“But the other day, at your door…”
Her gaze drops. “After Brennan disappeared, I knew he’d been right all along, but by then it was too late.”
As we cross the room, I note the Saint Andrew’s cross I’d seen on the stage before, as well as the giant birdcage, among other looming shapes and shadows—a human-sized champagne coupe, medieval stocks, a hospital bed.
“Do you know where Brennan is?” I beg.
“Oh, Jude,” she whispers, fists clenching.
I slow to a stop. “What? Tell me.”
Her face falls, her fingers relax, only to ball up again. “It claps like thunder, you know,” she says tragically, her eyes darting around as if she can hear it even now, even here.
“What does?” My brow crunches as I try to understand.
“The screaming.”
I’m almost too afraid to ask the next question. “And Aaron?”
She looks at the floor, shakes her head, squeezes and unsqueezes her hands.
“What happened to them?” It’s barely a whisper between us, and as soon as it’s out, I wonder if I actually want to know. If I canhandleknowing. These were my friends, and whatever fate they suffered is tied to my actions, at least in part, at least in Aaron’s case. I don’t know if I can take more lives on my conscience. My eyes burn and I cover my mouth with a hand as I suck in a sob, reality dropping like dead weight.
Cadence’s face crumples with anguish, and I realize it’s unfair to make her recount the details she knows.
“Never mind.” I stop her before she can get started. “We’ll sort it out later. Let’s just figure a way out of here for now.”Or we’ll be next,I think but don’t say. Glancing around, I take in several old bistro chairs, a park bench, a couple of chaise longues, and brocade settees. “Where the fuck are we?”
“Storage,” Cadence tells me, wiping her eyes. “It’s a prop room. Come on—I know where there’s a stairwell. I used to escape downhere when I needed a break from the twins’ constant shouting or moaning. They fight like cats and dogs. Screw like ’em too.”
“Stairs?” I question. “I thought there was only the elevator.”
She shakes her head and tugs me along. “It’s code. This is a public establishment. Fire warden wouldn’t be appeased with just an elevator. Anyway, don’t slow down. If anyone’s coming for us, I promise you they won’t.”
Her arms are striped in angry red slashes, burns from the fire I started. But she shook the ties off soon enough that they’ll heal. Her hands were fortunately spared.
Twig’s screams ring effortlessly through my skull. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just wanted out. But there is no out with Arla, I’m learning. There is only a deeper madness, a slow descent into chaos.
As we pick our way around, I say, “I still don’t understand about the blood. Why yours?”
Cadence casts a weary glance at me. “Not just mine,” she says.
My mouth drops open. “Brennan’s too?”
She nods. “And yours, eventually. Twig’s and Rock’s.”
I tug my arm away. “What do you mean? She was going to kill us all?”
The psychic’s sigh is full of fatigue. “Her mind is wide open to me now because she has nothing else to hide, but despite her efforts to the contrary, I got snatches of information before. It was hard to piece together, and I never managed to extract a full picture. Only a limited series of details that felt useless on their own and that I was too afraid to share. But I knew she neededusfor something, a full circle. I thought she needed our powers. Even when Brennan became suspicious, claimed she was siphoning magic away from us, I thought it was because she needed the full range of abilities for whatever she was hiding. But it turns out she never needed usalive, she needed us dead. She needed our blood—magicalblood—to make the pigment hold.”
Arla’s words to me fall into place. Four kinds of blood, anda binding needs the right one. Magical blood versus mundane blood—but that’s onlytwotypes.
“She told me as much this morning, but I didn’t get it,” I tell her. “She said bindings required the right kind of blood. I just didn’t know it was ours. Not like this. I’m so sorry, Cadence. If I’d only listened to Brennan, maybe I could have prevented this.”
She stops to scan the room, but it’s dark. “Apparently, that’s where Rudzitin went wrong. He knew the summoning would call for blood, but he never understood what he had captured.”
The disappearances Levi read about come back to me. Was Rudzitin was trying to stave off the inevitable? When he felt the vulnerability in his spell, did he keep trying to reinforce it? I suggest as much to Cadence, quickly filling her in on the articles Levi found.
She looks at me. “Rudzitin was a catalyst, like Brennan, gifted with telekinesis. I could feel his power over everything here like a varnish since the day I moved in. It’s how he built the well to hold the Fathom in the first place. And it’s the only reason his spell has held as long as it has after his death.”
