Good plan, except I was done sneaking around. There was no way she didn’t already know we were here. She was, as always, just waiting for the dramatic entrance.
“Good plan,” I said. “You guys let me know it works out.”
“What do you mean?” Hudson snapped.
I spun on my heel and started marching down the middle of the street.
“What is she doing?” Dave said. His voice sounded as if he were stuck between amusement and fighting the urge to strangle me.
“Eloise,” I drawled. “I’m here. No need for the dramatics. Stop being a coward and face me like a true Roberts woman. Or have you grown too soft hiding behind those who do the dirty work for you?”
No bite. Fine.
“We should have discussed this so I could have stopped you from being an idiot,” Hudson grumbled from behind me.
I casually flung a wave of Donn’s power into the air. It sizzled as it kissed my flesh and called to the darkness surrounding us. “How does it feel losing the only thing that made you powerful,Grandmother? Your hold is slipping through your grasp, and day by day, I’m becoming more of a threat.”
Her laugh was brittle as the shroud lifted, revealing the streets lined with hollowed elementals. Some wore familiar faces, others were strangers, but none of them were with us anymore. Ice skittered down my spine. Their eyes were wrong. Empty. No flicker of self. No resistance. She had their souls trapped in tiny glass jars while she siphoned their power and played with their bodies like puppets.
Power not their own pulsed through them in a sickening rhythm. The stench of rotting meat made me gag. She must have had one hell of a shield up to hide this from supernatural senses.
“Oh God,” Liz breathed beside me.
Eloise stepped through the elementals. She looked radiant, but it was a ruse. Her face flickered between the sallow reality and the glamor she was projecting.
White Castle burned behind her, not with flame, but with warped magic that peeled paint from walls and left the air tasting metallic and wrong.
She smiled when she saw me. “There you are,” she drawled, as if she had found me hiding in the kitchen during one of her legendary parties. “I was beginning to think you’d hide.”
Hudson growled low in his chest, power rolling off him like a storm front. “This ends now.”
Eloise laughed. “Oh, Principal. This is just the beginning.”
The hollowed elementals moved. Not charging. Not rushing. Advancing. In perfect unison.
Hudson’s reaper steel flashed beside me.Suit up—we’re at war.
He met them head-on, his scythe slicing across their chests. They should have fallen. Should have screamed. Should have died. But they didn’t, because they were already gone, and the part of them that felt pain was held hostage.
An arc of elemental magic shot out from my grandmother. Liz and I raised our hands and uttered a deflection spell. The vibrations made my bones ache because, damn, she was channeling a huge reserve of power.
“Cora,” Robert shouted from behind me. He barreled through the spirits hovering behind us in a line and grimaced as he brushed against the other side. “I got most of the folks out.”
“You see, Granddaughter, no one has to die. Just give back what you stole,” Eloise called.
“Most?” I whispered to Robert.
He grimaced. A door to the left of us creaked open and Karen, the owner of The Pit, strode out, brandishing a shotgun. Strapped to her waist were a bunch of pouches containing goodness knows what, and she’d looped a clip of ammunition across her torso
Rockhard and Lenson were a step behind her.
“Most,” Robert reiterated.
Rockhard grinned. “Cora, looking forward to the wedding.”
Why was he talking to me about the wedding? This was hardly the time or place.
“Don’t look at us like that,” Lenson grumbled. “Everyone needs something to look forward to, especially when everything has gone to shit.”
