by Laura Powell
Almost before she knew it, she was hustled back into the house, along a corridor and up some stairs. A door was slammed behind her, and another soldier took up position outside. This time it was for her own protection.
What had Rose tried to do? Or had there been some attempt at rescue? From the guard’s excitable Spanglish, it sounded as if the captive harpy had tried to work some evil, but been struck down in a faint, and they were trying to revive her now . . . There had been something final and foreboding in the way Rose said goodbye, and it chilled Glory to think of it.
Rose’s room wasn’t much more luxurious than the one Glory had been imprisoned in. The window was open and overlooked the front drive, but was too small to squeeze out of. While she tried to work out her next move, she turned the lamp down low and held a damp flannel to her brow, as if she really did have a headache. Pretending to be too ill to speak or move wasn’t much of a cover but it was all she had.
Her usual decisiveness had deserted her. The bridling had left her weak and cold. For possibly the longest half an hour of her life, she lay on the bed trying to think of what she should do, while every nerve and muscle was tensed for the door to burst open, for the shouts and threats and fists to start.
Incredibly, they didn’t come. Rose must still be alive and her amulet still hidden. At one point Gideon looked round the door, face tight.
‘You’ve heard the news. Stay here till we know more, OK? I’ve got to phone the wretched Senator –’
Glory lay in the shadows. She rubbed her forehead, let out a faint moan.
Gideon made a sound of annoyance. ‘Really, you need to sort these migraines out. You’re no use to me if you’re ill.’
She risked a faint whisper. ‘Sorry.’
‘Here.’ He put a small pistol on the bedside table. ‘If we’re under attack, you should be armed.’
And then he was gone again, and with him the guard at the door, and after another five jittery minutes, she decided to make a move, only for Pedro to come rushing back with the news that an intruder had been captured, and the hag-bitch was dead.
In the viewing room, Glory stood rigidly by the window, forcing herself not to look at Lucas strapped in the chair. Having him there, so perilously close, was almost as wrenching as watching Rose on the balefire.
For her vision had come true after all. Here was the Burning Court and balefire, here was the audience behind the glass. There she was at the stake; and also here in the viewing chamber, staring into her own face as the first flames spat upwards. And although some things didn’t belong – the marble columns, the lush vines, Gideon’s arm curled loathsomely around her waist – they only made the experience more surreal, more nightmarish, than any dream.
She couldn’t forget the feel of Rose’s hand in hers or the emptiness in her voice as she said goodbye. She had been fortunate that Gideon was too preoccupied to pay much attention to her, but listening to him relate events over the phone, she gathered that when a soldier had gone to check on the prisoner, she had uttered a piercing cry and then collapsed. Blood had run from her eyes and nose, but there had been an uncanny smile on her lips. She had remained unconscious, possibly in a coma, for nearly an hour before her heart had stopped.
Depending on the temperature of a fire, it could take anything from one to three hours for a body to burn. A glamour could survive the destruction of its amulet, and even the death of its witch, as long as the witchwork was strong and had been worn close to the body for a substantial amount of time. Rose had collapsed about ten minutes after Glory left her. She had remained alive, but unconscious, for another forty-five. Glory calculated the illusion would outlast her by about forty minutes. By the time the pyre had been built, Lucas captured, and the fire lit, there were perhaps only fifteen minutes to go before the glamour expired.
Or maybe her own glamour would be the first to fail. The bridling had sucked the life out of her fae, and although the effect was temporary, she knew the witchwork on her amulet was dangerously weak. She could be imagining it, but the burn marks on her hand already seemed a little faded.
‘I’m sorry,’ Glory whispered to the ghost of Rose Merle. ‘I never wanted –’
Smoke from the damp wood had begun to billow, black and thick. The Red Knights stationed at the hacienda’s main entrance points were still on duty, but the others were all watching the balefire. Soon they, and most of the garishly-lit courtyard, were hidden by a rancid fog.
It was time for Glory to make her move. When she took Lucas by the arm, she was shaken to see him recoil from her with such hatred. But as soon as she said his name, Lucas squeezed his eyes briefly shut, and the juddering tautness she could feel in his body dissolved away.
