Sylvia whirled on her.
She looked awful. Her eyes were puffy, her skin wan, her hair mussed from the fingers she was still running through it. Her formerly white cardigan was covered in streaks of brown and red, a story told in stains.
Katherine clenched her fists. “What happened?”
Sylvia paced the room, dust falling off her onto the wood floor.
“Sylvia,” Katherine said, her mind running with scenarios. Sylvia had been at Hollywood and Highland. Had she been with Lily when she snapped? Why hadn’t Sylvia been able to protect her?
“Please just tell me what happened to her.”
Finally, Sylvia stopped pacing and looked at Katherine, her lips quivering, her distress so strong that for a second Katherine wondered if she was exaggerating. She pushed the thought away—it was ugly and unfair, driven by the despair and anxiety that suffused every part of Katherine’s body.
“We were driving to Oak Grove,” Sylvia said. Katherine struggled to hear her over the ringing that had started in her ears. “But then Lilysaid she didn’t want to go. That she didn’t want to have magic anymore. I pulled over so I could try to talk her down, but she got out of the car and ran.”
Katherine tried to calm her racing breaths, but she couldn’t, because even though she knew where this was going, even though she’d seen it with her own eyes, it was getting more and more real with every word Sylvia said. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t supposed to—
“She ran into that big shopping center on the Walk of Fame.”
Breathe, in and out. “No. She wouldn’t. She couldn’t…”Breathe, Katherine. You can’t talk if you don’t breathe. “Why would she do that?”
“She said she needed to get away. But there were so many people there, and she couldn’t handle it.” Sylvia’s eyes were brimming with tears. “I’m so sorry, Katherine. She got lost in the crowd, and I was trying to find her when it happened. It was so big, and there was so much damage. All I could do was try to protect as many people around me as I could.”
“But not her.” The words dropped out of her, her filter burned away by the emotions of the night. Right after she said them, Katherine knew they weren’t fair. Snaps were fast and violent—designed for maximum destruction.
“I tried.” Sylvia dabbed at the corners of her eyes with her sleeve. “I wasn’t fast enough.”
Breathe.
“I… I found her body,” Katherine whispered. “I burned it.”
In and out.
Sylvia stepped over, pulling Katherine into a tight hug.
“Oh, Katherine.”
Katherine dug her face into Sylvia’s neck, her mantra forgotten as her breath hitched.
Dead. Lily was dead. And Katherine had burned her body. Her family would never know. Her parents would never get their daughter back.
They’d be just as broken as hers were.
The panic attack hit in full then, her chest contorting, squeezing tohalf its size, then half of that, until there was no room left for air to enter her body at all. Her lungs fizzled out of existence, letting pure terror take their place. It seeped from her chest, inhabiting her veins, her very bones, until her body was a foreign thing made of fear and pain.
Sylvia recognized the signs. She’d coached Katherine through the panic attacks she’d had almost weekly as a teen struggling with her unsettled power and the trauma it had caused, the panic attacks that still hit her occasionally now, despite years of medication.
She put an arm around Katherine and walked her to a chair, forcing her to sit before kneeling in front of her, taking her hands in her own and rubbing a thumb lightly over her skin. “Breathe,” she said. Katherine tried, but her anxiety decided that was the moment to trot out a thought about how long it would take her body to shrivel from the lack of oxygen, and that only made the whole thing worse.
“It’s not your fault,” Sylvia said. “It’s a tragedy, but it happened, and we can’t undo it.”
Katherine pulled her hands out of Sylvia’s. They were sweating. Sylvia shouldn’t have to touch her sweaty hands.
“I’m sorry.” Sylvia moved her hands to Katherine’s shoulders now, rubbing circles up and down her arms. “I know now is not the time to talk about coven politics, but I need you to remember, Silas can’t find out about this. No one can—there’s too much of a risk of it getting back to him. If Noctis finds out an unsettled witch snapped on our watch, hurt people on our watch… we’ll lose everything. And then we’ll never be able to help anyone like Lily ever again. Do you understand?”
Katherine tried to respond, but she was suffocating, her throat filling with sand that she knew wasn’t really there, but wasn’t it? Wasn’t she sinking, falling,drowning—
“Katherine,” Sylvia said, and this time Katherine managed to look up at her, shrinking at the clear anger and disappointment in her eyes. “I need you to clean this up,” Sylvia said. “Make sure there are no signs of Lily or I being there. We need to make sure that Noctis doesn’t get wind of this. Do you understand?”
