A terrific blast rocked the first story, and the sound of splintering wood rang up to them. Bennett smiled. “That will be my nephew now,” he told her. “Not that I need his help. It’s no wonder he’s so strong. You and your sister are the weakest of your line by far. He must have gotten all the power you’ve wasted.”
He pointed the staff toward her, and Cordelia stumbled up several stairs.
“You think that boy is strong,” she spat at him. “But his mind is weak. He’s never known love or affection. He only knows your thirst for power. He only knows what it is to be an instrument in your hand. He’ll destroy you. And everything you’ve worked toward. He can’t carry your line forward. He can’t function in the real world. Whatever power he has, it’s cost him. And the price is too great.”
She edged her way onto the widow’s watch now. There was nowhere else to go. Around her, the property sprawled in every direction. But she was trapped.
A horrible primal scream cut through the air, and Cordelia andBennett both looked down over the railing, where Han stood in the middle of the stair hall, glaring up at them.
“Where’s your brother?” Bennett called down. But the boy only wailed and tore at his hair.
Cordelia looked at Bennett, whose face was drawn with fear and consternation.
“Han!” he shouted down again. “Where is Arkin?”
Han released a howl so potent it rattled the house on its foundations and blasted the glass out of the tower windows.
Cordelia tried to cover her face as shards sailed past her in every direction, cutting and nicking her across her cheeks, collarbones, and forehead. A large piece sliced right through the open palm of one of her outstretched hands. Slowly she uncurled as the glass fell at their feet and rained down over Han. Blood trickled from her gash.
“What did you do?” Bennett screamed down at him.
Before the boy could respond, the front and vestibule doors crashed open, sending pieces of door frame flying. Han ducked behind his arms as the black bear charged in, all five hundred–plus pounds of it, thrusting its open mouth forward in an earsplitting roar. The boy had barely taken his arms from his face when the animal fell on him, ripping his throat out and tossing him like a rag doll across the parquet floor in a spew of blood.
“Eustace,” Cordelia gasped.
Bennett lifted his eyes to hers, his mouth hanging open as if his jaw had been broken. His secret weapon had been destroyed. It had all happened so fast, so unexpectedly, that he’d not had a chance to react and save the boy. Slowly, his pupils constricted, his gaze refocusing on her. He jerked the wand back and Cordelia felt her throat tighten, constricted as if she were being strangled by an imaginary hand.
“It’s time to end this,” he snarled.
Cordelia’s head thrummed with pain, the pressure in herskull unbearable. She would have screamed had it been possible. Clutching at the base of her neck with her injured hand, she felt the runes they’d drawn on her ignite against her skin, trying to protect her. They were the only reason she was still drawing a sliver of air. She backed toward the window overlooking the gardens, then around again toward the front as Bennett climbed to her level. In a shadowy corner Morna’s ghost was brooding, her face just beginning to materialize from the dark.
Bennett glared at Cordelia. The placid, congenial attorney was gone. Here stood a killer of sixty-plus years, a man who had tasted blood and liked it. “You’ll be purple inside of a minute,” he told her quietly. “And dead inside of two. And that bitch sister of yours won’t be able to save you even if she rides in on a flying lion.”
Below them, the throaty huff of the bear could be heard, and the wet, sinewy rip of flesh as it fed.
Cordelia reached to claw at him, but with so little air, her movements were jerky and off-balance. Blood trickled from her nose and ears and her eyes bulged; she knew her brain would bleed out if she didn’t suffocate first. Outside, a strong wind was gusting in continuous circles around the house, as if they were trapped in a cyclone, a by-product of her own desperation, growing with every loop. But as her nemesis slowly choked the magic and air from her, she could manage no more.
Bennett smiled coolly. “Your pitiful storms can’t save you now, girl. Not while I have this.” He thrust the staff in her direction and her throat snapped shut. Whatever thin cord of oxygen she’d been drawing was undeniably gone.
Her palm burned from the teeth as they clashed against each other inside the pouch at a frightening speed.
“What’s that sound?” he snapped, eyeing her, bending to see behind her back.
Cordelia flung them at him, unable to hold them a momentlonger. They sailed from the pouch like hot coals, sizzling against his skin where they hit his face.
“Arrgh!” He turned away, throwing a hand up to protect his eyes.
It was all Cordelia needed. She reached out and grabbed the staff he held with her bleeding hand, red streaking the wood and brass. “Blood for blood,” she choked out.
A streak of lightning, jagged and sizzling, ripped its way through the roof and the tower, igniting the staff in their grip, bringing it to life with white fire. Bennett drew back, shrieking as she took it from him. All at once, every door and window in the house burst open, and the wind that had been billowing beyond reach blustered through from dozens of entry points, spiraling up the center of the staircase. Something traveled with it, barreling toward them in a torrent, and she moved the staff to her other hand, reaching out to snap whatever it was from the air as it flew past. Her fingers clutched clumsily at it, and she felt the cool, smooth surface nick her skin. It was the bone knife from the crypt, the same one Bennett had used to perform the burial ritual on their aunt.
She didn’t hesitate. She flipped it blade-down and drove it straight into the old man’s chest beneath his collarbone, into the soft flesh between ribs, gritting her teeth. “Bone for bone,” she cried.
Bennett let out a dreadful howl, grasping at the smooth, white hilt emerging from his chest. Behind him, the mist was gathering, as if every shadow in the house had come together in one teeming mass.
“Take him,” she told the spirit of her great-great-aunt. “My debt is paid.”
The shadow moved with unnatural speed. In an instant, Morna had fully materialized behind him with eyes of black fire and violet glinting through her wild auburn hair. She wrappedher arms around his chest and her legs around his hips. Her eyes met Cordelia’s for the briefest of moments—a flicker of acknowledgment in them—before she threw herself back, crashing through the tower window, jagged with broken glass.
