Phantom Eyes (Witch Eyes) (23 page)

“You can’t possibly expect me to buy into this,” Catherine said, with a pinched expression on her face. It didn’t surprise me that she wasn’t receptive to what was really going on here. She, like Grace, had a way of only seeing things from her own perspective. It was like once she made up her mind about how the world worked, nothing could
change her perspective.

“It’s all true,” Trey said firmly, staring down at his hands.

“You’ve seen her, then?” Catherine challenged. “This mysterious ancestor of ours with all the answers?”

Trey looked uncertain for only a moment before his jaw hardened. “Braden saw her. She attacked him. And then she fixed him.”

“How convenient,” Catherine said, “out of the goodness of her evil heart, no doubt. So he can’t decide who the
villain is supposed to be in this little story, and we’re supposed to go along with it? Who is it this time? Lucien? Her? Me? This is one ridiculous claim after the next.”

“D,” I said. “All of the above. You’re all the villains, in some way.”
But me most of all,
I thought uncomfortably.

“So what is it you
want
from this little intervention?” Catherine asked. “Turn away my demon and let your father walk all over me? Do you really think I’m that stupid?”

“You should probably stop using that word,” I said carefully. “This isn’t an intervention. It’s a coup.”

Catherine’s whole body slowed, and her head moved at a glacial pace as she tilted it towards me. “Excuse me?”

There was a mocking laugh that had been building in me since the first time I’d been met with Catherine’s arrogance. She really did think she was the center of the world, and finally I could make her understand. “Did you really think I need anything from you?” I shook my head. “Grace coming back means there’s a third side this idiotic feud. The only reason you’re here is because you’re going to help me clear off the board a little.”

“Braden, what are you planning?” Jason asked skeptically.

“That depends on what you want to hear about first. The bad part of the plan, or the even worse part?”

“Braden.” Jason’s growl made me smile. I knew that tone of exasperation. John had used it often. But thinking of John reminded me of Catherine, and the smile faded.

“I know you want to help, but you can’t.” I tried to be
as concise and to the point as I could. Jason understood brevity. He opened his mouth to argue, but I ran over his protests. “And I can’t let you interfere, either. This is going to be hard enough without the distraction. So we’re going to compromise.” I looked at Trey, biting my lip. “And this is the part where we lose them.” Trey nodded, because I’d already told him what I was planning.
Some
of what I was planning.

“I could strip the magic out of you,” I said to Catherine, “but then I’d have to do the same to him. So at least this will still be fair. I’m going to bind your powers together. You’ll still have your own power, but you won’t be able to access it unless you learn to work together. Maybe that will get you both to start using your magic a little more wisely. You’ll be able to make sure Jason can’t act against you, and he’ll be able to do the same to you.”

There was a long silence in the room. A hundred years of hatred seeped in while we were talking, and stole the air. A dozen generations of Lansing and Thorpe ghosts crowding around at the corners, screaming their dissent.

I knew there was no way they’d go for it. And I wasn’t surprised when both Jason and Catherine leapt to their feet with angry protests.

I nodded to Tre
y, who started whispering under his breath. By degrees, both Jason and Catherine’s voices dwindled down to nothing, though they were clearly still trying to shout out their disapproval. We just couldn’t hear them. The moment they both realized their voices had been stolen, Jason and Catherine paused. I thought for sure that Jason would storm from the room, and I’d have to stop him. He remained standing but he didn’t move, surprising me.

“You don’t get a choice in the matter, and there’s nothing to negotiate,” I added, watching Catherine carefully. Unlike Jason, she was fighting Trey’s spell. I could see him sweating across the table, and the net-like layers of magic crossing her mouth kept bulging outwards and then retracting, like a balloon being filled and then emptied. The spell finally snapped after almost a minute of this, which was about thirty seconds longer than I’d expected Trey to be able to hold out.

“Do you really think I’ll stand idly by and let you take over my town?” she snarled.

