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“Especially when your own blood is handy.” Tavish waved at Dora, still huddling almost behind the door.
But Dora was?Pity whispered through me. No wonder she was miserable.
Oddly Dora lifted her camera, shut her eyes, and snapped a couple of shots of Tavish. “The boys will be dead before the ritual is completed,” she said in a distant voice. “You will be too late to save them.”
“Tell me, lass,” he said softly.
The camera flashed again. “If you pass the threshold before the ritual starts, their future changes.”
“What to?”
Her eyes snapped open as she lowered the camera and said with a touch of exasperation, “I can’t seeit until it changes; you know that.”
I groaned in disbelief. “Tavish, she’s lying to make you agree.”
Tavish lifted his gaze to mine, and then his eyes flickered to Auntie behind me. “Now I ken why you’re here, Malia, and why this time you risk all to take other than your own kin. Your lassie here has inherited the gift of prophecy given to you by Zeus.”
“Yes.” Auntie sounded both proud and regretful. “It is over a century since a sibyl was last born to my blood, and none before has ever had such easy use of His gift. The digital camera is a glorious invention; seeingthrough it is less painful than removing one’s eyes.”
“Tavish.” I struggled against Auntie’s constricting tail. “C’mon, they’re trying to scam you.”
“Nae, doll.” He shook his head. “Sibyls have to speak of that which they see, nae matter even if the speaking will lead them to harm. If the lassie says the boys will die if I di
“Theodora,” Auntie said, “do you have it?”
Dora moved to a small table and picked up a halter of golden rope, knocking off the computer game she’d shown me earlier as she did. She carefully put the game back on the table next to the glossy mag, her fingers gently lingering on her wedding picture as if she were reluctant to let it go. Then she held up the golden halter to show Tavish.
He gave a derisive snort. “I offer you my word, Malia. There is nae need to bind me to your servitude.”
“You do not think I would trust your kelpie half to be compelled by your word alone?” She sounded like he must really think her stupid. “It is too wylde and easily lost to the lure of the water.” Which was news to me. I hadn’t realized Tavish’s other shape wasn’t just him in another form, but judging by the frustration in Tavish’s eyes, she was right, and he’d been hoping she wouldn’t know.
Tension thickened the air, and I thought we’d hit some sort of supernatural Mexican standoff—
The sudden sting of fangs in my throat startled me more than any actual pain. I yelped in surprise, and stupidly thought, Damn, she’s bitten me.
“With my venom in her body, kelpie,” Aunt Snaky said, “the girl will die before dawn, even with her sidhe blood. Agree, and I will give you the antidote.”
Sick fear curdled my belly. I swallowed and pushed it away. I frowned down at Auntie’s red-and-black scaly tail wrapped around me. She had the antidote, but to get it, Tavish had to let her bind him with the golden halter. But if he was bound, then Auntie would hold all the aces, and I’d bet all of Dora’s fortune that that would end up with Tavish, me, and more horrifically, the boys dead. Because no way was Aunt Snaky going to say Thank youand wish us good health after her di
“Die before dawn’s a bit dramatic, isn’t it?” I tilted my head back to look up at Auntie. Her hair had dropped out, and her features appeared to have melted, leaving her head doing a good impersonation of an egg, if eggs had red-and-black scales. Very attractive. “Don’t s’pose you could be more specific about how much time I’ve got left?”
She frowned at me, then looked back at Tavish. “Do you agree, kelpie?”
In answer, Tavish screamed with rage and smacked his palms against the Ward. His magic rolled over me like the pressure wave after an explosion. My ears popped painfully, but the Ward didn’t break, just flashed the vivid crimson of an anti- crackgrid and absorbed all the juice he’d thrown at it.
“Kelpie, you ca
He curled his hands into frustrated fists and dropped his arms. Then he smiled. It was his kelpie smile full of Charm, a predator’s smile, but one that cajoled and tempted and beguiled. A smile that pledged to take all my sorrow, all my loss, all my hurt and leave my soul light and pure and at peace, if I would only come to him, and join with him in the depths . . .I clawed at the scaly tail that imprisoned me, fighting to go to him, to be with him—
“Theodora! Stop!”
Auntie’s shout broke the Charm-net Tavish had caught me in, and I sagged in her hold, bereft and despairing as if I’d lost something precious. The sound of sobs made me look up, and I blinked at Dora. She was on her knees at the front door, grief-stricken tears streaming down her face, and the hand with the gold halter stretched out to Tavish, frozen with her fingers only millimeters away from the Ward. Damn, he’d almost gotten her to break it. But the Ward was still there—An idea burned bright as dragon’s fire in my mind.
“You are also time wasting, kelpie,” Aunt Snaky said sharply. “Do you agree?”
“Hey, Tavish,” I called, “speaking of time wasting, I thought you said my soul looked like rainbows this morning?”
Tavish shook himself like a horse shedding water and sent me a puzzled look. “What, doll?”
Gods, give the kelpie a clue.He needed to get in, and the Ward needed to disappear. So I’d do my party trick. Simple. “Rainbows, and pixie dust, remember?” I said, pointedly.
His dark-pewter eyes showed a shocked rim of white as he caught on. “Nae, doll, you ca
Two boys’ lives were at stake. “We can but try,” I muttered, and focusedon the Ward . . .
I calledit.
For a second, nothing happened, and my stomach clenched in desperation. Then the Ward glowed like hot embers. Auntie hissed and her tail tightened round me, compressing painfully. The Ward melted from the doorframe and flooded like molten lava across the tiled floor toward me. She hissed louder, but just as she started to jerk me away, the Ward streamed over my legs—
—heat blazed through my veins, seared the breath from my lungs, shriveled the flesh on my bones—
And I fell into a furnace of fiery flames.
I CLIMBED MYway back to consciousness and blinked as the blurred writing in front of my nose rearranged itself into something legible: Round Wire Bright Nails, Steel–Self Color, 6.00 × 6 inch, 1-kg pack. I blinked again, tried to ignore the spike of pain that felt like a dwarf was hammering one of the six-inch nails into my brain, and sca
Good news: I wasn’t dead. Yet. My head was the only thing that was hurting. And the Ward on the front door was now bubbling away inside me like a malevolent spell in a black witch’s cauldron.
Bad news: Sucking up the Ward had killed my phone, there were still two kids hiding out in Aunt Snaky’s swimming pool, and there was no sign of the gold halter, so Tavish could be fishing the boys up for her di
Good news: Tavish had said Aunt Snaky was near shedding her skin, and I’d gotten the impression that if she did it when the boys weren’t around, they’d be safe. Tavish was tricky enough to play for time.
Bad news: If the boys weren’t around, Auntie would eat Dora. And I wasn’t sure if Dora wasn’t as much victim as baddie in all this. And whether her camera was a sort of weird “sibyl accessory” or not, she’d obviously thought getting me involved was going to somehow save her.