“Stop,” he said, hands wide, begging.
A flame lit next to his shoulder, catching the wallpaper, that Luke had to put out with his hands. His hectic pulse pounded black in the edges of his vision. He’d chosen wrong—she was faster than he was, and he could not claw his way out of this room with every sleeping body in it.
Her magic felt like ice crystals crawling across glass. Luke caught the icy thread guiding back to her, held it in his mind, and willed her frozen, still. He passed the ideas back and forth, the real freeze and the new one, and said it again, clearer. “Stop.”
Annabel froze. Her shoulders jerked; her lip curled in an angry sneer; her shoulders jerked harder. He had her—she was pieced together from memories and old spells, more magic than human, and Luke could control that.
He snatched Alexei’s jacket off the back of his chair and ran around the room, squeezing between chairs and furniture, to beat out two growing fires. The plants and wallpaper made more smoke than flame, choking Luke’s throat. He threw his elbow over his mouth and breathed through it, beating out fires and thinking about holding her still, making her calm.
He dropped the remains of the jacket on the ground and hunched over, coughing until he could breathe. The hazy smoke smelled toxic. Annabel was close enough to reach out and touch, but Luke stepped back. “Just tell me how you got back, and we’ll figure it out so everyone can stay.”
“I don’t need your permission,” she snarled. Her torso and shoulders kept moving, twitching out of joint as she tried to writhe free. She fought back like a human, not a spell, and her panic raked nails down Luke’s mind. “You let me go, you let—”
“I will, I just need you to not hurt anyone—” Luke glanced at Jeremy. His chest rose and his eyelids fluttered. Luke went dizzy with the relief of it and with holding his own breath to listen. It took too long, but Jeremy exhaled pure, the rattle fading in his chest.
“You only care about that one!” Annabel twisted. She had tears in her eyes, but her mouth kept sneering. “You only care about yourself, all of you, living without me. He’s been walking around in my life—”
“No.” Luke’s head shot up. Annabel heaved.
That was wrong—and it had been wrong when Corey Malcolm said it before, too. Luke ran around the table and shook Malcolm’s arm, but he stayed gone, unconscious. “That’s not what it is,” Luke said. “Is that how you got here? That shouldn’t…”
But if Malcolm had gone into the ritual focusing on that trade, taken back the power to tell his version of the story instead of handing it back to Alexei, it didn’t matter what Luke thought the magic should do.
Jeremy, Camille, oh help help wake up Mom—
Mom—
“You turned the spell around.” Luke glared at the bowl on the table as if he’d be able to see where it had fallen under her control. Agrimony to turn the spell around on the caster, Annabel’s blood on a candle. At least three different spells—the contract, the prayer, the candles—fit together like pieces of a mismatched puzzle, glued into place with fear and anger and the goddamn agrimony that always messed him up. They’d gone in to take charge of the whole disaster, and she had found a gap or caught a rope her brother had thrown, and wrested back control instead.
Luke had nothing to fix this. His mind whirred circles of Jeremy and Camille and help and Annabel’s own riotous anger scrambling back up the connection between them. Luke’s chest heaved, and his vision went black, and when he shook his head and focused again, she was free. She wrenched away and reeled back against the wall, panting—and smiling slowly at Luke. A fireball exploded by his head, extinguishing in one huge burst and leaving his face raw with stinging heat.
He tried again—focusing on the ice, imagining her frozen. “Stop.” But Annabel simply smirked, scrambling onto the table again and stretching to trace her hands around the chandelier, sending showers of sparks cascading down. She was getting stronger. She would drain Jeremy and come into this power, a broken thing laughing and lighting fires in a locked room.
Searching, searching, Luke’s eyes landed on the bowl on the table. Blood, every spell is in the blood—
Annabel caught him. She crouched in front of the bowl, a wrestler ready to pounce.
