And that was a big problem.
When a power share came with pain, it was easy to remind herself that she needed to be careful, that she needed to stop it before it went too far. But when it was flowing like this, she could get lost in it. Let it go on forever. Until she had nothing left.
The panic hit her in a surge, and she reached for her magic, ready to clamp down on the stream—but then Silas pulled his hand away, cutting her off just as the rune glistened on his palm. The air sparked around them, the bitter scent of magic spreading as the freeze spell flowed in gold sparks through the air.
Everyone it landed on stopped in their place, papers in hand, fingers half pressed to their keyboards. The spell was fast and efficient, leaving no time for any of the ordinaries to notice the extraordinary happening around them.
Silas glowed as he did it, his face relaxed, his dark brown eyes open and glistening. An enormously powerful witch carrying out an enormously powerful spell. It was… it was something Katherine wasn’t ready to admit to herself.
Instead, she reached for the frozen Luke’s keys, then unlocked the door and gestured inside.
“After you.”
The evidence from Hollywood and Highland was laid out for them.
It was on a long table along the wall of the room, in the midst of being investigated by a frozen pair of lab techs. Silas was glad they wouldn’t have to search hard to find it—his head was pounding, tinyanvils hammering against his temples. Doing the compulsion at the front desk had been a bad idea. Noctis’ spellmakers had worked hard on that one, but it was still a Class 5, and he’d had to push himself to make it work. But he couldn’t bring himself to admit to Katherine that yes, he had been planning to use plain old charm, and yes, that failed. His ego couldn’t take that.
The freeze spell, at least, had been a good cast. They should have three or four minutes before the world started to shift back into action—a pretty fantastic accomplishment, considering the sheer number of people he’d had to freeze. It was the best he’d ever cast that spell, and he gave himself none of the credit. All of that went to the witch who’d funneled him the power to do it.
His magic liked Katherine’s. If only Katherine liked him.
She’d gone to the far left of the table, so he moved to the right, scanning the evidence in front of him. He had been steadfastly avoiding thinking of the human cost of what happened, but the layout here—phones, wallets, ripped-off pieces of Halloween costumes—made that impossible. People died. Lives had been forever changed. He couldn’t let his selfish desires make him forget that—he owed it to these people to investigate this to the full extent of his abilities.
He kept walking, moving down the line slowly, searching for anything out of the ordinary. It was all more of the same, bloody splatters of lives ended too soon, images that would haunt his nightmares, things that he—
He saw it just in time. Katherine was only a few inches away, her head turned, but if she moved just a little, she’d catch that glint too.
Sylvia’s caster, sitting with the blade out, a fleck of blood dried on its tip.
The second his brain made the connection between the knife in front of him and the caster he’d seen Sylvia use the night before, Silas was in action. He reached for it with his left hand at the same time his right angled against the blade of his own caster. He held in the hiss of pain as his hand gripped the handle of Sylvia’s caster, the rune glinting before the knife flickered out of view. He slipped it into his pocket just as Katherine whirled on him.
Her eyes narrowed, and his heart skipped several beats. He needed her not to have seen that. He needed time to figure this out on his own, to find some way that this didn’t mean what it seemed to mean.
Sylvia had been at Hollywood and Highland during the attack. If she were somehow responsible…
He knew what would happen if he told his parents what he’d found. Laws in the witching world were ostensibly enforced by courts and juries, but Vikrant and Nina’s hands were all over the verdicts. With evidence like this, they’d be able to make it so Sylvia wouldn’t just lose her job—they’d take her magic forever. And she wouldn’t be the only one to go down for this. Katherine, her friends, everyone who his parents thought might be on Sylvia’s side would be out too. Aestas would be fractured, and anyone left would turn their hate toward the man responsible.
There had to be a reasonable explanation, one that would absolve Sylvia of this so that she could her keep her magic and Katherine could keep her job. He just needed enough time to find it.
So he let his face split into a lazy smile, relaxed his posture. “Keep staring like that and it’ll go to my head.”
She stared at him a moment longer, then let out an annoyed huff and went back to her search. He did the same, continuing down the table, trying to stay calm.
All the while, Sylvia’s knife burned a hole in his pocket.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Katherine steeled herself outside the door to Sylvia’s office, taking a deep breath before knocking. She held her breath as the wards glowed and the door popped open slightly. Her hopes that Sylvia might be out this morning were dashed when she heard her mentor say a faint “Come in.”
Katherine walked inside, taking her seat in front of the desk. Sylvia looked tired, her normally shiny hair marred by tiny bits of frizz emerging from her scalp. Her red lipstick was faded, feathering at the edges, and there was a chip in her always-perfect manicure. It was better than she had looked the other night, when both of them had been covered in dust and blood and tears, but Lily’s death was clearly hitting her just as hard as it was hitting Katherine.
And Katherine was about to make her day even worse.
She pushed the question she was here to ask to the back of her mind, instead leaning forward and reaching for Sylvia’s hands. There was a brief flinch, but then Sylvia reached out and grasped hers back.
“Feeling better?” Katherine asked.
“It comes and goes.”
