My father was standing in the hall outside the map room, leaning against the wall across from the open door with his arms crossed and brow creased. He might simply have been frustrated. Or he might have been holding back a simmering fury that told of a mounting need to manifest his sword and start slashing through magic until there was nothing left.
I knew exactly how he felt.
Thankfully, though, neither of us was stupid enough to ignore the warnings and concerns of those who were much, much wiser regarding the casting of that magic.
“Hey, Dad,” I said, a few steps away.
My father tore his gaze away from the empty doorway. It was an easy guess that he had a direct sight line to my mother from his position. “Jade.”
His gaze fell to the rapier in my right hand. So much of my alchemy had been pumped into the delicate golden blade and the sapphires that decorated the intricate cross guard that it glowed.
“You’ve worked with your mother’s weapon, then?”
“Yes.”
“Then it will hold for as long as we need it to.” My father pinned me with a fierce gaze. “I would like you to see the healer again before we confront the elves.”
“You took a walk around the stadium?”
“It is well warded. More than expected. And I cannot sense the size of the force contained within.”
“Alivia,” I said. “They were joined by a ward builder. She brought Reggie a gem of power.” I rubbed my scarred forehead. “As best I can remember. That’s probably why Mory couldn’t get Ed through their wards anymore.”
My father grunted in acknowledgement, his gaze angling back through the doorway. “I can cut through it.”
“Of course.”
“But I cannot predict the consequences of doing so.” He flexed the fingers of his right hand, most definitely recalling the feeling of wrapping them around the hilt of his sword. A frustrated growl edged his tone. “So we will do it your grandmother’s way. For now.”
“Actually, I think Rochelle is running everything behind the scenes.”
My father’s shoulders relaxed slightly. “Yes. Right. That makes much more sense. I am comfortable working with the oracle.”
Yeah, Dad and Gran weren’t the best of friends. I wasn’t completely certain what Yazi held against my grandmother, though I certainly suspected it might have to do with her managing to hide me from him for twenty-three years. In Gran’s defense, though, she hadn’t known who exactly she was hiding me from at the time.
“They’re almost ready for you,” my father said.
I stepped into the open doorway. And then I stopped, because I needed just a moment to wrap my head around what I was seeing within the map room.
Gran and Angelica Talbot had painted a series of concentric circles radiating out from the column of magic that still contained my mother at the center of the room. They were approximately two feet apart, with a series of runes painted within them. Different symbols for each circle. Each with an opening on a diagonal with the door — creating a direct pathway to my mother from where I currently stood.
Angelica was crouched a few steps to my right with her back to me, adding more runes to the outermost circle nearest the wall. Her brown-sugar-shortbread magic tickled my senses as she dipped her brush into black paint, then carefully added a second leg to the end of what looked like a diamond set on the tip of a triangle without a base.
“Careful to not splash the baseboards, Angelica,” my grandmother said, straightening from where she was carefully placing flat stones around the innermost circle, just feet away from the base of the column of magic that held my mother aloft.
“I know, Pearl,” Angelica said testily. “I can feel the magic.”
The room pulsed with power. Layer upon layer of magical energy roiled so strongly that I found it hard to believe the house was still anchored to its foundations. It should have been hovering two feet off the ground along with my mother, floating within the sea of magic.
Gran sniffed, brushing her hands together as she spotted me within the doorway. “Paint,” she said with much disgust. Then she curled her lip into a sneer that was somehow also a smile. For me.
Angelica sat back on her heels, surveying her work. “Yes, you will have to replace the carpet, unfortunately. I wouldn’t mind waiting until Stephan and Liam are back to check over the runes.”
“The oracle has them tasked elsewhere —”
“I know that —”
“Jade is ready. We must proceed.”
Angelica flinched, turning to spot me in the doorway. The dark-haired sorcerer straightened, her magic shifting around her. And for the briefest of moments, I felt as though she might attack me.
“Lots of magic here,” I said carefully. “I couldn’t even taste either of you from the hall. Or this … magnificent spell.”