Their hands touched when she loosened the rope binding him to the chair. Then Glory went to Gideon, leaned her head against his. As he turned round, she felt the curve of his cheek. That was when she stuck the barrel of the gun in his ribs.
‘You’re burning the wrong witch,’ she whispered into his ear, a loving smile on her face, in case somebody caught sight of them through the smoke. She pulled him up and round so that his back was to the window. ‘Now you’re going to escort us outta here. Keep quiet and play nice, and you might make it out yourself.’
Lucas got to his feet. He was dazed but calm, though he avoided her eyes. She understood. She didn’t want to look at him either – not so long as she was hiding behind a dead girl’s face. And yet the impulse to go to him was immediate; she could feel the movement of springing forward gather in her body. She forced it down.
Gideon, meanwhile, seemed emptied of everything but stunned horror. She had expected threats, snarls, bravado. Instead, he was limp and unresisting.
At Glory’s direction, he fumblingly picked up the chain attached to Lucas’s cuffs and opened the door. She walked beside him, holding the point of the pistol to his side. The soldier outside stood to attention and Glory smiled Rose’s dazzling smile. ‘The prisoner’s getting agitated. We’re taking him back to his cell,’ she said in her best posh voice, hustling the trio past. Gideon kept his silence, although she thought she could hear his teeth chattering. Coward, she thought with contempt.
Somehow she got the three of them down the hallway and round the corner. Lucas came to a stop.
‘I came with Raffi. Is he a prisoner here too?’
‘Raffi?’ She shook her head. ‘No. No, I ain’t heard nothing about that.’
Lucas bit his lip, but they kept moving through the shadowy depths of the house. Glory was worried that the glamour on Rose was already wearing off; that lines of red hair had begun to streak the blonde. Or that her own brown-black eyes were showing through the illusion of their violet covering. And as soon as anyone else saw Gideon they would realise something was wrong. His skin was a sickly green and he was panting as if he’d run a marathon. His legs buckled, and he swayed drunkenly in her grip.
Glory gave him an angry shake. ‘Get a grip of yourself. We ain’t done with you.’
He barely seemed to notice. ‘Can you hear it?’ He clutched at her with clammy fingers. ‘The hissing . . .’
‘What’s he talking about?’ Lucas asked.
‘I dunno,’ she said, but she felt a creeping in the pit of her stomach.
‘Playing ill now, are you? Think you can trick us?’ Lucas was whispering – they all were – but with a stab of violence in his voice.
‘It can’t be a trick – I can see them.’ Sweat was pouring down Gideon’s face. ‘We have to keep them away –’
‘Keep who away?’ Lucas asked.
His eyes darted fearfully. They were clouded, with a greenish tint. ‘The snakes. In – in the shadows there. There! I can hear them . . . the slithering – they’re getting closer . . .’
Glory swallowed hard. ‘He’s been hexed.’
‘What?’
‘It’s the same bane . . . the bane what Rose cast on the Senator’s kid.’
‘And Rose is dead,’ said Lucas. They looked at
each other in fearful understanding. It meant the bane was irreversible.
Somehow, Rose had known her time was up. Even before coming to see Glory in her cell she must have made her preparations. Vengeance had been done and Glory, raised in the tradition of coven blood feuds, should rejoice. Instead, she remembered reaching into Esteban’s mind, and how the bane had nearly overcome her. The rasping darkness, the taste of bile . . . She felt a wave of exhaustion and disgust. For it seemed she had been here before: fleeing through a strange house with a captive inquisitor, while another witch was engulfed by flames. ‘Lucas – I don’t – I – what shall we do?’
‘Where’s the nearest exit?’
‘Through here.’ She had been heading for the door she’d gone through earlier, with the vague idea of forcing Gideon to requisition a car, and tell his henchmen they were taking Lucas to another detention facility. No chance of that now. ‘There’s a guard, though, and –’
‘So let’s get him to help.’
