There’s a knot at the tip, in an exact mirror of my own.
It’s the last thing I see before he covers me with the Hypnosis Variants, and they fall around me like flakes of ash, and I know, then, that he has won.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“Did she see me here?” Larkin growls. “No one was supposed to see me here.”
“After tonight it won’t matter what she’s seen and what she hasn’t,” I mutter.
I try to hide the shudder whenever I glimpse Aila’s face. The same gray eyes, pointed chin, dark auburn hair. It is like Juliet, back in time.
As soon as her eyes glaze, I order her to join the others. She doesn’t move quite as quickly as the Clifftons had. “Go!” I bark at her. She takes her place at the end of the line, and I examine her hands. She is the spitting image of Juliet, except for the finger where she always wore the ring.
It isn’t there.
I curse. Something red starts beating behind my right eye.
“Where is the Helena Stone?” I shake her so hard that her head snaps back. “Where is the ring your mother always wore?”
I almost think I see a flicker of something in her eyes, but that’s impossible. She swallows and answers in a monotone voice, “Father has it. He’s at war.”
I resist the urge to scream.
But—?I tell myself—?at least if the Stone is far from here, then it can’t end the Curse. I blink away the red and am trying to decide what to do next when a light suddenly flips on in the kitchen.
I scramble for my last pouch of Hypnosis Variants. Pour them into my cupped hand, ready to throw, and drop the emptied pouch in the grass. I turn to welcome our final player.
“Mrs. Cliffton?” a young boy’s voice calls out, cracking with fear as he opens the back door. “I think there’s something wrong with Genevie—” He sees us and stops short.
I stare at him. If Aila is Juliet, then this child is me.
“Miles,” I say quietly, “come here,” but his eyes suddenly go wide. He’s seen something behind me, and I instinctively flinch. Turn just in time to see a hurtling flash of silver.
I bring my hands up to shield my face, straight into the path of something sharp. The razor edges of a Star bite through my hand.
I scream. There is a searing, burning pain like I hadn’t known existed.
I force myself to look down. See without understanding where three of my fingers used to be. They are now somewhere on the ground. Along with the last of the Hypnosis Variants. Spilled and useless.
And then there is blood, so warm, and a pounding in my ears.
My hands, I had told Phineas. I’ve always been good with my hands.
I don’t let myself look down again. I don’t want to know how bad it is.
How? I think blurrily. How did the girl slip through the power of the Hypnosis Variants, like no one ever has?
Larkin is wondering the same thing. His face darkens as he advances toward Aila, and he growls, “How did you do that?”
She lets out a cry of terror, and he wrestles her across the lawn to tie her to a chair. Straps her into it with his belt and tightens the notches so her breath starts to hitch.
Everything is like a dream, and I stand for one stunned moment, reeling in the pain, and then rip off my coat and wrap it around my hand to staunch the bleeding. “Miles, it’s going to be all right,” the girl says, over and over, until Larkin finally covers her mouth with a hankerchief.
“We gotta get your hand back together. She got you pretty good,” he says to me. “Good thing she didn’t hit your jugular.”
“I need to see a doctor,” I say.
“Then let’s get what we came for,” Larkin says nervously. He picks up a vial. “I can’t risk anyone knowing I was here.”