Jeremy wasn’t breathing, and Luke was twice Annabel’s size. He sprung, diving between the chairs and over her body to get to the silver bowl. The attack was a gauntlet—his breath knocked out of his stomach, his knee against a chair as it fell, and Annabel’s nails like claws down his cheek. He bellowed and she screamed and Luke was flying, a sick lurch. His back slammed so hard against the wall his vision went black. He blinked and shook his head, focused on Annabel, who was sneering so he could see her sharp white teeth.
The blood it’s in the blood—
A flood of adrenaline washed away Luke’s pain, and he jumped up. Annabel jerked close as he moved, but he didn’t dive for her again. He went to Alexei, fingers scrabbling for the knife in his shirt pocket.
He flipped it open and dug the blade into his palm. It was painless, the creamy give of slicing through butter, until a burn raced up his arm. He opened his hand over one of the candles on the hutch and watched his blood fall on the wood, the wax, and the flame. “Defend Camille,” he said out loud, “and defend Jeremy, and defend Annabel. Defend Jeremy, Camille, Annabel. Jeremy, Camille, Annabel. Defend us all.”
He waited through the sharp burn of the knife, the truer burn of the fire, and the sting of dirty-penny smoke billowing into his eyes and lungs, until the magic started to shift in the room. Cold tentacles shriveled around him, the air growing warm and human again.
Twice more to seal: “Defend us all. Defend us all.”
He shut his eyes and stood there and bled. Camille stirred and finally, finally, Jeremy coughed. Luke would turn, and Annabel would be sitting there, fresh as a new book, ready to get back to her interrupted life, or at least she would have had the grace to disappear again. He prayed, that was the only word for it, to every minor deity and faceless god he’d ever heard a story about: let it be all right. He mashed the heel of his hand along the back of his cheek and it came away wet with sooty tears.
Luke opened his eyes and turned around, pulling his hand away from the candle and cradling it to his chest. Jeremy and Camille sat on the floor, washed sickly green, and Annabel Malcolm was a waxy white corpse on the table.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Jeremy couldn’t breathe, coughing, coughing, coughing so hard his lungs scraped up into his throat, the chaotic noise of the room crowding out all the places he was supposed to carry air or blood or his own brain.
“What the fuck?”
That was Alexei’s voice, shouting—Alexei?
Jeremy coughed, and it hurt a little less. He found a smooth inhale and coughed it out more easily.
He breathed again.
He breathed.
Black spots scattered across his vision, and he blinked them down. When his eyes locked into focus, the first thing he saw was Natalya, with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. She was crying.
A body moved past Jeremy’s. Helene crouched on the floor next to Camille, who gripped her mother to stop swaying. “Mama?”
“Shh, shh.” Helene turned to Jeremy and put a powder-cool hand on his cheek. “Honey, are you all right?”
Jeremy blinked at her and started to understand. “Am I alive?”
His voice was hoarse and tiny, but his words silenced the room. Alexei turned. Malcolm—he was the other person shouting, bellowing at Alexei—stopped and looked down, too.
Luke slumped against the hutch behind Alexei, blood on his face and smeared brown across his white shirt. He had his eyes shut against the noise. “She was going to kill you.”
“I know. She said—” Jeremy stopped. He’d kissed Luke goodbye and woken up alive. “Did you save me?”
Luke shook his head. He was holding his hand against his chest like a wounded bird. Helene stood up and put her hands on h
is elbows, and he said, “I tried, Mom, I did try.”
She made that soothing hush noise again. “Tried what, honey?”
Natalya wiped her hands harshly across her face. “Are we just going to leave her here?”
Malcolm and Alexei both moved and stilled, reaching for Annabel’s body but afraid or unwilling to touch her.
“I can take her upstairs,” Sergei said.
“I’ll do it,” Alexei replied instantly. He pushed his hair, sopping with sour-smelling milk, out of his face, and scooped her up, arms under her shoulders and knees. He was careful, as if she might crumble or shatter in his arms, but her body flopped solidly against him, hair falling in a tangle.
Jeremy flinched back, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away. She was real, and she was dead. Had he killed her? Or as good as, fighting to keep her from tearing his life away? There were plenty of other people—some in this room—who seemed to deserve the punishment, but it was her body Alexei carried to the stairs.
