Chapter 29

29

EVANGELINE

I woke up when it was still dark out, in the murky pre-dawn span of time, where my internal clock could only figure out that it was too early to be awake. Gabriel was next to me, his face resting just a few inches from mine, and he looked unfairly handsome in the pale gray light, like some sort of Renaissance statue come to life. In addition to perfect skin, vampires apparently never got morning breath.

It almost hurt to look at him. If this had been any other time in my life, I might have cuddled closer and gone back to sleep, let myself wake up later in his arms for a lazy round of morning sex and another one of his hilarious attempts at breakfast. I might have let myself be domestic, asked him about going on a real date some time, maybe cleared out a drawer or two at my place for his fancy clothes, and teased him when he got sniffy about not having enough closet space to hang his blazers in my room.

But that wasn't something I could give myself the luxury of thinking about. The fate of the entire magical world was resting on my shoulders, and I had more important things to worry about than trying to have the "So, what are we?" talk with a nine-hundred-year-old vampire. I liked his company, and it was useful to have him by my side as backup. And the sex was fucking fantastic. Figuring out more than that was so far down my list of priorities, it was laughable.

The connection to the last piece of the ascendancy array was even stronger now. I could feel it calling to me—a constant tugging at the back of my mind. Clearing out some of the wards yesterday had helped, and I'd felt it when we were there, but there had still been too much clouding my awareness.

Too much, I realized with a start, like a bunch of dormant wards reacting to an ancient vampire. God, how had I not seen it before? A bunch of the magic that I'd unwound yesterday had been defensive magic designed to keep people just like Gabriel out. The wards had probably been trying to send up alarm bells as soon as he set foot in the clearing.

The call of the ascendancy array was getting distracting, like a faint itch I couldn't quite scratch. I glanced out the window. The sky was still dotted with a few stars, faint through the light pollution of the city. I could probably make it to my parents' home and back before any of the vampires even woke up.

Explaining why I needed to go without Gabriel or any of the others would take time, and I wasn't sure if it was time we could afford to lose. The people who were after the artifact had followed me before, and if they'd realized that I'd gone to the old house… Sure, the wards would slow them down, but they were willing to use vampires recklessly. If they sent in a few to draw the focus of the wards…

There were just too many unknowns, and the buzz of the ascendancy array in my mind was making it hard to think. I slid out of bed and padded out of the room to the guest suite. I dressed quickly, sending Isabella a text as I tugged my jeans on.

hey can I borrow your car, I need to go back to the house without making it a whole thing

Yeah obvi, but I'm gonna drive you, she sent back. Also do you have any idea what fucking time it is, you absolute animal

You're the best!!

Duh. Ok see you in 10

I moved through the silent house with my boots dangling from one hand by their laces, hyperaware of the strength of vampiric hearing, and the chance of a house this old having some seriously creaky floorboards.

I slipped into Gabriel's study and searched his desk until I found what I was looking for: the box his mom had given us. I opened it just a crack and saw all three of the fragments of the artifact we'd found so far nestled inside. I shut the box firmly and pocketed it. Then I tore a page out of my notebook and scribbled a quick note for Gabriel, making sure to leave it front and center on the desk.

Practically holding my breath, I crept down the sweeping front stairs and out the door. It was chilly but clear out, and I sat on the front steps of the manor as I waited for Isabella to show up.

It took her less than ten minutes to get there, and I had to assume she'd taken a pretty lax approach to traffic laws. Her dark purple VW Beetle pulled up to the curb, and she waved at me through the window. When I hopped into the car, she pressed an enormous paper coffee cup into my hands.

"I figured you might need this," she said. "Also, I wasn't gonna do anything without getting some caffeine in me, so…"

I took a sip, and the sugary monstrosity Isabella had ordered was perfect. "God, that shouldn't be so good," I mumbled, and she shot me a grin as she pulled out into the dark streets.

We spent most of the drive in companionable quiet, with Stevie Nicks crooning softly from the sound system by way of Isabella's aux cord. In the gloomy twilight, the drive seemed shorter but somehow creepier. The trees I'd thought were pretty yesterday seemed shadowy and secretive now.

We curved up the side of the mountain, and soon we were back in that clearing. Back where I'd spent the first years of my life, even though I still had a blank space in my memory. The charred heap of rubble looked worse in the dim light. Not more menacing, just sadder. Smaller.

I climbed out of the car and frowned.

"Can you go back down the road a bit?" I asked Isabella. "I want to make sure the signal's as clear as possible."

She nodded, turning the engine back on. "Text me when you're done," she said, and I watched her car disappear through the trees.

Now that I was alone, the clearing felt different. Welcoming. The pile of disenchanted items we'd left behind last night seemed almost like old friends. I breathed in deep, and magic stirred up around me, settling onto me like a warm blanket.