“I signed a contract of my own,” I said quietly, getting up and standing by the window. “This power I have? It’s only mine for a handful of days. But I’m not going to sit on it, and squander it the way Thorpes and Lansings have done for generations. I get three days in Belle Dam to do
whatever
I want. Understand this: I can, and will, make your life
very
difficult in the meantime. I will tear down every obstacle between me and what I want. It doesn’t matter if it’s people, things … or even places.”

I turned my back to the window, the view of Belle Dam and the harbor in the distance. Catherine’s snide dismissal hung in the air.

Now.

It almost seemed like the windows started shaking even before the harbor caught fire, before boats and buoys exploded into kindling and ash. In my mind’s eye I watched them like a line of matches, each explosion causing the next in line. Ships passed from grandfather to grandson ignited just as easily as the rarely used luxury boats that left the dock only rarely. Catherine and Jason had a front-row view, and I had their expressions at the moment they changed.

The building shook, the windows rattled and threatened to break, the sky became a fireball that bathed Lucien’s office in red light. The corona spread around and behind me, draped like a shroud of force and flame.

I waited long enough for their masks to crackle, then collapse. Silence wrapped its hands around their necks, choking their words. They stared, and stared, and I did not blink. I would not be the first to look away.

“I’m not playing around,” I said, barely a whisper. “Do we understand each other?”

thirty

I let them take it all in. Even Trey, who knew it was coming, was stunned into silence. In the distance, sirens screamed to life, the pitch of the fire trucks higher and longer than that of the squad cars blazing through the city.

Thirty seconds after the blast, the phones of the two most important people in town started going off in a rapid fire stream. By mutual, silent agreement, both Jason and Catherine pulled them out and shut them off. No one said anything, and the port in Belle Dam continued to burn.

My contract with Grace forbade me from altering the spells that had been laid into the town’s foundation. At a glance, that meant I couldn’t go around destroying the city building by building, because the lines of the city—the buildings, the streets, the woods—had been part of the binding spells that trapped Lucien. Break down those elements, and the spell would start to falter.

But the harbor wasn’t a building. It was an outpost on the water. Fair game.

“Lucien would like nothing more than to tear through this town and cause destruction like you’ve never seen,” I said. It was a testament to how quiet the room was that my voice carried as much as it did. “If you push me, I’ll save him the trouble.”

I relaxed my fist, and the amber glow in the office vanished as a dozen fires a mile away were instantly snuffed out. “Lucien lied about a lot of things, but he told me what the witch eyes meant. What this
power
meant.” I stared at the pair of them, struggling to remember the days when I’d hated one and feared the other. “It’s supposed to burn through you. To cripple you. That way, when the demons come, you’ll take any bargain they lay before you. You’ll become their instrument. I chose to become a different instrument instead.”

“Braden,” Jason whispered, and I saw in his eyes that he
knew.
That all his searching, all his sacrifice had been in vain. He’d found a way for me to escape and left the choice up to me. But I hadn’t chosen him. Again. “What did you promise her?”

“Just the three days,” I lied. Because as long as it was only seventy-two hours, it was manageable. I couldn’t think about what happened on the other end of the countdown. I cleared my throat. “If you cross me, I’ll destroy you, and I won’t even break a sweat. The harbor is your only warning.”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” Catherine scoffed.

I extended my hand,
pulling,
and something that was a glowing mesh of crystals, flames, and spirit slipped out of her like taffy. Catherine exhaled, her knuckles dug into the armrests, and her eyes widened as it drained out of her. I let it continue, let her feel the very power she clung to bleed out of her. Let her know how it felt to be helpless and weak.

I could feel the winter voices stirring inside me, feel the malignant part of my power rising in response to the rage Catherine stoked in me. I never knew I could want someone dead so desperately, and yet struggle so hard to keep from killing her. If I lost control now, I knew she’d never survive.

“Like I said, I can take your power if that’s what you would prefer.” I walked over to her, and leaned against the edge of the table, looking down on her. “Do you think I won’t? You’d deserve it. I can
ruin
you.”

Catherine gaped at me, and it took everything in me that I didn’t just end her life there. To see the light in her eyes die the same way she’d made John’s light disappear. “You’ll beg, but I won’t kill you,” I said finally. “Because every day, I’ll have something so much worse in store for you.”