Angelica nodded, turning to survey her and Gran’s work with some satisfaction. “It is a sight. Perhaps the most complex spell I’ve ever attempted. In this short a time, at least.”
“Yes,” Gran said. “Let’s hope it —”
My mother sighed so softly that I barely heard her. The magic writhing across the ceiling and walls contracted into the center column that held her aloft. Then it all just dimmed. My mother dropped an inch closer to the floor, and as she did, the boundary spell tying Scarlett to the witches’ grid slowly feathered back out across the map etched along the walls and twined over the ceiling.
The magic brightened as it resettled. I might have been imagining it, but the white tendrils of power appeared shorter and thinner than they had a moment before.
“About five minutes this time?” Angelica asked.
“Yes.” My grandmother pursed her lips. “We need to cast. Now.”
“It would be safer with Stephan and Liam.”
“Perhaps. But we are spread thinly. And my daughter is dying.”
A flush of weakness ran through my limbs. “What can I do?”
“Wait there, Jade.” My grandmother stepped over to the opening to the innermost circle, gazing past me. “Yazi? We’ll need Rochelle and Jasmine.” She hesitated. “And Burgundy.”
Angelica gave Gran a look. “Olive would be a better choice.”
“Not if it goes badly.”
“You need to fill me in, Gran,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm and even.
“Yes, yes. I’m sorry. We’ve just been working on the fly. Angelica and I have devised a way for you to substitute the rapier for your mother. This should allow the boundary spell to naturally fade after it has consumed the magic within the weapon.”
“Without also killing Mom.”
“Exactly. I have every confidence we will make it work.”
“It works in theory,” the dark-haired sorcerer interjected. “But a casting this complicated usually takes months to perfect.”
“Yes,” my grandmother snapped. She almost snarled. “But we have Jade.”
Angelica eyed me without comment.
Jasmine stepped into the doorway behind me. The magic in the room was so intense that I only sensed the golden-haired vampire a moment before she appeared.
“Ah, good, Jasmine,” Gran said. “I believe the outer circle is yours to seal, yes?”
Jasmine studied the room for a long moment, then nodded.
“Shouldn’t the junior witch seal the outer circle?” Angelica asked quietly. “She is the least … tested of us.”
My grandmother threw her shoulders back imperiously. “My understanding is that when the original spell was cast, Jasmine triggered it from the four corners.”
“Yes, but —”
Burgundy brushed past the golden-haired vampire, standing shoulder to shoulder with me. She was cupping her focal stone in both hands. Next to everyone and everything else in the room, her magic was dim, confined to an almost imperceptible blue hue around her fingers.
A tiny fissure of terror cracked open inside me. That magic, Burgundy’s magic, could be snuffed out so easily … overwhelmed, swallowed, consumed by the spell waiting to be unleashed in the black paint etched across the floor.
“Gran?”
“You will leave this to me, Jade.” My grandmother gave me a stern look. “Burgundy, I believe your spot is in the second inner circle. That is where your magic wants to rest. But you must look for yourself. You must choose. And once you have done so, when we begin to cast the spell, you will cross through the circle along the pathway, stepping nowhere else, and stand before the first opening.”
Burgundy swallowed hard. Then she lifted her chin, cast her gaze around the room, and nodded.
My stomach churned uneasily.
The magic holding my mother aloft contracted again. Scarlett moaned softly, sounding pained. Then she slipped farther down toward the floor.
“We need to go now, Pearl,” Angelica said tensely — and suddenly more than ready to throw her previous caution aside. She stepped toward the door, carrying the open can of paint while carefully avoiding the runes still drying underneath her feet.
Rochelle appeared behind me in the hall. She was holding three paintbrushes. She nodded as she met my gaze.
“Yes, yes,” Gran said, also crossing to the closest opening between the circles. “We will proceed in a procession, entering the room one at a time. Jade first, crossing toward the innermost circle. Burgundy will follow, sealing Jade in. I will be third, sealing Burgundy.”
