Everything is over: the Key Generation, the door, the prophecy, the war and the restoration of balance and the lives of every creature within the abyss. One less heartbeat in the world, and everything changes.
Something pulses beneath my palm.
I jerk back. I must have imagined it. There is nothing there. Greer is gone. She—
It pulses again.
“She moved,” I gasp.
“What?” Grace asks, her voice barely a whisper.
I look at Cassandra, who is smiling through her tears.
“She moved,” I repeat. “There! She did it again.”
“See it, see it!” Sillus cries.
Cassandra sighs with overwhelming relief. “She did.”
“Impossible,” Milo gasps.
I ask, “How?”
Grace scrambles to my side and presses her palms to Greer’s face.
“Your blood,” Cassandra explains. “From the left vein it has the power to kill, and from the right it has the power to heal.”
“Yeah, I know that.”
“The healing blood,” she continues, “can—in very rare instances—also return life to the dead.”
My mind reels. “What?”
Cassandra smiles. “When administered within moments of death, your blood has the power to save a life.”
Grace sobs. “Oh my god, she’s breathing.”
“How do you know that?” I ask our mother.
As far as I’m aware, Cassandra hasn’t been a part of our lives or the mythological destiny we carry since she handed us over for adoption. She shouldn’t know about the blood.
“There is another legacy,” she answers. “The Sisterhood of the Serpent. From the moment of the prophecy, the women in our line have known this time would come. While we do not have your powers, we pass on the knowledge from generation to generation so the truth is not lost.”
“That’s amazing,” I reply, trying to imagine how hard it was to carry that information forward through the centuries.
“When you were born,” she continues, “I knew the time would come when my daughters would need even more from me. In addition to the knowledge of the Sisterhood, I’ve studied every piece of Medusa lore I could get my hands on. I went to nursing school, volunteered for the emergency room and the trauma ward. I’ve had sixteen years to get ready.”
I shake my head, stunned. I thought she had abandoned us. All this time, she’s been preparing for this moment.
And it paid off by saving Greer’s life.
I feel frozen, like I can’t draw breath into my lungs.
But beneath my palm, my sister is not having that problem. Her chest rises and falls with the steady rhythm of resting breath.
If I were the kind of girl to cry at happy news, I’d be sobbing right along with Grace. Even so, I find it almost impossible to keep my act together. I wrap an arm around Sillus’s shaking body and hug him tight. It’s only the knowledge that my other palm needs to stay steady on the wound and my mind needs to stay focused on revenge that keeps me from collapsing onto Greer’s life-filled body.
CHAPTER 20
GRACE
Greer is alive. I can’t stop staring at her, can’t stop watching the rise and fall of her chest, can’t stop my heart from pounding in my chest with unparalleled joy.
A minute ago, she was dead. I didn’t have to feel her pulse fade away to know. The look on Gretchen’s face was enough to tell me everything. She was gone.
And now she’s back.
My brain can’t quite accept the reality of it. In the space of a couple of minutes, I’ve experienced just about the biggest possible roller coaster of emotions. My sister—my triplet—came back from the dead. And my other sister brought her back.
Greer is still unconscious—maybe in another astral lock—but she’s breathing easily, and the wound has stopped gushing blood. There is so much blood. Her clothes are covered with dark red—she’s going to be upset when she wakes up. The ground, too, is soaked in blood, as is Gretchen’s hand—the hand that saved Greer’s life.
Gretchen looks stunned, and I suppose I do, too. The idea that my sister is back from the dead—however briefly she was gone—is beyond comprehension.
“You saved her,” I whisper.
Gretchen glances at our mother. “Cassandra did,” she says. “I mean, our mother.”
Cassandra shakes her head with a weary smile. “I only knew the lore, and hoped it was true.”
“It’s still amazing,” I say.
“It’s impossible,” Milo says, reminding me that he’s still here—that he witnessed all of this.
If he wasn’t freaked out before, he is now.
“We need to get her back to the safe house,” Gretchen insists.
“Yes,” Sillus says. “Go.”
Rough footsteps echo down the alley an instant before Thane comes running around the corner, covered in sweat and with a bleak look in his stormy gray eyes. “Bastard got away.”
He took off after the murderer—well, attempted murderer—almost the instant the knife hit Greer’s chest, and it had looked like he and Greer had run all the way here from the safe house in the first place.
He should be exhausted, but he doesn’t show it.
Ignoring everyone else, he crosses to Greer’s side and drops to the ground. He reaches out, reverently tracing his fingertips over her brow.
There is such sadness in his eyes—Thane has always had a bit of sorrow in him, just beneath the surface —but this is so much worse. He looks . . . bleak. As I open my mouth to tell him the good news, Greer coughs. He lurches back.
“She’s—” He swivels to stare at me. “She’s not dead?”
I shake my head. “Gretchen saved her.”
Thane looks at Gretchen, uncharacteristic emotion on his face. He doesn’t usually let this kind of feeling show, but the gratitude is unmistakable. He looks like his soul aches with relief.
“How?” he asks.
“Our blood,” Gretchen says, holding up her right hand. “It . . . has that power.”
He nods, as if that’s all the explanation he needs. I shouldn’t be surprised that he just accepts it. If his blood had been able to save Greer, to bring her back from the dead, I think he would have drained every last ounce to try.
“Cassandra showed her how,” I tell him.
As he turns back to face me, he sees Milo standing off to the side. He scowls and then turns to me. “Grace?”
“Um, yeah, I . . .” I flick a desperate glance at Milo, but he gives me a helpless look. That’s okay; now isn’t the time anyway. “Can we talk about this later?”
Thane considers it for a second and then nods. “Get Greer back to the safe house.”
“We were just about to do that.” Gretchen looks at Cassandra. “Can we move her?”
Our mother’s brow furrows. “Let me examine her.”
