A tremendous roar disturbed our brief ceasefire. Magic splashed about the hallway, sparks trickling into the kitchen and I heard an agonized scream as feet rushed across the hallway, only to clash with the supernatural malice. It was silenced by the sound of a tremendous crash and a thud as something hit the living room wall.
Seren winked back into existence beside us. “Wasn’t me,” she whispered.
“Who would send a fool to be a foot soldier?” questioned the phantom voice. She laughed and it was the most unpleasant sound. “I would say ‘goodbye, boy,’ but he doesn’t seem to be alive anymore.”
I winced. Boy? What the hell had Jared been thinking to barge in there?
Seren’s face crumpled as she fought back tears. “Magic is protecting the house, keeping us from getting out or anyone else from getting in. I can’t break it,” she whispered hurriedly. “I don’t know where Étoile or David are. I don’t know what she’s done but trying to use magic here is like wading through mud. I’m finding it difficult to shimmer.”
“Where are Christy and Clara?” Evan asked, keeping his voice low as I started to tremble beside him. Seren reached out to place her arm on me.
“Don’t do that,” I snapped in a hiss and she scuttled back. She and her sister had done this to me several times before but I’d only just allowed the thought to fully form. They could calm me down to the point of knocking me out when it suited them! “Every time you and Étoile want me to simmer down, you just touch me. I don’t need to feel all Zen right now!”
“You could have stopped us any time,” Seren shrugged. “We can only influence another witch’s feelings as long as she allows it. Besides, your magic leaks when you get angry and it’s distracting.”
Evan said that to me once, the first time we met. I wasn’t even going to go there right now but the sisters and I were going to have a chat later. I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for telling me that now.”
“Um, no problem.”
“Christy and Clara?” Evan prompted.
“I can’t find them,” Seren whispered, adding, “I have to look for my sister.” She vanished as quickly as she had come.
“She’s going to pick us off one by one,” growled Evan.
“Why are you doing this?” It was Marc’s voice and I tried to work out where it was coming from. He was closer to the living room than the rest of us so perhaps the library, or his room, which opened off the hallway. Next to me, Kitty sighed in relief.
“I just want to talk to Stella,” trilled the singsong voice.
“We need to get closer,” I said. “I’ll move myself through there.”
“I’m coming with you,” said Kitty as she gripped my wrist. I could probably have disappeared without her but I didn’t want to risk losing my arm. Or her’s.
Evan started to shake his head, then paused. “Much as I hate to say it, you’re right. She’s just going to come after us anyway. I’d rather have some chance to do some damage than none at all. Seren is right about the magic. We need to be closer.”
“You don’t have to come.” It tore me to say it; of course, I wanted him with me... and I didn’t.
“You shouldn’t go at all,” said Evan, glaring at me like I was about to obey him. I couldn’t hide, he knew that. His hand still held mine and I gave it a little squeeze. At last he said, “We’ll go together. Moving another person is more difficult than moving yourself and there’s a spell weakening all of us. You can draw power from me, if you need to.”
“Can I do that?”
“Of course, but not often, and only because I volunteered.” I clearly had a lot to learn. “Concentrate.”
Evan whispered the location to me and I nodded as I pictured the living room. I envisioned, very precisely, the square of carpet behind the sofa to which he thought we should shimmer. It seemed to be the furthest spot from the door where the voice was coming. I hoped she was occupied with Marc who was unwittingly providing us with some cover. I took a breath, wished and felt the electricity sing through my veins, though I didn’t dare close my eyes for even the briefest moment.
We landed, crouched in the same position, with our backs to the sofa instead of the cool kitchen wall. I hoped our magic would somehow be obscured by the recent activity and that we hadn’t just announced our presence as loudly as ringing a doorbell. I felt inexplicably exhausted with the effort of moving through space and when I glanced at Evan, he was drawing in the same shallow breaths.