“And I will seal you, Pearl,” Angelica said. “Then the oracle behind me. With the vamp … Jasmine sealing the final circle.”
“Each of us is powering a separate section?” Burgundy asked.
Gran nodded. “Bare feet for everyone but Jasmine, I believe.”
The golden-haired vampire laughed quietly. “Yeah, magic doesn’t work like that for me anymore.”
“You will anchor us perfectly, Jasmine,” my grandmother said. “Burgundy, you’ll want to place your stone down first, before the opening. Then seal Jade within. I have already imbued the paint with some of my essence. But when you close the circle, you will add your own. Do you understand?”
Burgundy nodded. “Like I’m healing the circle.”
A pleased smile flitted briefly over Gran’s face, cracking her stern exterior. And through that crack, I saw that she was scared.
Underneath all her brusque orders, my grandmother was afraid. That realization was chilling.
The magic in the room shifted again. My mother cried out, a brief and utterly forlorn sound.
My father pushed off from the wall across the hall, where he’d been silently listening. “Now!” he barked.
“Jade,” my grandmother said, shooing us all back out of the door to cluster together in the hall. Then she stepped to the side. “You first.”
“But I … I don’t know the spell.”
Angelica plucked two of the new paintbrushes from Rochelle’s hands, practically shoving them at Burgundy and Jasmine. “You don’t need to. You’re the lightning rod.”
“I’ll talk you through it, Jade.” My grandmother touched me lightly on the shoulder. “After all the circles have been sealed, you will release your mother. And hopefully, the spell will accept the rapier as her replacement.”
“Fingers crossed,” Jasmine murmured, stripping the protective plastic off her paintbrush. “Otherwise it’s going to be a hell of a backlash.”
“Not helpful, Jasmine.” My grandmother turned to my father. “I’m sorry to ask the mundane of you, guardian.”
“Just ask, Pearl.”
“Would you hold the paint can here by the door, so we may wet our brushes in turn?”
Angelica offered the open can of paint to my father. He grabbed the handle, stepping to one side of the door. I met his gaze.
He nodded. “Go get your mother.”
“Okay.”
Shoving all my worries aside, I stepped back into the map room. The magic twined across the walls and ceiling reacted to my entrance this time, tugging lightly at the rapier in my hand. I quickly crossed through the rune-scribed circles until I stood before my mother. Her toes were almost touching the floor now, making her shorter than me even though she was still suspended in the column of magic.
I glanced back as Burgundy stepped up behind me, carefully placing her focal stone between her bare feet. Her toenails were painted bright yellow. She was holding a paintbrush slick with black paint in her other hand. It glistened with magic.
The young witch crouched over her stone, hovering the paintbrush over one side of the narrow opening in the circle between us.
“Wait,” I said, carefully setting the rapier down so that it didn’t touch either circle or the painted runes. “Wait, wait.”
“Jade,” my grandmother snapped from the hall, “we don’t have time for second-guessing.”
Ignoring her, I hunkered down so I was eye to eye with Burgundy. She met my gaze. The whites of her eyes were wide and round. She was scared. But being brave about it.
“May I add some protections to your focal stone?” I asked.
Her eyes widened even further, but she nodded, palming her stone and holding it before her. She had carved a single rune into the stone’s face, its edges smooth to suggest it was the result of repeated etchings.
“What does the rune stand for?” I asked quietly. I tried to block out all the other frantic energy in the room, and to simply focus on the witch crouched before me. “Strength?”
A faint blush bloomed across Burgundy’s face. She had a dusting of freckles over her nose and cheeks that I’d never noticed before. “No. It’s a … passed down from my grandmother. A grounding. The symbol for earth combined with a healing rune.”
“That’s even better,” I murmured, hovering my hand over the stone. “It suits your magic more than brute force or a simple amplification … but let’s just add a little something, shall we?”
Burgundy exhaled in a rush, as if she’d been holding her breath even while speaking. “All right.”