Glory released Lucas from the cuffs he’d kept on for appearance’s sake and the two of them dragged Gideon into a small anteroom. He didn’t attempt to resist them, instead he clutched at them with desperate hands. The bane was progressing much faster than Esteban’s; bloody scribble marks had started to wriggle up from under his skin. The horror of it was catching: they were both sweating and shaking too by the time they managed to disentangle themselves.
Lucas took up position behind the door. Glory ran to summon the guard.
‘Oh! Help me, please help – Lieutenant Hale’s been attacked. More witchwork – hurry –’
The Red Knight pounded after her and into the room where Gideon was rocking and moaning on the floor; snake marks, like living tattoos, writhing over his face. The man didn’t even have time to cry out before Lucas struck him over the head with a chair.
He staggered and fell, and between the two of them, they managed to disable him. Lucas tied him up with the cuffs and rope that had been previously used on him, tearing a strip off the man’s shirt for a gag.
Glory was watching Gideon. He needed no restraints: his eyes were nearly completely clouded over, and soon he would be locked in the bane’s trance.
‘Help me,’ he rasped. ‘You . . . can . . . help me –’
‘I can’t,’ she said with a tremor of pity, in spite of herself. ‘The only person who could is dead on your balefire.’
‘Leave him,’ said Lucas harshly. ‘We have to go.’
They took the Red Knight’s set of keys, and his communications radio. One of the keys opened the door with the carved vines around the frame. Together, they slipped through it.
One step into freedom. Then another, and another one after that.
Chapter 30
There were no shouts, no gunfire, no alarms. The identity of the girl on the balefire hadn’t yet been discovered, Gideon and the guard hadn’t yet been missed. Everyone was still enjoying the show.
Glory seemed to know where she was going and Lucas followed her blindly. Thunder growled in the darkness, the air was hot and close. They ran into the ruins of a walled garden, and then an overgrown orchard. The top of its walls were barbed, but half-fallen in, and they sky-leaped into the tangle of trees beyond.
Lucas thought they were to the north of where Raffi had parked the car. He felt another twist of anxiety, but there was nothing for it but to keep going: a headlong scramble through the undergrowth, tripping over roots, ferns, brambles. Rain began to patter overhead, then drum against the leaves. It seemed as if they had been running for miles, for hours, for ever.
‘Stop,’ he called out at last, in a muddy clearing. ‘Where are we going?’
Glory turned. Rose turned. Two girls in one. He was chasing a ghost. ‘I don’t know. I just – we have to get away.’ Her breath came fast. ‘We have to keep running –’ She made a stumbling step towards him. ‘Lucas . . .’ Tears glittered in her eyes. Rose’s eyes.
‘No. Wait –’
She flinched.
‘I still can’t believe . . . I have to see you. The real you, I mean.’
Lightning flared as, haltingly, he reached out to touch her hair. It seemed as if the rain was washing the red away, but it was the witchwork that was fading. As he stroked the damp strand curling by her cheek, it lightened under his fingertips, gleamed blonde.
Glory gave a small gasp. She closed her eyes; when she opened them, another streak of light revealed the lilac darkening to blue, then brown. He traced the line of her brows, and watched them darken too, grow straight and strong beneath his touch. As he cupped her face in his hands, brought it close to his, its features shifted and blurred . . . the last of Rose Merle vanishing into the night.
There were tears on Glory’s face, but no blood. He brushed his lips against the bruise, livid on her cheek. He bent his head to kiss the bloom of fae on her collarbone. The rain crashed through the trees. He said her name. Her arms tightened fiercely around him, even as her mouth trembled under his. Then she was kissing him back.
The roar of water was deafening, the trees seemed to be cracking under its force. Red mud and black leaves sloshed around their ankles. They were streaming with water, dissolving with it; into the night, into each other.
A beam of brightness swooped through the downpour and caught them in its light.
‘Good to see the two of you are on top of the situation,’ said a voice. American, amused.
And behind it, ‘Lucas, you dirty dog! This is hot stuff, amigo!’
Raffi, and Jenna White.
