Chapter 31

31

EVANGELINE

T he final fragment of the ascendancy array, a breathtakingly fragile piece of filigree humming with power, glittered in the light of my magic. Carefully, I set the box down on the wooden workbench, placing my hands on either side of it and blowing out a careful breath. This tiny little thing had the power to end the magical world as we knew it, and it was meant for me. My parents had made this with the tools right in front of me, working in this room while I played.

I braced myself against the surface of the workbench. It was pitted and grooved from years of use, fuzzed over with a thick layer of dust. Almost reverentially, I took the box I'd swiped from Gabriel's desk out of my pocket and set it down next to the box I'd just found. Something about the symmetry of it appealed to me—the box Gabriel's mother had given him next to the box my parents had left for me.

I flipped open the other box and took out the pieces of the array. Would I be able to figure out which of the tools hanging on the wall had made which marks? If I flipped through my mother's notebooks, would they tell me which of my parents had twisted the wire, melded it together, etched and enchanted each piece? My hands began to move of their own accord, slotting the pieces together as if muscle memory had taken over. It was simple—so simple. How had I not seen it before?

The ascendancy array was beautiful. Now that all four of the scattered pieces were gathered and put together, it was shaped kind of like an hourglass. It had two elongated teardrop shapes made of intricate metalwork joined together at their points. As soon as I completed it, it floated a foot or so off the desk. Weirdly, it didn't feel as though it had lifted up, but as though the world had moved down around it. A faint wave of vertigo washed over, but I shook it off.

The artifact began to glow, faintly at first, then blindingly bright. I reeled back, throwing an arm up to shield my eyes, and the light slowly dimmed into something warm and gentle. I blinked the afterimages away and looked around me, trying to get my bearings.

I was in a version of the cellar workshop, but a version sketched loosely in golden light. If I looked at things out of the corner of my eye, they were just soft fuzzy shapes, but they sharpened into odd wireframe versions if I looked directly at them. I turned, trying to take it all in, and gasped.

Behind me, in the middle of the room, stood two figures more real than the room around us, but not by much. They looked like watercolor versions of the real deal, color shifting fluidly over their forms in a desaturated suggestion of what they must have once looked like.

"Evie?" one of the figures said, taking a half-step forward. Her hair was swept into a loose, dark braid, her green eyes wide behind her glasses. Next to her, a tall man with curly red hair and three days' worth of stubble raised a hand to reach out for me, but it passed through my arm.

"Mom," I choked out. "Dad?"

"You're so tall," my father said.

My mom elbowed him in the side. "Of course she's tall, honey. She's not a baby anymore," she said, her voice full of fond exasperation. "God, look at you. You have your grandma's cheekbones. You're so gorgeous."

Watercolor tears welled in her eyes. I was crying, too, my eyes stinging, and I could feel my nose getting heavy in the way that meant I was about to have a full-on ugly sobfest.

"You're here," I said dumbly, my voice wet.

"Sort of," my father said. "We're just echoes, sweet pea. We put a bit of our spirits in the array so we could talk to you when you found it."

My mother wiped a hand over her cheeks. "We don't have long, baby. I'm sorry, I wish we had more time, but… we only have time for the important stuff."

I nodded, trying to ready myself to hear about the powerful magic and the danger that could come with it.

"We love you," my mother said, and I felt like I'd been punched in the stomach. "We love you so much, baby. I'm so sorry we weren't there to see you grow up."

"We had to protect you," my father agreed, putting a hand on her shoulder. "You're incredible, Evie. You're the best thing we ever did. I can't tell you how much it means to see you like this, all grown up."

I was crying properly now, ugly shuddering sobs that shook my whole frame.

"You have no idea how much I wish we could hug you right now," my mother said gently, her voice hitching.

"It would probably just make me cry harder," I admitted between sobs.

"I was like that, too," my father said soothingly. "Real big crier. You should've seen our wedding pictures. I looked like I had severe hay fever."

I snorted out a wet laugh at the same time as my mother and tried to wipe my eyes.

"Are you… are you guys…?" I'd heard stories about powerful magic users trapping parts of themselves for safekeeping, hiding them so they could never be truly killed. Most of them were fairy tales, sure, but I'd dealt with enough eternal sleep curses and enchanted animals to know that just because something was a fairy tale, it didn't mean it wasn't true.

"No, sweet pea," my father said sadly. "We're gone."

"I started to get visions," my mom said. "A woman, a powerful dark witch, was coming for us. Magic users had been going missing, then turning up with a hole in their memories and their powers stripped. Ewan and I are—were, I guess—pretty damn powerful, and if she'd gotten our magic…" she trailed off, her lips pressed into a thin, grim line.

"So, we put our magic somewhere safe," my father said. "We loaded the place up with as many protective spells as we could, and we built the array. It has every single ounce of magic we had left in us. We knew it would… that it would mean we were pretty much sitting ducks, but…" He took a deep breath and blew it out again, slow and measured. "It would also mean the world would be safer. You would be safer."

"You sent me away." My voice came out tiny and fragile. I hadn't meant to say it; it was like that hurt little five-year-old deep inside had taken the reins for a minute. Tears were still streaming from my eyes, and I wiped them away with the back of my hand. At least the sobbing had stopped.

"We had to," my mother said. She took my father's hand and clutched it tightly, clinging to him like a lifeline. "We set up a portal spell. It was designed to trigger if anything happened to us, to send you somewhere safe. If we hadn't…" She closed her eyes, burying her face in her husband's shoulder. He hugged her tightly, rubbing a soothing hand up and down her back.

