I stared at him for a long moment in disbelief. The Endicotts had been shocked at my revelation, disgusted even, but for this to be their solution…
Then again, perhaps I should have expected it. Our ancestors had dropped half of a medieval town into the sea. What had Theo called Widdershins, the day we mapped the arcane lines? A bloody nightmare?
They’d meant to stay and help me cleanse it of whatever magic they deemed unacceptable. Any besides their own, in other words. The truth of my lineage must have convinced them there was no saving Widdershins. The corruption ran too deep.
It was their solemn duty to put an end to us. And what better night than Hallowe’en, when the arcane energies would be at their height?
God. Did they mean to use the maelstrom? They had the wand to help them tap into its power, after all.
I rose shakily to my feet and looked around. Griffin was hurt, and even though the injury wasn’t critical, he was in no shape to fight. Christine, however, met my gaze calmly.
“I’m with you, of course,” she said.
I shook my head. “No. You can’t.”
Her black brows snapped together. “Damn it, Whyborne—”
“No!” She fell silent at my shout. “They’re sorcerers, Christine. If you bring your rifle, they’ll set fire to the powder and blow it up in your hands.”
“A sword, then or an ax—”
“You don’t know how to fight with one,” I cut her off. “And the Endicotts have been doing this their entire lives. They know far more magic than I. They think destroying the town is the right thing to do, and they won’t hold back, not for anyone. I can’t fight them and keep you safe.”
Rising to my feet, I looked out over the foyer, the broken exhibits and damaged fossils, the destroyed decorations and fainting donors. Dr. Hart and Mr. Mathison had both begun to approach, but stopped when they’d heard Fenton’s words. Now they looked at me in confusion.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ll turn in my resignation tomorrow morning. If I survive, I mean.”
Miss Parkhurst ran up to me, giving Persephone a wide berth. “I don’t know what’s happening, but good luck, Dr. Whyborne,” she said, and kissed me quickly on the cheek.
I blinked in surprise and touched the spot, even as she fled, her face burning. Turning back, I saw Griffin struggling to his feet, most of his weight on Christine’s arm. “Look after Father,” I said to them. “I…I’ll see you later.”
“Ival,” Griffin reached for me. I stepped closer, and he gripped my arm. “The Endicotts have been doing this their whole lives, as you said. And maybe they know more magic.” He met my gaze, and I read there all the love he had for me. “But you are magic.”
I wanted to reply, but my throat was too tight with emotion. So I only nodded. He squeezed once, then let go.
Ignoring the burning in my eyes, I turned to my sister. “Persephone? Will you help me fight them?”
Her tentacle hair rose in an angry halo around her head. “Yes.”
“Sir?” Fenton asked, and a note of fear quivered in his voice. “Shall I drive you?”
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
Not daring to look back at Griffin and Christine, I hurried out the doors, Persephone and Fenton behind me.
~ * ~
I clung to the motor car’s seat as Fenton drove us through the winding streets with reckless speed. The storm clouds I’d noticed at the cemetery had rolled in while we were inside the museum, and now fat drops of rain began to pelt from the sky, stinging painfully against our exposed skin.
“Can you summon the other ketoi back?” I shouted over the rush of wind and rain.
Persephone perched in my lap, her arms loosely around my neck and her tentacle hair crushed against my face. Fortunately, the stingers appeared to be under some sort of conscious control. The tentacles themselves felt odd but not unpleasant, if I ignored their occasional wriggle.
“No—not without a stone.” Her mouth tightened in a frown. “I should not have dismissed them—but I thought it would make things easier for the land people, allow me to show the danger is passed.”
“It was a good idea. You didn’t know the Endicotts would do this. Threaten the town. Kidnap Mother.”
If the twins hurt Mother, I didn’t know what I’d do. Did they have her out even now in the soaking rain? Was she afraid? Hurt?
“We’re almost there,” Fenton shouted over the rumble of thunder. At least he hadn’t questioned I knew where to go. If the twins truly meant to wipe Widdershins from the face of the earth, they’d need immense power to do it. Despite the dangers, they’d go to the heart of the maelstrom. The ancient bridge over the Cranch, where it entered the bay.
The streets grew darker as we neared the bay, and the downpour strengthened, until we were all soaked. I could feel the arcane rivers beneath us, swirling fast and tight toward the center, in a way I’d never been able to before. Because of the date, the ancient Witches Sabbath? Or because, having touched its power several times now, I’d become in some way attuned to the flow?
Or because Widdershins knew me, as the poem-prophecy said?
We turned onto Front Street, and Fenton brought the motor car to a halt. The electric lights of the bridge shone in the darkness, although we were still far enough away to make out only indistinct shapes on the span. Two appeared to be wearing robes, which flapped and snapped in the breeze.
