My mouth drops open in disbelief. Arla said he didn’t know what the spell needed because he wasn’t like us. So I never imagined he had magic, but now it makes sense. “His death?”
She nods.
“You’re saying he diedhere?”
She nods again. “I couldn’t understand why I kept sensing his flavor—red currant jelly—until I saw his ghost in the areaway. I told you I used to spend extra time down there. It was the only place I could get a little space from Arla’s overpowering aura and psychic meddling. That’s when I knew he’d died in the building.”
She did try to warn me it washaunted as fuckin the underground. I just never realized she’d experienced it personally or by whom.
“But now that Arla’s got her claws out of my third eye, I realize he didn’t just die, he sacrificed himself… to the Fathom.”
I gasp. “He must have known it was only a matter of time.”
Cadence shrugs. “Whether his was the only magical blood he knew of to fix the fading ritual or he simply couldn’t face the destruction his failure would surely bring, I can’t say. Rudzitin always knew a binding requires blood, but a binding of this magnitude requires more than just any blood, and he didn’t learn that in time.”
“Neither did we,” I point out.
Without Arla deliberately muddling her sixth sense to hide the truth, Cadence is suddenly clear as a bell. I reach into my back pocket where I tucked my phone before Levi and I came in. Thankfully, it’s still there. Quickly I pound out a text message to him—I’m ok. R u out?
“I guess the twins had no idea about this either?” I ask as I wait for him to respond.
Cadence points toward a heavy door in one corner that I can just make out. It must be the stairwell. “Not about Rudzitin’s sacrifice. But they know most everything else, though it’s hard to say what they learned when. They’re the only ones Arla ever truly trusted, but I’m sure she kept secrets from even them.”
“You mean, they know she wants to kill them?” I’m aware the twins are peculiar, but I had no idea it went this far.
“They would happily die for her cause,” Cadence tells me. “The twins are devoted to Arla in every sense of the word. They helped her kill Brennan. They were helping her to kill me. And they were going to help her kill you.”
As we near the door to the stairs, an old coffin and bier set pushed against a wall comes into view. “And after that?”
She turns to me. “After that they were going to kill themselves or let Arla do it for them.”
Shocked, I look away, my eyes passing over the coffin like it’s just another prop, until I notice the scrap of banana yellow fabric pressed between the head and side panel. It’s the brightly patterned end of a silk tie. My stomach sinks and I veer toward it, unable to stop myself.
“What are you doing?” Cadence whispers. “Don’t!”
I know why she wants me to stop—she knows what I’ll find inside. But I have to be sure. Carefully, I lift the top. Aaron’s lifeless body lies within, white as the satin paneling in the cap. His skin is tight and shiny from bloating, a foul smell beginning to emerge. Evidence of a long, clean cut runs the breadth of his throat.
Cadence covers her nose and mouth and turns away.
“This is my fault,” I tell her as I lower the lid, forcing a rush of emotion to halt before it can explode out of me, to sit in my throat. “I introduced him to Brennan.”
Cadence pats my arm in an attempt at comfort. “It’s not that simple, Jude. But you already know that.”
I look at her and see Solidago burning behind her eyes.
“Come on,” she says. “We need to get out of here, or we’ll end up the same way.”
My phone pings, and I glance down at the screen. It’s a reply from Levi.Upstairs. I have the journal.
Upstairs? A swirl of anger and fear and pride courses through me. I thought I told him to leave.
Stay put,I text back.Coming.
“Come on,” I tell Cadence as we plunge into the stairwell. “We have to go up to go down.”
The stairs let out in a far corner of Arla’s bedroom between the windows and the wall. I dimly recall seeing the door when I woke up here that morning after coming to Medusa for the first time, but I’d thought it was just a closet. Her room is dark and silky like I remember. It’s empty; whatever she didn’t want me to see earlier is gone.
Cadence passes me, flinging open the door where Levi is waiting on the other side with the journal gripped tightly in one hand, his phone in the other. I fly into his arms, not realizing until this moment how grateful I am that he’s okay, how much risk we took in coming here.
