NESS
I’m in my bedroom dreaming up ways to beat the Senator.
The first step is incapacitating Zenon, wherever he’s stationed in the manor, so he can’t sound some alarm if I manage to get past Jax and morph into someone else to escape. The polling numbers I last saw were favoring the Senator, and I’m sure he’s only gained more support since the propaganda videos, but if I can go live on national TV wearing the Senator’s face, I’ll own up to every single crime of his.
No more White House. Straight to jail.
There’s a gentle knock on my door and Luna slowly enters in a crimson cloak that contrasts her sickly white skin. It’s the first time I’m seeing her in the seven or eight days since she broke into the manor and built some arrangement with the Senator. She’s also alone without even June at her side.
I could take her right now.
Luna picks up an unlit candle from my bookcase and smells it. “Eucalyptus. One of nature’s many deceptions. It invites you in with its smell but its oils are a welcomed touch to any poison.”
“You lied to me,” I say, cutting to the point.
“When?”
Her question is genuine. She has trusted me with her life, with her pursuit for immortality, and who knows how many times she’s lied to me.
“About the Senator,” I say.
“You not asking the right questions isn’t my fault.”
“Would you have told the truth?”
“It’s best to hold one’s cards to one’s chest until it’s necessary. You were already more than willing to work for me—to work against your father.” Luna sits beside me on my bed, bringing me back to the days when she first took me in and cared for me. “Besides, your betrayal proves why I was wise to keep secrets from you. There are many Blood Casters spread across the country, but the few I keep at my side are the ones I trust the most. The things I’ve asked of you could land me in prison, make me a target, but I asked them of you because it was important, because I believed in you.”
There’s a softness to her voice, like a mother trying to get her child to understand something very important without yelling.
The day of the Blackout, after June saved me and brought me to one of Luna’s hideaway homes, Luna surprised me with lulling words of second chances. I didn’t see it back then, but she was manipulating me into talking about my struggles with the Senator. She set herself up as the trusted ally who would keep me safe if I worked for her. Even though it meant risking my life to become a specter. It wasn’t an easy decision, and the Cloaked Phantom was rapidly approaching. But it felt like a sign when Luna obtained a shifter wounded by a hunter, and Luna told me the poor creature could live on in spirit if I fused its blood with mine. I agreed and drank the potion thinking my new life would be better, thinking I could trust this woman who nursed me back to life with tonics when my body was dangerously morphing against my will.
Never in my life did I feel more special than when Luna taught me to shift. I was so dazzled by her praise that I couldn’t see how she can transform without any gray lights.
I get up from the bed and sit at my desk. “Hopefully your next Blood Caster cooperates. Yeah, Dione told me what you were up to the night of the constellation; I’m not the only big mouth.”
Luna turns to the doorway. “I’ll be sure to have a word with her,” she says, and then her green eyes land on me again. “It’s unclear how much time I have left in this world, but I know that time isn’t best spent nurturing new specters. I was using the Cloaked Phantom to fulfill a favor. Your father and I could only dream of creating a replacement for you since I’ve never met a single person—celestial or specter—who could transform into another as faithfully as you have. Recruiting another could be manageable for jobs with low stakes, but not changing the world as we’re asking of you.”
I would rather be fired from this job instead of staying on as their top employee. “Now that I’ve dressed up as Eva and Carolina for the Senator, I take it you’re going to have me pose as the Spell Walkers next?”
“It was an idea, but then the Spell Walkers will piece together that you’re alive and potentially find proof and methods to discredit your father’s campaign. The same precautions are in place from when you would go undercover for me—never impersonate someone who will have a credible alibi. Eva and Carolina won’t as long as they stay within our reach.” Luna coughs, violently, and I fight back these old instincts to help her. “But when the time is right, you may get to wear your lover’s face for us.”
