Evermore (The Night Watchmen Series Book 5)

by Candace Knoebel

  I roll out blueprint after blueprint, all targeted around the highly populated areas and the military buildings, each with points of entry that could be weakened with enough magic. There are detailed drafts made up of where the Divine will be and how best to capture them. But it’s the last blueprint I roll out that chokes the air from me like a fist squeezing my lungs.

  “When I saw that, I knew I needed to meet with you,” Charlie says, pointing to the drawing of the Dagger of Retribution.

  “He’s going to try to kill them,” I say through a blur of disbelief. I look up and over to Jaxen and the rest, feeling like the air has been sucked out from the room. “He wants to take Ethryeal City.”

  IT DOESN’T TAKE US LONG to sort through the rest of the contents in the box.

  There were more files kept on the health of the other leaders of the Darkyn Coven and a slew of Darkyn witches, all listing various, newly discovered illnesses they were testing due to exposure from the Exanimator. It seems those stripped of power become more mortal than Primeval, and by putting their bodies through the process of absorbing power, they weaken their immune system.

  We also found recent shipment receipts for various materials, including some that point to weapon making. Records on each of us stolen from the Academy. There were pictures of Jezi and Jaxen. Of Gavin and Cassie. Pictures of me with Katie and my parents… My stomach clenches as I brace on the edge of the couch, anger and helplessness ripping at me nerves.

  They knew about me even before the rest of us did.

  “We have to take this back to Mack and Seamus, and the Divine,” Jaxen says as he drops the last of the papers on the coffee table and runs his hands back and forth through his hair.

  “He’s going to have a field day,” Gavin points out, shaking his head as he stares blankly at the mess on the table.

  “I just don’t see how he can have the gall to go after the city when he can’t even go a day without sucking a witch dry,” Jezi says while flipping through the papers, as if the answer she’s looking for will be found within them. “The Divine said they tied up all their magic in the city to keep it protected beneath the Veil. There’s no way he’ll be able to surpass that amount of magic alone, right?”

  “I hate to sound cliché, love, but where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Weldon says. “Better yet, where there’s vengeance to be had, there’s always a way.”

  “The Divine said it themselves. It’s simple,” I say, feeling like all my blood has drained dry. “Take out a Divine and the spell breaks.”

  Charlie has been chewing on his thoughts, twisting a toothpick in his mouth. A small line has formed between his eyebrows. He takes in a short breath, head tilting to the side as if something just came to him, and then he leans forward and pillages through the papers on the table. A second later, he hands Gavin what he was looking for.

  “There,” he says, pointing to the paper he handed him. “I thought it was weird when I first read it, but passed it off as the shit witches need.” He clears his throat, shifts his eyes as the line between his eyebrows deepens, and drops his tone. “It’s been a while since I’ve been around that kind of stuff.”

  Gavin reads off the list. “Chickens, black candles, twine, whiskey, milk, bark… the list goes on and on.”

  With every ingredient, Jezi and Cassie’s face scrunch even more. “That isn’t anything we would ever buy. I don’t even know what it can be used for,” Cassie says, repulsion marked on her face.

  “Black magic,” I state, thinking of Sanura and the hunter they bled dry.

  “Either way, these were ordered recently. The last shipment received. He must have been prepping a spell,” Charlie points out. “Maybe something that would allow him to find a way into Ethryeal City under the radar.”

  “The problem is, we don’t know what kind of spell these things could be used for,” Jaxen says, dragging a hand down his face.

  I lean forward, feeling like a sliver of light has been shed. “But I know someone who does.”

  AS EXPECTED, MACK DOESN’T TAKE what we found very well.

  It takes all of five minutes for his composed outlook to shift into a raging epidemic. Sterling and my father are called in and given immediate orders to round up every Elite in the city to be on guard by taking posts along every square inch of cityscape. It is decided to not say a word to the citizens for fear that we could have an unknown infiltration and alert the Darkyns to our knowledge of their plans.

