“I can’t guarantee your witch will be safe here,” Mage began, regarding the woman with disapproval, “among this crowd.”
“Oh, we’ve taken care of that! Show them, Ileana,” Viggo said. Ileana lifted a shaking hand to her neck and pulled a tiny vial on a chain from her collar. “Isn’t it lovely?” Viggo crowed. “She stole it from one of her teachers. It makes her blood toxic. Anyone who bites her will die.”
My attention shifted from the vial—a powerful weapon that the Fates must have played a part in creating—to the girl. Her trembling knees knocked together and she wrung her hands, clenching and unclenching her fingers constantly, clearly terrified. And her young age made her practically useless to Viggo; she would have just learned how to find the magic threads within herself, and she would have few spells in her repertoire—and no idea how to bend the laws of physics to create new spells. There was no hard and fast set of rules around sorceress magic. It took years of experimentation; the more cautious witches never truly figured it out. And this witchling was weak, judging by the tiny glow of magic radiating from her. The smug fool in front of me didn’t know that, though.
“Viggo. She can’t break the Merth’s curse. She can’t get Veronique out. She can’t undo anything I’ve done. So let her mother go,” I pleaded. The child would be lucky to tie her own shoes with her magic.
“Gladly! As soon as you release Evangeline.” Viggo turned to the young witch. “This is Sofie. This is all her fault, you know.”
The young witch turned to regard me, contempt flashing in her eyes. I sighed heavily. Great. Yet another enemy within these walls, thanks to Viggo.
“I hope you’re not planning on having her toy with magic,” Mage called, “considering we have a truce.”
“Yes, I recall Sofie couldn’t use her magic, right?” Viggo answered, smiling. “Sofie,” he repeated. Mage’s lips tightened, his emphasis not lost on her. “Ileana is not Sofie. I have done nothing to break our agreement. And what was that other part? Oh yes, no killing of anyone. That includes Ileana, here.”
“She killed Tanner!” Mage threw back, glancing over at the corpse on the cobblestones.
“In self-defense! You can’t hold that against her!” Viggo was testing her honor, seeing if she would back out of the truce she’d imposed. It was silly, really; she could tear both Viggo and this witchling to shreds in seconds, if she chose. But from what I could read of Mage—which wasn’t a lot—her honor, or the impression of her honor, held sway.
Her mouth twisted and she nodded, and I knew Viggo had won.
“If her magic causes anyone any harm, I will strike her down.” I glared at Ileana. “Dead.”
“Agreed! She’s not here to harm anyone!” Viggo exclaimed, throwing an arm proudly over Ileana’s shoulder. She remained rigid, terror-filled eyes looking everywhere but at me now.
With an angry shake of my head, I turned and stalked off.
The glass panes of the French door rattled as I slammed it. I marched straight over to study Veronique’s portrait, as I did every time I stepped foot inside the grand mahogany-and leather-filled parlor. “I hope you’ll understand, Veronique,” I whispered, anticipating the tales painting me as a wicked sister that those two monsters would spin. And she’d likely believe them. As lovely and sweet as my sister was, no one would ever have described her as clever.
I heaved an exhausted sigh. For over one hundred years, I had waited for the Fates to fix this mess and release my baby sister from her tomb. And then, for the last eighteen years, I had spent my days in a bipolar balance of bliss and dread as I watched Evangeline grow up, knowing what I had brought down on her, what my deal had condemned her to. I was exhausted, tired of the magic, of the unknown, of the constant fighting with Viggo and Mortimer, of the hatred boiling inside of me. I hadn’t always been so angry.
Yes, I had a temper—Nathan had always been quick to point that out. I was his fiery redhead. But that fire had evolved into rot, deep within my core. The only saving grace, the only reason the rot hadn’t fully consumed me, was Evangeline. And I would lose her if I didn’t get that damn pendant off her, something I could not for the life of me figure out how to do. Each day I poked and prodded the boundaries of the spell’s weave inside my head, delivered to me by the Fates in a hard, marble-sized packet of magic. But it was impenetrable.
And if that wasn’t enough, now I had the fate of Earth on my shoulders. How would I manage to keep the end of the human world at bay when I couldn’t even control the mess within these Fifth Avenue walls? For God’s sake, I had just unwittingly helped Viggo bring in the enemy! A useless witch, but an enemy, nonetheless.