“Calm down, Eveny,” Peregrine says crisply. “Anger isn’t getting you anywhere.”
But her words only make me madder. “Could you cut the whole icy superiority thing for a minute and be honest with me? Or is that too much for you?”
Chloe takes a step forward and reaches for me without saying a word. At first I pull away, but she just steps closer and stays there until I crumple. She folds me into a hug as I start to cry. “We’re sorry, Eveny,” she says. “We’re sorry we didn’t tell you. And we’re sorry about what happened to your mom.” She pulls away after a moment and tilts my chin up so that I’m staring right at her. “If you come inside, we’ll tell you what we know.”
I reluctantly follow her in, glancing at Peregrine as I go. She’s being strangely silent, and her lips are set in a thin line.
“Are your mothers here?” I ask once we’re seated in the living room.
Peregrine shakes her head and looks almost apologetic. “They’re at Chloe’s house. We can wait until they’re back if you want. . . .”
“No,” I say immediately. “I want to know the truth. Now.”
“What did you see?” Chloe asks gently.
“Wait, go back,” Peregrine interrupts. “You said you charmed the room? How?”
“I used my Stone of Carrefour.”
The eyes of both girls widen. “You have your stone?” Chloe asks in a whisper. “We thought it was lost with your mother.”
“This is a huge deal,” Peregrine says flatly. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.”
“Kind of like you didn’t tell me that my mother was murdered?” I say through gritted teeth.
Chloe puts a hand on Peregrine’s arm and says to her, “We can talk about the stone later. Right now, Eveny’s trying to tell us about her vision.”
I recap what played out in the parlor. The ceremony. The plunge into darkness. The screams. My mother gasping for breath as Peregrine’s and Chloe’s mothers ran for help. My mother dying.
“Our mothers aren’t sure whether your mom was a target because of something personal, or whether it was someone trying to weaken the power of Carrefour by eliminating the triumvirate,” Chloe explains when I’m done.
“Without your mother,” Peregrine adds, “our mothers were greatly weakened, and it’s been harder for them to . . .” Her voice trails off and she adds, “Harder for them to cast their magic.”
“So I’ve heard,” I say stiffly. “Somehow you’ve all managed to convince yourselves that it’s fine to use the Périphérie to keep your own lives floating along perfectly.”
“You don’t understand; they owed it to us,” Peregrine says right away. “Our ancestors have been providing for the people in the Périphérie for over a century.”
“That doesn’t justify taking from them now!” I exclaim. “All the crumbling houses, the people who have lost their money, the dead lawns, the decaying trees . . . That seems right to you?”
“We had to keep central Carrefour up somehow,” Chloe says in a small voice.
“Even the weather?” I ask.
“The sunshine on this side of town doesn’t create itself,” Peregrine says. “We don’t use it every day, though. You can see there’s a storm coming now.” Peregrine’s eyebrows knit together in annoyance. “You can’t expect us just to stop living.”
“I don’t,” I say. “But you have no right to live in luxury that’s built on other people’s lives falling apart. That’s disgusting!”
Chloe quickly picks up the thread of Peregrine’s argument. “It doesn’t have to be that way anymore, Eveny. That’s the great thing about you being back. We have a triumvirate again. We can start drawing our power purely from plants. We can even restore the Périphérie.”
“If you join us,” Peregrine says, “our lives can be just as we want them to be. You seem to keep forgetting what a gift this is.” She reaches out to take my hand, but I pull away.
“But you and your moms have already destroyed so much. You can’t possibly justify that.”
Peregrine rolls her eyes. “Whatever,” she says. “Don’t goody-goody us. You’ve adjusted quite well to the perks of zandara since you’ve been back, haven’t you? Your beautiful house, your huge property, your instant popularity, the money to attend Pointe Laveau. It’s all zandara, Eveny. All of it.”
“We don’t deserve those things,” I reply. “None of us do.”