House Of Ivy And Sorrow Part 25

"No . . ." But one look out the window proves Nana's right. The light is changing to an unnatural, sickly orange. Thunder rumbles, and with it comes a strange noise that sounds like someone is torturing animals. Then I realize what it is. "The alarms."

"He's trying to take-" Nana puts a handkerchief over her mouth. And then she coughs, so hard and so long I worry she'll suffocate. The speck of black on the white cloth grows until it stains her fingers. Her hand shakes in mine, frail and exhausted. Death waits for her, so close it seeps through the cracks in our house and chills even me.

I wish I could force back the tears. Nana has never really looked young, but she's always been strong. As a child, I remember her carrying me to my room if I fell asleep reading by the fire. She taught me how to hunt foxes and rabbits, where to find the best reptiles and insects. I could never outrun her, even when I ran my fastest. Everything about her is strength. I hardly recognize her this way.

"Don't die!" I cry.

"Josephine." Her hand comes over mine. It feels like if I push too hard I'll break right through her skin. "Cut."

I snap my head up, and my eyes meet hers. "Cut?"

She nods.

I gulp down another sob and take the letter opener from my desk. Sliding the trash can up next to us, I take her wrist but then hesitate. It feels wrong to hurt her, to let her bleed, but she said it helps ease the pain. She deserves at least that, even if she . . .

The knife slides across her wrist with little resistance, like cutting into whipped cream. Black blood bursts from her veins with an unpleasant gurgle. It spews far too quickly, as if there is more than her body can hold. The smell is sickly sweet and bitter at once, sugar and bile, life and decay.

Nana lets out a long sigh. "Better."

"What do you feel, Nana?" I ask.

She purses her lips. "It's not good, my dear. We must maintain the barrier. If he uses all his magic on that, then you can make sure he doesn't get any more by-"

"Wait." I shake my head, already knowing where she's going. "No. I won't do that. I can't do that. No one here can do that."

"What?" Gwen says, her voice quiet.

I close my eyes, the idea too horrible. "She wants us to kill her, so he can't get any more power."

Everyone gasps.

"That would be unpardonable," Prudence says. "To kill our own."

"It won't work anyway," I say. "He already has more than enough." The sky screams again, as if to emphasize my point.

Nana's eyes fill with tears. "This will not do. He can't have you."

No one speaks, even after she lies back, spent. Prudence has her hand over her mouth, horror in her steely eyes. Maggie holds on to her mom, and Tessa blinks back tears. Kat and Gwen stare at me, waiting.

I force down the freak-out. I don't have time to freak out. I have to fix this before it's too late. Stand tall. Focus on the task at hand. Treasure the time I have. "He won't win. We'll figure this out. Keep reading."

Blank stares.

"I said keep reading! We need to find an answer now."

They go back to their books. Every page flip sounds frantic, and I push as fast as my eyes will go. There has to be something. This can't be the end. But as the hours pa.s.s, the storm grows worse, and the alarms at the barrier are the only other sound in the attic. My mind keeps going back to Levi, to his claim that Cursing me would be the only way.

Please don't let him be right.

"Here!" Prudence about jumps from her seat, and hope blossoms inside me. "In Astrid Hemlock's history, it says: *There is far more capacity to hold magic than some realize. As I have studied and grown in magic, it has grown in me. The body is only one way in which we can store magic, but there is another, more powerful way: storing it in your soul.'"

"In your soul?" The wheels turn, Levi's shadowy aura at the forefront of my mind. He said Shadows were born with a little magic. Witches aren't-we immediately absorb it from the ground when we're born. Maybe that's why his is stronger, because it's stored in his soul. "Does she say how to do that?"

"Not in detail." Prudence turns the page. "All she says is: *Once I found the seat of my soul, it was a simple matter to transfer my magic there. My power is unmatched, and no witch challenges our family's stake in this land.'"

