Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic (Dowser Series) (25 page)

I shook my head. Sienna’s logic was dizzying. Had Kett and Desmond come for us? Come for me? Was I somehow complicit in all of this? Gran always said that not making a choice was a choice in itself. That choosing to turn the other cheek or look the other way wasn’t always the best choice either. Had I always known Sienna was pushing into magic she shouldn’t be touching? Magic Gran always warned was addictive? Was I an enabler? Even beyond the trinkets, were Hudson’s and Rusty’s deaths on my shoulders?

“You love me, sister,” Sienna said, interrupting the avalanche going on in my head. “I want this. This is permanent power. You know I need … need something to be mine.”

“This isn’t any way to get it.”

 
“I can feel it, like you always said you could feel magic. It burns, scorches me from the inside out. It wants. It needs me. It will fill me up, make me shiny and new.”

“That’s not … that’s not how it feels to me. That’s not how it tastes.”

“You are already culpable, Jade,” Sienna snapped. “You can’t run away and hide behind Pearl’s skirts. You think these two believe you’re innocent? They came looking for you,” my sister repeated. “To tidy up their investigation.”

“They came looking for you.” I sounded a bit more sure of myself this time.

“Me? Nothing points in my direction. But the trinkets and your magic points directly at you. When I kill them and leave the bodies in your basement, that will tighten the noose nicely.”

“No one could ever believe I would be capable of any of this. You reek of it, the stink of the magic seeps from your pores. You’ve been hiding behind my trinkets and borrowed clothing, but you’ve gone too far, Sienna. You’ll never get the stink out.”

“And Jade can’t stomach the magic,” Kett said, his voice a whispered knife through the tension building between my sister and me.

“We’ll see about that,” Sienna snarled. She snatched up the stainless steel bowl from the ground and darted over to Desmond.

“No!” I shouted, as I took my first step into the blood-soaked dirt. I stumbled, lost my flip-flop, and ended up taking my second step barefooted. The instant my foot touched the blood the ‘unliving’ magic seized me.

Sienna slashed her fingers in some sort of cutting spell across Desmond’s neck. Blood sprayed everywhere. She laughed as it splattered across her face and chest but she managed to catch some of it in the bowl.

I struggled to free my foot but ended up toppling forward onto all fours. The magic was leeching up from the ground, imprisoning me as it had done in my dream. My limbs felt sluggish. My heart raced. I twisted and turned but couldn’t get away.

Sienna danced away from Desmond, the bowl of his blood held in the palms of both hands. The wound at his neck sealed and he began to fight against the binding spell once again.

Sienna turned to me. My feet, one hand, and one knee were still pinned to the ground. Sienna reached down with one hand and yanked my head back by the hair. “Let’s test your theory, vampire,” Sienna said, and tipped the bowl toward my face.

Then I saw it. The shifter and vampire blood that had splattered across Sienna’s chest was smoking where it touched the necklace.

I stopped struggling. This off-balanced Sienna, who’d been fighting to hold me still. The bowl tipped and she released me to grab it.
 

Then I laughed.

Sienna’s mouth dropped open in a stupefied expression. Her blood-spattered black-lipstick-and-black-eyed look was difficult to pull off when looking fucking stupid. I laughed harder.

“What?” Sienna snapped.

“Look at the necklace, Sienna.”

She did.

I freed my hand from the dirt. Seeing my necklace burning off the foreign, unpalatable magic in the blood, I understood how I had sweated out of the dream spell. And why I always threw-up when I came into contact with black magic. My magic naturally rejected it. The sweating and vomiting were my body’s instinctual means of expelling the dark magic. Now that I knew that, I could use my magic like a shield to create a barrier between me and the ‘unliving’ magic Sienna was wielding. The black magic might be able to affect me, even incapacitate me briefly, but it had no way to permanently hold me. As a dowser, I was naturally drawn to magic, but now I understood I could also manipulate it.

I punched Sienna in the gut.

She collapsed forward. The bowl went flying.

Then a bunch of things happened all at once.

Desmond ripped himself from the hold of the binding spell and flung himself at Kandy, who moaned as he ripped the stakes from her hands and pulled her from the pentagram.

