“Of course,” Sylvia sniffed in an insulted tone.
Uncorking a bottle, Lienna poured what looked like water over a rune. She poured a small pile of sand on another, then a few drops of liquid on a third.
“Fire, if you please,” she said to Aaron.
He squinted at the liquid and it ignited with a puff of smoke. The small flame danced merrily.
“Ezra,” Lienna instructed, “place your hand in the center of the circle.”
He pressed his palm to the tabletop, with water, earth, and fire on three sides of his wrist. Everyone in the room, including me, collectively held their breath as Lienna referenced the small grimoire she’d produced from her satchel, then began to chant. No one else made a sound.
Ezra was no longer a demon mage—but after ten years of demonic possession, was he human enough to pass the test?
Her voice rose, smooth and confident. The puddle of water shimmered, then dissolved into a faint silver glow that lit the lines of the array. The pile of sand disintegrated, and the spell’s radiance increased. The flame melted into the array. Once more the glow brightened.
“Aqua et ignis, terra et ventus, revelate tenebras,” Lienna intoned.
The silver luminescence swept over Ezra’s hand. It rushed up his arm in a wave, passed over his head and shoulders, then whooshed down to his feet. Swirling back up his body, it flashed down his arm, over his hand, and into the circle. The pale light filled the clear glass crystal.
With a final flare, the light snuffed out. The crystal, sitting innocuously on the table, had turned ivory white.
Lienna smiled, the stern agenty-ness of her face softening with relief. “The crystal is white. He has no Demonica contamination. Ezra Rowe is neither a demon mage nor a contractor.”
“Of course he isn’t!” Cameron shouted. “The MPD are idiots!”
“Is MagiPol going to drop the charges against our guild?” someone else called.
“Can we go home yet?” another voice—Alyssa, it sounded like—asked loudly.
“This is an important step,” Darius answered, “but only the first. Our guild—and all of you—are not out of danger yet.”
As he walked over to Lienna and began conferring with her in a low voice, buzzing conversations erupted around the room. Aaron, Kai, and Ezra had their heads bent together again, all three grinning despite the continued direness of our situation. I couldn’t blame them.
“What are we supposed to do, though?” I said, more speaking my thoughts out loud than directing the question at anyone in particular. “It won’t take the MPD long to figure out we’re here.”
“They probably already know,” Sin answered, looking up from her phone. “Bounty hunters have been watching the guild day and night, waiting for someone to get reckless and leave.”
My brow scrunched. “Leave?”
Sabrina folded her hands in front of her. “When the MPD came down on us a week ago, Darius told everyone that we could either flee right then or go to the guild. With all of us here, no bounty hunters have tried to get inside. As long as we’re together, they can’t capture us.”
That made sense. Gather the troops, batten down the hatches, and pray MagiPol didn’t attempt a siege. I imagined everyone was pretty damn sick of these four walls by now, though.
I squinted at Sabrina. “How did you get out, then?”
“Uh.” She shuffled her feet. “Darius and a few others have been sneaking in and out, and he helped me.”
Had he now.
“By the way,” Sin added as she tucked her phone in her pocket, “you should call Justin. I just updated him, but he’s been worried sick about you.”
My squinty stare shifted to her. “You’ve been texting my brother?”
A flush spread through her cheeks. “Just … just, um, every day … mostly. He needed to know what was happening!”
I pursed my lips, then shook my head. “I’m glad you kept him in the loop. You told him to stay away from here, right?”
“Yes, he knows to steer clear.”
“Good. The last thing I need is—”
“Tori!” Partway across the room, Aaron was waving at me to join him and Kai. “Come on!”
I swiftly scanned the room for Ezra. He was heading up the stairs, accompanied by Elisabetta and Miles. A follow-up healing, I was guessing.
Heading toward Aaron and Kai, I said over my shoulder, “Don’t let Zak leave, ’kay?”
Sin and Sabrina looked alarmed by the instruction, while the druid scowled.
I joined the mage pair. “What’s up?”
“Agent Shen and Agent Morris are heading back,” Aaron explained. “As soon as we have word from them on what’s happening at the precinct, I need to meet with Darius and the other officers, but we have some time to clean up.”
“Clean up what?” I tugged on a scraggily lock of my hair. “Oh, you mean clean up us.”
“Exactly.”
As he and Kai turned toward the basement stairs, I threw my arms over their broad shoulders, needing the closeness after so much uncertainty and fear. When they each wrapped an arm around my waist, I bit the inside of my cheek against a renewed wave of dread.
We were out of custody, but nothing was fixed. Nothing was okay. We’d saved Ezra, but unless we could convince the MPD of our innocence, we were all doomed anyway.
And our fates now depended on Darius and two MPD agents we’d just met and didn’t trust—at least, I didn’t trust them. Hard to say how Darius felt.
Walking together, we headed into the hall behind the upper stairs, where the door to the lower level was hidden. There, we had to split up because we couldn’t fit through the doorway in our current configuration.
In the quiet basement, the two mages turned toward me as though they’d rehearsed—but more likely, they just knew each other that well.
“You did it, Tori,” Kai murmured. “You saved him.”
A lump formed in my throat. “I couldn’t have done it without you two.”
“We were scared out of our minds,” Aaron said roughly. “We had nothing to do but sit in those cells and worry.”
“Zak saved
