So, with a steadying breath and a great shoring up of my heart, I hit the key to bring up the security video again.
Drae’s still on his knees, so the rest of us crouch down beside him, huddling close around the screen, and I recognize the dubious look in their eyes; they want to believe this isn’t real. That I misinterpreted the images, that there’s dirt on the lens, that something glitched with the cameras or the transmission to make it look like West was in that barn when the fire started.
I want to believe it isn’t real, either. That it’sanything—any impossible, ridiculous thing other than the brutal truth.
But the cold feeling in my gut tells me that what I saw so far can only mean one thing.
It was all real. She was there.
With a shaking finger, I hit the button to restart the video.
Through the eyes of the exterior barn camera, the four of us watch our witch pad across the lawn just after sunrise, not long after the four of us retired on the roof. Her movements are quick but graceful, bare feet leaving soft footprints in the still-dewy grass. She’s wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt and a thin pair of yoga pants—no hoodie, no shoes—but if she’s cold, she doesn’t show it. She makes her way to the library as if she’s in a trance.
Sensing the motion at the threshold, the cameras switch, giving us a view of the barn’s interior. The library is deathly quiet inside, dark in the murkiness of an early fall morning. The only light comes from the Cerridwen Codex on the table. It pulses with indigo-violet magic, brightening at her approach.
“What is shedoing?” Draegan asks. He can barely hold his head up.
I reach over and squeeze the top of his wing, gesturing at the screen for them to keep watching. This is as far as I got before. The rest is as new and terrifying to me as it will be to them.
We all hold our breaths as West places her hands on either side of the book. The words on the page glow furiously, reflected in her glazed eyes. Her expression is blank, devoid of life and laughter and any spark that evenremotelyresembles the woman we love.
Jude reaches out and touches her face with a claw as if that alone can put the light back in her eyes.
It doesn’t, of course.
It’s fucking heartbreaking. All of it. Watching her under the influence of this dark magic, feeling the fear and rage radiating off my brothers, seeing that dead glaze in her eyes, and worst of all—wondering if we’ll be forced to watch through the goddamned security cameras as the love of our immortal life is utterly incinerated.
But I keep watching. We all do. Because whatever it is, we need to know how this ends.
West glances up from the book, the rune on her neck blazing to life and igniting her magic, dark indigo light surging from her palms, flickering in the eye of the cameras.
Yet through it all, her face remains blank.
And then, with nothing more than a deep breath, she begins to chant. Soft at first, the words gathering power and volume with each repetition.
Blood of my blood, my magic, my fire
I call unto you, my king and my sire
Return to this realm to claim what is ours
By flame and by force, so shall we devour
She recites the words three times—something from the Codex? Something she made up? Some dark enchantment forced upon her by the mages? The fae?
“What the bleeding hell is that?” Jude asks, and we watch, awestricken as indigo flames gather in her palms and stretch up both arms and across her chest.
“What must I do?” she whispers.
“Who the fuck is she talking to?” Auggie asks. “There’s no one there.”
She seems to be waiting for an answer, but if she gets one, it’s not something any of us can hear. There’s a quick shake of her head, and she hesitates, as if she’s debating whatever she’s about to do.
But it’s only a few seconds before she’s dismissing whatever doubts stayed her hand.
Her face finally changes, a spark of life where before there was only emptiness. But the vicious smile stretching across her mouth doesn’t belong to her. It’s dark and cruel and terrible.
Ugly.
