Wilding Springs never felt so like home. I stepped out into the kitchen with my kids at my side, to find Gram and Demetrius waiting for us. Sassafras stood on the table, tail thrashing and I knew he was going to give me a lecture on leaving him behind. But before he could say a word, I scooped him into my arms and bussed him on the top of his head with noisy lips.
“Oh, SASS,” I said. “You’re the bestest puddy tat EVER.”
He snorted. And relaxed in my arms. “You suck,” he said.
“So I’ve been told.” I kissed him for real while Gram doled out glasses and frothing, ice-cold chocolate milk. Within moments, I was seated with Sass beside me lapping his own bowl of creamy goodness while Gabriel quite calmly informed me he’d been searching for other pieces of Creator all along.
Surreal, really. All in a day’s work for the Hayle family.
“I’m not sure what to tell you, Mom,” he said, serious eyes large and full of more maturity than they should have been for his age. I wanted to tousle his blond hair, to kiss his soft cheeks. Instead, I sat on my hands to keep from doing so, wanting to grant him the gravity of his seriousness for as long as he needed it. A thin, green ribbon peeked out from the cuff of his sleeve before disappearing again. I’d almost forgotten the drach souls that had attached themselves to my kids, souls I’d rescued twice now from the grasp of the Brotherhood. He must have had the rest of them secreted away on his person. While it might have been startlingly freaky to another mother, I found it endearing, like frogs in his pockets. “I’ve searched and searched, but I can’t find anything.”
My fingers itched to stroke his hair. One glance at my pouting daughter reminded me we weren’t just here for Gabriel. “What do you think, Ethie?” She looked up from glaring at her milk, startled. Wary. “Any suggestions?”
She shrugged, looked away. “I tried to help,” she said. “But I can’t.” How much that had to hurt her. Meira would understand, I was sure. It couldn’t be easy, being the younger sibling of someone important. How had I missed it, neglected her?
You and your beatings, my vampire sighed. Get on with it, Syd. It’s never too late.
I hoped she was right. “I meant it when I said we needed you. Do you understand that?”
Again the noncommittal shrug. But she was listening. I could almost see her ears perking.
“The coven will be yours one day,” I said, meeting Gram’s careful eyes. What was she thinking?
“Oh,” Ethie said, seeming to deflate. “That.”
Gram choked, then barked. “Yes,” she said, making Ethie jump. “That.”
My daughter shrank from her great-grandmother’s anger while I glared at Gram. But whatever reaction I’d expected from her, Gram was deep in something else entirely.
“I’ve had just about enough of your petulance, young lady.” Implying this was a long-term state of affairs, something outside of my experience. I tried to remember if Ethie seemed unhappy before. Before the Brotherhood attack, before Quaid and I started having problems. Before my life turned upside down again. And couldn’t remember. She’d seemed happy, hadn’t she? Or, like Quaid, did my daughter hide her unhappiness behind her lovely smile and beautiful eyes?
Was I as deluded with Ethie as I had been with my ex-husband?
“This family,” Gram said, poking the table in front of my daughter with one finger, “is the reason we’re all here.” She waved around the circle of us. “Without this coven,” again the jab at the table, “without their support, your mother,” I was now the focus of her pointing, “would never have been able to fulfill her destiny.” She was absolutely right. All I had to do was think of Ameline and how she turned out in the clutches of the Dumonts. A swelling pride filled my chest, choking me up.
I really had to get a handle on my emotions before I turned into a blubbering basket case for good.
Ethie didn’t seem impressed. “It’s just the coven,” she snapped back. Her blue eyes flickered to me. “Small stuff.”
What had I done to my daughter?
Gram’s power, the magic of the coven, grasped my daughter firmly in her chair and held her there. Ethie’s eyes flew wide, mouth hanging open and it took everything I had not to stop my grandmother from pinning my child in front of her. Everything. Protective Mama Bear roared in my head. The only thing that saved Gram was the fact that, well. She was Gram.
Anyone else would be minus a head by now.
“Young lady,” Gram said, voice shaking. “If you’re unwilling to accept the power and duty of this family’s lineage, I will find another heir to take your place.”
She’d do no such thing.
Hush, girl, Gram sent. I know what I’m doing.
Manipulative old bat.
How do you think I managed your mother all those years? Gram had amusement in her mental voice. Now hush, I said.
Ethie’s lower lip trembled as she looked at me, faint defiance there. “Mom won’t let you,” she said.
“Your mother,” Gram said, swelling with the power of the family magic, eyes glowing with blue fire, “is no longer a member of this coven and has no say in what I do.”
