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Except Deerling was still standing, and still grinning that sick, feral grin at us.
“She’s not dead,” he cackled. It was hard to make out the words with park of his jaw missing. I gagged, seeing his tongue move between the gap in his cheek.
“What the fuuuuuuck?” Secret said.
Wilder looked down at the gun in his hand, then back up to the evidence of the damage clearly visible on Deerling’s face.
“I think we have an answer to the can we kill him a second time question,” I said with a defeated sigh. And now our witch was down for the count, meaning the only person here with the power to put Deerling back in the ground was yours truly.
And I didn’t have the faintest idea of how.
Both La Sorciere and Santiago had implied I was one of the most powerful witches they’d ever encountered, but what good was that power if I didn’t know how to funnel it into something useful?
I’d learned how to harness the magic when I needed it, but that was mostly to control it from going off when I didn’t intend to. Could I wield that kind of power at will?
There was only one way to find out.
I thought back to what I’d seen in my memories at the Rain Hotel, when I’d been able to completely destroy Morgan. I thought about the blood on the carpet upstairs, in the place where Wilder had laid after Deerling had shot him. I thought of the way this room h
ad looked the last time I’d been here, and suddenly I knew.
I knew I could do this.
My skin felt cold all over, but when I looked down, my hand was glowing bright red. The others had apparently noticed this as well, because Secret said, “Genie, no.”
“It’s okay,” I told her. “I have to.”
I had no idea what Santiago would have done to bind Deerling’s death, or if it would even work. But I knew with an eerie kind of certainty that I could put him down for good.
I took a step towards him and raised my hand. He kept grinning up until the moment he saw the flames dancing along my skin, then his smile faltered and he took a jerky step away from me.
“W-what is that?”
“I brought you back, and I’m sorry for that, Timothy. You should have been able to rest in your death forever, and because of me you couldn’t do that. I’m going to make it right.”
He darted his head to the side as I moved to touch him. “No.”
Deerling was afraid, and I couldn’t blame him. I think I would have been afraid, too, if I wasn’t so utterly calm. I could barely see his face, my mind was just replaying the images of the room, the carpet, the moment I killed Morgan.
“Let me make it right.”
“No.”
He tried to jerk away again but I grabbed his face in my hand and squeezed his chin, my fingers slipping into the wet hole of what had once been his cheek. I didn’t feel anything.
A wail escaped his lips. “Stop. Stop.”
“You tried to take something from me, something I love. And tonight you tried to take someone else from me. You are a blight on the face of this earth, and I think it’s important I tell you something before you go.”
He mewled and no words came out. The smell of charred flesh filled the room. His face was melting under my fingertips.
“I don’t feel guilty. At. All.” Then I smiled and him and said, “Ustulo.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
We emerged back on the main level coated in the ashy remains of Timothy Deerling. Everyone looked shell-shocked, and for me it was only now starting to sink in what I’d done.
I’d obliterated someone.
