Whispering good-bye to Kisten, Ivy dropped her head and passed me. I didn’t move, staring at the black hole. Edden’s hand fell on my shoulder. “You need to get warmed up.”
I jerked out from under him. Warmed up. Good idea. I wasn’t ready to walk away. Kisten’s soul was at rest because he had fought back and won. But what about those of us who were left behind? What about Ivy and me? Didn’t we have the right to satisfaction, too?
My heart pounded, and I clenched my jaw. “I am not going to live with this pain.”
Ivy’s boots scuffed to a stop, and Edden squinted suspiciously at me.
Shaking, I pointed at the dark hole. “I’m not going to let the I.S. cover this up, put them in the ground with pretty headstones and dignified names and dates and say that Kisten was murdered to further someone’s political agenda.”
Ivy shook her head. “It makes no difference.”
It made a difference to me. The room was cloaked in black, hiding the depravity of what happened when a lifetime was spent afraid of death, when one’s entire existence was bent to the selfish desires of the self, when the soul was exchanged for the mindless drive to survive. Real lives were ruined in the wake of these ugly caricatures of power. Kisten’s soul lost just as he found the strength in himself, Ivy winding the noose tighter in her attempts to find peace. Darkness wouldn’t cover this up. I wanted the room bright. Bright with a savage truth so that it would never be consigned to the shelter of the earth.
“Rachel?” Ivy asked, and shaking, I tapped a line. It touched me, tearing my thin aura like a flame. I went down on a knee, but gritting my teeth, I stood, letting the pain flow through me, accepting it.
“Celero inanio,” I shouted, giving the force an outlet of a black charm gesture. I’d seen Al do it. How hard could it be?
The line roared into me, pulled by the charm. Agony flamed, and I convulsed, refusing to let go of the line as the spell worked. “Rachel!” Ivy shouted, and I fell back at the white-light explosion in the middle of the room. My hair blew back, then shifted forward as the air in the room burnt itself out and new rushed in to replace it. Like heaven itself, the glory of fire burned white, a tiny spot of black at the center of my rage.
I fell to my knees, eyes fixed on the doorway and the hard stone going unnoticed as my knees bruised. And then Ivy had me. Her arms cushioned me, and I gasped, not at their icy softness, but at the sudden cessation of pain from the line. She had me again, and her aura protected me, filtering the worst of it.
“You stupid witch,” she said bitterly as she held me. “What the hell are you doing?”
I stared up at her, the line cool and clean in me. “Are you sure you can’t feel anything?” I questioned, not believing her aura was protecting me from this.
“Just my heart breaking. Let it go, Rachel.”
“Not yet,” I said, and with her arms around me, I pointed at the hellhole. “Celero inanio!” I said again.
“Stop!” Ivy shouted, and I screamed as her hands left me and the pain bent me double. I gasped, feeling my lungs burn. But I couldn’t let it go. It wasn’t done yet.
The cot burst into flame, a glowing haze of orange hovering over it, looking like a body contorting in torment. The blood on the floor was a puff of black that whirled up as more air was sucked in to replace that which was burnt. Ivy’s hands found me from behind, and I took a clean breath as the pain was muted and I could bear it again.
“Please don’t let go,” I said, tears of pain and heartache trickling down, and I felt her nod.
“Celero inanio!” I cried again, my tears evaporating as they fell to make glittering sparkles of salt, and still the rage burned in me, pulsing in time with my heart. The ley line streamed in like vengeance, burning, trying to take me with it like a mindless flood. I could smell my hair starting to burn. The scrape on my cheek felt like fire.
“Rachel, stop!” Ivy screamed, but I could see the sparkle of Kisten’s eyes in the flames, smiling at me-and I couldn’t.
A shadow darted between me and the roaring inferno. The heat beat at me as it blinked past. I could hear Edden swearing, and then the stone door shifting. A sliver of cool shade touched my knee, crept up my leg, and kissed the edge of my cheek. I leaned into it as the band of white vengeance narrowed. My balance left me and I collapsed. But I held on to the line. It was the only clean thing I had.
Ivy gave me a little shake to bring my attention to her. Her eyes were black with fear, and I loved her. “Let go of the line,” she pleaded, her tears burning as they hit me. “Rachel, let go of the line! Please!”
I blinked. Let go of the line?
The tunnel was plunged into darkness as Edden finally got the door shut. A wave of cold air burned my skin. My eyes slowly recognized the outline of her face as she held me. Edden’s silhouette grew more defined as a red glow became brighter, showing where the wall was thinnest, at the door. My fire still raged behind it, and the glow of the heat lit the tunnel with a soft haze.
Edden’s shape stared at the door, his hands on his hips. “Sweet mother of Jesus,” he breathed, then drew his hand back when he went to touch the lines the spell had etched in the door. I could see the bright ring of the charmed circle of iron embedded in the door. Radiating out from it were black threads making a spiral pentagram with arcane symbols. In the middle was my handprint, and it was molding to the spell, making it wholly mine. No one would open the door again.
“He’s gone! Let it go!” Ivy shouted, and this time, I did.
I gasped as the power shut off, jerking as the cold swarmed in to replace the heat. I clenched in on myself, whispering, “I take it. I take it. I take it,” before the imbalance could strike me. Tears leaked out through my clenched eyes as I felt the ugly black slither over me like a cool silk sheet. It had been a black curse, but I had used it without thought. Even so, the tears weren’t for me: they were for Kisten.
Silence apart from my rasping breaths. My chest hurt. It felt like it was burning. Nothing flowed in me. I was a burnt-out shell. Everything was silent, as if the sounds themselves had been turned to ash.
“Can you stand?”
It was Ivy, and I blinked at her, unable to answer. Edden leaned over us, and I cried out in pain when his arms slipped between Ivy and me, raising me up as if I were a child.
“Oh shit, Rachel,” he said when I fought back a wave of nausea. “You look like you’ve got a bad sunburn.”
“It was worth it,” I whispered. My lips were cracked, and my eyebrows felt singed when I touched them. The wall was still glowing as Edden shifted into motion. A spiderweb of black was etching through the door, turning the rock silver as it cooled. It was the curse that I had spoken, slowly lightening like stretch marks as the stone cooled. The door was fused shut, and my mark would warn anyone away from tampering with it. Not that I thought there was anything behind the door now.
I caught my breath in pain when Edden almost tripped and my tender skin was rubbed. Ivy touched my arm as if needing to reassure herself that I was okay. “Was that a ley line?” she asked hesitantly. “You did that with power right off a line, right?”
My chest hurt, and I hoped I hadn’t damaged my lungs. “Yeah,” I said softly. “Thank you for cushioning it.”
“You have that kind of power all the time?” she said, almost a whisper.
I went to nod, then thought better of it when my skin pulled. “Yes.”
The memory of the black magic symbol etched on the door rose through my thoughts. So it was a black charm. So what? I might be a black witch, but at least I was an honest one.
Edden slowly carried me back to the surface, silent but for his breathing. Everyone who knew Kisten had been murdered to satisfy a political agenda was either dead or in this hallway. My love would be remembered for dying to save Ivy’s and my life. That was why he had died, not because of someone’s whim. That was who Kisten was. Had been.
And no one would ever say different.
Thirty-four
Though my mom was hundreds of miles away by now, my room still smelled like her light lavender perfume, wafting up from the dusty boxes stacked where Robbie had left them beside my bed. It had been nice of him to bring them all in while Mom showed me the brochure of the apartment she had waiting for her in Portland.