Pressing my fingers to her inner wrist and the heel of my hand to the focal stone, I reached out for her magic. Feeling for what made her utterly unique, even among the powerful Adepts that waited impatiently in the hallway behind her. Her watermelon magic tickled my taste buds, sweet and thirst quenching.
“There you are,” I murmured. I twined my own magic around Burgundy’s, carefully coaxing the energy forward so as to not overwhelm the delicate watermelon power. “You’re already a healer. That comes to you naturally.”
“Yes,” Burgundy said reverently. “I like … helping.”
I pulled more of the young witch’s power forward, trying to not rush, trying to not just grab and shove. I channeled her sweet, delicate magic into the stone, cementing her inherent abilities with my own magic. Intensifying them. Then tying the stone back to her. A conduit. For her use only.
Burgundy gasped. “The stone is … it’s getting warm. And … can you … I can see it glowing. Just … a glimmer, a halo … is it … is that my magic?”
I smiled at her. “Yes. That’s you.” I closed her fingers around the stone, outlining the rune carved through its center with my forefinger. “You’ll be able to channel your healing through the stone now. It will ground your magic as it did before, but even more so. It will amplify that magic with focus and intention. But you must be careful not to drain yourself. And no one else will be able to take the stone from you, or use its power against you.”
“But if I give it to someone?”
“The magic can pass from you to another by choice. That’s always the way. Love is given freely. But it can’t be taken by force.”
“Yes. I understand.”
I straightened, meeting my grandmother’s disgruntled gaze over Burgundy’s bowed head. The younger witch was staring at the stone in reverence. “Sheer power isn’t always the way through a difficult situation.”
My grandmother stiffened her shoulders. “Yet you casually hand an object of immense power to a young witch who has no idea what she now holds. What she now commands.”
“I do understand,” Burgundy said, gently but firmly.
I opened my mouth to back the young witch up, to explain why I’d felt an instinctual need to protect her from the spell we were all about to cast. But my grandmother raised her hand to silence me.
“Fine, Jade. I’d like to save my daughter if you’re done making speeches.”
My tone grew low. Dark edged. “It wasn’t much of a speech, Gran. And we won’t make it through any of this by treating anyone as expendable.” I turned my back on my grandmother before she could respond. “Put the stone in your pocket, please, Burgundy.”
“Under your foot or in your opposite hand while you seal the circle,” my grandmother corrected. “Against skin is a better choice.”
I didn’t bother to counter that. My grandmother was the senior witch in the room, after all.
Magic shifted behind me as Burgundy applied her paintbrush to the carpet and closed the circle, sealing me in with my mother and the column of power.
A moment later, more energy bloomed, twisting through the next circle, then feeding back through mine, as Gran stepped forward and sealed the younger witch into the spell.
I kept my gaze on my mother’s face. She looked serene, but I could see a single track of tears across each of her pale cheeks.
Another circle was sealed, adding the taste of brown-sugar shortbread to the intricate spell circling around me.
“Get ready, Jade,” Gran whispered behind me. “It must be an equal exchange. Your mother for the rapier.”
Tart apple tickled my senses as Rochelle sealed her circle. The carpeted floor began humming under my bare feet. At the edges of my peripheral vision, the runes were glowing a deep sea-blue. Then they began to vibrate.
Angelica was murmuring something, needing to vocalize the spell that the witches and the oracle could simply channel through themselves.
I raised the rapier before me in my right hand, holding the blade just under the cross guard, point down.
Jasmine sealed the final circle. Sweet peppermint topped all the other tastes filling my senses. A gentle breeze of energy twisted through each of the circles, swirling all the magic that had been called forth. Peppermint combined with apple, with shortbread, with lilac, and with watermelon into one gigantic bite. Then all those tastes mellowed into a single mouthful of power.
Power primed and waiting.
For me.
“Hey, Mom,” I whispered, lifting my left hand so it was even with my right. I was ready to grab my mother and to shove the rapier into the column of magic at the same time. But … I hesitated. The spell was so intricate, so delicate. Just shoving my hand and the sword into the center of it seemed violent.