Persephone and I climbed out of the motor car. A stiff wind blew from the ocean, ruffling my hair and bringing with it the sound of chanting. “Go back to the museum,” I told Fenton. “Take Father, Griffin, and Christine as far from here as you can.”
Fenton nodded. “Yes, sir. Where should we go?”
“Given the family history, as far away from the ocean as possible.”
I walked down the street, every nerve alive and thrumming, Persephone at my side. Thunder rumbled again, and lightning cracked out to sea.
We reached the bridge. Fiona’s wand stood upright in its center, somehow jammed into the solid stone. Chalked sigils marked the road all around it. As we approached, Theo took up position at Fiona’s side, near the low stone railing.
Persephone and I froze, side-by-side, mirrors of the Endicott twins. One pair human, the other monstrous, and at the moment, I wasn’t even sure which was truly which.
Fiona held Mother in front of her, one arm tight around her waist. The other pressed the tip of a vicious blade to her chest.
“Stay back,” Fiona warned. “Unless you want to see her die before your eyes.”
Mother was pale, and a dark bruise showed on one cheek. They hadn’t taken her easily. She gripped Fiona’s wrist with both hands, as if holding the dagger back from her flesh. But years of illness had sapped her strength, and if Fiona chose to stab her, there was nothing she could do to prevent it.
Mother’s eyes widened at the sight of us. “Persephone?”
Persephone nodded. “Yes.”
“How touching,” Theo said, his lip curling. “The mother of monsters and her litter, together at last.”
“Let her go.” My voice trembled, and I swallowed hard against my fear. “There’s no need to threaten her.”
“No need?” Theo let out a bitter laugh. “This town is a blight on the face of the earth! Your woods are haunted, your most powerful families poisoned by dark magic. The very streets were designed by a necromancer. Even the public museum is filled with cursed objects and tomes that ought to be shut away or burned. There is every need!”
“But it’s all right,” Fiona said. “The sea will wipe everything away and make it clean again.”
No. She couldn’t truly mean it. “You’re raising a tidal wave? But—but that’s madness! You’ll die, too!”
Fiona’s eyes gleamed in the light. “Yes. If such is the price we must pay for protecting humanity from monsters like you, then so be it. We’ve lived life to the fullest, and now we can die without regret, so long as we take you with us.”
She truly believed her words. She—and Theo—looked at me and beheld a horror. No different from the ghūls, or the yayhos, or the abominable Guardians. She and Theo were saving the world, and nothing I could say would convince her otherwise.
And in the meantime, she held my mother tight against her, a tiny dot of blood forming on her bodice where the knife pressed a little too hard.
“But we’re not without mercy,” Theo said. “Surrender, don’t fight us, and we’ll let Heliabel go. She might even escape what’s already in motion.”
Already in motion. The spell was cast. The wave on its way.
“No!” Mother shouted. Her eyes narrowed, and she gave Theo such a look of scorn he took a step back. “You will not use me to hurt my children.”
She met my gaze then, and the anger slid away, replaced by love and something very like grief. “Send them both to hell, my knight,” she said.
Then she jerked Fiona’s knife to her instead of pushing it away.
The blade slid into her chest, all the way to the hilt. Blood instantly darkened her bodice, and she let out a choked sound of anguish. Fiona shouted in surprise and instinctively pulled the knife free, springing back from the sudden gush of blood that followed it.
“No!” The sound tore its way out of my throat. Persephone and I ran onto the bridge, but we were already too late.
Mother stumbled back, her life flowing out of the terrible wound. Her legs struck the stone railing—and she flung herself over, back, and into the river.
She was gone.
~ * ~
The world stopped. Or maybe just my world.
Nothing remained but a pool of blood, already washing away in the rain. A roaring sound filled my ears, and the bones of my arms and legs didn’t seem to work correctly anymore.
I’d expected to lose her, ever since I was old enough to understand the meaning of death, to know there was no other possible end to Mother’s long illness. But not like this.
Send them both to hell, my knight.
I screamed, and the world screamed with me.
Wind howled across the bridge, funneled by nothing save my desire to see Theo and Fiona pay, to see them hurt and broken and shrieking. Rain pelted them, accompanied by a sudden onslaught of stinging hail. The gale caught their robes, tangling the fabric about their bodies. Fiona stumbled, the hood temporarily blinding her.
Theo dropped to the ground, hands pressed against the bridge. I started toward him, my pulse slamming in my ears, my only thought to rip out his heart.
