Think, think. What else?

The caliph was trailing my parents, they’d said. Could he have been one of the people running out of the Luxe temple? It probably didn’t matter; we were hidden and warded.

Then there was Lon … He’d begged me to let him come with me that morning, and I’d foolishly told him no. Stubborn, he’d called me. He was frustrated and angry; but I insisted, and he didn’t argue. This memory kick-started another round of tears. Everything he’d done for me, the time and work, the money he’d spent. It was all for nothing. Apart from that, I was losing him, and Jupe, and I’d only just found them. My aching heart shriveled.

Years of lukewarm relationships, noncommittal and joyless, lined my stomach like a lead weight. No happiness, no friends, no love, all because of my parents.

Hiding from the law, living a lie …

While they were running around scheming up crazy rituals to harvest some stupid power from me, I put my life on hold and lived in fear and silence. I ran from their enemies— the Luxe Order, Riley Cooper … I took the brunt of it for my parents. Their sins, not mine, but I paid for them. Me! How stupid was I?

“One minute,” my father whispered to my mother as they took prearranged places in front of me.

I was out of options. Broken. They won. Nothing I could say or do would stop them.

But just as I’d accepted my fate, a light flashed. Not in my head, but out in the woods.

It floated and moved like a torch in the distance.

Flames bobbed and flickered.

It was a halo on fire.

37

I didn’t know how, and I didn’t care; hope sprang through me.

Oh, Lon, I thought, please let that be you. My parents are crazy. They killed all those people and they’re going to sacrifice me. I’m so sorry for dragging you into this mess.

As soon as I finished my thought, the fiery halo went out.

I choked on a sob.

Maybe it wasn’t him after all.

My father sauntered to the edge of chalk circle with something in his hands. Intoning a spell—not in Latin or English, but in some Æthyric language—he walked the circle. As he did, Frater Blue followed.

My father blew a breath onto the triangle that held the winged demon. The air around it got brighter. Then he walked behind me, repeating the incantation. Next was the watery female demon at the western point; he sprinkled liquid on her triangle to lighten it. Last, dirt was scattered on the demon with the barklike skin who represented earth. Not only did that triangle get brighter, but my father yelled out the spell and threw Heka down at the ground. The entire circle roared to life.

A blue glow emerged from the earth and spread over our heads like a gigantic umbrella, enclosing all of us inside a dome of light.

The circle was now fortified; it couldn’t be breached from the outside. Not by a person, or even a gunshot.

“Let us begin,” my father announced.

He dropped what he was holding and picked up the glass talon. My mother joined him and they approached me, strutting like deranged peacocks, both wearing horrible, repugnant smiles. Whatever image I’d once had of my parents, I couldn’t reconcile it with the two alien beings standing before me. My family was gone. Lost. Dead. Worse: I’d never really had one at all.

Frater Blue’s robed figure moved around the inner edge of the circle, vibrating with a low noise. A background spell, an underpainting to serve as the base for the layers of the main incantation.

My father began droning the Æthyric words to his ritual.

“Oh-ele sohnef vorereh heg-heh. Goho-he iehadah bal eh teh.”

I wriggled desperately against my bindings, then tried to rock the entire oracular bowl with my body. It gave ever so slightly, scraping against the rocky ground below me. My mother put her bare foot on top of the rim to still it. I growled at her, but neither one of them made eye contact with me.

“Koh meh mateh—”

“Fuck you!” I spat. “Fuck both of you … you … lunatics!”

“Ah-deh nah gorgan-mal—”

“I hope you both burn in hell.” Angry tears ran down my face.

Movement outside the circle caught my eye. Three dark figures appeared at the top of the rocky hill outside the circle. My heart rammed against my chest. Please …

The caliph was the first. The head of the Luxe Order— Riley’s father, Magus Zorn—was the second. And the third? Lon.

A wave of wild joy broke over me, but this was soon tempered when my mother turned her head to peer over her shoulder. She saw them, but she didn’t react. Didn’t care. All she did was nod at my father to continue. Cold terror trickled down my spine.

“Oh-reh kalheh, zod a dehess—”

The caliph was the first to approach the circle, calling out as he galloped down the hill. “Enola! Alexander! Stop this right now,” he hollered.

My parents didn’t look up. My mom just squeezed my dad’s hand harder.

“This is lunacy!” the caliph said. A ghostly shape trailed him … his guardian. They stopped at the dome of light around the circle, and the caliph reached out to touch it with his hand. The fortified barrier sparked, and he flew backward, tumbling to the ground with a yelp, his guardian disappearing when he did.

“Kahsah reh zod-heh bessmah—”

“You can’t breach it from the outside,” I shouted.

Magus Zorn, the leader of our rival order and the man I’d believed to be my enemy all these years, reached to help the caliph back on his feet. Everything was wrong. Backward. I began to feel dizzy, until my focus shifted to the gold and green light behind them.