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“Doesn’t mean I can’t get answers from you first,” Lucas said darkly.
He cocked his head, and Chloe stepped forward with the Mentalist Wand raised. Lucas dropped his arm. Fake Mandy rose into the air, her back pressed firmly against the wall. Chloe used her telekinesis to pin her there, until her toes dangled off the ground.
“Who are you, really?” Chloe demanded, the end of her Wand glowing brighter than ever before. Now that the fae amulet wasn’t blocking their magic, Talia and Chloe could use teleinsight to get inside Fake Mandy’s head. Only this time, their spell was stronger, because they used their power to force Fake Mandy to utter her own confession.
She had no choice but to answer in a rasping voice, “Magnus Knight.”
My heart should’ve stopped in my chest. I should’ve felt the world tilt on its axis and experienced it all come crumbling down. Instead, all I could think was that it made perfect sense.
If there was anyone in this coven as bad as the priestesses, it was this man. He was the Alchemist behind nightshade, the one who’d been working with Priestess Stella to try to obtain the Alchemy Wand from the Crock of Death. He’d killed so many innocent people to do it. The priestesses had discarded him after he’d failed, but clearly they’d found another use for him.
I recalled the last time we’d seen Magnus. He had been throwing up behind a dumpster in an alleyway. It was no surprise that he’d made some kind of deal with the priestesses.
I couldn’t believe we’d let this man into our home! For months, he lived alongside us, attended our Yule celebration and baby shower, only for him to do the unthinkable and take our son when our guard was down.
It was all coming together. We’d gotten into Octavia Falls so easily the night we rescued Mandy and Tate. We’d written it off as a result of the Festival of Chosen, but all this time, the priestesses had actually wanted us to rescue them, so that they had a man on the inside. The only other option the priestesses had was to set the girls free, but by that point, Tate had already been captured, and they knew we’d come for her regardless. If they let Tate and Mandy escape, we’d have suspected something for sure.
The priestesses only came for us later that night when we’d broken into the school. They’d wanted us to rescue the girls, but they hadn’t intended for us to find the Oaken Wands.
“Where’s the real Mandy?” Lucas growled.
Magnus laughed in Mandy’s voice. “In a holding cell somewhere.”
His apathy for one of my friends’ lives made me want to snap his neck. Tendrils of magic twisted out of my fingertips again, curling around Magnus’s throat.
“Don’t kill him yet,” Lucas warned.
“I’m not going to kill him,” I said. “I want to look into his real eyes before he dies.”
The Alchemy magic pulsing through his veins was strong. I sensed traces of fae magic mixed in with the potion he’d taken to disguise himself as Mandy. The priestesses had obviously supplied him with rare herbs to keep up the charade. I curled my magic tightly around his, and I felt the spell snap.
His limbs elongated, and his hair shortened. The softness of his jaw morphed into sharper features, until it was not an image of Mandy hanging in front of us, but Magnus.
“We should’ve known it was you!” Chloe growled. “We read your mind at Yule. We should’ve been able to tell you were deceiving us.”
“The amulet disguises me under all circumstances,” Magnus sneered. “Even your little party trick couldn’t expose me. All I had to do was come up with something you’d believe, so you didn’t keep digging. I did my homework before I infiltrated your little safe house. I knew Mandy was close with that Amy girl who burned on the pyre. Every time I mentioned her, you all backed down.”
I thought of the morning of Yule—how he had mentioned her when I’d come into his room for help with my gift. He’d said Amy had taught him the tea we’d made for Talia, but that wasn’t true. Magnus knew the spell because he was an experienced Alchemist. I should’ve known something was up when he pretended as if Mandy had lost all her jewelry-making supplies when she left Octavia Falls. She wouldn’t have let all that leave her stash.
“The amulet is why I struggled to gather intel on the priestesses,” Talia realized. “Because you were involved, but my visions couldn’t see past the fae spell.”
Magnus gave a chilling laugh. “Of course. Not even the power of a Seer could expose me.”
“You’ve been here all this time, haven’t you?” I demanded. “You’ve been posing as Mandy since the night we found you in Lilian’s basement last November.”
Magnus strained against the wall, but he was weak compared to the Mentalist Wand. “Yes.”
“This never should have happened,” Onyx insisted. “How did he trick our wards?”
“He didn’t have to,” Professor Warren said hollowly. “We invited him in and led him through.”
Lucas’s face turned red in rage as he stared down Magnus. “What was your objective? Why hang around so fucking long?”
“The priestesses made me a deal,” Magnus replied. “If I infiltrated your safe house and brought back the Oaken Wands, they would restore me to my former glory—get my businesses back up and running and put me in a position of power within the coven once again. I was meant to bide my time until you found all the Wands, then take them all, and return them to the priestesses.”
“Then why bother taking a child?” Verla snapped.
“Priorities shifted,” Magnus said. “When I found out the Curse Breaker was pregnant with demigods, I consulted with the priestesses.”
