My mouth drops open. Is that why she thought Vlad kept her here with me all those years? Then I look to the ground.Wasit why Vlad kept her here? I always assumed it was because of her magic. Because he enslaved everyone in her family. But he’d never made any of the others live in his compound. They’d had lives outside.
It was only Sabra he kept locked under his roof. Controlled and never allowed to know anything else besides these walls. Never allowed to have any other friends besides me.
Sabra looks at Layden. “We’ll try again. Let me do some studying, but I think I might have an idea of what was off with my calculations. I need to look at some star charts and go back to Mom’s grimoires.”
It starts to rain, big fat drops washing away all the chalk-work Sabra did. I reach out and pull her into a hug. “We haven’t really talked since I got back. Maybe we can go out for coffee soon.”
She nods as she pulls away, some of the bounce coming back into her voice. “I’d like that.”
My tight chest loosens a little.
“Okay, I’m getting really hungry.” Sabra looks apologetically at Layden. He immediately backs away from her.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine. Just time to call it for the day,” Sabra says. “I’ll call you soon when I know more.”
“Of course, whatever you need, please don’t make yourself uncomfortable on my account,” Layden backs away even further. “I appreciate you trying to help me. I can’t express how much. I didn’t know strangers could want to help one another until I met Phoenix.”
Sabra looks at him, then at me, then glances back and forth at us again. “Uh-huh,” is all she says, then smiles and turns away. “Bye,” she calls over her shoulder with a perky wave before bouncing away toward where she’s parked in the large garage in the left corner of the compound.
“I like her,” Layden says.
It’s stupid to feel jealous at his simple statement. But I can’t help feeling the sting of Sabra’s words, too. Is that what I’m doing? Keeping him here so I can fantasize about him and have him nearby because of how safe he makes me feel? Like I would a comforting blanket or a toy?
Are you going to be a selfish little girl?
I always have been, though, haven’t I? Freeing my parents from me was the one unselfish act of my life.
Layden might be so much older than me, but he’s brand new to this modern world. He seems not to know how drop-dead gorgeous he is. If he wasn’t literally a curse on any woman he spent more than an hour with, they’d all be drooling over him.
Of course he’d like someone sunshiny and bright like Sabra more than a gloomy person like me.
It only matters if she manages to free him from his curse. I’m ashamed that the thought makes me feel like stabbing my best friend.
NINE
PHOENIX
Layden,Sabra, and I stand at the center of another circle, trying for the I-don’t-know-how-many time to make something happen.
We’ve been trying once every other day or so, always with the same outcome. Vibrations occur as the concentric circles begin to spin in opposite directions, light beams up from Layden’s runes, and occasionally, an earthquake shakes underfoot.
Vlad banished us to a field far beyond the compound after our fifth try put a crack in the center stone of the courtyard.
So today, Sabra’s chalked a circle in the middle of an old asphalt road between fallow fields. It’s a street that leads to nowhere because Vlad bought out the contractor before he could start to build a planned neighborhood there.
“I think I really got it this time,” Sabra says excitedly as the circles start to spin.
“You said that last time.” I roll my eyes.
“I mean it. I found something in Mom’s old notes. She was only using the barest of circle magic once when she made contactwith the other side using a rare arcane equation. She’d scratched it out in the grimoire, but I finally figured it out.”
I turn to look at Sabra, which is difficult considering the tiny circle the three of us are standing in. “If she scratched it out, maybe that was because she thought it was dangerous.”
Layden’s eyes ping back and forth between the two of us as Sabra faces off with me.
“Or really powerful,” Sabra says, eyes shining with reflected light as the runes Layden laid on top of Sabra’s work begin to leap and arc all around us.
