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It felt as if all the air had been sucked out of me. I couldn’t breathe. “Does it look like—”
“No. It wasn’t the same magic that Luciana used to take your power, but it’s similar. Too similar.”
Chris’ email came to mind. I couldn’t fathom it, but I still had to ask. “Do you think Luciana’s back? That she’s somehow still alive?”
“No! How could you even think that?”
“I got an email from Chris about the demon activity around St. Ailbe’s. He asked me if I thought it was possible, and—”
“Wait a second. What did you say?” Claudia’s voice grew cold.
“Yeah. I felt the same way when I heard,” I said. “We’re heading back in the morning. Apparently, after Meredith’s ceremony, demon attacks started amping up at St. Ailbe’s and no one told us.”
“I know that every Alpha handles their own pack, but if there was demonic activity in the area, someone should’ve told me. I might not be ready to take up the coven, but that’s my land. My responsibility.” Her tone was deeper than normal with outrage, and I was glad I wasn’t the only one a little pissed at being kept in the dark. “It can’t be a coincidence that demons are showing up where Luciana did her magic.”
“My thoughts exactly.” I was glad we were on the same page. It made me feel more confident.
Claudia was quiet for a second. “When I went back to the compound after the Weres burned it down, the land felt evil. I did some clearing magic, but it wasn’t working. I tried everything I knew. Eventually I gave up. I assumed the land would be tainted forever and it didn’t seem worth the trouble to cleanse it. The land is in my name now, and I’m not going to let anyone build there again. So I didn’t think it mattered if evil lingered on that land, but what if I missed something? What if Luciana left some magic brewing somewhere that didn’t burn? I didn’t—” A hiss came through the line as she sighed. “I couldn’t force myself to step into the rubble of her house to make sure it fully burned.”
“But Luciana herself can’t come back, right? I mean—the idea of zombie-demon Luciana coming after us is the stuff nightmares are made of.”
Claudia laughed for the first time. “No. That’s not happening, but I love your imagination, prima. You can let that particular worry go. Luciana’s dead. Really, she was dead before we saw her in Santa Fe. The demon had full control of her by then.”
“So you’re saying you’re sure it’s not Luciana.” I barely killed her the first time, and if I had to do it over, I wasn’t sure what I’d do differently. Dead was dead, as far as I knew.
“Sí. Por seguro. Where she went, there’s no coming back from.”
“That’s excellent news.” But it left a huge question. If Luciana didn’t murder Muraco, then who did? Or maybe the better question was—what killed him? “Do you think it’s the demon that was possessing Luciana? Could it have come fully through to our realm somehow?”
“Possibly. Or she could’ve let other demons out. Or maybe even another witch that she’d been teaching? And I haven’t found the black mages in Peru yet. The ones who taught Luciana. That’s another very real possibility.”
“Well that’s fan-fucking-tastic news.” I chewed on my lip as I thought about whether or not to bring up my visions, but I had to tell her. Everything was connected. I wasn’t sure how yet, but Claudia might be able to help figure it out. “There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
“My visions have been off. Until today, I hadn’t been able to see anything at all for a couple weeks. And then earlier today, all I saw was black. Like there was nothing. And I felt fear and despair and pretty much every other horrible emotion.” I paused for a second. “What do you think that means?” It couldn’t be the future, could it? Was I seeing the end of everything?
The Bimbo cakes I’d eaten were threatening to make a reappearance and I swallowed hard.
“I don’t know what it means,” Claudia said. “But it can’t be good. I just…”
I pressed my forehead against one of the balcony rails and waited for her to finish. She was quiet for a while and I checked the phone to make sure the call hadn’t dropped, but she was still there. I could just barely hear her footsteps as she paced around the room.
“I should never have left without fully clearing the compound,” she said finally. “I’m such an idiot.”
“No. If that’s true, then I shouldn’t have left either. I never even thought about going back there to check on it.” The place burned, Luciana was dead, and I never wanted to step foot back on that land. Both of us had earned a honeymoon, damn it. “You said yourself that you tried everything you could think of. You couldn’t know that this would happen.”
Dastien slipped out of the house. He sat behind me, threading his legs through the rungs next to mine. He rested his chin on my head, and I relaxed back into him, taking comfort in his closeness. “If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go by the compound and try clearing it when I get back. I can find anything left in the ruins of Luciana’s house just as well as you could.” I couldn’t believe I was offering this up, but if she was that worried, then I had to check it out.
“I don’t know. I think anyone digging in there is a bad idea, especially you.” She sighed. “This is a mess. And I still can’t believe that someone got to Muraco…”
“Yeah, but Muraco was old,” I said. “He couldn’t have been that hard to kill. Don’t you think—”
Dastien stiffened at my words at the same time Claudia cut me off. “Muraco wasn’t an easy target.”
“He wasn’t?” He’d always looked frail to me.
No! Dastien said.
