She exhales. “What’s done can’t be undone. But make no mistake, you haven’t escaped your training, young lady,” she says. Grandmère takes another sip and leads us down the hall. She frowns, looking over her shoulder at my face. “Since you went where you didn’t belong, Emma, you should enlighten me. Tell me your impressions of the Davenports. Did you get a close-up view of Wilhelmina’s ‘Satan Spawn’?”
“They put on a great show,” I reply.
My grandmother’s lips become a line, and her face morphs into a pinched sour thing like she’s licked a rotten lemon. Her eyebrows rise with displeasure.
Not wanting to make her more angry, I add, “If you’re into flashy, exaggerated performances. Their show isn’t like ours.”It’s so much better.
Grandmère’s lips curl into a prideful smile. “Most cannot match our elegance and class, dear. Did you discover your rival in the Tether? Or, if you fail to train properly, your executioner?”
“Malcolm.” My mind flashes to his power, his control, and the charm behind his beautiful brown skin and crooked bad-boy grin. My pulse quickens, and there’s a fluttering in my belly. My body must be remembering the magical way he played his guitar. Because I absolutely cannot be reacting to the boy that played it. I suck in a sharp breath and dismiss the shiver of both fear and attraction that glitters through me. “Malcolm’s Tethered,” I say.
“Mmm.” Grandmère walks toward a rose-gold crescent moon–shaped bookcase where a small pink vase sits next to a leather-bound book. Sheshifts in front of it and scowls. “The Tether,” she says. “I’d love to teach you everything about it, but it’s cloaked in mystery. Even the location is hidden until the competitors are magically transported there. But if the warriors are chosen, it’s coming and soon.”
Demetri says, “Someone must choose the Tether’s dates and locations. Who’s behind it?”
“Wouldn’t they be our greatest enemy?” I ask.
“Sabine,” Grandmère huffs. With an irritated eye roll she adds, “If that witch still breathes, she’s the one orchestrating this.”
“Let’s find her then, end this,” I say.
“If it were that simple, I would have already handled it, little bird,” Grandmère responds. “If we attack Sabine, she’ll end us like she murdered those who tried to defeat her in the past. Now, enough of the things we can’t control.”
With that, Grandmère gulps the last of her champagne and tilts the pink vase.
My mouth falls wide. Under the vase is a small remote control–sized panel. Grandmère hands Demetri her empty flute and swings the panel open. Inside lies a sleek touchscreen keypad with blue flashing buttons. She presses a number combination, and the bookshelf slides sideways, revealing an elevator.
“Let the training begin!” says Grandmère.
“I’m too tired,” I protest, touching my black flapper dress. “I’m not ready.”
The elevator dings, and the doors glide open.
Grandmère sighs. “Rest is for dead birdies.” Her eyes mock me.Ten steps ahead of you,they seem to whisper. My brutal “tough-love granny” snaps her fingers. A bright swirl of moonlight spirals over from the window in the front door, carrying with it a strong breeze. The swirl of light surrounds me and Demetri. With a fizzing sound and the smell of homemade cinnamon rolls, my dress shifts. It moves, melts, its color lightening and stretching over my body, morphing into a slick navy catsuit. The belt on my suit is a snake eating its tail. Except for the lighter color and belt, my catsuit mirrors my grandmother’s. I look at Demetri, at the fabric of hisclothes darkening, weaving themselves into a navy catsuit like mine. His sleeves elongate and twist, spiraling and slinking over his biceps like new skin, but his suit is beltless.
Magic or not, Grandmère Clair planned every detail of these battle-training outfits. That took forethought. Strategizing and planning every detail has always been in her nature.
I gasp. “You knew we’d be back now, didn’t you?”
My grandmother smirks and strides into the elevator. “Get inside,” she orders.
Demetri sets her empty flute on the bookshelf. We follow her into the elevator.
“Who knew we had a basement?” I ask as we descend. My fingers scratch nervously at my navy catsuit.
Grandmère smirks. “Head injury, dear. You forgot.” Grandmère smooths her silver bob as she stares at her blurred reflection on the steel door of the elevator. She looks at me like I’m broken. I hate all of the memories I’ve lost due to the accident.
My mouth hitches wide in shock as the doors open.
“Ahh,” she breathes out. “Let’s get started.”
Our training room is a massive gym with glowing workout equipment and a sparring ring. One side of the room has a sauna and a science lab with complicated-looking gear and equipment. The lab is stocked with burners, beakers, microscopes, incubators, heat lamps, and safety hoods. It has everything, even a surgical table. In the back left corner, next to a silver wall, there’s an isolation room with an air lock and rows of white hazmat suits hanging nearby. Across from that, under a tiny barred window, is a black wall full of knives, guns, and all sorts of other weapons.
And sprinkled around Grandmère’s organized chaos are black-and-white photos of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Harriet Tubman, and Madam C. J. Walker. There are images of loads of other prominent Black people, from the past, this present, and some from the future who I’m less familiar with since I haven’t been briefed on many years past the 1960s. Granalways talks about one of them—Cynthia, a distant cousin with wicked talent and a voice that defies gravity, turning other singers emerald with envy when they witness her spellbinding performances in musicals.
There’s also a photo of some handsome big-eared guy named Obama. And some woman named Oprah who seems to love wearing the color purple.
“Look around you.” Grandmère points to the pictures on the wall. “We are descended from people who survived slave ships and dirty cotton fields and lived through the vicious pecks of Jim Crow and still went on to build, to achieve, to exemplify greatness. To make music and spread joy. Despite oppression and abuses that are too awful to speak about, our people survived. And tonight, I will teach you how to do the same. Survival is the real magic, Emma. It’s in our blood.” With a smile she adds, “Little bird, step into the sparring ring and earn your wings.”
