“It’s not whatIwant that matters,” he calls back.
Before he’s finished speaking, another two figures shimmer into view a few paces away from Orlan.
One of them is Halle Vanguard.
She has the ability to change her appearance at will—just as the keeper does—but it seems she’s chosen to appear in a form that will ensure I recognize her. She looks as sweet as a fairy with auburn hair, bright-green eyes, and a dusting of freckles across her nose. A petite wisp of a thing, she’s wearing a short, brown, plaid skirt, knee-high brown boots, and a tight, V-neck, sleeveless top in the same color as her eyes.
Beside her is Jonah, but unlike the first time I saw him, he’s on his knees, blood splattered across his white collared shirt and dripping from what appears to be a fresh wound across his forehead.
I can’t see much of his face, since his head is down, his ice-blond hair contrasting garishly with the blood splattered through it. For some reason, his natural healing doesn’t seem to be kicking in, but then, Halle seems to have that power. Her brother wears a scar across his face that she apparently gave him when she tried to kill him.
Right now, it appears the only reason Jonah’s upright in any sense is because she’s gripping the back of his collar.
“Jonah!” Lucian lurches forward, but I grab him before he can surge past me. His next shout is for Halle. “What have you done to him?”
“Well, let me see,” she says, calmly surveying us. “First, I followed him around and watched him stash that lighter up there. Very impressive, the way he hoisted himself all the way up there when he thought nobody was watching. And then I got Orlan to place spells around this square so that the next time there was an influx of magic here, I’d be alerted and all of the humans would suddenly experience the urge to leave.
“But it was only a few hours ago that I finally captured Jonah and, since then, he and I have been having a lovely time playing a game of question and answer.” Her lips twist. “Except that he chosenotto answer, so things got a little… unpleasant.”
She lets go of Jonah’s shirt and he drops to the ground, barely breaking his fall with his hands so his head doesn’t collide with the pavement.
But it seems he isn’t quite as wiped out as he first appeared because his left hand darts out, his fingers wrap around Halle’s ankle, and fire bursts across her boots.
The leather bursts into flames, disintegrating to reveal her leg beneath it—which blossoms with amber color, only to instantly cool to a charcoal texture.
“Oh, stop that already,” she snaps down at him. “You can burn anything else you like, even my vines, but you can’t burnme. I’m Hel, for fuck’s sake, Goddess of Death and the Underworld. I’mmadeof ash.”
“What is this, Hel?” I call, choosing to use her real name. “What do you want?”
“What do Iwant?” she snarls, leaving Jonah where he kneels and seeming not to care that he could attack her from behind. “I want Galeia back!”
“Then go find her,” I whisper. “And leave us be.”
Halle gives a cold laugh, stopping abruptly only a few paces away from me. “Oh, you think because I’m the Goddess of the Underworld that I can raise the dead? How quaint that you believe I have that power.”
Inwardly, I feel weirdly sorry for her. It’s clear from what Halle’s saying that she believes—like I did—that my biological mother has passed away. I guess it matches with what she said the first time I fought her. She told me it wasn’t she who betrayed my mother. That she would never do such a thing.
“Galeia must be incredibly cruel, even for a dark creature,” I whisper. “To cause you this much pain.”
Halle’s forehead pinches and her lips draw back from her teeth. “Galeia was never cruel. Her only fault was to believe that light could be found in darkness. As iflovecould overcome anything.”
Her eyes suddenly fill with tears, glistening as they run down her cheeks. “Love only brings pain.” She gasps for breath as she thumps her chest. “I loved her like a daughter and it only brought me pain!”
I’m shocked by the sight of Halle’s tears. Also, the fact that she’d shed them so readily in front of me. Unless it’s a ploy to get me to feel sorry for her.
She isn’t beneath such an approach. The first time I saw her—although I didn’t know it was her at the time—she was shoeless and shivering in tattered clothing, drowning her sorrows in alcohol as she slumped with her back to a tree in Central Park. It was very close to where Sosia stashed the page fromTheBook of Dark Magic.
“If you believe Galeia’s dead, how does this help you?” I gesture to Jonah, who has pulled himself back into a somewhat upright position, although he remains on his knees.
Halle drags the tears away from her bottom lip with her teeth. “I want to know where my brother is. It’s time for him to pay for what he did to Galeia. Now that the Ultima Nostra isn’t protecting him, I can finally seek revenge.”
Well, I guess we’re both looking for him, then. But while she seems to want him dead, I need him alive.
“Revenge for what, exactly?” I ask. “What did he do to Galeia?”
When I first met James Vanguard, he pointed to the scar that runs down the left side of his forehead and told me it was a reminder that family will always try to end you.
But he never told me why.