Malcolm moved as if to follow, but Natalya put a gentle hand on his arm, and Sergei lumbered more roughly between him and the door. The spaces between them stretched, but eventually, Malcolm sat down hard in his chair.
Alexei was gone for a long time, and no one said anything. Camille clambered up from the floor and took a seat. Jeremy tried to follow, but his legs gave out, and Sergei had to help him. He felt scarily weak—it was hard to lift his arms, to keep his head up on his neck—and even the blood rushing back to his limbs seemed to come too fast. With too much to process, his fuzzy mind grasped at random thoughts—he was alive. Luke was hurt again. Something had changed, but maybe not for the better. He was alive. He could fight tomorrow, but oh, he wanted this night to be over. He was alive.
When Alexei returned, he filled the doorway. “What happened? Start from the beginning.”
Luke was still leaning against the hutch, his hand against his chest. He shut his eyes and shook his head.
“We found my ancestor,” Jeremy said. “It felt like talking to the saints.”
“Fairy-tale rules,” Luke said. “That was how I thought it would be. She set a condition on the contract, but it wasn’t a spell or a curse or anything like that.” He opened his eyes and found Jeremy’s. “It was just a prayer.”
Jeremy stared back, ready to believe. It hadn’t felt like reality. But it had felt like something. “It was like—” he turned to Alexei. “It was like when you asked for help, when Annabel disappeared. You were just scared, reaching out the same way Maeve was all that time before, and…” He trailed off. Did he really mean, And then you got me? Ta-da! He felt so small, the tiniest cog in the turning world.
“And then Jeremy,” Luke finished, like it made sense. “And all this.”
Alexei’s forehead crumpled briefly, his only acknowledgment. “And then?”
Jeremy shook his head. “I woke up, and Camille was on the floor. When I went to check on her, I looked up, and—she was here.”
“Here?” Malcolm’s voice was hoarse. “Her body?”
Jeremy shook his head. “She was awake. But she was…”
He was too scared to finish it, but Luke did. “Wrong. Possessed or warped or something. I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?” Alexei asked tightly.
Luke waved his unhurt arm and hissed an explosive exhale. “How am I supposed to know? She was here, she was weird, Jeremy was fucking dying. I don’t know how she did it. She wasn’t exactly chatting. I did one incantation, the same candle, the same blood. I said all their names. I thought—” He stopped, swallowed. “I don’t know what I thought. That it would work because it had to work.”
“Fairy-tale rules?” Alexei repeated, sandpaper rough and dry.
Luke stared at him. “I did try.”
Still croaky, Malcolm said, “I guess you didn’t try hard enough, did you?”
Luke winced and didn’t answer, but Helene turned and shot a look that ought to have burned Malcolm crispy. Jeremy wanted to go to Luke and—he wasn’t sure. Kiss him or wipe the bloody sweat off his forehead or say no matter what, he was grateful to be sitting here. Luke was swaying against his mother, though, and Jeremy could only shift in his chair before he got dizzy again. Sergei moved behind him, putting a hand on his shoulder. He still hadn’t said anything, but his brow hung low, face dark with thought.
“We have to get these kids to a hospital,” Helene said.
“What about Annabel?” Malcolm looked back and forth, finally landing on Natalya. “What do we do?”
After a long quiet, Alexei said, “I know. We get a time machine, go all the way back, and when you find out your sister’s got a boyfriend, you keep your fucking mouth shut.”
Malcolm drew in an angry breath, but Alexei was still talking, low and subtle as poison, “You did this and you can live with it—”
“This is your binding. You made this—”
“I was protecting her from you!”
The shouting rammed Jeremy’s aching head, and he ducked it into his hands. They had not fixed anything. Nothing was healed. Someone—Luke or Camille—made a deep, quiet moaning sound.
Jeremy missed Sergei’s movement, but a falling wall of magic shook the room as Sergei slammed his hand onto the dining room table and bound Alexei and Malcolm into silence.
Jeremy lifted his head. Malcolm battered his walls like a moth at a window, but Alexei went still, arms crossed, looking at Sergei.