  I look to Mack, the color bleached from his face. The frown sewn permanently to his lips, and I realize for the first time since he began the Rebellion and took his place as a High Priest, he has to go back on his promise to keep the public informed.

  For the first time, in his blood-red suit, he has become one of them.

  I turn to Number One. “It’s time,” I say, looking into his eyes. “What you have done for me... returning my powers… I can never repay you.”

  “It was our pleasure,” he says, wearing a small smile.

  “I need you to return to Alesteria’s side now. The Divine need you more than ever. I… I dismiss you.”

  He nods, turns, and then hesitates. “You are a great warrior, Everlasting,” he says, his words heavy with respect. “And my name is Andre… if you ever need me.”

  My heart swells and then bursts as he heads out the door, ordering the rest to follow him.

  “And as for the Divine?” Seamus asks Mack, who is unraveling like a ball of yarn.

  “They’re with Sanura as we speak, going over the details of her Grimoire,” Mack says as he gathers up what he needs and points to the door, “which is exactly where we are headed. She’s going to tell us what these ingredients are meant for, and then we will meet back here and formulate a plan.”

  We follow him down the elevator, out into the streets, walking at a heated pace. Mack only slows it down when he notices a few citizens looking at him funny, sensing his distress, but resumes his pace once again after passing them.

  Once we’re inside the hospital, we find ourselves staring through the window to Sanura’s room. The room is smaller than I hoped for, outfitted with one large, fluorescent light in the middle of the ceiling. There are multiple machines hooked up to her, monitoring her breathing and her heart. She has cords under her nose and hooked to her wrists and shoulder. Patches stuck to her temples and her chest.

  In this lighting, she doesn’t look too well. She’s ghastly pale and weak-looking, a bag of bones and leathery skin. Cecilia is holding her hand, telling her something, while Alesteria, Wistar, and Garrick look on. As if they sensed us, Alesteria and the others look our way.

  Mack lets out a half-hearted wave, and then waits for Garrick to step out of the room.

  “Yes?” Garrick says, looking between the lot of us.

  “We have some urgent news,” Mack says, voice shaking. The information rolls off his lips in wave after wave, beating against Garrick’s steely resolve until there’s nothing left but a pained look on his face. “We have a list of ingredients purchased that we’d like to question Sanura about. They seem to be the kind of magic she dabbled in. If we can decipher what spell he was using, then maybe we could prevent the loss of many lives.”

  Garrick holds his hand out, waiting for the list. Mack looks a little startled by this. “I’ll take it in to her,” Garrick reiterates, pushing his hand out again. Mack reluctantly sets it in his hand and nods, stepping back in line with the rest of us.

  I guess not even the highest title can grant you an in with every matter in life.

  Garrick disappears back into the room, and we watch as the faces of the Divine morph from pleasant to fearful to annoyed. They each turn to Sanura, and I know they must be asking her now. Must be listing off the strange number of ingredients ordered by Mourdyn himself, but when her mouth moves, her finger lifts, pointing to me through the small cracks in the blinds.

  I want to shrink back when they collectively turn in my direction, but my feet are planted fi
rmly in the ground by pride, keeping me rooted in place. Garrick opens the door a second later and asks for me. I hear Mack’s breath hitch in his throat, as if he’s waiting for his name to be called too, but when I head for the door and Garrick steps aside to let me through, his disappointed exhale is enough for a hidden smile.

  “Sanura has asked for you,” Cecilia says as she gets up from her seat next her and moves to stand with Garrick and the others.

  I know I’m being watched from all sides. From my friends and from the Divine, but when I sit next to Sanura and meet her cold, reticent gaze, I don’t feel like I’m in the same plane anymore. It all shifts away from us as images of the Dwelling beat behind my eyelids.

  “You come for answers,” she says, her voice hoarse and reserved.

  I nod.