It was a fine line. I couldn’t know with any certainty which actions would lead me down the path of Grace’s prophecy. I didn’t even know for sure that our bargain could have stopped it. What if I fell faster than expected? Could I still wake up a boy, and be a monster before the setting of the sun?

No.
I released the crystal spell and waited until the look of recognition and relief settled across Catherine’s face. I wouldn’t take her power now. That I could was enough.

“It’s after midnight,” I said, looking to the wall clock. “Two days left.”

Catherine swallowed, but wisely held her tongue.

“This is all the mercy you get. Step out of line and I will tear your life apart, piece by piece.” I glanced over my shoulder towards Jason. “Either of you. I mean it.”

“Braden,” Jason said, stepping forward. “You need—”

“The feud ends here,” I said, talking over him. “Belle Dam’s out of the demon-dealing business. You brought this war to us. Trey bargained his life for power, just as I did with Grace. When they come to collect, who’s going to pay? You? Her?” I shook my head. “Kids always suffer for the sins of their parents,” I muttered.

Before I could listen to any more of their defenses, their complaints, or their arguments, I focused on the magic churning a hole inside of me, and concentrated on the magic inside of
them.
Catherine’s magic was crystal and yet fluid like blown glass, eschewing function for appearance. It was lavender and rain, chiming and the music of flutes. It smelled of baking bread and tasted like spice.

Jason’s was a thing of function, straight, sharp lines and segments. It was bits of black and white woven together in interlocking pieces, built up over time like the bricks in a wall. Every edge was sharp as razors, dull polished steel and hot ashes. It smelled like the incense they burned at church, and the way clean smelled in a hospital. Trumpets blared and drums beat in a perfect steady rhythm.

Their powers were so different, it should have been impossible to bind them together in the way that I’d wanted, but three weeks of training with Grace had taught me new definitions of what was both possible and what was wise. It was possible that there would be some damage left in my aftermath, and at least this way I was giving Catherine and Jason the opportunity to fix it once I was gone.

Actually binding their powers together was easy when it came down to the practice of it. I braided the power together, drawing it tight down the line like it was rope. There were benefits to what I was doing—collectively, they’d be even stronger than the two of them had been on their own. If something bad
did
happen in Belle Dam, they might be better prepared for it.

If I’d had time, I might have tried to work out a way so that the connection would pass down the family line, so that the two families would always have to work together if they wanted to accomplish anything. But I still had a sinking feeling that the Thorpe line was going to end with me.

It didn’t take as long as I feared it would. Their individual strengths bound together until they were not two separate sources of power, but one split right down the middle.

After the cloud of magic had left my eyes and the room started to come back into focus, I realized my hands were on the table, and I wasn’t so much standing as I was being held up. Trey was at my side, his arms wrapped around my waist, keeping me vertical. Fatigue washed through my body like it’d been there for years and I’d only just noticed, but I managed to regain my own balance. Trey didn’t pull away.

“Is it done, then?” Catherine demanded frostily. Her skin was flushed red, as was Jason’s. I’d been so focused on what I was doing that I hadn’t stopped to wonder what the binding must have been like for them. Or how they even felt about it. I’d basically just crippled something that had sustained them both for the majority of their lives. It was almost worse than what Grace had done to me, in a way, because even though Grace had taken my power from me, she hadn’t left me with the illusion of independence I’d fostered onto them.

But I couldn’t worry about that right now. “I need your sister,” I said softly to Trey. “And there’s still a lot to do tonight.” We walked around the table and out of the room before Trey looked back and stopped us. “Hey,” he said, nodding back the way we’d come. I turned, still seeing the glowing sigils in the carpet that bound Catherine to her spot.

“Oh, right,” I said, waving my hand. The binding circle evaporated, and some of my innate power swept back into my body. It alleviated some of the fatigue I was feeling, even though I was still so tired. If only I had time to sleep for a week, I might actually feel rested. But I only had so many hours left to my life.

Every one counted.