“It’s the magic working against us,” explained Evan when I looked questioningly at him. “It’s going to be rough.” He shuffled closer to me and his hand wrapped tighter round mine. “I can see Jared,” he murmured in my ear, his voice barely louder than a whisper. Kitty released her grip on me a fraction and I leaned forward to follow Evan’s line of sight. Jared lay at an angle, face down. One arm was flung towards us and I strained to see his face.
“Not moving,” I whispered back. “But I don’t know if he’s dead or just hurt.”
“I won’t let you do this,” Marc was saying. I doubted very much that he expected the reply he got as a red-hot flash erupted in the room like a lethal firecracker. There was no noise, except for Kitty’s laboured breathing. I felt intense fear coiling within me for the first time in weeks. I couldn’t hear a thing in the still room but I sensed the hum of power seeping all around us. It was cloying and terrible; it trailed over my skin, raising the hairs on my arms like static shock.
Evan had taken the opportunity to lean across us and sneak a look around the other side of the sofa. “Robert’s definitely dead,” he said to us after a long moment.
“Stella, I don’t have all day. We need to talk and I know you’re in here.” There was no cajoling now, the woman just sounded impatient.
“How do I know you won’t kill me?” I asked, my voice curiously strong and even, although my hands betrayed me by shaking uncontrollably.
“You have my word.”
Somehow, I didn’t think that counted for much as I sadly thought of Robert, whom I misjudged so badly, now dead while Jared wasn’t moving. I didn’t want her to work her way through the rest of my housemates before she got to me. Besides, I wanted to know why she was doing this.
“I’m going to talk to her,” I said decisively as Kitty gripped my arm again, frantically shaking her head.
“It’s a bad idea, Stella,” agreed Evan. “We can come up with a better plan.”
I rolled my eyes. “Like waiting here while she picks us off one by one is a good idea? I don’t think so. I can’t let that happen.”
“Then I’m standing up with you. You’ll need me.”
“No,” I shook my head. The thought of Evan getting hurt made my heart contract. “She came for me.”
Cautiously, I swivelled on the balls of my feet and raised my head until I could peep above the sofa. After I was sure she had seen me and I wasn’t about to get my head blown off, I stood to my full height, my shoulders square and stiff disguising the fear that nearly paralysed me. I kept my shaking hands behind my back.
Eleanor Bartholomew looked back at me and smiled a crazy smile that didn’t quite reach her dull eyes. She was dressed like she was about to go to a country club in a pastel twinset and cream pants, as well as a string of pearls around her neck. There was a streak of blood across her top but I don’t think she knew it yet. Her hair was impeccable, of course. It was probably de rigueur for society psychopaths to get coiffed first.
She wasn’t alone. A woman stood behind her, limp brown hair straggled around her ears. She had a handsome face with sharp cheekbones. At least, she had been striking once. Now her skin was dull, her cheeks sunken and grey with glassy eyes that scanned the room but didn’t seem to be registering anything. There was something disconcertingly familiar about her.
“You told Marc to search my room,” I said. It wasn’t a question; I was just stating a fact.
“Yes.”
“It was you who attacked us at your apartment.” Again, a stat
ement, but I was curious. “How did you do it?”
“Astra did it.” Eleanor reached to her side, her eyes barely leaving my face and stroked the woman’s cheek with the back of her hand as I watched. Astra, the sister Étoile and Seren had been searching for, nuzzled against it like an affection-starved puppy. “I had to get you away from them all.”
“Which is why you sent me here so Marc could watch me. What was he supposed to find?”
“Evidence.” Eleanor shrugged. “I told him to seduce you if he had too. Did he?”
“No.” Sheesh. What kind of mother asks that?
Eleanor shrugged again. “Spineless, just like his father.”
“What did you think I was hiding?”
Eleanor laughed but it wasn’t a pretty, happy sound. “Not what you were hiding, dear Stella, but evidence of what I was hiding.”
