Audrey glanced at the red and blue pins in its center of the corkboard. So many other pins surrounded her children, so many who would use them or remove them.
“I must be quick,” Louis whispered. “I am down to one pixel on this phone’s battery, and it’s winking red.”
There was a burst of static. Audrey pulled the receiver away until the noise died.
“Louis?”
“Yes. . still here.” His voice was barely audible. “My relations make their move
A whoosh of screams and crying and the laughter of the mad flooded the connection.
There was a click. Then nothing.
“Louis?” Audrey whispered.
Her heart pounded and she rose. She believed him.
She had to go to battle, fight, protect her children from the others, and somewhere in those feelings was the foolish urge to protect Louis as well.
Audrey looked back to the corkboard and yarn and pins.
She then understood why her subconscious had left those last two pins. She had to make up her mind- deliberately, and accepting all the consequences-where they belonged.
And so she did.
She set both black and white pins together. . nestled next to the red and blue pins of Eliot and Fiona.
She slammed the receiver to the cradle and then picked it up and dialed the direct line to Lucille Westin’s private and personal office. She’d have Fiona and Eliot pulled from class and kept with Miss Westin until she could get there.
If there was still time.
Cecilia watched Audrey storm out of the house, not even bothering to close the front door.
She followed and eased it shut, spotting Audrey’s Jaguar XKSS through the door’s stained glass windows as the roadster roared out of the driveway. The car smeared into a midnight blue streak of chrome and taillights.
Audrey was gone. Finally.
Cecilia locked the door and meandered upstairs to the dining room. The long-abandoned game of Towers she and Eliot had been playing had been moved to the end table. The circular mat and cubes were covered in dust. Smudges dotted some cubes where Eliot had touched them recently, perhaps thinking of his next move.
On the surface, this was just a game. . but deeper, it was a magical metaphor for all their lives. . and deeper still, it represented a game of dire consequences played by those with millennia more experience than she or Eliot possessed.
With that in mind, Cecilia had no qualms about cheating.
Her eyes filmed over milky white, and she fumbled over the playing field, feeling the threads of fate that wove about the pieces, pulling and tugging, and with tiny clockwork flicks advanced them forward to their next moves.
To the future.
Audrey would have Cecilia’s head if she knew. But the great Cutter of All Things was not here to stop Cecilia this time.
Still, she took great care not to let a single quantum vibration escape her fingertips. There were others than Audrey who would not approve of her prying into their affairs, others who were
In her mind, she saw the Towers field-lines and circles radiating from the center like a spiderweb. Many of the stone cubes were easy to identify: Audrey, Eliot, Fiona, that boy called Robert, and a smattering of Infernals, humans, and Immortals.
Fiona’s piece was near the center, but tiny cracks crisscrossed the white marble. Eliot’s cube was by hers. They both stood before a stack of five black, a tower whose might was unassailable.
Eliot’s cube had one face smeared with soot (or possibly blackberry jelly), a black spot upon the white. Audrey would’ve denied it, but Cecilia knew this was an omen most ill.
Poor Eliot. It was too late for him.
But it was not too late to adjust
She blinked and her eyes cleared.
Yes. . Cecilia knew what to do. She always knew. If others had not the conviction to protect her lambs, then she would.
She rolled up the Towers mat-pieces and all-so they scattered into chaos, and put it all in the cupboard. She then ambled back to the children’s bedrooms.
Fiona’s door was locked, but a simple word of unbinding did the trick, and she entered.
The room was as neat as a pin. Cecilia was so proud of Fiona. All that schoolwork and responsibility, and she still had time to make up her bed. There were precise stacks of papers on her desk, neat piles of books, flash cards, and a sketch of the Immortal family tree.
Fiona was a good, hardworking girl, and it pained Cecilia to do this. She took careful note of the location of every object-and then ransacked the room, turning over pillows, pulling out books, tossing clothes from the hamper, pulling out drawers and shaking their contents onto the floor.
When she got the lowest bookshelf, she tossed aside
She cradled it with trembling arms and sat on the rumpled bed.
Inside, carefully placed was a scandalous bikini. Cecilia held it before her. She could not imagine her Fiona ever wearing such a tarty thing. She set it aside.
Next was a stack of old-fashioned Polaroids showing Fiona and that boy, Robert, splashing in the water, palm trees in the background. Those were from last summer, when Henry had flown them out to his island before school (chaperoned by Aaron, so she knew Robert had made no ungentle-manly advances upon poor, innocent Fiona).
There was one last item in the shoe box: a rolled-up sock.
Inside was something heavy and hard.
Cecilia took the sock out, unrolled it on the bed, and then gingerly coaxed out the object within.
She gasped as a sapphire the size of an egg tumbled upon Fiona’s gray wool bedspread-gleaming with blue brilliance and crisp facets.
The stone’s name was Charipirar. It was the mark of power of that Hell-creature Beelzebub, Lord of All the Flies, once Chairman of the Infernals, and the beast whom Fiona had killed-by pulling this, his own talisman, through his neck.
She’d kept the trinket as a souvenir.
And everyone had forgotten about it. Almost.
She found herself gazing into the depths of the stone, and quickly averted her eyes before it pulled her too deep. Using two pencils, Cecilia pushed and prodded the stone back into the sock and rolled it up.
This could change everything, even save Eliot. . and perhaps damn millions of souls.
What did that matter? As long as Cecilia saved the ones she loved.
Eliot stared at his teammates.
They stared back at him like he was crazy. Even Amanda-always on Eliot’s side-looked shocked.
“Rescue Jezebel?” Jeremy asked with a smirk.
