Page 24

"Those are two different things, Hazel. Only one of them is a good plan."

My sigils came up my arms before I told them to.

I want to be honest about what I thought was going to happen, because I've had a long time to be embarrassed about it. I'd pinned twelve High Priests to a wall eleven days ago. I'd just pulled a forest out of a hundred-year-old lawn and folded a hundred imps in half with it. I was the most dangerous thing in Ohio for a minute and a half and I had believed in my own powers.

I stupidly thought I could take her.

I opened my hands and called the roots.

They answered my call eagerly, too. That's the cruelest part. The ground split for me again in four places, out of which four ropes of pale roots came up through the gravel fast enough to whistle through the air. They went for my grandmother from four directions at once like a closing fist.

Danika lifted one finger. Just one.

The roots stopped.

They stopped, six inches from her, hanging in the air quivering like a desperate fish fighting to get off the hook. She looked at them with mild interest, adding insult to injury.

"Your mother could do this before she was nineteen," she informed me, like in passing.

Then she closed her hand and my magic slammed back into me.

There is no describing the feeling I experienced properly. My magic wasn't blocked or countered or drained from my body. She took hold of it and pushed it back at me. Everything I'd sent out came back up my arms and into my chest at once, overwhelming me. It was like swallowing a lit match while gasping for air. I went down on one knee in the gravel with both arms wrapped around my own ribs and every sigil on my body flaring white. I was burning up from the inside out.

"Hazel!" Sissily shouted my name, sounding scared.

"Stay back." I gasped. I couldn't get air in my lungs to yell at her louder. It sounded more like a whisper than a shout. "Sissily, stay back…"

A large ball of fire went past my head before I finished the sentence.

My best friend, five foot nothing in a cardigan, threw everything she had at the strongest witch on this continent because I was curled into a ball on the ground gaping like a fish out of water. The whole lawn lit up orange. To be fair, it was an extremely impressive display of power. It would've made a huge difference against anything but my grandmother.

Danika caught it like it was nothing.

She turned her wrist with all the elegance of a queen and the flame folded in on itself like a bedsheet. The magic went out with the sound of a closing book. Then she lifted the same hand, and Sissily rose off the gravel by about a foot. My best friend stayed there, kicking, with her arms pinned at her sides and her ponytail hanging straight down.

"Put her down." I got one foot under me. "Put her down, Danika, or Hecate help me one of us will be dying tonight. I said, put her down…"

"Look at yourself first." My grandmother gestured at me with her other hand, displeasure twisting her mouth.

With a frown, I looked. I was pretty sure she was not pointing out my fashion choice for the evening.

The gold glow was gone. Every sigil on my forearms had snuffed out the instant Sissily's feet left the ground, and the four roots lying dead on the gravel around my grandmother had gone gray. There was not one ounce of power left anywhere in my body either.

Just me. Bare feet. Torn shirt. Blood under my nails and demon gunk crusted up to my elbows.

"There it is," Danika said softly.

My stomach dropped to my feet, so I did the one thing I did best when faced with her.

I glared.

If looks could kill I'd be the deadliest creature in all the realms.

Because Danika wasn't gloating. That's what I keep going back to. There was no triumph in it at all. She said it the way a doctor says their findings when the results come back and confirm exactly what they were afraid of.

"I wondered," she went on, oblivious to my inner turmoil. "In the ritual chamber, with the human on his knees. I thought perhaps it was shock. But it's consistent with you, isn't it? You are the most powerful thing our bloodline has produced in four hundred years, and you cannot hold a candle when somebody you care about is in peril." If I didn't know better, I would've said there was hurt lurking behind those cold green eyes. Maybe because my magic had no problem working when Danika was the one in peril, or slapping her against the wall like a fly.

"Let go of my friend." Ignoring her rambling, I fisted my hands to hide that they were shaking.