The voicemail that Lucas left for Troy Morgan had produced results. As soon he’d picked it up, Troy got hold of Zoey Connor at WICA and Jonah Branning at the Inquisition, demanding action. ‘Your cousin,’ Jenna remarked drily to Glory, ‘appears to have quite a forceful personality.’ WICA knew that Section Seven had an agent in Cordoba on the trail of Cambion. After some inter-agency haggling, Jenna White was contacted and tasked with finding Lucas and Glory’s whereabouts. She had arrived at the hacienda just in time to intervene in Raffi’s capture by a Red Knight. ‘This spy-girl is super kick-ass! She takes the bastardo down – bam! Pow!’
Raffi and Jenna were debating whether to stage an intervention themselves or wait until Comandante Almagro and the police arrived, when the scrying-bowl showed Rose – or so it appeared – turn on Gideon. The police were now on their way to the hacienda, but Lucas, Glory and Raffi were travelling south in Agent White’s armoured jeep. Section Seven had a lead on the location of Cambion’s clinic, and Jenna had been heading there before the diversion to the hacienda.
Now and again Raffi would turn round in his seat to look at Glory and Lucas in the back, and grin at them broadly, or give the thumbs-up. They were sitting a respectable distance apart, though their hands rested casually against each other in the space in between. Whenever they caught the other’s eye they smiled, then looked away, collusive and a little shy. They were very tired. Lucas thought how good it would be to fall asleep, knowing Glory was beside him.
Her voice dragged with exhaustion as she recounted what had happened between her and Rose. ‘She were being controlled in some way. Voices in her head. And that thing with the gingerbread man – it didn’t make no sense at first, but now I’m thinking she might’ve meant a poppet.’
Jenna shook her head. ‘You can tell if a poppet’s at work. It’s that dead-eyed look people get, and the way their bodies jerk about, like they’re on strings. Rose may have been a bit schizo, but it’s clear she passed for normal most of the time.’
‘And if a witch was directing her through a poppet, they would have had to keep close by,’ Lucas pointed out. ‘You need to be within viewing distance.’
Glory bit her lip. ‘Whatever it was, she must’ve got free of it in the end. Though I think she guessed, somehow, that she weren’t going to recover.’
‘Well, I’ve had enough of guesswork,’ Jenna said shortly. ‘It’s time for solid facts. Let’s hope Cambion HQ can provide them.’ She st
ill had her high ponytail, and a trace of pink lipgloss, but the cheerleader peppiness was long gone.
So far, there were no signs of pursuit. By now the police would have reached the hacienda, where the Red Knights must be struggling to contain the fallout from their lieutenant’s condition and the exposure of the balefire witch. Jenna said that Gideon had overstepped the mark in any case. Neither his superiors in the Red Knights nor Senator Vargas would have been happy with the extent to which he had taken matters into his own hands. ‘The guy probably had a few screws loose even before the hexing.’
Lucas was mostly conscious of the ache at the back of his head where he’d been knocked out, and the steady warmth of Glory’s hand. He did not want to think of Gideon or his fate. A bane of that nature was too powerful for the mind and body to withstand. Gideon would not live long under such pressure. Lucas searched himself for pity and found none. It would come later, perhaps. He supposed that would be a good thing.
At last, he allowed himself to float into sleep. In the front of the car, Raffi was renewing his charm offensive on Jenna. ‘But how old are you really?’
‘Too old for you,’ she said, with a flick of the ponytail. ‘And too smart besides.’
It was mid-morning before they reached their destination. The rain poured all night, turning the roads to churning red mud, the potholes to oily ponds. As the sun came up, a smudge of mountains loomed ahead, their peaks dusted with rose.
They stopped only once, at a run-down petrol station attached to an even more dilapidated motel, to use the bathroom facilities and get food. Jenna had a medical kit in the car to deal with Glory’s scrapes and bruises, but when Raffi heard of the blow Lucas had taken to his head, he asked, with uncharacteristic diffidence, if he could lay his hands on the spot. As he did so, Lucas could feel the fae flowing through, warm and faintly tingling, and the last of his headache vanished. ‘Maybe I will become super-kick-ass-spy-doctor,’ Raffi said. ‘Fighting evil and mending bones!’
