Page 47

“Sage, run and get a bucket of soapy water and some rags,” Clark said, staying outside the room but frowning at me.

I didn’t look at him, because I might shatter him like glass if I noticed him too much. Instead, I slipped and slid across the floor to the piano. I wasn’t the best player, but I’d learned a few songs, some classics, some Beatles, and my favorite, the classic jazz singers. I sang along with the notes because otherwise I’d notice that my bloody feet were making a mess of the pedals.

“This is so gross!” James said with enthusiasm. Gross was awesome in his book.

“Contain the mess. Don’t spread it around,” Sage lectured. “Mom, we could use your help.”

“Don’t disturb her magic,” the man I’d never loved for fifteen years rumbled. His voice was beautiful.

My mediocre playing and even less impressive voice was magic? Why did that make me want to cry? No idea, but I let the tears come, my voice getting thick and emotional while the rage inside me flowed into the music, twisting it into a thing of absolute weirdness.

“So, this blood is thirty years old?” my daughter whispered. “Creepy.”

I kept singing, and when the song was over, I moved to something else, something random and new. I just played, and words came, about betrayal and cruelty wrapped in lightning, but love cutting through all the hate and leaving you vulnerable and weak, quivering and helpless but happy. Could you trade weakness for happiness, or would it destroy you? Maybe we were meant to be destroyed. Otherwise, we’d never know what we were beneath the hate and anger we wore like armor.

I don’t know. I sang and played until the rage and anger crumpled inside of me, leaving me collapsed on the piano in a crash of dissonant chords.

I lay there like a rag doll until Sage came and sat next to me. “This piano is amazing,” she said. “And it’s in tune! Wherever the parlor piano went, good riddance. This thing is going to be so fun to play! Let’s duet.”

She started while I stayed there, slung over the keys, until she elbowed my head a few too many times, and I slowly summoned the strength to sit up straight. The room spun around me, and I fell over backwards.

Clark caught me, scooping me up into his arms while he stared into my eyes with concern in his own. “So much magic for such a small person.”

I reached up and touched his face tattoos. They lit under my fingers, and I felt a rush of energy, leaving them tingling when I curled them into a fist. “I’m not small. You’re just big. Come to think of it, there are perks to you being so big. I could gain fifty pounds, and you’d still be able to carry me around.”

He huffed a laugh as he carried me out of the pretty room of slaughter and death, up the curving staircase, past the portrait of a serious old woman with steel hair and black eyes. My relative? Such an old person. I tried to raise my head, and the effort was enough to knock me out cold.

fourteen

. . .

I woke up to rain pounding on the window, lightning crackling, thunder booming. I blinked at the dim light outside. I felt like the pounding was in my head, because whatever I’d done with the green smoke was seriously big magic that I’d had no business playing with.

A crack of thunder shook the house, and I rolled out of bed, stumbling around until I found the door. Happily, I was still dressed. Clark/Teeth/Peregrine hadn’t undressed me. Good. But didn’t he want to take advantage of me? Wasn’t he evil and selfish and horrible?

Another crash of thunder made me flinch. It was right outside the house. Was Clark going to get fried? Why was I running toward it? This was stupid.

Then again, when was the last time I’d done anything intelligent? I shoved open the door, which didn’t want to open, and stalked out onto the porch, grabbing onto the post while I stared out at the lightning sorcerer wrapped in lines of energy while Ray of Sunshine threw dark-matter bombs at him.

“What are you doing?” I yelled at Ray. He glanced at me then Donny came stalking out of the tree line, lines of dark energy wrapping around him, growing darker and darker, like the expression on his face.

“Get back in the house,” Ray of Sunshine said, winding up to throw another huge bolt of negative energy at the lightning sorcerer. My husband. Who wasn’t attacking back. Because we’d made a deal that he wouldn’t kill them. That was what had shaken the house, Ray’s bolts, not Clark, and he was just sitting there cross-legged, taking the pounding, like the pouring rain wasn’t enough.

“You get home!” I yelled back before I left the protection of the porch, immediately becoming soaking wet, my hair on end because of the energy being flung around.

“Get back to the house,” Clark said, finally showing some reaction. His eyes flared bright blue, and he glared at me as he stood in time to take a bolt of darkness directly to the chest. He flew backwards, rolling to a stop.

I ran to him, but I couldn’t touch him because he was still wrapped in lightning. I did turn around and face Ray and then Donny. Both came closer, drawing on dark energy until my nose was buzzing with it.

“Move or you’ll get hurt,” Ray said.

“You can’t kill my husband!”

Donny got big-eyed, shocked and hurt, before he glowered and the darkness gathered, heavy, thick, and he started levitating. “If you’re married to the Council’s Teeth, you deserve to die!”

He raised his hands, ready to hurl energy at me, but then Sage hit him from the side, knocking him down to the mud. And now they were mud wrestling.

“What are you doing?” she screamed.