“I don’t like this,” Beatriz whispers. “It feels like a trap.”
“Of course it’s a fucking trap,” Luisa hisses. “But what choice do we have?”
I swallow hard. My mom is angry I foiled her Ascension plans, but surely, she wouldn’t kill Rafi for it. Would she?
Actually, I know the answer to that.
A violent flashback of my mother drenched in a man’s blood rocks through me. A politician floating in the air as she slits his throat in front of her eleven-year-old daughter. Solina de la Cruz has never been shy of murder.
Beatriz listens at the door and shakes her head. She can’t hear a thing. I take a deep breath and, willing away my fear, push the door wider. There are no Nox triplets waiting to greet us this time.
It takes a few blinks to acclimate myself to the dark, although a strange faint white glow emanates from the ceiling— the giant moon, this time full and bright as it was at the Ascension. My chest squeezes when, for a moment, I forget it’s not a ceiling window and not a real moon. Rafi told me about the magical moon on our walk to La Boqueria, the MA built it for the triplets— an olive branch for the imprisoned Nox.
Beatriz nudges me, and I look down.
On the ground, in the corner of the room, is the hunched form of someone beneath a black cape.
“Rafi!” Luisa screams as she propels herself forward. With a zap of something electric, she crashes into an invisible force and cries out. The artificial moon above us shines, full and white, highlighting the O-shaped screams of our faces.
The hunched form moves, the cape slowly slipping off their shoulders, and with a gasp, we realize that the person on the ground isn’t Rafi. It’s my mother.
“Mom?” The question rings out into the darkness.
Just a couple of hours ago my mother looked pristine— her white pantsuit unblemished and her make-up perfectly in place. Now she looks like a drowned rat.
Why is my mother tied up? Is this a trick?
I search the shadows. We aren’t alone. The triplets have their hands bound behind their backs, mouths gagged and… Rafi! I call out to him, but he can’t hear me clearly behind the invisible border. I run my hands across its glass-like veneer, and bang on it like I’m knocking on the door to hell. Luisa and Beatriz do the same, tracing the parameter of the invisible border as if we’re all miming on a street corner. A bunch of desperate clowns.
“Mom!” I scream again. “What the fuck is all this about?”
Her eyes flicker open, albeit feebly. She looks around, momentarily confused. She’s either concussed, magically in a trance, or she deserves an Oscar.
“Is she trapped?” Beatriz asks.
“She looks afraid,” Luisa adds, banging on the barrier. “Can you hear us, Solina?”
My hands are shaking, slick with sweat, as I feel my way against the invisible forcefield.
“Who the fuck is doing this?”
Fear dances along my skin, each pore puckered and crawling, like I'm covered in bugs. Then, from the shadows, a form takes shape — tall, broad shoulders, teeth gleaming white against his tanned skin.
“Welcome, Witches,” Salvador says with a smile.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Papa!” Beatriz exclaims. “What are you doing here? Are you hurt?”
“You fucking asshole!” Luisa screams. She kicks out against the barrier. “Let Rafi go! And the triplets!”
Salvador looks directly at me. “All in good time.”
I don’t understand. My mother sent the crow. She’s the one whose Ascension I’ve foiled. Is this some kind of elaborate revenge? Are they both in on this? I look at her hunched form and then into Salvador’s dark hooded eyes.
Luisa worked it out before I did.
“You betrayed her,” I say, more of a statement than a question.
His gaze sweeps over me, my anxiety bubbling to the surface. Salvador has always been kind, truthful, genuine… yet before me is a man whose face is twisted with decades of resentment, anger, and disgust.
“Papa?” Beatriz’s voice is weak, tamer than I’ve ever heard it before. She’s afraid of him, afraid of the meaning of all this. “Father, what are you doing? Why did you take Rafi?”
Salvador ignores his daughter. His attention is solely on me.
“When your mother told me she had tricked you into coming here, to Barcelona, I was appalled,” he says. “She claimed to want to see you, but I knew straight away she intended to make you her Second.” An ugly sneer twists his handsome face. “Imagine that. A mere Verity Witch as the Second of the MA? Outrageous!”
His words stick in my head like gum at the bottom of a chair. My mother successfully lured me to Barcelona under the pretense of needing help finding Maribel, and I only agreed because I wanted my story for Jackson. But that soon had her tricking me into being an MA member so I could be her Second— a Second she could control instead of Salvador. I still don’t understand. Why couldn’t she control him? He’s no more powerful than I am.
“You're angry she didn’t make you Second?”
“Angry?” he snarls. “I removed our only obstacle to the top, then asked your mother to marry me. She agreed. I was meant to be the Second — but then she invited you.”
“Then why didn’t she marry you?”
“When Solina invited you, under the pretense she missed you, she put off our nuptials. She was stringing me along the whole time.” He looks down at my mother, teeth gritted with loathing. “I was nothing but her backup. As soon as you arrived in Barcelona, I knew she planned to cut me out of our own plan.”
None of this makes any sense.
“But...” My voice is small. “I questioned you. You never lied to me. Not once.”
“He’s a Silencer,” Beatriz offers, her voice even smaller and more broken than mine.
A Silencer?
“A Mage who can silence the powers of others,” Luisa says darkly.
Canceling the magic of others is his power? So, he can lie