"I remembered," I said. "When I touched the first piece of the ascendancy array, I saw fire. That was when it happened, wasn't it? When you…" I couldn't make myself say the word.

My father nodded, and he looked worn-out. The color that was washing over them became fainter, slowly but surely. "The witch came here," he said. "I don't know how she found us, but she did. She brought one of her followers, the leader of a major vampire clan, to try to take us in."

"Roland De Montclair," I said numbly.

"You know of him?" my father asked.

"I… yeah. You could say that."

"When they found us, she realized we'd taken out our own magic. She was furious. She started throwing fire magic around, and, well." His eyes went distant for a moment.

"She was already so strong," my mother said. Her voice had the same flat quality I'd heard when I asked people about the atrocities they'd witnessed. "Even together, we wouldn't have been able to stop her. Two of the most powerful witches in the world, and it wouldn't have been enough. I'm so sorry, sweet pea, but it has to be you."

Fear rose in my gut. "Me?"

"The magic of two of the most powerful witches wasn't enough," my father said. "The power of three, though…"

"Now that you've claimed the ascendancy array, all of our magic is yours," my mom said with a watery smile. "You're so much more powerful than you know, Evie. I know you can stop her."

They were so faded, I could barely see them, and the glow of the room in the vision was getting dimmer.

"I'm not ready," I said. "I don't know how to stop her. I don't know what I'm doing. I can barely even remember to do laundry most of the time!" I felt small, childish, and wholly out of my depth.

"You get the laundry thing from your dad," my mother said, and my dad nodded ruefully. "Nobody knows what they're doing, sweet pea, and nobody can do it alone. It's all about finding the right people who can help you figure it out." At her side, my father gave her an adoring look.

"She's right," he said. "Teamwork. She did the laundry, I did the dishes. You're the one with the strength to stop this whole thing, but don't think for one second that you're the only person in this fight."

"You need to find D—" my mother started to say, but suddenly, the vision lurched away, making me feel like the ground had been torn out from beneath my feet.

Abruptly, I was back in the real cellar, shoved forward over the workbench, with rough wood digging into my cheek. I tried to twist out of the grip that was keeping me pinned down, but it just got stronger, shoving me against the table until I could hear my ribs creaking.

I twisted my head back over my shoulder as far as it could go, trying to see who had gotten the drop on me.

I saw a familiar face, rawboned and hatchet sharp, with cold, dark eyes, and a severe black widow's peak. The man sneered down at me with cold pleasure. The last time I'd seen him, he'd directed that look at his son.

"You should have stayed out of this, witch," Roland De Montclair said. "But you just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you?" He had my wrists pinned with one hand, and with the other he pulled out a pair of silvery cuffs.

I gritted my teeth, let all of my weight fall forward onto the desk, and kicked backward with both feet as hard as I could. There was a crack, and I felt the impact through my whole body as my boots connected with his knees. He let out a grunt of surprise, and the distraction was just enough for me to twist free.

My new power thundered through me, brutal and unrestrained. For all my life, my magic had been something I could access when I needed it, like lowering a bucket into a well. Now, it was like a massive, thundering river, and the dam holding it back had just burst. I bared my teeth in a manic grin and threw a bolt of raw magic at the vampire. It crashed into him, and he flew backward and slammed against the wall. The surge of energy was heady.

The sound that Roland let out was the snarl of an injured animal. With vampiric speed, he yanked a small coppery knife from the pretentious-ass watch chain he was wearing and threw it at me. It hit my chest with a sickening crack, burying itself squarely in the middle of my breastbone. If there was pain, I didn't feel it. I was too caught up in the rush of power to feel anything but a faint cold tingle as I yanked the blade out and tossed it to the floor.

I twisted vines of magic out of the air to bind Roland in place, but they came out all wrong. They were more like tree trunks than vines, each one at least a foot across, and when they surged forward, they did it with so much strength that they crunched into the wall, shattering the concrete, and sending books toppling off the shelves.

The flood inside me wasn't stopping. It was only getting more and more powerful. I should have been afraid, but I wasn't. I was fucking furious.

"Look what you made me do," I snarled. The vines flailed wildly, and Roland darted between them, dashing toward me so quickly that I couldn't track his movement. He slammed the flat of his palm into the spot the knife had struck, and, oh, there was the pain.

I stumbled back against one of the work benches, tools and glassware rattling and smashing. I wasn't going to let this man, this pathetic, petty vampire beat me. I fumbled blindly behind me and threw the first thing my hand landed on: a bundle of scrap metal. As it left my grip, it parted and blossomed into dozens of needle-sharp darts, each one of them flying straight toward Roland.

Three bulky vampires charged into the room, each one bigger and dumber looking than the last. One threw himself in front of Roland, and the spikes buried themselves in his broad back.

"Took you idiots long enough," Roland spat as the vampire in front of him gurgled out a weak apology, blood dripping from the dozens of wounds. He threw the injured vampire to the side, where he flopped limply over one of the thick vines of magic. The tendril seemed to react to his weight, curling in on itself and squeezing hard. There was a horrific wet crunch, and he slumped. When the vine uncurled, the vampire's midsection had been reduced to a red paste, still stuck through with shards of metal.

One of the newcomers stared down at his fallen coworker in horror. I shook out my arms and let the magic build.

Let them try stop me .