"Okay," I murmured. "Okay, I'm here. Show me what I need to see."

There, behind the remains of the house, I could feel it calling me, tugging me forward. It was a strong, steady thrum, as easy to sense as my own heartbeat. My boots crunched over the dead leaves and dew-damp charcoal. I curled some of the magic into my hands and threw it downward, blasting the ground clear of debris. Twenty years of dirt and grime was knocked out of the way, revealing a metal door set into the ground. It had the odd, shimmery look to it of something that had been enchanted to be invisible but was allowing me to see it. There were wards all over it, but they opened up for me like they were welcoming me home.

With a wave of my hand, the cellar door opened. The stairs leading down were old but looked sturdy enough, and I kept a glowing ball of magic floating above my shoulder as I walked down into the darkness.

The cellar looked like something halfway between a lab and a studio. There were sturdy workbenches against one wall, one made of scarred wood, and another made of a surface that looked a lot like the tables in my high school chemistry classroom. Tools hung on a neatly organized pegboard above the benches. Some of the tools were easy to identify: pliers in a range of different shapes and sizes, a row of tiny screwdrivers, something that looked like a jeweler's loupe. A lot of the tools were much stranger, complicated shapes made of brass and wood and bone. A rack of vials held what looked like long-expired potion components, and a burner and cauldron were set up on the more modern workbench. Two well-worn and slightly musty rolling chairs were tucked against the benches.

Bookcases made up the opposite wall, all packed with a chaotic mishmash of tomes. Brightly colored books with thick, glossy spines that looked a lot like the old computer manuals my parents—my other parents, I thought with a weird twinge—had had were side by side, with ancient leather-bound books with titles stamped in gold.

The wall between those two—the one opposite the stairs—seemed so much simpler, but it was the one that took my breath away. There was a large threadbare armchair with a little beanbag chair next to it, and a scattering of toys surrounding it. Anchored against the wall was a roll of white butcher paper, with a length of the paper stretched across the bottom few feet, pinned in place by the bookcases. The paper was covered in clumsy drawings. A squiggly shape that might have been a dog. A sun wearing sunglasses, floating above a house drawn the way every little kid draws houses, and a tree that looked like a green lollipop. I crouched down and brushed my fingers over a stick figure with oversized hands, and a face drawn by someone who was still pretty new to the concept of faces. Its nose looked unfortunately phallic.

I had been here. I had drawn these while my parents did magic right next to me. My little baby hands had grabbed the crayons scattered across the rug and scribbled something that was probably a fish.

I pushed myself back up to my feet and turned to the bookcases. The array was close. One of the shelves was crammed full of books with unmarked spines, weirdly uniformed compared to the jumble on the other shelves. I grabbed one of the unmarked books at random and flipped it open.

It was full of neat, slanted cursive that shimmered much the same as the cellar door had.

Project notes, day 37 . We've finally sourced most of what we need for the array, although trying to get enough bloodstone dust was a pain. I'm not sure how much time we have, but the dreams have been getting more and more frequent. Someone—something—is coming for us. I don't know if Evie's picked up on us being stressed or something, but she's been fussy all week. Yesterday, Ewan had to go pick her up from kindergarten because she bit a kid, but it was just Dylan, and he seems like a little shit. She's been pretty curious about what we're doing, and she keeps trying to help. Right now, we've got her in "safety goggles," sorting pieces of craft wire into different cups. She's taking it very seriously, and it's the cutest thing in the world.

There was a rough pen and ink sketch of a little girl with a mass of curls, sitting cross-legged on the ground, scowling at two cups. Her safety goggles were pretty clearly meant for swimming if the dolphins next to the lenses were any indication.

My chest felt too tight, like someone was inflating a balloon inside my ribs. I snapped the journal shut and tried to slide it back into its place, but the shelf was packed so tightly that the other books had filled the space. I worked a hand between two of them and tried to shove them out of the way when my fingertips brushed metal. I frowned and began pulling journals off the shelves, tossing them onto the beat-up armchair.

Hidden behind the row of journals was a rectangular metal box, a little bigger than a postcard, and maybe three inches tall. Every inch of it had been etched with protective runes and wards. The metal was oddly warm in my hands, and the locking charms unwound themselves as soon as I touched them. The box opened easily.

There was a photograph inside. It showed a tall, redheaded man with my nose , and a dark-haired woman with my eyes, magnified by tortoiseshell-framed glasses. The man—my father—had a little girl on his shoulders. She had a puffball of chestnut hair and grinned madly at the camera, both hands fisted in the man's hair. They looked happy. I'd imagined them older, but then, if they were really as powerful as Marcus had said, it made sense that they would've been able to control how old they looked. My hands trembled as I lifted the picture out of the box.

Beneath it, nestled on a scrap of gray fabric, was the last piece of the ascendancy array.