  “I have your answers,” she says with a certainty that screams of a price to be paid. “But first, I want to tell you a story. A story about a mouse I used to keep as a pet for my boy. Its name was Panya, and she ate only the best scraps we had. She was no bigger than my fist,” she says, lifting her hand and balling it into a fist to demonstrate. “Yet, she had stolen my boy’s heart, and mine too. Then came the worst freeze we had ever seen. We lost our crops that year, as did everyone in town, and had to fend off what we had in storage.

  “The master didn’t take limitations very well. We did everything we could to ensure he and his boy ate like kings while we fended for what we could, setting traps and eating jars of pickled vegetables, but the food was so sparse and my boys’ clothes were beginning to hang on their skin… I took anything I could that came along.

  “I had a bag of rice I kept from the last shipment we received hidden in my room for times such as that so my boys would never go hungry. I made sure to only cook from it once a week to make it stretch for the times when there was nothing to be caught.

  “Panya wasn’t used to not being fed. In the years she was ours, there wasn’t a day that went by that she had to scavenge, not until we couldn’t afford to feed her any longer. But that’s the thing about hunger—it isn’t an emotion you can turn off and on; it’s an animalistic need that takes over your brain. A need to survive that pushes out all common sense and forces you to do things you wouldn’t have dreamed of doing in a million years.”

  She locks her eyes on mine, the years of hardships and pain dwelling within I couldn’t even begin to understand. I’m already tensing up, knowing the end to this story can’t mean anything good.

  “I set a trap near the tiny hole I found in the bag of rice where it had been nibbled through. And when I found her, I made a meal out of her and gave an extra day to my boys.”

  I know my face is wearing everything it shouldn’t, parading the conflicting mix of feelings I can’t stop from barraging against my mind.

  She sucks in a breath, pulling herself back together. “That list is for the dark magic I taught him. For ancient spells we used on beings such as yourself.”

  I know she’s referring to hunters without having to say it. Her hate is still there, freshly buried beneath the truth I forced her to see.

  “It was his preferred spell, meant to control the mind, leaving the owner unaware,” she explains, shifting in her bed to sit a little higher. “This is a spell he turned on me, making me commit unspeakable acts I’d never think of for fear of where the Gods would send me.”

  I think of the hunters she helped him murder, of the blood they bathed in together, and my heart withers for her. Heat flares through my bloodstream and on up to my cheeks. He has ruined everyone and everything he’s encountered.

  “If I know him,” Sanura continues, “and unfortunately I do, then I’d say he’s setting his traps. He’s hungry, Faye… just like me and my boys were. Just like Panya was, and just like you are. The question is, are you going to be the mouse, or the one setting the trap?”

  I LEAVE SANURA’S ROOM FEELING more rattled than ever.

  Sanura’s words patter through my mind like a rainstorm as we cram into an elevator. Even though I’m surrounded by people, I’ve never felt more alone. More… lost when it comes to the future.

  Mack presses the button for the first floor and steps back, eyes locked on the dial marking the floors. Eyes shift from one person to the next as all our heavy thoughts stifle the little bit of air we have.

  There’s a hot pressure building inside my chest and head, like a bucket of fire has been poured down my throat. The ground doesn’t feel stable beneath my feet anymore. Every time I feel like I’ve gotten a good grip on what’s happening around me, it’s like the world gets a good laugh, and then yanks the earth from beneath me, knocking me back on my butt.

  He’s using black magic to control people, but all learning this has done is opened up more questions. Has made me feel even more out of control over my life and what will happen with it when the time comes to face him.

  Who is he controlling? Why is he controlling them? What is he making them do?

  The only person who might be able to answer that is Eliza, and she isn’t due back until tomorrow.

  “At least we know he can’t use the dagger until his power is fully restored,” Jezi says, recounting what the Divine assured us before dismissing us. Her voice is soft inside the tiny shaft, her words unstable and lacking, like she had to force them out.

  “That’s comforting,” Jaxen mutters, his head rested against the golden wall of the elevator. “We all know the only way that can happen is if he gets a hold of Faye,” he adds with an acerbic bite.

