Ivy turned, the covers tangled around her legs, but she didn’t feel it. Or rather, it didn’t register, her mind already occupied with a source of far greater discomfort. It echoed within her, loud, agonized, and dreadfully familiar.
I call thee forth, warrior of stone, to stand against the Enemy of All. Stir, and awaken.
Uncle George? In sleep, her brow furrowed and her head twisted on the pillow. She knew the voice but not the words. Mom’s brother, confirmed eccentric. Black sheep in a family of decidedly gray ones. The one who spoke openly about magic and supernatural gifts and some endless, covert struggle against the forces of Darkness. As a child, Ivy had found his stories as chilling and exciting as the ones about the hook-handed killer, or the witch who appeared to steal your soul if you chanted her name three times into your mirror. She had never believed any of them, but she had sat and listened, wide-eyed and enthralled, to each and every one.
Dad, I just heard something. I think someone is out there.
Jamie’s voice now, just as familiar. If Ivy had listened intently to her uncle’s stories, his son had hung on every word, learning them like holy gospel. Visits to and from the U.K. had never happened often enough, and Ivy had always looked wildly forward to the chance to reconnect and play with the cousin who had been a bare year older than herself. But while she had wanted to play ball or cops and robbers or intrepid jungle explorers, all Jamie wanted was to play at being Wardens and protecting the world from the demon invasion. Strangely enough, not games her friends in suburban New York had prepared her for. She always felt as if she had gotten the wrong script. She had played along, though, because Jamie was just that convincing.
And also because there wasn’t much else to do at Uncle George’s country house.
The familiarity bred by those long visits meant that even asleep, Ivy’s subconscious had no trouble recognizing George’s and Jamie’s well-loved voices. Their tones, though … those made her frown in her sleep and twist again atop her rapidly warming mattress.
I need a few more minutes, boy. I have to complete the summoning. Once he wakes, we’ll have nothing to fear.
Once who wakes? Ivy wanted to ask. What was going on? She could hear urgency and fear underlying her uncle’s cool, British reserve, the same emotions that bubbled over in her cousin’s words, but as usual, she could see nothing. Her talent never allowed her to put any images to what she heard. Clairaudience, the experts labeled it. Eavesdropping fit better. At least, Ivy thought so. Clairaudience sounded too scientific, as if she had some kind of radio receiver inside her head that she could tune to a certain frequency to pick up whatever sounds she wanted at any given time.
Wouldn’t that have been convenient? But no, Ivy hadn’t gotten so lucky. Instead of that radio receiver, she had gotten the same sort of reception as the poor schmuck in that old joke whose tooth filling occasionally made opera broadcasts spill out whenever he opened his mouth. Ivy never got to choose what she could hear. It only came to her at the moments she least wanted to hear, moments filled with anger or fear or soul-wrenching grief. It had to be powered by emotion, and somehow the most powerful emotions always seemed to be the most painful ones.
Clairaudial empathy, someone had suggested as a label. Ivy just called it her curse.
She began to struggle against the choking grip of sleep. Her subconscious recognized the fear in her cousin’s voice, the urgency in her uncle’s. She might not know what the two of them were talking about inside her head, but she knew it was important, and she knew they felt as if they might be in danger. If she didn’t wake up, she would be unable to help them.
Hell, she might not be able to help them anyway, but at least if she were awake, she might have a chance. Asleep, she only counted as so much dead weight.
Lethargy clung to her. Ivy fought hard, but somehow the unconsciousness seemed to fight back, holding her down like a hand in the face of a drowning victim. She even found herself struggling to breathe the same way, and it got harder to tell the difference between her relatives’ fear and her own mounting panic.
Wake up, Ivy, she commanded herself. They need you. Wake up and get them help. Do it. Now.
Come forth, Guardian. Uncle George spoke with both authority and a new sense of urgency, a frantic sort of demand. It sounded almost like desperation.
A crash echoed in her mind, the kind of boom that would have shaken the ground of the surrounding area. Ivy could almost swear she felt the vibrations.
Hurry up, Dad. We need to get out of here. They’re coming.
I know. I’m trying. The spell isn’t working, though. Something is wrong.
Another thundering crash, and Jamie swore. We need to leave. We can try another night.
No, we can’t. If they find him here in this state, they can destroy him. He needs to waken, otherwise all we’ve done is lead the Order straight to him.
We don’t have time.
We don’t have a choice.
There was a moment of silence. Well, not so much silence as the absence of voices. The bone-rattling booms continued, like God’s door knocker being plied by the devil himself.
Maybe we do. We can hide him.
How? her uncle demanded. He sounded confused and testy, like someone had presented him with a mug of tea without offering up a biscuit alongside. He’s a bit bloody hard to miss, don’t you think?
I found a spell, Jamie said. In that book you dug up a few weeks ago. It’s supposed to be undetectable, even to the nocturnis. I have it memorized. It’s got to at least be worth a try.
The next boom came louder than the others, if that was possible, and was accompanied by a sharp cracking sound, like wood splitting under the blade of an axe.
I don’t think we have any choice, Jamie insisted. We’ve run out of time.
Another pause.
Do it.
Ivy heard a rush of air, like a deep inhalation, then the sound of her cousin chanting something in a language she almost recognized. Not French, which she spoke a little, and not Latin, which she didn’t, but something similar and just out of her reach.
She might not recognize the words, but she had no trouble with the cadence. Jamie spoke quickly, his voice low and urgent, full of power and will. She recognized it from all the times he had stayed up late into the night while her family visited him, after the adults thought them both tucked safely into bed. The wall between their rooms hadn’t been thick enough to hide the fact that every spare moment not spent playing at being just like his father, Jamie had been studying so that one day he would be just like his father. He couldn’t hide it from Ivy, though. Little pseudosisters could be better than spymasters when curiosity and twinges of jealousy spurred them forward.
You’ve done it, Uncle George cried, sounding almost as surprised as he did relieved. Now we need to disappear, too. Come on.
All at once, the booming and the cracking ceased and a deafening explosion reverberated in their place. It shook Ivy even in sleep, and though she still could see nothing, she could hear, mixed with the echo of the sonic wave, the patter of stone falling like rain, and dust whooshing along as if caught in the wake of a hurricane.
Then there was silence.
Terrible, black, empty, suffocating silence.
Ivy shot out of sleep, sitting up in a rush of motion, choking on the air she struggled to draw into protesting lungs. Her bedroom remained dark and still, but the sounds of collapsing rubble still filled her head. Her heart raced as if she had just run a marathon. A slick film of sweat coated her skin, making her thin cotton gown cling to her uncomfortably. She trembled from head to toe as the reality of what she had heard began to sink in.
“Jamie,” she whispered into the night. “Uncle George. What have you done?”
With shaking hands, she fumbled for her phone and silently began to pray.