“I’m the lightning rod,” I murmured. Angelica had called me that. But it wasn’t quite right. That wasn’t how my magic worked. It was more like I was —
Magic contracted around me. But it was the original boundary spell, not the one we were attempting to cast. My mother’s eyes snapped open, her face etched with silent agony as the column of power dimmed again.
“Now, Jade!” my grandmother shouted. “Reach into the magic with the sword. Free your mother. You can do this, dowser.”
Dowser. Alchemist.
I wasn’t a lightning rod at all.
I was the storm.
I gathered all the magic circling around and thrumming under my feet. All the magic in the runes painted across the floor. All that combined power, carefully keeping it separated from the spell holding my mother hostage.
I channeled that energy up through my body, feeding it through into the rapier already imbued with dragon magic and fortified with my alchemy. Then I took all of that energy, the entire sum of the spell painstakingly painted across the floor by Gran and Angelica, and I channeled it into the sword.
Burgundy slumped to the floor behind me.
Angelica let out a sharp cry.
I slipped both my hands and the rapier into the column of magic, allowing the power of the boundary spell to flow around me and the weapon. I closed my empty hand around my mother’s upper arm.
She opened her eyes.
And smiled.
“Hello, my Jade.”
“Hi, Mom.”
I gently tugged my mother from the column of magic. She slumped against me, unable to hold her own weight. But that was okay. I was strong enough to hold her for as long as she needed.
Then slowly, I loosened my grasp on the rapier. I let the energy of the column, of the boundary spell, lick along its edges. I let it sip at the blade’s magic. Then I allowed it to consume it.
I started to withdraw my hand. The boundary magic resisted, attempting to hold onto me and all my power as well.
My mother wrapped her hand around my forearm, her grip weak as she tried to add her strength to mine.
I tugged my hand free, afraid to breathe as I waited to see if the grid would accept or reject the rapier. Holding my mother upright, I waited to see if the spell would try to take her back — or whether its energy would lash out against her.
I was ready to step forward myself, to take her place in the central column, even though I knew I shouldn’t.
The magic held.
“Thank you, my darling girl,” my mother murmured.
Then, preceded by a teeth-aching wash of his guardian magic, my father was striding through the room despite my grandmother’s weak protests. He lifted my mother, cradling her in his arms and gazing at her with a desperate fierceness. “Don’t you do that again.”
My mother laughed weakly. “I would do much, much more if needed. You know that. Plus, I knew our daughter would come.”
Yazi grumbled under his breath as he swiftly turned toward the door with my mother in his arms. “Healer!” he bellowed.
Qiuniu was already standing in the doorway. “I’m here, warrior.”
“A boon, if you please.”
The healer waved his hand as if brushing something away. “There are no favors between us, Yazi. I’m here by choice.” He reached for my mother, meeting my gaze over my father’s shoulder. “I’ll be back for the others.” Then he carried Scarlett from the room with my father on his heels.
I cast my gaze around the map room. The magic of the column held, writhing through the walls and crisscrossing the ceiling. But all the energy that I’d felt in the circles and the runes had faded. The black paint remained, but the spell was dormant, evaporated.
No … consumed. Channeled by me into the rapier.
Burgundy was curled up where she’d collapsed onto the carpet. She was cupping her focal stone in both hands and murmuring as if talking to it. And maybe she was. Who was I to judge?
The junior witch smiled at me softly when I caught her eye.
Gran was sitting cross-legged behind the younger witch. She looked exhausted, but she held my gaze steadily. “A magnificent casting, Jade.”
Angelica was kneeling behind my grandmother, looking at me as if I were … well, some kind of dreadful monster. “You … you pulled all the magic from the spell …”
“What did you think she was going to do, sorcerer?” my grandmother snapped. “She’s an alchemist. How else was the weapon to take Scarlett’s place?”
Angelica shut her mouth, then smoothed her expression. “The barrier won’t hold for long now. I’d estimate we have two days at the most.”