  Even though I already know this, the realization of it still makes me shudder. Thinking of being in that machine again, the electric shocks striking me repeatedly as my power is siphoned out… I don’t know if I can do it again, and that thought alone makes me wish I could find the nearest hole to bury myself within.

  Jezi turns, looking between Jaxen and me, wrinkling her forehead. “The Exanimator was destroyed though. I saw the damage Faye’s power did to it before we were pulled from the Underground.”

  She’s searching my eyes, asking me to tell her this is true, and it’s another jab to my gut. I would be the only one who knew… I was in the machine. I was the one responsible for destroying it past the point of repair.

  Shame is a hot branding iron pressed against my cheeks.

  “It doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed,” I force out, my voice hoarse and coated in guilt.

  Silence creeps in between us as the elevator opens to the first floor.

  “So what do we do now?” Gavin asks as we follow Mack out of the hospital into the beginnings of a flurry. We each tuck into ourselves, shoving hands in pockets and tightening scarves around our necks.

  “We wait,” Mack concedes, his voice distant. He doesn’t bother with zipping his jacket up as the wind beats hard against his skin. It’s like he’s lost inside his own mind, tripping against the traps his own mind has set.

  And then he turns on me so fast I almost bump into him, eyes struggling awake like a bulb about to blow. “Eliza will return tomorrow with answers, and, when she does, I’d like for Miss Coccia to be present.” The bulb flickers all the way on. “Yes. It is a must. Make it happen, Middleton.”

  I have to tuck away the remarks I want to make that press against the back of my teeth, because I can see his inflated, autocratic thoughts dancing behind the hooded weight of his eyelids. He only wants Katie there as an incentive to get Eliza to talk. That is not how I want my best friend to be treated. That isn’t how anyone should be treated.

  But then the monster within me whispers, and I listen.

  Mack is right. We need answers, and we need them fast.

  I refuse to be the mouse any longer.

  AWHILE LATER, I FIND MYSELF staring at the dark ceiling, listening to the soft whirring of the fan as I wait for the slow, sinking feeling sleep brings. The minutes seem to stand still as we wait for what we know tomorrow will bring. As a mist of weighted thoughts float above me, swirling and interchanging with every blink.
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  Real sleep is for the confident and the ignorant.

  I roll toward Jaxen and can just make out the curve of his form, a heavy darkness I scoot closer to, drawn to his warmth. His arm is open to me, wrapping around me and pulling me in.

  A long minute passes, our chests rising and falling out of sync.

  “Do you think he meant it?” he finally asks in a hoarse whisper. His words are loaded and rushed, like he wasn’t sure he wanted to say them, but they escaped anyway. A pained whisper that scratches at my heart.

  I know he’s thinking about his father. He’s probably recited what his father said a thousand times to himself, rearranging and dissecting each word and how it was spoken, because that’s what he does. It’s how he deals. The layers to Jaxen are so deep and so vast, and only make me love him that much more.

  Even in the dark, I can feel him staring at me. Waiting for me to take the hand of the little boy inside him and guide him back into the light.

  “As sure as I am about your love for me, yes, I think he meant it,” I say quietly, just in case Gavin and Cassie are sleeping. “He did what he did out of love for you and for your mother. How could he have known that the deal he made with Bael would have gone a different way than what he asked for? Bael didn’t have to bring her back bitten, but it was a risk your father wanted to take. A risk taken because of love.”

  He sighs, and I see the dark flash of his hand moving to his mouth. A beat later, there’s a continual clicking sound cutting through the silence as he chews on his nails and his thoughts.

  I wait, patiently. He will work this out, just like he always does.

  Finally, he says, “Yeah, but I think about the arguing they did when I was younger, and about what he did to Gavin, so easily, and it makes me question things,” he admits, his voice riddled with doubt.

  I turn his face to mine even though we can barely make each other’s features out. Rest my forehead against his as our breath mixes together. “Jaxen, every relationship has its bumps. And everyone screws up now and then. Think about us and how we started out,” I say, waiting to let it sink in.