A chill shoots up my spine. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I strung together the most groundbreaking alchemical formula since Keon Máximo discovered how to give humans the power of creatures. Do not mistake me for a fool who can’t see young love.” Luna might get that haughty smile knocked off her face if she isn’t careful. “It must’ve been painful when you carved into him like he was nothing but roasted meat. How much harm do you think would befall him if everyone knew the truth about who he is? About who he was?”
It’s my understanding that a lot of people grieved Bautista de León. There were so many memorials for him across the country, even fans across the world were impacted by his death too. But there were many that celebrated this news. And then there’s every living soul who hates specters with their entire being who would take to the streets if they could pin all their anger on Emil. They wouldn’t even care that Emil doesn’t have a single memory from those lives, or that he’s his own person who would never do what Keon Máximo did. He could become the most hunted person alive.
I’ve hurt Emil enough for one lifetime. I can’t let others know about all of his.
“Why hasn’t the Senator used this yet to villainize Emil?”
Luna grins. “As I told you, I only reveal my secrets when they benefit me. I have given Iron a blueprint to success that stands strong without him knowing that resurrection is possible.”
“Why do you still care about keeping secrets? You’re dying. Set the world on fire.”
“You spent the better part of this year under my care, and you still think I’m nothing but a match. There has been a lot of death, I would never deny that, but I have always been in pursuit of resurrection and immortality—of life in all forms. Out of the hundreds of alchemists across the globe, I’d wager only dozens are worth anyone’s time, and for the most part, we have failed humanity. No one has figured out how to cure the common cold, cancers, deadly infections, blood illnesses such as mine.” There’s color in her cheeks, but she still looks the weakest I’ve ever seen her. “Some have bought time, but never all of it,” she adds with a sadness.
Her illness, haimashadow, is simply described as a sickness that blocks life. There’s no known cure, though Luna was always hoping the Reaper’s Blood could regenerate her arteries and make them good as new.
“If you care so much about the world, Luna, maybe you should’ve spent more time trying to protect those in it.”
“I don’t have to care for those who won’t mourn me.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to be more selfless,” I say. She could’ve learned a lot from Emil if she weren’t more interested in torturing him.
“There is nothing wrong with being selfish. You’re allowed to have an agenda born out of your own need—fame, love, security, power, revenge. For some, it’s all those and more.”
It seems really greedy, but I’ve wanted all of these things too. There’s been a lot of privilege in being a politician’s son with my own bodyguard and living in a manor with a panic room. Not to mention all the financial security we’ve had. I dreamed of trading convention stages for the ones on Broadway and theaters across the country. Red carpets, press junkets, popping into drama schools to share my wisdom. I was looking forward to getting older and discovering the power of my own choices, but instead I’m wondering how I can get my revenge on the Senator and Luna, who stole my free will with manipulation and threats. And there’s love, which maybe starts with running into a building to save someone when you’re finally free to become yourself.
“I see it in your eyes that you don’t disagree,” Luna says.
Even though I swear I’m masking my emotions, she still sees through me.
“What’s your point?” I ask.
“That it became clear to me ages ago that I wouldn’t achieve dominion over life and death in an average life span. It takes alchemists decades to master their craft, and even supreme ones such as Keon and myself were advanced thanks to the works left behind by those before us. Loss has put me on my journey, but don’t you think it would be a great sadness to rebuild the world and not live in it? That doesn’t seem fair at all.”
“And it doesn’t serve you,” I mock.
She’s stone-faced. “It does not. What I want most in this world is my dear sister, Raine, to be more than ashes in an urn. I have gone through incredible, unnatural lengths to bring her back to life, and despite my many breakthroughs and discoveries, I needed more time to solve the puzzle of true resurrection, which the Reaper’s Blood would’ve afforded me.”
She’ll die before I apologize.
