“That’s enough!” Arkin lunged at Cordelia from across the massive desk as his brother lunged at him, but Han was the quicker of the two. They toppled back toward the open doorway to the basement as Han slammed into his brother, Arkin tearing at his own face and screaming.
Cordelia sent a sudden blast of wind spinning around the room. Papers went flying and books blew off the desk; with a boom, the bust of Homer hit the floor, where it split into pieces. It knocked both boys even further off-balance, and they tumbled down the steep, inelegant stairway.
Cordelia rushed to shove the door closed, pulling with all her strength to move the desk just far enough to keep the door from opening again.
She put a hand to her chest and turned around, running from the room and headlong into the chest of Bennett Togers.
Cordelia bounced off him, spiraling around the hall and hitting the floor before she finally regained her footing. She scrabbled back on hands and knees to the stairs, using the banister to pull herself up as he stalked toward her.
“What did you do to them?” he growled.
“It’s what you did to them. I just gave them a little encouragement.”
Bennett lunged at her, and she jumped back, stumbling up another three stairs. The sound of the bookshelf door striking the desk echoed through the house.
He smiled like he’d won. “You think a locked door can hold him? Tell me, what did your mother teach you about our gifts?”
Cordelia tried to stay calm. She needed to if she had any hope of surviving. But he still had the upper hand.
“We’re witches,” she said, though Maggie had never told her that.
Bennett cackled. “Is that what she told you?”
“We can heal,” she stated more confidently, backing up again, taking another two steps. “And meld with the minds of animals. And tell fortunes.”
“You idiot girl,” he spat. “Witches are for costume parties. We’re necromancers, born of an ancient, unsevered line. We are the death keepers. And we can do far more than you have been told.”
Cordelia backed toward the landing of the second story as he advanced on her, climbing the stairs beneath her slowly.
“What is the opposite of healing?” he asked her. “Do you know how you unlock magic to take a life?”
She shook her head. If she could just keep him talking, keep him distracted while she thought of something.
“First, you must squeeze it out of something with your hands. Beat it out with your fists. Only then will the spirits tell you how to do it without. When I killed your mother’s lover, I ran to the woods horrified at what I had done. I cried out with his blood on my hands, and the souls of our people found me there, broken by the creek. They whispered their darkest secrets to me. Ancient curses we’ve nearly forgotten. That’s when I really began learning. Just as my father before me and his before him. Tobias killed his own wife in her sleep so he could learn the dark ways. But our line is newer, weaker. We couldn’t overcome yours until now.”
Cordelia took another step back, and another. She reached the second-story landing and turned to continue higher. “What did you do to my sister?” she begged him. “What did you do to Gordon?”
He ignored her pleas. “I had to start small, of course. Mice, bats… You’re familiar with my work. This craft takes practice. Trial and error. But my skill set kept growing—madness, paralysis, pain, darkness. Those are my gifts. Your sister cures disease, and I grow it. But the boy, he’s better than I ever was. His blood is strong. The strongest in our line. When your aunt weakened, he overpowered her with it. He held her down from afar. She stopped moving. Stopped speaking. Stopped eating. Eventually, she stopped breathing. Her heart stopped beating. Strong as she was, even she couldn’t resist him.”
“But the bones,” Cordelia said, still climbing. Overhead, movement on the widow’s watch caught her eye. Morna’s shade darkened the air like a pillar of fury. “The crypt. It should have kept her safe.”
Bennett smirked. “Only the blood of a Bone can bind another Bone.”
The runes over her aunt’s lips flashed through her memory, and Hella’s words—Bone pays for bone. Blood for blood.
“That’s where your fool family messed up. Han is not the first secret son in our line. They’re easy to hide when you can never leave your own property. My ancestress’s child by Erazmus—the boy, Tobias—was hid from his own father. All this time, we’ve been creeping up on you, and they never saw us coming. They never knew our blood was theirs.”
Cordelia backed up again, glancing above her. She was nearing the third story. She felt the spirit’s hunger as she drew closer. The runes her sister had drawn across her skin the night before burned beneath it, as if they’d been embedded with hot coals. The teeth in her hand began to rub against each other, heating up with the friction. Inside herself, the magic responded, pulsing and hot, eager to defend.
“None of that now,” the old man said, twisting the staff, and Cordelia could feel the power inside her constricting as if it were being squeezed from her body. Her head began to throb.
A pounding sounded on the front door, a shaking of the knob, and Bennett flicked the staff. Cordelia could hear all the locks in the house click closed automatically. Gordon’s voice sounded through the glass as he called for her; his fist slammed the wood. She breathed a sigh of inward relief that he was still alive. But where was her sister then?
“Why are you telling me all this?” she asked Bennett, if only to keep him talking. The staff in his hand sounded a dull thud on every stair.
“Because I’m so tired of pretending to be lower than you.” He leered at her. “I want you to take the truth to them when you die. I want them to know it wasus.”
Cordelia squeezed her eyes closed and climbed back another two steps to the third-story landing. She was backing her way toward the widow’s watch.