Sergei turned away, to Helene and the kids. “How do we walk out of here without anyone else getting hurt?”
Camille looked up at him like she’d remembered something obvious. “I can do that. The truce.” She got to her feet, brushing out her skirt, and repeated the words pensively. “The truce.”
Sergei opened his hand, go on.
“I can seal it,” she said. “We walk away, and they can’t hurt each other again without getting hurt themselves.”
“You’re sure you can put a lock on Alexei?” Sergei asked.
Something a little harder than a smile touched Camille’s eyes and the corner of her mouth. “I can cross anybody.”
Chapter Fifty-Four
Camille took a candle off the hutch and started to work. The spell stacked like bricks, a tower Luke could have pushed over, and she glared at him.
Luke got the hint and left the room. Sick with failure, he couldn’t make himself look at Jeremy. He got as far as the hall right outside the door and sank to the floor, cradling his burned hand. Everything hurt, and his hand and arm were covered in blood. It was hard to believe that sticky red stuff was his own—when he looked down, his vision tunneled, as if he was trying to see something far away.
He was drained, attenuated—that blood magic had been a payment. Luke had made a sacrifice, had left something in that room. He twisted to peer through the door, Camille standing over the truce bag and Jeremy lying on the table, head on his arm.
Luke hadn’t even hesitated. If he had the choice again, he’d do it every time.
He listened to the ritual instead of his own thoughts. There was more shouting and useless drama as Sergei undid the bindings. Every loud noise was a hot pop of white light in Luke’s field of vision, sharp against the bruised, tender pain behind his eyes.
It wasn’t long before Malcolm left the room, tramping past Luke without looking down at him. He went upstairs and came back with Annabel’s body in his arms like a sleeping child.
Natalya and Alexei came next, pausing together at the door. She opened her mouth; he shook his head. She left without saying goodbye.
Alexei closed and locked the door behind them. He put his eye to the peephole and stayed there for a long time. Luke sat in the dark hall and watched Alexei’s shoulders rise and fall too evenly.
Luke dragged himself up. Again, like this would be the time that made it clear, he said, “I tried to save them all. I said all their names, I—”
“It’s okay.” Alexei kept his face at the door.
“It’
s not.” Luke’s voice rose, and he pushed it down to a whisper. “We killed her, you and me, I killed—I meant—I said all their names—”
“Okay.” Alexei turned and put his hands on Luke’s shoulders. “You’re right. It’s not okay. Come sit down.”
Alexei unlocked the door and led Luke onto the stoop. The night air was cool and clean, and exhaustion hit Luke like a rock. He sat down hard on the step.
Alexei settled next to him more slowly. His hair and collar were wet, and he smelled like sweat and sour milk. “Tell me what you did. Slow down. Breathe.”
Luke got himself under enough control for one sentence. “I tried to get to the blood, to break up the ritual, but she stopped me.”
“Is that what happened to your face?”
“What? What’s wrong with my face?” As soon as he said it, Luke felt the pain in his cheek, a smaller fire than the one in his hand.
Alexei’s jaw twitched. “Never mind. Carry on.”
Luke slumped over his own lap. “I thought it had to be the blood. I gave some of mine, and I said defend them. I said their names, Camille, Jeremy, Annabel. But I think—I think I wasn’t focused on Annabel right, because—she was hurting him, and I was scared, and—”
“Breathe,” Alexei said again. “Jesus, breathe. So, you think if you were more, what, pure of heart, we’d be catching Annie up on everything she missed right now?”
“You’re making it absurd on purpose.” The night was darker than Luke was used to, the grand old trees on the block whispering as they blotted out the hazy glow of the night sky.
“No, it is absurd.” Alexei scrubbed his hair away from his face. “That body hasn’t had a glass of water or a meal in almost twenty years. You said yourself she was feral. Demonic. Maybe death is the best we could do for her.”
“Maybe we killed her and you’re talking shit in circles so it doesn’t sound so bad.” Luke meant to sound fierce, but his voice kept wavering.
The Uncrossing Page 29
