Something’s happened to Xavi.
I look up at the Palau Güell where Beatriz told us to meet her.
Luisa tries the door.
“Merda!” She kicks at it. “Xavi must have let her in but now it’s locked again.”
She pulls out her phone and dials a number. “Alba, Alba, pick up… There you are. Come open the front door, please. Now!”
There’s silence as she listens.
“Fuck protocol, Alba, this is an emergency!” she screeches into the phone before hanging up.
A minute later Alba is at the door, tugging it open in her white nightgown.
“You know I’m not allowed to…” she starts, but we don’t wait for her to finish as we rush past her and sprint up the grand staircase towards the roof.
I’d underestimated the number of steps and my calves are burning when we reach the top floor and burst through the door. Judging by the urgency of Beatriz’s text I’m expecting to see some kind of drama, but the roof is empty and silent.
Luisa and I double over to get our breath back and that’s when we hear it, the gentle sound of sobbing.
“What the fuck?” she mouths at me. But the sound is full of so much fear and pain it’s impossible to ignore.
Something black falls on me and I duck. It’s just a feather. But then I notice there’s more, two land in my hair, and another one sticks to my top.
I squint in the darkness, making out a couple of rock-like forms at our feet. Luisa crouches down and I join her, tentatively touching one of them. It’s cold but soft. She yelps and we both stand quickly.
The ground is covered in dead crows!
A wind kicks up and feathers start floating in the air like charred remains of a fire, swirling in my face and obscuring my vision.
Then I see Beatriz. She’s sitting in a heap on the floor before the aviary, her pretty purple dress from the wake fanning out around her.
Luisa walks up to her roommate, her voice gentle.
“Bea,” she says. She repeats her name for the second time, soft as a lullaby. “Bea. What’s wrong?”
“Someone killed them. All of them.”
Luisa looks wildly around her at the dead birds, but Beatriz hasn’t finished yet.
“Xavi and I snuck upstairs tonight. The wake was draining, and I needed him, and of course he came straight away.” She swallows a sob. “We wanted to make love under the stars, but he could tell straight away something was wrong. With them.” She sweeps her hand over the dead birds. “He shifted so he could communicate with the other crows, and he went in… in the aviary. And… And...”
Beatriz falls silent, her eyes fixed ahead. The aviary, which is normally full of jet black crows preening their feathers and getting ready to transport messages for the MA, appears empty. Except it’s not. The crows are still there but they’re all lying in a heap at the base of the cage, beaks open and blood matting their feathers.
Luisa swallows down a gasp. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Beatrice says, her head bent low and voice trembling. “There was a mist, like a grey cloud, at the bottom of the cage. I told him not to go in, that it didn’t feel right, but…”
“Where’s Xavi?” I ask.
Beatriz finally looks up, her face as black as the feathers swirling around our feet. Mascara has run down her cheeks and her hair, normally so neat and tidy, is tangled from the wind. Her arms are wrapped around something, like a child holding a toy in their coat to shelter it from the rain. She opens her hands, tears streaming wildly down her face, revealing a black mass curled up in the crook of her elbow.
A limp crow.
Xavi.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Why won’t you listen to me?” I scream. My mother and I are standing in her office and the walls feel like they’re closing in on me. We all went back to Luisa’s last night, but none of us slept. As soon as it was day, I messaged my mother, demanding a meeting about Xavi’s death. She refused to see me until mid-afternoon, and now she’s refusing to hear me out.
“Saskia, I have an Ascension to plan. The sickness that has spread through the aviary is concerning, yes, but we are already dealing with it. New messengers will be bought in.”
“I’m not talking about the damned birds! I’m talking about Xavi.”
“Why would I care that some random Shifter died?”
“Random Shifter?” My voice rises hysterically. “He was Beatriz’s boyfriend, Mother.”
“And she should know better than to mix with one of them.”
I slam my hands on her desk. “Did you do this?”
“No.”
She’s telling the truth.
“But you still won’t investigate his murder?”
“No.”
She glances down at her paperwork as rage bubbles in my chest. I want to rip every piece of paper in her hands to shreds.
“You know what?” I drawl. “Fuck this shit. And fuck you. I’m going home. You can clean up your nasty MA mess yourself. This hellhole of yours is nothing but murder, paperwork, and bigotry!”
I spin on my heels and face the door, but my mother halts me with her words.
“You can’t leave before the Ascension.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because you are going to be my Second.”
I tip my head back and laugh, but her gaze is steady. She’s fucking serious. A chill shoots down my spine.
“I’d sooner die.”
“God, you’re so dramatic.” She purses her lips as if my boundaries are a mere suggestion and not something that would ever apply to her.
“You can’t control me, Mother,” I spit. “Just like you couldn’t control Mikayla. And it kills you.”
I turn around, intent on making my exit again, but this time she steps in front of me.
“That’s where you're wrong,” she says, her face inches from mine and voice dripping with venom.
For the first time in my life, I'm not afraid. There’s nothing she can do to me that she hasn’t done before. But then she flashes