Of course, it was so simple. She had never, for a moment, thought that a five-year-old child could be responsible for killing her parents, despite what she told Marc. She never doubted who I was either.
Eleanor had been the one to kill my parents and she thought I knew. It hit me like a cannon discharged into my chest. She had probably been waiting all this time for her world to crumble.
With fury rising through my bones to bubble in my chest, I sure intended for her to pay for it.
Of course, when you’re not thinking straight, you’re not thinking tactically and I wasn’t thinking at all when I summoned the large plant pot from the hallway and brought it smashing down on her head, yucca, soil, and all. In the split second it took for Eleanor to register what was about to happen, she thrust forth her hands and sent a bolt of magic hurtling towards me.
I froze.
Kitty grabbed my legs and tackled me to the floor, where I sprawled on my back for a moment as Evan leapt up to cover me, completely unshielded, sending forth his own pulse of energy. Power crackled overhead. Evan met Eleanor’s force with equal strength and, though not eradicating it entirely, certainly held it at bay and prevented it from reaching us. He stepped around the sofa so that he could pounce forwards, forcing Eleanor to stumble over herself. Beads of perspiration popped and trickled across his forehead and I saw the veins bulge in his forearms as he tapped into the very core of his being to defy her.
He hadn’t reckoned for Astra issuing her own blast. I assumed it was she; her magic had a purple tinge to it, unlike the green flashes from Eleanor and the brilliant white of Evan’s. I saw the violet-tinged flash of lightning stream towards him and only had a millisecond to yelp a warning. Astra hadn’t sent a deadly pulse, but enough to distract him, allowing the green lightning to slash at him before exploding into shards all around us. As I watched in horror from behind the sofa, Evan was lifted from the floor, his face and body contorted as he hung weightlessly in mid-air before being smashed to the ground.
I was rooted to the floor as agony ripped through me, shredding any remote feeling of calm. I had never known pain like this. As I searched for any sign that Evan was alive, I vowed that this battle wouldn’t end until one of us was dead; it would be Eleanor or me; that much was clear.
And like hell was it going to be me.
TWELVE
“I loved him,” Eleanor whined, her chin trembling with anger. I could barely hear her as I stared at Evan’s body, feeling that my whole world was falling apart. “I loved Jonathan. We could have had such a wonderful life together. We would have been happy together, but he wouldn’t leave her. He wouldn’t leave Isadore.” Eleanor spat my mother’s name into the air as if it disgusted her. It probably did. Inside my head, the puzzle pieces clicked into place; the unhappy woman in the wedding photos had been Eleanor, which is why she was gazing at my father. My parents had hidden me with humans where she was never supposed to find me. My mother had been the love of my father’s life, though Eleanor saw her as nothing but an obstacle to her happiness with my father.
“No, you wouldn’t, he would never have left my mother!” I was certain of it. I crept upwards, slowly at first, not sure if she would lash out at me. Robert lay dead at Astra’s feet and she seemed to be nudging him with her toe. It almost appeared that she wasn’t quite certain and thought he might get up with some encouragement. Violet flecks danced on her fingertips.
Eleanor’s face tightened and she glared at me as if I had just uttered the most stupid thing. “That’s why I killed her. I simply waited until he went out and left her at home. She was with you. I watched you both through the window playing happy family, talking about Daddy coming home. All I had to do was knock at the door and she answered it. It was so easy,” Eleanor’s eyes took on a faraway look and I edged backwards. “Don’t move,” she hissed, snapping her attention back to me, her lips twitching upwards at the edges into a strange semblance of a cruel smile. “She was dead before she could even say hello. I snapped her neck. I didn’t have to check if she was dead but I did anyway. When I bent down to touch her neck and feel for life, I didn’t know Jonathan had come back. He shouldn’t have come back!”
I could see the scene in my mind but I didn’t know if I was imagining it or remembering something I once witnessed. I could envision Eleanor, a much younger Eleanor, stooped over my mother’s inert body in the little porch of our home. I could also see myself, tiny and afraid. The magic hanging about us, cloying and raw, was palpable.