“But it won’t bounce back,” Jasmine said. The golden-haired vampire was leaning against the wall next to the door. Her eyes were closed. “It won’t consume Scarlett.”
“No. It won’t,” Gran said smugly. “It should simply fade. Or we can turn it off. Jade can easily retrieve or replace the weapon now.”
Ah, there it was. The other shoe dropping.
Somehow, my grandmother had gotten her way after all. The witches’ grid had been weaponized, albeit accidentally — but still courtesy of me. Kandy would be pissed. Thankfully, I didn’t feel tied to the grid in the same way I had been when it was first created, but Gran now thought that I could control it. Fuel it.
Rochelle, who’d been standing quietly and listening to us chatter, suddenly gasped. Her eyes glowed with a bright, searing light.
“Here we go,” Jasmine murmured. “Time to see which way magic wills us. Again.”
“I see … I see …” Rochelle murmured, reaching out with both hands. “Yes. I see.” The oracle smiled, deeply satisfied. “Gather the misfits.”
Jasmine snorted. “They’re on their way.”
“What?” I asked. “The misfits? Like who? Mory? Ben? The twins? That … that can’t be right.”
Beau strode into the room, carrying Rochelle’s army-green satchel. Angelica’s flinch let me know just how quickly the shifter was moving. He was also carrying a sketchbook. But before he could pick Rochelle up or hand over her drawing supplies, the white of the oracle’s magic faded from her eyes.
She gazed at her husband, reaching up and touching his cheek adoringly. “It’s going to be okay, Beau.”
He grunted noncommittally, but Rochelle just smiled and laid her hand on his arm, allowing him to lead her from the room.
No one had answered my question. “What misfits?” I asked again, a bit more caustically.
Jasmine smiled tightly. “All of us, Jade. It’s going to take all of us. You know there was no chance of it being any other way.”
Gran sighed, reaching for me. I stepped by Burgundy and helped Pearl to her feet. She patted my shoulder as she stood. “It’s not always about you, Jade.” Then she turned away. “Come, Angelica. I believe we deserve some tea.”
Angelica nodded, rising, then following my grandmother into the hall. I listened to the satisfied murmur of their conversation as they traversed the hallway and mounted the stairs.
Jasmine met my eye, smiling sneeringly. “Piece of work, your gran. But believe me, she doesn’t even hold a candle to my mother in the nastiness department.”
“It isn’t ever all about me,” I said belligerently.
Jasmine laughed. “Of course not. But it shut you up, didn’t it?” She turned her head slightly, listening to something I couldn’t hear. “Benjamin just arrived. Unfortunately, he brought his mother, speaking of pieces of work. I think Teresa Garrick might eat souls for breakfast.”
Before I could figure out how to respond, Burgundy reached over and touched the back of my hand lightly. “I’ll stay here, Jade. And keep an eye on the map.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” She dropped her gaze to her focal stone, holding it reverently before her. “Thank you for this gift.”
I touched the smooth stone lightly. It felt … pleased. Contented. “Thank you, Burgundy. For being here when I couldn’t be. For doing what I can’t.”
“We all have different talents.”
“Yes. Neither more important than the other.”
The junior witch grinned at me.
I tried to smile back, but my face felt tight, so I didn’t force it any further. Meeting Jasmine’s gaze with a nod, I strode past the golden-haired vampire, exiting into the hall.
“I’ll stay,” Jasmine said to Burgundy behind me. “Go with Jade. You might never get another chance to learn from the most powerful healer in the world.”
“But … you said Benjamin was here … don’t you need … um …”
“Just go, witch,” Jasmine said. “Let the rest of us sort ourselves out.”
Coming from another vampire, addressing Burgundy as ‘witch’ instead of using her name might have sounded derogatory, but I could hear the smile in Jasmine’s tone. And I could imagine the answering grin on the so-called witch’s face.
Eager to check on my mother, I jogged up the stairs, leaving the rest of the overheard conversation behind me.