That reality seemed to come as a complete shock to my daughter. I knew she was smart. But watching the wheels turn in her head fascinated me. So clever, too clever by far, this daughter of mine. She relented quickly, bowing her head to Gram.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Coven leader.”
Watch this one, Gram sent, humor gone.
She just needs to feel included, I sent.
Perhaps, Gram sent. Paused. You’re right. Of course. As though fighting herself, some thought she’d had. I’ll make sure to do just that.
There is far more of your mother in her than you, Ethpeal, Sass sent, sounding sad. Trust him to eavesdrop.
Gram’s reaction came in a violent burst of denial. Don’t you ever say that again, Sassafras. Not in my hearing.
What the hell was that? Sass?
He wouldn’t answer, though I did catch the words he spoke directly to Gram. She feels like Mahalia. Lilibeth at the very least.
I warn you, cat, Gram growled.
You two, I snarled my own interruption, will tell me what the hell you’re talking about.
They both fell silent. Before Gram spoke, too quickly and rushed for my liking. My mother… is the reason this coven is so powerful. The reason I became an Enforcer. And we’ll leave it at that.
Will we. Sass sighed. I hope that’s the end of it.
I really needed to know what they were talking about. But Gabriel was finishing his milk, pushing back from the table, looking at me with expectation and eagerness.
“I’m ready to try again, Mom,” he said. “When you are.” He fiddled with his cuff, smiled at me, a secret thing. “I had an idea.”
“Let’s explore it, then,” I said, rising with him. While sending a tight message to Gram and Sass. This conversation isn’t over, I sent. Watch over Ethie. But I’ll be asking questions when I get back. And I expect answers.
Neither responded. We’d just see about that.
When we reached the basement, Gabriel at my side, I glanced back over my shoulder, happy to see my daughter had followed us, just ahead of Gram, Sass at her feet. The veil parted as we touched down, Max and Jiao joining us again. The drach leader bowed to my son who nodded gravely back.
“Max,” Gabriel said, “I haven’t been able to find the pieces on my own. But, I was wondering, do you think they might help me?” Green fluttered at his wrist again before the multicolored rainbow of ribbons burst from his clothing to soar around the drach leader’s head in a dance of delight.
He smiled at the old souls with kindness and patience, nodding to them as though they spoke to him before meeting my son’s gaze with his diamond eyes. “I believe that will be up to them,” he said.
Gabriel held out his hands and the ribbons came to him immediately, like a twisting tornado of happiness, settling in his palms. He stroked them one at a time until they settled. And opened a Gateway.
Frozen tundra lay on the other side, a wash of crisp white under a lavender sky. It made me shiver just looking at it, though harsh temperatures didn’t bother me anymore. Gabriel grinned, turning to me with excitement in his face.
“It worked!” The ribbons rose in a spiral, settling on his hair, his shoulders, draping themselves as if exhausted. “They helped me focus what I learned by being part of the veil.”
They what? “How?”
Gabriel’s little nose scrunched as the ribbons calmed, preening and humming. “They can see different threads of magic,” he said. “Far more clearly than we can, because they are pure energy.” I could tell my son struggled with the explanation, but not the concept. As though trying to fill me in was like he was talking to an infant. It was in equal measure pride-stirring and insulting. “Because they were drach, they can feel the veil.” Gabriel huffed a breath. “Am I making sense?”
I thought of my time as a drach, of the different feeling to the space between planes. How its organic nature felt almost alive. And nodded. Enough sense at least I trusted he knew what he was talking about.
The black ribbon around my wrist purred its approval.
“Only one?” I hated to sound ungrateful, but there were still the majority of pieces floating around out there and we were on the losing end of acquisition as far as my tally could track.
“Well done.” Max’s not-so-subtle comment made me wince. I should have been the one praising my kid. Priorities, Syd. The drach leader didn’t wait for me to apologize, instead gesturing at the opening. “Shall we see if what we seek awaits on the other side?”
A soft kick of fear poked me in the belly as I thought of Belaisle and Eva Southway. They’d tracked me in the past when I’d gone hunting the pieces. She’d used my connection to her son, Piers, to follow me and allow Belaisle to snatch the prize out from under me at the last minute. But that connection was long gone, severed even before my departure from this plane, on purpose, in Zoe’s presence and Piers’s. With his understanding if not his blessing.
And Gabriel and I managed to retrieve a piece afterward, from a watery world, from the hands of merpeople. Without incident. I could only hope that would again be the case. Regardless, we were all in now.
I was all in.