“He saw you with Isadore dead?” I urged her to continue but my heart didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I wanted to clamp my hands over my ears and block it all out. Instead, I waited.
“He shouldn’t have come back. He shouldn’t have come back for hours and by then, I would have been there to comfort him. I would have helped him get over her. There was nothing to stop him loving me once she was gone.” Eleanor was hysterical with what she saw as the injustice meted out to her.
“He would never have loved you.” The voice of reason and I were going to have to sit down some day so I could tell it to shut up during life or death moments.
“Of course, he would have! I would have left Robert and given myself to him. Jonathan would see the sacrifice I made and would have loved me all the more. He always saw the good in others.”
“You would have left your own child?” I couldn’t imagine how a parent could abandon their own blood. I consoled myself that at least I knew, for certain now, that my parents never turned their backs on me, even though I never really believed that they had. It was strangely comforting to know that I was loved and hidden from harm all these years until I could defend myself.
“Marc would have been fine with Robert. They didn’t need me, not like I needed Jonathan.” I scanned the room for Marc, then what I could see of the hallway. I couldn’t see a body so I assumed he was alive, at least, and within earshot; and my heart pined for him. I wondered if Robert had ever known or suspected what Eleanor had done. I concluded that a part of him had to or he wouldn’t have come to warn us; the puzzle pieces clicked just a bit too late for him. He tried to warn me, even hide me again, just as my parents did, in plain sight with people who would protect me, but he was too late and fell into his wife’s trap. It was almost too horrible to be true. Eleanor intended to kill us all.
“Why didn’t you kill me?” Did she think she would become my mother or had she planned to get rid of me, the last obstacle between Jonathan and her?
“The moment I realised Jonathan had seen me, he disappeared. I could smell his magic in the air as he snatched you from inside the house and disappeared. He was back within minutes. He tried to get to Isadore but I pleaded with him. She was gone; I could take her place. I could love him more than she ever did.” Eleanor paused and, if I hadn’t seen her murder her own husband, then refer to my mother’s death with such indifference, I might have pitied her psychosis.
“I tried to show him. I tried to take him inside so I could give myself to him, show him what a wonderful wife I would be to him, but he was furious. I could see the disgust in his eyes. He hated me and I couldn’t bear
it. I stabbed him and I stabbed and I stabbed; and eventually he died too, leaving me covered in his blood. It shouldn’t have happened. He should have been free the moment Isadore was dead. He should have been free to love me. She was the only problem; she always got everything she wanted.”
“He would never have loved you,” I whispered again. “Never. You are pathetic, sad, deluded and evil. How could anyone love someone like you?”
Eleanor screamed and the veins in her forehead heaved as she shook. She locked her eyes on me and I saw her mouth barely moving as she started murmuring. Behind me, there was a tremendous hiss and rush of air so I could barely hear her. But before I could begin to puzzle what she was voicing, I fell to the side as my arm was roughly yanked down. Just seconds later, the bolt whistled through the airspace my head had occupied only moments earlier. Continually ducking my head was getting to be a very nasty, albeit necessary, habit.
Newly crouched on the floor, I could see Evan lying on his back, his shoulder at a strange angle to the rest of his body. He was bleeding from a jagged cut on his cheek and more blood oozed from wounds across his body. Even in his unconscious state, I could see his face contorted in pain. It was all I could do not to lurch towards him and cover his body with mine.
Kitty caught my eye and shook her head. “You would be totally exposed,” she warned. “Stay down. He’s not going anywhere and I can see him breathing.”
I nodded obediently, heaving with relief. I could just make out his chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. Kitty was right anyway. Unconscious, Evan was hardly a target. Eleanor might even assume he was dead from across the room. If I threw myself out there, she would have me in her line of sight and I didn’t know if I could defend myself against her superior strength. Even worse, Evan was definitely no longer a participant in the fight.
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