Fiona paused, her brown eyes meeting Katherine’s. “You are a good person,” she said. “You need to get that through your thick skull before your self-sacrificing ass gets yourself killed.”
Katherine blinked. “That might be the meanest way anyone has ever complimented me.”
Fiona let out a huff of air. “Thanks. I’ve been working on that speech for ten years.” Fiona paused for a beat, catching her breath before she rested her hands on Katherine’s shoulders. Their foreheads fell together, Fiona’s face inches away from Katherine’s. “You’re not alone in this,” Fiona whispered. “Let us help you.”
Katherine stayed there for a moment, then pulled away. She paced toward the end of the hall, keeping her back to her friends.
She was so exhausted. Not just from the past few days, but from the last thirteen years. From the moment she first felt unsettled magic run through her veins, she was alone. It was an isolating power, one that encouraged secrets and lies and solitude. It had taught her in those key formative years that being close to other people was dangerous. Trust was dangerous. Love was dangerous.
Those were lessons she’d never been able to unlearn.
But here, in this moment, weren’t they true? Letting her friends help her would put them at risk. Could she live with herself if one of them got hurt because of her?
She turned back and looked at them, the question rattling around in her brain.
And she made a choice.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
There was magic in the air of Los Angeles. Too much magic.
Katherine could feel it lingering in Sunspot’s dining room, leaking in through every door, every window, every crack in the foundation. It prickled against her skin in tiny shocks, each a spur to her anxiety. She paced back and forth across the space, unable to sit still as she waited. She wanted to run out, but she needed every advantage against Sylvia that she could get, and that meant getting Sylvia to meet her on her home turf.
Finally, the door opened.
Sylvia looked… normal. It was eerie, seeing her standing there in a T-shirt and leggings, her face flushed and her hairline dotted by beads of sweat. Like she’d just gotten back from a run.
There was no moment of shock or fear at seeing that Katherine had escaped her prison. Sylvia simply walked past her, moving to the bar and surveying the bottles of alcohol that lined the wall. She went for one of the most expensive ones there—a Glenfiddich that retailed for upwards of five hundred dollars. Sylvia had bought it for Katherine’s twenty-fifth birthday celebration. She’d decked out the room with fairy lights and disposable cameras and they’d drunk until half the bottle was gone. The hangovers the next day had been bad enough that the rest had sat untouched for years.
“Want one?” Sylvia asked, her tone calm. She clearly had no fear about what Katherine might do. Not with the power running through her veins, crackling through the air like lightning.
Katherine nodded. She perched on a stool across from Sylvia, watching the delicate lines of her hands as she poured.
“God, it’s a scorcher out there,” Sylvia said, sliding Katherine the drink and then taking a long sip from her glass.
“How many?” Katherine’s voice was low, rough.
“I don’t know. A lot.”
Katherine’s hand tightened on her leg. She knew what the pulse she’d felt had been—power bouncing off the memory of the unsettled magic left in her body. For anyone with more than just a memory, the pulse would have been catastrophic. Kids whose unsettled power normally wouldn’t have bloomed until puberty were now unleashed. Kids who had no hope of keeping their newfound magic in check. Kids who would do things they had no control over. Kids who would never be the same.
Sylvia had created an army of accidental killers.
And a world of settled witches who would need to turn to her to figure out how to manage the chaos.
Katherine’s jaw clenched, her teeth grinding.
“You don’t have to hide it,” Sylvia said. “I know you’re mad.”
Katherine didn’t trust herself to respond. Sylvia seemed significantly colder than when Katherine had last seen her. Her speech was without affect, her normally lyrical voice flat. Her body, on the contrary, was all energy. She alternated between pacing back and forth and jiggling on the balls of her toes, her fingers tapping against her glass the whole time.
“I don’t see why, though,” Sylvia continued. “This will be good for those kids, in the long run. They’ll be able to take care of themselves. They’ll be strong. They’ll be powerful.”
Katherine reached for her drink. She took a sip.
“This’ll be the best thing that’s ever happened to them.”
Katherine tightened her hand around the cup, feeling the cool glass on her palm. And then she smashed it on the bar.