I turned, waved purposely to my daughter. Who raised her hand, face settled into a brave smile though her lower lip trembled as she waved back. And let us go without protest.
She’d be fine. I’d make sure of it.
I hastily erected a shield of warmth around Gabriel as we passed into the icy world, only to have him smile up at me and push the protection away gently.
“It’s okay, Mom,” he said. “I don’t feel it. Haven’t really felt much of anything since I was part of the veil.”
That scared the crap out of me. But he seemed unfazed, willing to accept such a momentous truth as par for the Universe saving course. I supposed I had to do the same if I was going to come out of this with my heart and mind intact.
If it wasn’t already too late, that was.
Jiao moved on ahead, seeming to float over the icy surface. It wasn’t until I tried to walk forward myself I sank into hip-deep snow, cracking through the surface crust of thin ice.
Max pulled me to the top while I slipped a shield beneath me, holding me buoyant. Gabriel already had the hang of it, was racing after the lóng where she crouched over a chunk of rock sticking out of the snow.
“Here,” she said, while Gabriel pounced on the object with a squeal of glee.
“A foot!” He turned to me, waving me closer as Jiao breathed softly over the surface of the stone. The snow melted away in a wash of liquid that quickly reverted back to ice, a cloud of steam dissipating in the wind. Tendrils of frigid air pulled at my ponytail and tried to buffer me off my feet while Gabriel ran his hands over the uncovered foot carved from white stone.
I was thrilled to find another piece so quickly. But, it had been my experience in the past the parts of Creator weren’t so easy to just stumble over and retrieve. Where were the guardians of the chunk of rock? The people to protect it?
I looked around me at the frozen world and shrugged at last. Long gone, I guessed. Frozen under the ice and snow. Still. This seemed far too easy.
Gabriel stepped away as Max’s power grasped the foot and pulled it free. Tried to. The moment his magic touched it, the ground began to shake. Shaylee acted before I could, trying to steady the trembling earth beneath us, cracking and shifting ice and snow settling. Without our supportive shields, we would have sunk deep beneath the surface, I was positive of that.
And, thanks to my Sidhe princess’s determination and focus, was unprepared when Trill appeared next to Gabriel, one hand settling on the foot. And vanished.
Taking the piece with her.
Not this time. I went after her with a roar, latching onto the dissipating tail of her power, weaving my own magic through it like a braid, a leech she would never shake loose. Oh, she tried. She dragged me, heaving and struggling, into the veil, through three different worlds, crashing me physically into the side of a mountain, into the depths of an ocean. I gulped water and emerged coughing in the veil, but held on, clothing dripping a long stream of moisture behind me as Trill jerked against my grip.
Finally crashed us into a forest, falling through sharp boughs and to the brambles below. I panted with exertion, a dog with a bone I would never release as she turned to me, shielded so heavily I couldn’t reach her to hurt her.
All I could do was hold on. And try to accept the fact that Trill was stronger than me.
Dear elements, what was she becoming?
“Syd.” And then Zoe was there, her dark eyes expressionless, voice multilayered. The voice of Creator. “Let her go, Syd.”
I glared, fumed, raged inwardly. Couldn’t speak. Scowled at Trill who shook and wept, hands full of the foot of the statue I was trying to reassemble.
“Syd.” Zoe’s voice this time. “Please. You have to let her go.” She sounded tired.
DAMN IT.
I released Trill, backed off. Immediately regretted it as Liander Belaisle appeared in a puff of black. But wait, here was my chance—
No, Zoe sent while Trill handed off the piece. No, Syd.
Rigid, betrayed, I could only glare my hate at Belaisle as he accepted the foot from Trill’s shaking hands with flourish before laughing at me.
“How does it feel, Syd?” His cold, yellow eyes gleamed with joy. “To have Creator herself turn against you?”
Bastard.
He disappeared, leaving Zoe and me. And Trill. Who didn’t run this time. She instead turned to the Helios oracle who was Fate with grief twisting her face so painfully I almost felt sorry for her.
“Please,” she whispered. “Let me tell her.”
Zoe shook her head, stoic. “Trill, just go.”
The Zornov woman’s face settled, anger rising. “You can’t make me,” she said, defiance in her voice. “If I really want to, you can’t stop me.”
Zoe sighed. Turned to me. “Do you want to destroy this Universe?”
I shook my head, heart aching. Desperate to understand. To know what to believe, who to trust. They’d both just done the unimaginable. And they were supposed to be on my side.
“Then trust me. Trust Trill. And go.”
With no other option, if Zoe was right, I did as she bid. And hoped I’d made the right choice after all.
***