll have me to answer to!”
Finn shoves his pistol in the waistband of his pants and crosses the room. He takes both my hands in his and says, “We need to talk.” He drags me out into the dark foyer, pulling harder than he needs to, and though I don’t want to leave my friends alone, they’re probably safer with Finn out of the room.
His gloved hand against mine is itchy and wrong.
Scratchy.
Cold wraps its claws around me. I feel like I’m being dunked in icy waters as my brother’s words about his death come flooding back to me. Something hit me hard from behind. There was a gloved hand over my mouth. It was scratchy.
Scratchy.
I didn’t see a thing. I was gazing at the river. I heard someone whistling a tune. It was a beautiful night, and then, boom, lights out.
The first night I met Finn in the park comes to me, crystal clear and ice cold. I remember it so well now, the way his whistling ghosted through the trees.
Darkness circles my thoughts. My legs are barely able to keep me upright as the realization smacks me with a terrible wave of sadness and horror. I’ve never felt this lost, this empty before.
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