Sienna flung herself sideways at me and took me down to the floor. We tussled. She was way stronger than she should have been. But then, oddly, so was I. I wasn’t totally sure anymore that I could thank the yoga classes for that.

As Desmond pulled Kandy from the pentagram, a flash of dark magic swamped the room. He’d compromised the integrity of whatever spell Sienna had set up. This wave of darkness hit my brain and immediately scrambled it. I collapsed to the blood-soaked ground, aware that Sienna was also screaming and clutching her head.

I blacked out for a bit.
 

When I came to, I noted that Sienna was passed out beside me. Desmond and Kandy were down and out, off to one side of the stairs. Kett was sitting cross-legged in the pentagram.

As my vision cleared, I watched the vampire puncture the skin of his wrist with his teeth. Before the wound could seal, he squeezed a few drops of blood onto one of the points of the pentagram.

“Dowser, good,” Kett said, though his back was to me. “I thought you’d wake first. I’m keeping the unfulfilled magic at bay with my offering, but we will need your sister to close the spell. Unless you know how to do so?”

I pulled myself to my knees and attempted to straighten up. I was only half successful. “Is everyone dead?”

“They still breathe,” Kett answered.

I reached over to Sienna and yanked my necklace off over her neck. A childish gesture, but still, it was mine.

With the necklace back in its rightful place, I crawled over to Kett, careful not to intersect the pentagram. Then I remembered what he’d said about Sienna, so I crawled back to drag her with me.

I pulled my sister around until we were sprawled in front of Kett. I noticed — and quickly looked away — that his eyes had dilated fully red.

“No worries, little dowser. I’m not so far gone this time that I will need to instantly feed.” Ah, he’d noticed the look.

“She ate Rusty, didn’t she?” I asked as I looked down at my sister, crusted in blood and dirt from where I’d dragged her across the ground. Yeah, I was kind of stuck on that point. My hands and knees bore a similar dirt-blood crust, and I was certainly glad I couldn’t see my hair.

“I imagine she also would have harvested his heart and liver, if she hadn’t realized we were near,” Kett answered.

“And drinking your blood … will she turn?”

“No. It takes more than that … though …” — he tilted his head momentarily, as if puzzling through something — “it might have lasting effects.”

“Like what?”

“Perhaps it would be better to close the spell, then chat.”

“You need her blood?”

“Just a drop.”

I grabbed Sienna’s hand and hovered it over the edge of the pentagram a few inches away from Kett’s feet. I pulled out my knife and pressed the point to Sienna’s index finger. A drop of blood welled. I set the knife in my lap and hurriedly squeezed Sienna’s finger while I smeared it across the edge of the pentagram.

“Jade!” Kett shouted a warning, though he was only a foot away.

Something nasty stung my waist just below the left side of my rib cage. I dropped Sienna’s hand … actually I think it might have twisted out of my grasp.

I looked down. A slash of blood welled through a cut in my T-shirt. I pressed my hand to the wound and looked up in time to see Sienna gain her feet, my knife in her hand. “Sienna?” I whispered.

“Yes, Jade.” Sienna’s sneer was firmly in place as she then leaned over to stab me in the stomach, about an inch to the right of my navel. “Thanks for those lasting benefits, vampire,” she said. She pulled back the knife to stab me again. “Stupid, stupid, Jade. All those years of protection and unbreakable spells, and all you needed was a drop of blood to ensure the knife couldn’t be used against you. But poor little Jadey was so scared of the big, bad blood magic.”

“Thanks for taking care of that for me, sister,” I choked out though the waves of pain from my belly. That gave Sienna pause — just enough for me to grab the knife as she thrust it down and forward. I reached out — as I had when checking the wards upstairs — to find the magic of the knife. Then I sealed it with the magic glistening in my own blood that coated the blade.

Sienna screamed as the magic cemented into the knife and seared into the skin of her hand. She reeled away, attempting to shake the knife free from where it was burned to her.

I somehow stumbled to my feet. My hands were pressed to my stomach as I took a half-hearted step toward the stairs.

Sienna shook off the knife and swung back to me. As I watched helplessly, mired in more pain than I’d ever known, she pirouetted and knocked a back kick into my bleeding gut. Damn those self-defense classes we took together.