I sigh. It's not much information, but it's better than nothing. At least it gives me some other option that doesn't involve Levi Cursing me. "Maybe I can figure out how to do that."

No one seems very convinced, but Nana smiles. "If anyone could do it, you could, my dear."

I try to smile back. "Just have to find the seat of my soul, right?"

"What does that even mean? Like where your soul is inside of you?" Gwen asks.

"I guess." I sit on the floor and close my eyes, focusing on the magic that permeates every inch of this house. It's dark and warm, like melted chocolate coating my lungs. I let it fill me until I'm practically buzzing on it.

"What are you doing?" Kat asks.

"Absorbing magic," Maggie answers for me. "Are you full yet?"

"To the brim." I put my hand to my head, dizzy from trying to get more than I can hold. "There's no where else for it to go."

"Try to put it in your heart?" Gwen offers with a cringe. "Aren't souls in your heart or something?"

"Yeah . . . don't think so," Kat says.

"Give me some time," I say. "Tessa, Prudence, Maggie, if you could try to fortify the barriers . . ."

"Of course." Prudence stands with her sister and niece. "He won't get through on our watch."

"Thanks." I close my eyes. The magic swirls around me, but all I can do is breathe it in and out. I'm so full I feel like I could burst. Try as I might, there doesn't seem to be a way to put it in my soul.

Levi's magic bounces all around him, like an aura of power. Maybe that's what it looks like when it's in your soul, so I try to push it out while hanging on to it. Doesn't work. Then I attempt visualizing it in my soul, all comfy and powerful. I even get desperate enough to try stuffing it in my heart like Gwen suggested.

Hours go by. I smell dinner, salty and savory, downstairs. They try to get me to go with them, but I stay in the attic, determined to find a way. Because if this doesn't work, then all I have is Levi. I'm already out of time as it is.

My head doesn't feel right from breathing in magic for so long. I lay back, exhausted. "This is ridiculous."

And then I'm laughing, because "ridiculous" sounds hilarious. Which rhymes! I think.

Josephine.

No one spoke my name, but I know I heard it. I hold my breath, straining to listen for it again. Desperate to hear it, as if it means I've made progress.

Josephine.

Whatever it is, it sounds as old as the earth itself. It comes from all around me, in the air and the walls, the furniture and histories. It even comes from inside me, and that's when I gasp. I know this voice like I know my mother's.

This is magic.

My heart leaps as I feel its power crackling everywhere, like a million mini lightning storms and tornados in constant motion. It smiles at me, knowing that it has my full attention. This has to be it. I've somehow gotten the magic to my soul, and now I'll be able to save Nana and avenge my mother and make everything all better.

Come.

It calls, wrapping around me like a queen's mantle. Promises-it has promises of power and safety and happiness. Here are my answers! This is true power, and with it I will destroy the Shadows and make the Blacks pay for their crimes. I will teach every witching family not to mess with the Hemlocks.

Mine. Forever.

I pause, realization was.h.i.+ng over me in all its cold truth. Before I can talk myself out of it, I force myself to leave the room. Rus.h.i.+ng down the iron stairs, I rub my arms, which are ice. I sit at the kitchen table, silent and hopeless. This is not how it's supposed to end, not after how hard we've fought and how much we've learned.

"Give up?" Prudence asks.

I shake my head. "I found the power Astrid was talking about."

Gwen looks so hopeful, and it breaks my heart. "Does that mean you can-?"

"No. I can't beat him. Letting the magic into your soul . . . that's Consumption, total loss of control to the darkness. It almost had me." I hang my head, ashamed. "I almost let it take me so I could stop him."

Everyone at the table slumps. Even the house seems to sag a little. Nana puts her hand on mine. "That, I will never allow you to do. Not to save me or anyone."

I nod, though in my heart I know there is no way I can let Nana die. Maybe I can't be Consumed, but there is still the Curse.

FORTY-ONE.

