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“Let it go,” Emmanuel tells me as we’re driven to the Wildblood house. It’s about a half-hour ride from our house in Eden’s Crossing. “She won’t touch Rébecca. She knows what you’ll do to her if she does. It’s an empty threat. Don’t let her use it to get to you. She wins if you do.”
I nod. It’s true. She won’t touch our little sister again. She did, a few years ago, leaving marks criss-crossing the length of her back. I admit part of that night is absent from my memory, but when I came home and saw Rébecca and what Grandmother had done to her, I saw red. All I know is if it hadn’t been for Emmanuel, I might have killed the old woman. Like I said, I have her temper.
But I recall how Rébecca had cowered from me that night, the days that followed. I never intended for her to see me in that state, where my control snaps. When I lose my mind and my self.
For Grandmother to have threatened to hurt Rébecca again, though, reveals how important the Tithing is to her, how wholly she believes in the curse—in what needs to be done.
“She’s insane, you know that,” Emmanuel says, as if having read my mind.
I turn to glance at him. “If she’s the one who’s insane, why are we doing this? Why are we going to their house? Aren’t we as insane?”
His expression falters, darkens. He shifts his gaze away momentarily, lips tightening. “What happened to Mom and Dad. To Abacus. Are you willing to take the chance?”
He’s talking about the curse Elizabeth Wildblood placed on our family centuries ago. He’s talking about the words she whispered as they tightened the noose around her neck.
I recall how lightning had splintered the sky in my dream, and I touch my neck as I remember the very real feeling of the rope biting into it, the sensation of suffocating. This all began when our ancestor, Isaiah Delacroix—with the backing of IVI—was able to accuse and condemn a woman to death. I can guess at his reasons, knowing the petty, sadistic man he was, because I do know him. Not only from the tomes containing the Delacroix history, but from our time on Proctor’s Ledge.
That knowledge may come in the form of dreams, but it’s no less real than my brother sitting beside me now. No less real than the moon shining in through the tinted windows of the Rolls Royce.
I draw a tight breath in, steel myself. “No, I’m not.”
He pats my arm as the driver pulls up to the gates of Briar Rose, the Wildblood home. It has been for centuries now, ever since Elizabeth’s descendants settled in New Orleans several decades after her execution.
The car comes to a stop. Emmanuel and I open our doors and step out. I button my coat as I stand on the curb, taking in the gated property. The house, which is set back a little, is still visible from the street. It’s a typical Garden District home: well-maintained, sizable with a good plot of land around it. The porch, which wraps around it, is dotted with furniture, a swing, and hanging plants. The vivid blue is a stark difference to the darkness of the Delacroix mansion.
Here, there is light. There, there is only darkness.
Here, there is life. There, well… there, there is death.
But that’s the point of tonight, I remind myself, to take the Wildblood woman and make the sacrifice. Then balance will be restored, and my family will be safe.
What’s left of them.
If it isn’t to be, if it isn’t what is destined, then none of them will be marked. But in the long history of the Tithing, every single time, the fate of the chosen one has been decided before any Delacroix even enters their lives. Tonight, just as on every other night of a Tithing ceremony, one of the Wildblood women will bear the mark of the crescent moon. When I see it, I will know she is The Sacrifice chosen by powers higher than myself or her. If it wasn’t meant to be, she wouldn’t be marked. None of them would have ever been marked.
The second Rolls Royce pulls up to park behind ours. Emmanuel turns from the house to me. I nod and step toward the gate, noticing the salt along the border, some protection spell no doubt, and trample right through it.
In order to save my family, to save Rébecca and Emmanuel and even my grandmother, I cannot care about the Wildblood Sacrifice. I cannot allow myself to see her as human. Her safety won’t matter. It doesn’t matter. She will pay The Tithe—and so will I, ultimately. It’s not as though she’ll be the only one making a sacrifice.
Something flickers in one of the windows upstairs. I look up as the curtain falls closed. A glance at Emmanuel tells me he has also seen the infinitesimal movement. He raises his eyebrows and one corner of my mouth curves upward. We’re being watched. By the sisters? By her? They know which of them will be taken tonight. They know which witch bears the mark.