“For the longest time, I carried many regrets. There were opportunities to claim powers of my own, especially when I was young enough that it wouldn’t pose the great risks to me that we’ve seen with those who are older, but the dawn of specters was still new. Their powers may be extraordinary, but above all, specters are still mortal; even my miracle June won’t live on forever. Thankfully, I didn’t make any rash decisions, since there’s nothing to suggest that phoenix blood on its own would’ve brought me back as I am, and we’ve seen that to be true with Keon and his scions. The creation of immortality always meant playing the long game, and I’ve done just that, from working alongside Keon to nurturing my marriage to empowering all of you Blood Casters.”
“I didn’t know you were married.” Before she can say anything, I add, “I get it. It wasn’t my business.”
Luna’s smile is interrupted by another cough, blood painting her palm. She wipes it on her crimson cloak, not bothering with a handkerchief. “Once Keon was killed by the Halo Knights and didn’t resurrect, I believed him dead and sought out other ways to get closer to death. There were quintuplets in Colombia, all brothers haunted by their deathlike powers.”
I prop my elbow on my desk, finding myself pulled into this story that feels like a fairy tale. The eldest brother, Fabian, could hear and understand ghosts, but was so tormented by their pleas that he took his own life. Mattias’s howls grew to be so piercing that an entire town’s combusted brains traced back to him. Santiago secluded himself to avoid his visions of imminent deaths. Álvaro could smell someone’s bones and blood and predict how much time they had left. And the youngest was Davian, whose touch was so deadly that his mother died from childbirth.
“Santiago was the last living brother when I arrived in Colombia, and while I would’ve loved to work with Fabian and his direct line to ghosts, I arrived at Santiago’s house with promises of helping control his power so he could return to the world,” Luna says proudly, and as someone who agreed to shifting powers for the same dream, I’m not surprised that he embraced her. “I gained his trust, and he welcomed me into his home and heart. I was given everything after our marriage—the family’s estate, their darkest secrets, even a child with great potential who is no more. I don’t consider myself superstitious, but even I would say that family was cursed.”
I’m wrapping my head around how she was a wife and mother and I never knew any of this. I can morph into her and capture the exact shade of green in her eyes and the cracks in her lips and the wrinkles in her neck and the dark red tongue from her daily tonics. But that’s all surface. I can’t ever imitate the shadowy heart inside her.
“Did Santiago take his own life like his brother?”
“No, I gave myself the honor of killing him. I took great joy in watching his eyes glow as he foresaw the death I planned for him, and how powerless he was to stop it.”
I can’t even pretend this is shocking. This is the same woman who murdered her parents when she was young. It all tracks. “Sounds like he didn’t serve you.”
“He gave me a child, and through that, I learned how to nurture those with powers. The Blood Casters were born years later.”
“Thanks for the history lesson. It’s great to know you’ve always been this horrible.”
Luna lets out a little laugh. “You once believed me to be the lesser evil—that your father was an even more dangerous criminal. You wondered about your next assignment. I’ll have you know that you’ll be impersonating Nicolette Sunstar in the upcoming debate. The plan is quite diabolical, designed by yours truly. But I am simply buying time until I can make my next move, and when I can, I’m hoping that these personal confessions of my past will have regained your trust. I don’t have any family left, though I consider you mine.”
I don’t want to show my anger, but there’s no face I can hide behind. “You would have more family if you didn’t kill everyone off.”
She inhales a deep breath as she rises from the bed and makes her way to the door. “You don’t—”
“Shut up! You think you’re some manipulation mastermind and bragging about using others, as if the Senator isn’t using you right back.”
I expect her to call for Stanton to punish me for lashing out like this, then I remember that he’s not in the picture and she’s in my house and she doesn’t hold full power over me anymore. Luna grins, like she’s proud that I’ve stood up to her.
“It’s true that no matter how calculating one can be in a round of chess, the queen can still be overtaken by an unsuspecting force. But the game continues as long as the king stands, and a pawn may cross to the other side of the board, stronger than before. What I’m asking of you, darling Ness, is if you are on my side when I return to power or an enemy to be conquered?”