The stones of the bridge turned soft beneath my feet, my shoes sinking into them like mud. Taken off guard, I glanced down, only to see the stone resolidify, trapping my shoes. I jerked against its grip, but it held fast.
“You’re too late, cousin!” Theo shouted. The wind died along with my concentration, and he scrambled to his feet. “Look—the river level is already dropping as the sea retreats. What’s coming over the horizon will cleanse this hellhole of ketoi and dark sorcery alike.”
I tried to shatter the stone holding me fast, but command of earth had never come as easily to me as the other elements.
But I wasn’t alone in this fight. Persephone let out a growl of fury, and the scars on my own arm tingled as she grasped the river beneath us with her will. A wall of water heaved up from beneath the bridge, curling as it prepared to smash down on the Endicotts and flatten them against the stones.
Fiona spun and faced the side of the bridge, both hands flung up before her. The wall of water stopped, churning, as her will held Persephone’s back.
Before I could call a warning, Theo struck. A blast of wind hit Persephone, sending her into the wand still rooted in the center of the bridge. The wand snapped under her weight, and both hit the railing. She tried to scramble to her feet, but he struck her again, hurling her over the rail at the same point Mother had fallen. The river collapsed back into its banks, Persephone’s spell shattered.
I finally succeeded in wrenching free of my trapped shoes. The stones of the bridge felt cold beneath my socks.
Frost raced over my skin, biting and stinging, and the rainwater under my feet turned to a sheen of ice. I tried to draw on fire to melt it, but before I could, Theo hit me with another gust of wind. My feet went out from under me, and I struck the bridge hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
“Give up,” Theo said. He stalked toward me, his expression one of fury and hate. “Why waste your last moments fighting us both, when you can’t possibly win?”
My last moments.
I felt the maelstrom beneath me, arcane energy swirling in from both land and ocean, fast and wild as a riptide. The tidal wave rolled in, still out to sea but closing quickly. The sea wall wouldn’t be enough to blunt its fury, and a good part of Widdershins would be swept away. These wouldn’t just be my last moments, but Griffin’s as well. Unless Fenton had performed a miracle of driving, they’d surely be caught up: Griffin and Christine, Father. Miss Parkhurst, Dr. Hart, Bradley, everyone I’d known. Hundreds of souls packed into the tenement houses, the sailors along the wharf. Thieves and whores and beggars; husbands and wives and children. All were going to die, and most of them would never even know why.
Beneath my hands lay the flood of magic that had drawn Blackbyrne to Widdershins two centuries ago: too dangerous and raw for anyone to touch directly. Even knowing he would die tonight, Theo had diverted it carefully into the spell, funneled through the wand.
If only the wand hadn’t broken, perhaps I might have made use of it. But as it was, I had nothing except myself.
“Then the town will rise to his hand,” I whispered. “One for the sea, and one for the land.”
I opened all my senses to the maelstrom. The scent of the sea intensified: cold water and ancient things, deep as time. The stones of the bridge pressed against me, and I could almost taste the quarry they’d been taken from centuries before. Wind stripped the heat from my skin, but at the same time, I could hear the hiss and crackle of fire.
I threw aside every mental barrier and called on the maelstrom. And Widdershins answered.
~ * ~
Energy flooded into me, a feeling of power like nothing I’d ever experienced, even with the dweller. The dweller had been a separate thing—but this magic wasn’t. This magic was me, or I was it. Or maybe there had never been a me at all.
Lightning danced across the sky, the electric lamps going out all at once. But it didn’t matter, because the entire world was filled with light. The arcane rivers burned in my sight with blue fire, pouring in from the land and the sea, meeting in a swirl of current, which became a gigantic whirlpool, slowly rotating counterclockwise. The eye of the magical storm lay in the center of the bridge, but the energy didn’t simply disappear, draining off to some deep place in the earth. Instead, a huge spire of blue-white light shot up from the center, vanishing into the clouds above.
“What is he doing?” Fiona shouted, sounding panicked. “Dear God, look at his eyes!”
I rose to my feet. The world around Theo shimmered as he shaped it to his will, giving me plenty of warning of the spell he meant to use against me. I tore the energy from him, and he cried out in shock and fear.
They hurled wind at me, and lightning, tried to drown me in the rain. None of it touched me at all, unraveling before the sheer flood of power moving through me. I should have been cold in the soaking rain, but instead I burned from within. Steam rose from my skin.
I ignored them and ran for the spire of light only I could see. The very heart of the maelstrom.
Heat blazed through the scars on my arm. My coat and shirt turned to ash, the same blue-white light of the maelstrom pouring from the scars. Fire burned along my nerves; my breath was wind, my blood the sea, and my bones the earth which held it. I could see the thousands of flickers of life in the city and the ocean, feel the press of their feet on my streets, hear their laughter and taste their tears.
