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“Well, she’s dead,” Merlin said beside me with not a trace of regret.
That was when I started to cry, useless non-magic entity that I was. Even though Virginia had tried to frame me for murder and send me to jail, she’d still been a living, breathing person.
Now she wasn’t doing either of those things.
And with Luna and Dash still here and ready to fight, I could very well be next.
26
Luna let out a keening wail and ran to the well after her lost familiar.
“I didn’t mean to kill her, only to stop her!” she cried. “Her brush with power had driven her mad. I should have been more careful before taking her on. This is all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, remembering my conversation with the fake Harold in Dash’s illusion. Even though I’d played a part in his death, it hadn’t been my fault.
The same was true for Luna now. Virginia had made her own choices. She’d betrayed her witch. She’d chased blindly after the fleeing magic, which resulted in her fatal tumble down the well.
Funny how I’d considered Luna an enemy when she was just as hurt by today’s events as both me and Merlin. I actually ached for her now as I regarded the lanky white cat, whose formerly green eyes had already begun to fade to a pale almost sickly blue.
That reminded me—she’d given up her magic. She couldn’t hurt us now. She couldn’t hurt us ever again.
“Where’s the other one?” Merlin shouted from beside me, already kicking up his back feet in case he had to summon a twister and resume the fight.
I glanced to Merlin and then to the larger garden. Luna sat sobbing at the well, but the far more deadly Dash was nowhere to be seen.
“No! She got away,” I ground out. It seemed our true nemesis had used the distraction of the magical fog to slip away undetected. Which made me wonder, had that thick cover come from the severed bond or had Dash cast the illusion herself?
“A coward!” Merlin spit at the ground, then curled his lip in disgust.
“No, she was anything but.” I shook my head, wishing my cat’s assertion was true but knowing better than to hope. “Both plans A and B failed, so she retreated. She’ll be back with a new plan and even harder for us to defeat the next time.”
“Merlin, I’m so sorry,” Luna mewed from her place on the lip of the old stone well.
When it became clear that she wouldn’t leave her vigil there, Merlin and I stalked over to join her.
Luna fixed her gaze on Merlin, her eyes dull and sorrowful. “My familiar tried to destroy you. I thought I was helping when I cut our magical ties, but I just created an excuse for the other one to sneak away.”
While I felt bad for Luna over Virginia’s death, I still couldn’t let her off the hook completely. She’d had a part in this, too.
“You mixed a potion,” I accused, finally able to utter the words I’d failed to speak so many times.
Now that Luna’s magic was gone, it seemed the spells she’d previously cast no longer worked, either. “You forced me to give it to Merlin and made it so that I couldn’t warn him.”
Luna’s eyes grew wide as Merlin reared up and arched his back. “Luna! Is this true?” he demanded.
The white cat hung her head in silent shame.
“It’s true!” I cried, wringing my hands. “She kidnapped me and used hair from both of us to mix the potion. I wanted to tell you, Merlin. I tried so hard.”
“Gracie, it’s okay. I understand why you couldn’t resist the spell. You’re still very new, but we’ll work on building your defenses so that others have a harder time casting on you in the future. It will be okay.” Merlin sounded almost fatherly in that moment. He may have been disappointed in how things had gone down, but it didn’t make him love me any less.
The others were right. Our bond was strong. Not just magically, but emotionally, too.
Merlin’s tender tone vanished when he turned to address the other cat. “Why, Luna? You said you had no part in the plot to imprison my familiar before our bond could fully actualize,
and yet you did this?”
She let out a shuddering sigh.
