“Oh shit,” Harold says, panic threading through every syllable. “She’s waking up.”
“Then tighten the bindings and stop hovering like an incompetent fool,” Lenora snaps. “We’re already running out of time, and I won’t have you bungling this any further.”
Footsteps rush toward me across what sounds like packed earth. I keep my breathing deliberately shallow, my face slack and expressionless, but the moment rough hands touch my armsto check the restraints, I wrench my eyes open and lock them directly onto Harold’s face.
He startles so violently he nearly jumps clean out of his own skin, stumbling backward like I’m about to Hulk out and break free from my bonds through sheer force of will. As much as I desperately want to punch this pathetic excuse for a man square in his cowardly face, I’m somewhat limited by my current position. Still, for one glorious second, the sheer terror written across his features almost makes this entire nightmare worth it.
His eyes go wide as dinner plates. His mouth opens and closes as he searches for words. He looks less like a town Councilman and more like a man who has realized far too late that he has made a catastrophically stupid mistake that’s about to cost him everything.
“You,” I rasp, my throat feeling like it’s been scraped raw with sandpaper, “are so unbelievably stupid.”
He recoils even further, like I’ve physically slapped him across the face with my words.
“This wasn’t my idea,” he blurts immediately, because apparently his first instinct under pressure is to start snitching. “Your aunt made it very clear what needed to happen here tonight. She threatened me, said she’d destroy my business, ruin my family’s reputation. She made me help her.”
“Harold.” Lenora’s voice slices through the clearing like a blade, sharp and deadly.
He flinches at her tone like he’s been struck, and I’m suddenly more inclined to believe that she really did coerce him into participating in this makeshift kidnapping scheme. It doesn’t excuse his actions, but it does explain the obvious terror radiating off him in waves.
I turn my head as far as the restraints will allow and take in my surroundings properly for the first time. We’re deep in the woods beyond town, in a circular clearing that’s been lit by old-fashioned lanterns set into the ground at regular intervals. The flickering flames cast dancing shadows across a ring of ancient standing stones that look like they’ve been here far longer than Ruby Springs itself. I’m strapped to a flat slab of rock in the center of it all, which would probably be appropriately dramatic and terrifying if I weren’t currently too absolutely furious to appreciate the theatrical atmosphere my aunt has created.
“Oh, this is perfect,” I mutter, letting all my sarcasm and disdain color the words. “A forest altar. Of course, you dragged me out into the middle of nowhere for this. Why commit a magical felony somewhere convenient and comfortable when you can add unnecessary melodrama to the whole production?”
Harold stares at me like I’ve grown a second head, clearly dumbfounded by my apparent lack of proper fear in the face of whatever ritual they’re planning. Little does he know that beneath the sarcasm and bravado, I’m absolutely terrified. Humor and righteous anger are the only weapons I have right now, and I’m going to use them for all they’re worth.
Lenora doesn’t even blink as she steps into my line of sight and locks eyes with me. Her expression is cold, calculated, completely devoid of any emotion that might pass for human warmth or familial affection.
“Shut her up,” she says flatly.
Harold inches closer with obvious reluctance, reaching toward my face with shaking hands. The moment his fingers come within biting range, I snap at them like a rabid animal, my teeth clicking together just short of his skin.
He yelps and jerks back so fast he nearly trips over one of the ground-level lanterns, windmilling his arms to keep his balance. “She tried to bite me!”
I work up a mouthful of saliva mixed with blood from where I bit my own tongue and spit it onto the stone beside my head,glaring up at him with all the venom I can muster. “I was aiming to take the whole finger off, actually. Don’t take it personally.”
I refuse to just lie here passively and let them do whatever they’re planning to me. I’ll fight them every step of the way. The next time Harold gets within range, I’m going straight for his throat.
“Enough.” Lenora steps fully into view then, and the sight of her standing over me with several torn, yellowed pages clutched in her manicured hand makes something hot and violent flare to life behind my ribs. The rage is so pure, so consuming, that for a moment I can barely see through it. “You have your mother’s unfortunate talent for dramatics and inappropriate humor in serious situations. No wonder everyone in town is already so taken with you. You’re performing the same tricks she used to charm people. I didn’t anticipate that level of social manipulation from you. Another miscalculation on my part, it seems.”
My eyes immediately lock onto the pages in her hand like a heat-seeking missile. They’re aged, creased from being folded and unfolded countless times over the years. I know with absolute certainty that these are the missing pages we’ve been searching high and low for, the crucial information that was torn from one of the grimoires in the shop. Of course she has them. Of course she’s been keeping them safe all this time.
Lenora follows my gaze and smiles, a small, ugly expression that transforms her elegant features into something cruel and satisfied.
“Oh, were you looking for these?” she asks mockingly, lifting the pages slightly so they catch the lantern light. “I had every reason to believe that you and that meddlesome Ezra Lawson would go digging through family records eventually, once you started asking the right questions. I certainly wasn’t about to leave them somewhere they could actually be found. I tore themout of one of the grimoires myself decades ago, when they were in my mother’s care, and I’ve kept them hidden all these years.”
I stare at her with such concentrated hatred that if looks could kill, she would be nothing but a smoking puddle of slime at my feet. Every ugly possibility I’d considered, every worst-case scenario that had kept me awake at night, is standing right in front of me breathing and smiling and holding the proof of her crimes in her hands.
“It really was you all along,” I say, and my voice comes out lower now, stripped clean of sarcasm and bravado, containing nothing but the awful truth. “My own blood. My own family.”
Lenora tilts her head to one side like she’s considering an interesting academic question. “Of course it was me. Who else could it have been?”
There it is, the metaphorical gauntlet thrown down at my feet with casual indifference. Gone is the political smile and carefully chosen public words. There’s no hesitation in those simple words, no attempt at denial or deflection. Just the truth laid bare.
“My mother was absolutely elated when you were born,” she continues, beginning to pace slowly around the edge of the stone altar like we’re having a perfectly normal family conversation and not whatever fresh hell this is supposed to be. “So was my sister. They looked at you like the future of our entire bloodline had arrived wrapped in a pink blanket, like all their prayers had finally been answered. All that hope, all that breathless certainty about what you would become. They just knew that you would inherit everything that should have been mine by right of birth and magical strength.”
She laughs once, though there’s no humor in it, just bitterness and old resentment that’s had decades to ferment into something poisonous.
“You see, the magic strength needs to hold this town together skipped over both me and your mother when we were born,” she explains, still pacing. “Two daughters, two disappointments, two failures who couldn’t access all the power that ran in our bloodline. Then you came along and suddenly the entire world was ready to rearrange itself around a squalling infant who hadn’t even learned to hold her own head up yet.”