Miss Lester and Amelie had been right. Widdershins did indeed know its own.
My feet no longer touched the bridge, my body buoyed up by magic. I left off fighting the spells the Endicotts cast, and instead drank them down, absorbing their power into the vast sea that was myself and the city and maelstrom all at once.
They sought to destroy me. To destroy everything. I would not let it happen. I would not.
With all the howling power of the vortex backing my will, the earth spell responded as easily as breath. The bridge shattered into rubble, dragging my cousins down into the river with it. Fins cut the water, the river boiling with ketoi, and Fiona let out a startled scream. Then the water closed over her head, and she was gone.
Theo clung to a broken pier, his spectacles askew and his face masked with blood. “Even if you succeed here, this isn’t over,” he snarled. “Others will come. You’ll be hunted like the monster you are.”
“Let them try,” I said.
Clawed hands grasped his shoulders and legs, and he screamed. The sound cut off abruptly.
Amidst the churn of ketoi and blood and shattered stone, Persephone broke the surface. She held Mother’s body in her arms, limp and unmoving. For a moment, our eyes met. Then she dove beneath the water, carrying Mother with her, and was gone.
I hung suspended between water and sky, earth and cosmic fire. My clothes were charred and tattered from the arcane power, but my pocket watch floated free, still connected to the scraps of vest. Lightning arced on its surface and played around the chain.
The Endicotts were dead, but the wave they’d raised was almost on us now. I could hear its distant roar, like the growl of some great beast coming to feed upon us all. Magical energy had turned into physical force, which would grind on until it spent itself against the land.
Or unless something else took the energy from it first.
I could make myself a conduit between the power of the wave and the maelstrom. If I could feed the energy through me, the wave would dissipate.
And what would it do to me?
I didn’t know. And it didn’t really matter, anyway. There was no other choice.
I concentrated on the distant wave, feeling it as I felt everything in Widdershins, through my connection with the maelstrom. I closed my hand on the pocket watch, curling it to my chest, as if by protecting the picture inside I could protect Griffin as well.
Then I stretched out my scarred hand and drew the energy of the wave into me.
Arcane fire poured through me, but this time it burned. I screamed, back arching, and it seared through my very soul. I tried to feed it into the maelstrom, to ground myself, but it was too much, too fast. My heart stuttered in my chest; my mouth tasted of burning iron. My bones were hollow, veins nothing but conduits for the forces funneling through me. Even the air in my lungs turned to fire. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, couldn’t, couldn’t—
The light went out. A moment later, icy water slammed into me, quenching the fire and closing over my head.
~ * ~
“Ival! Breathe, damn it, breathe!”
I opened my eyes. My legs still lay in the shallows of the river, but my shoulders rested against something warm. Figures leaned over me, silhouetted in the light from lanterns. For a moment, their identities escaped me, my mind still half expecting to feel the city around me like an extension of my own body, to see the arcane fire. Then I blinked, and everything came into focus again. “Griffin?” I mumbled. “Christine? I thought I told you to stay at the museum.”
“Oh, thank God.” Griffin clutched me to him. I returned the embrace, feeling as weak as a newborn.
“If you really thought we’d stay behind, while you risked your life, I’ll—well, I’ll be damned insulted.” Christine scowled at me from Griffin’s side. She was soaked to the bone, and with a start, I realized she must have come into the river after me.
“Wh-what happened?” I managed to ask. “The wave—”
“Whatever the Endicotts were doing, you stopped it.” Griffin leaned back and stroked my face. “God, you scared the hell out of me.”
“Your wound—”
“Hurts like the very devil. I’ll need help getting back to the motor car.” He grimaced in pain. “Perhaps I’ll just stay here the rest of the night, actually.”
I managed to sit up, afraid to put any weight against his injured torso. “Persephone—she had Mother.”
“I saw.” Griffin shook his head. “When you left, I had an idea. I thought Stanford must surely have one of the summoning stones on him. It was in his pocket. We thought we could call the ketoi back and have them help you. We met Fenton on the way here, and he brought us as quickly as he could. Christine threw the stone in and the ketoi came. Persephone had Heliabel, but…I don’t know if she was alive or not by then.”
Persephone had dove down with her body. Taken her to the sea. But for burial or transformation, I didn’t know. And the silent river offered me no answers.
A sob tore through me, and I couldn’t hold it back. I wept for Mother, and Guinevere, and Emily, and maybe even for myself. Christine took my hand, and Griffin held me close, and we sat in silence on the riverbank while the black waters rolled out to the sea.