Pain exploded from my stomach and radiated through my limbs. I fell backward, unable to bring my arms up or slow my descent. I hit the east wall, smacked my head, and slid down the brick.

Sienna gasped.

I struggled to focus, to right myself. I reached up to find a handhold, only vaguely aware that the outline of the portal had somehow appeared behind me. But my hand, slippery with my own blood, slid across the brick wall and I fell hard onto one knee.

The magic in the room shifted around me in a rush. Pure, white energy flooded my senses. It came without taste … except maybe freshness. The wall that I was huddled against for support disappeared, and with a flood of golden magic, the portal opened.

A power I’d never felt before filled me, filled every pore of my body with joy … no … exhilaration. It was a physical feeling rather than an emotion.

The golden light blurred out everything in my field of vision. It buoyed me to my feet. My arms were lifted to the sides, my head thrown back. Then I was floating in it. I breathed it in, feeling strength flow through my body, my limbs. All the small aches and pains, the wounds of the last couple of days, eased. The deep knife wound on my belly knitted together and healed. The dirt and grime of Sienna’s magic was scoured from me, leaving nothing but this golden magic — and me — behind.

I felt invincible. I felt whole. I hadn’t realized I’d been missing so much of myself.

Something called from the depths of the magic, but it wasn’t a voice, just a possibility. The possibility of moving ever forward, the possibility of knowledge, the possibility of another life waiting just beyond the threshold …

Darkness moved out of the light and I realized I was facing the room, suspended a few inches above the dirt floor. The magic of the portal glowed behind and flooded past me. The darkness resolved itself into the form of Sienna, who took a few stumbling steps toward me.

Behind Sienna, Kett had flung his arms across his face and twisted away from the golden glow. Desmond was cradling Kandy in his arms, but they both gazed at the portal behind me in awe, not fear. No pain was evident in either of their faces, though they were still battered and bruised. It seemed the portal magic was only healing for me.

Sienna lunged toward me. On some instinct, I grabbed her arm as she tried to pass.

My feet touched down. Sienna yanked against my hold, at first with just a tug and then with a snarling pull. I was immovable. My hold was apparently unbreakable.

“It’s not for you, Sienna,” I murmured, knowing it to be the truth. “Only death awaits you through there.”

Sienna screamed in frustration and tried to twist away.

“No, sister,” I said again, utterly patient and understanding — so unlike me. “You must trust me.”

“Jade!” Sienna shrieked and clawed her free hand toward me. I felt her magic boil up around her. The golden light of the portal didn’t like it. I could feel it pull away, though it still lapped along the left side of my body and face — the side that wasn’t touching Sienna.

Sienna raked her clawed fingers toward me. I made no attempt to block her, though she moved as if in slow motion. Her magic hit me from the tips of her fingers — the cutting spell, I thought — and sliced across my jaw, neck, and cheek.

I locked eyes with Sienna. Hers were still entirely filled with black pupil and nothing else. Her expression was frantic, fierce, and utterly hateful. Utterly alien.

The wound on my cheek healed.

Sienna’s eyes widened and she stopped straining against me. “Let me go, Jade,” she whispered. “You have everything. Let me have this.” Her tone recalled late-night conversations under the cover of sleepovers before Sienna’s dad had died. Confessions and dreams … none of Sienna’s wishes had ever come true. I hadn’t completely realized that until this moment.

My grasp loosened and fell to Sienna’s hand. She squeezed my fingers.

“Sienna, please …” I whispered, aware on some terrible level that I had already lost my sister. My best — perhaps my only — friend.

“There is only forward for me, Jade,” Sienna said. It was her truth. It always had been, no matter how many walls she hit along the way, no matter that no one loved her as their one and only. No matter that she’d always been lost and floundering, she moved ever forward.

Sienna turned and stepped into the golden magic, our fingers still entwined.

She gasped, like she used to when we were young and experiencing something wonderful.

She turned to look back at me. The golden glow was a halo around her head and torso. Her eyes had cleared. The blood and dirt, the stink of the ‘unliving’ magic had evaporated.

I stared into my sister’s eyes and thought just for a second that I’d been wrong, that everything was going to be okay somehow.

Then Sienna said, “It’s so beautiful here,” in the softest, sweetest of tones. “Come with me, sister.” She tugged at my hand. “Come with me, Jade.”