Astrid Hemlock was not a good witch. I pore over her history all night, hoping to find some glimmer of hope, something to convince me that I don't have to find Levi. Maybe she just did it wrong. Maybe there is a loophole, a way to be unConsumed. But it only gets worse and worse with each page. She was obsessed with her land, with the idea that people were trying to take it. She even thought the nearby settlers would kidnap her daughters if they stepped a foot out of her tightly woven magical barrier. But it was never enough. Never.

The villagers are gone, consumed by plague. They won't bother us anymore.

I had no choice but to burn down the castle. No one claims my land.

An old man begged for food, but I knew he was a spy. I used his eyes to guard our gate.

I cursed the ground to only grow weeds, that way no one will settle here.

I poisoned the water.

I found a child in the gardens . . .

On and on it goes, Astrid laying waste to the European countryside ages ago. I can't help but feel shame that I'm related to this woman, this monster. It isn't any wonder that people feared witchcraft, what with this kind of stuff going on. Why is it always the bad apples that define a group?

Then I feel horrible, because I judge Levi based on his father all the time.

When Astrid's pages end, I search for her daughters' histories. I find Persephone's first, and after a quick sleeping-spell reversal I'm in. What I find in this book is worse.

Mother is mad. She has not had a sound mind for years, and I know from reading other histories that she's succ.u.mbed to Consumption. She doesn't notice how it's eating her away. Her once-beautiful hair is thin, nearly gone. Her fingers are black and rotting, as are her feet and teeth. In her sleep, when she sleeps, she moans and cries in pain. I suspect the magic is eating away her insides in return for taking more than she should.

Nothing in the world is worth her agony, and yet she won't see reason.

Demeter and I hide in our room most days now. We know there is nothing we can do but wait for the magic to kill her. Then we'll be free, and perhaps we can heal this land after she is gone, though it may take the rest of our lives to do it.

Eaten alive by magic. This does not sound at all pleasant. Nor does the evil, murdering insanity part. I may as well hand myself over to Jeff Anderson.

Or Levi.

The thought makes my heart shrivel. This should not be the better option, but as I watch Nana sleep in the recliner beside me I can't imagine my life without her. And honestly, I have no chance of survival anyway, even if she wants to believe it. The Blacks probably wouldn't let any witnesses live, which means Gwen, Kat, my father, and the Crafts are dead. I would be forced to live on, because I don't doubt what Levi said about his dad wanting to leech off me for as long as possible. And the idea of Sylvia Black in my house . . . it makes my blood boil.

Surely being Cursed by Levi would be better than that fate. If anything, at least my friends would live. Nana would kill me if she knew what I was thinking, but what else can I do?

In the silence of early morning, my phone chirping sounds very loud. It's a text from Winn.

Can you come over?

"s.h.i.+t."

"Who is it?" Kat asks.

"Winn. But I can't leave now. . . ."

"Go," Gwen says from the floor, where she, Kat, and Maggie pa.s.sed out a few hours ago.

"But-"

"Go." Kat rolls over. "Sometimes the answers come when you stop looking for them. Go work things out with your boyfriend. Relax a little. We'll call if Nana gets worse, okay?"

I nod slowly, but only because this is the perfect excuse to go find Levi. If I tell any of them my plan-they'll try to talk me out of it. But my decision is made.

"We'll scour the spell books for anything that might ease her pain," Tessa chimes in from the window seat, where she and Pru are still reading. "We might not be able to cure her, but maybe we can give her more time."

"Take a little break, sweetie," Nana whispers. "I'm not dead yet."

"Okay." I suck in the tears as I text Winn.

Sorry. Sick again.

My stomach twists at the thought that these could be my last words to him, that everything is about to change. I care about him so much, but how can I possibly be with him when I'll be tied to Levi for the rest of my life? It's not fair to Winn, even though it feels like my heart is shriveling up inside me.

When I get downstairs, my dad is at the kitchen table nursing a cup of coffee. He looks concerned as he takes me in. "Did you sleep at all?"

I shake my head.