CHAPTER 9

“James!” Mom gasped, and then there was total confusion as everyone started talking at once.

“What’s he doing here?” Aislinn barked, just as Izzy laid her hand on my arm and said, “Who are those guys?”

“It’s—it’s my dad,” I said, my voice breaking. And then I was shoving past Aislinn to throw my arms around Dad’s neck.

His own arms came up to weakly encircle me. “Sophie,” he murmured against my hair. “Sophie.”

It was almost too good to believe, that he could be standing here, that Cal could be next to him. I squeezed my dad tight, tears spilling onto his shirt collar. “You’re okay,” I sobbed. “You’re okay.”

He gave a raspy chuckle. “More or less. Thanks to Cal, here.”

I pulled back. Dad’s eyes were red, and he looked like death warmed over. And the purple markings swirling all over his skin, signs of the Removal, were just as devastating to see as they’d been the night he’d gotten them.

But he was there, and that was all that mattered. My eyes slid over to Cal, who still hovered uncertainly beside Dad. “You’re okay, too,” I said softly, and he smiled. Well, he did that weird lip quirk that Cal called a smile. “Yeah,” was all he said, but there was a lot of meaning behind that one word. Relief and happiness flooded through me, and I took a step forward, wanting to hug him, too. But for some reason, at the last moment, I just reached out and squeezed his arm. “I’m glad.”

His hand briefly covered mine, his touch rough and warm. I could feel a blush spreading up from my chest, so I turned back to Dad. “How did you get here? Where have you been?”

“Can we go somewhere less…transitory to discuss this?” he asked, gesturing around the hallway. I felt like I might burst into tears all over again. Transitory. God, I’d missed him so much.

I’m pretty sure Aislinn was about to tell him no, but Mom stepped forward. “Of course. We can talk in the living room.” For a moment, my parents held each other’s gaze, and while normally your parents gazing at each other is kind of gross, I couldn’t help but smile.

Like every room in the Brannick house, the living room was practically empty. There was a couch that seemed slightly better than the monstrosity in the War Room, and Dad and Cal sat there. I sat on Dad’s other side, while Aislinn and Izzy hung out in the doorway, and Mom perched on the edge of the sofa nearest me.

Dad sighed, and his hand trembled a little as he laid it on mine. “I can’t begin to say how good it is to see you.”

I laced my fingers with his. “Same here. I mean, with me seeing you, obviously.”

Smiling, Dad squeezed my hand. “Yes, I deduced as much.”

“How did you find this place?” Aislinn asked, pretty much killing any hope for a nice family moment. “It’s warded against your kind.”

“There’s a spot about three feet across in the northwest corner,” Cal answered. “The wards are broken there. I can fix them if you want.”

Aislinn was obviously taken aback, but she recovered quickly. “No need. I’ll send Finley out to redo it tomorrow morning.” Since the Brannicks were descended from a powerful White Witch, some of them still had residual powers. Apparently, this was the case with Finley. “You can go help her,” Aislinn added, to Izzy. “It’s time you learned to make wards.”

“As for how we found you,” Dad said, “it wasn’t easy. Cal told me that he’d sent you to the Brannicks, but when he tried to use his magic to get a lock on you…”

“It was like you had just disappeared,” Cal said. “No locator spell worked, no tracing hex.”

“It was the Itineris,” I explained. “It didn’t know what to do with me now that I’m de-magicked.”

Dad nodded. “I suspected as much. Anyway, we’ve spent the past few weeks making our way here. Cal didn’t think it was wise for me to travel by Itineris in my…current state, so I’m afraid we’ve had to travel the old-fashioned way.”

“It took you three weeks to fly from England to Tennessee?” Aislinn asked, raising an eyebrow.

“We didn’t come here right away,” Cal answered, crossing his arms over his chest, a scowl on his face. “There was a lot of other stuff to deal with.”

“What kind of stuff?” I asked.

Dad rose to his feet and started to pace. “After the Brannicks and L’Occhio di Dio attacked Council Headquarters in the spring, there were only five Council members left.”

“That wasn’t us,” Aislinn retorted. “Or The Eye, for that matter.”

Dad stopped his pacing and stared at her. “What?”

Briefly, Aislinn told Dad the same story she’d told me last night, about suspecting that the Casnoffs had set the fire themselves, only to blame it on their enemies. When she was done, Dad seemed to have aged ten years. “I wish I could say that that’s preposterous. But after what I’ve seen Lara Casnoff do…In any case, the other three members of the Council were killed when Thorne Abbey was destroyed.”

I’d seen one of those three, Kristopher, killed, but it was a shock to learn the other two, Elizabeth and Roderick, were gone, too. “Lara and I are the only members still remaining,” Dad continued. “I’m”—he gestured to his tattoos—“not exactly useful. I’m also dead.”

“What?”

“A few days after Thorne Abbey burned down, Lara Casnoff called a huge meeting in London at the mansion of some bigwig warlock,” Cal said to me. “I was able to do an invisibility spell and get in. There must have been hundreds of Prodigium there. Anyway, that’s where Lara made the big announcement that your dad had been murdered by The Eye.” He nodded toward Aislinn. “With the help of the Brannicks.”

Aislinn swore under her breath, and Mom lowered her head.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Look, I get that that’s bad, but can’t you just pop up and be like, ‘Hey, here I am! Totally not dead!’”

“I could,” said Dad, “but if it suits the Casnoffs’ purposes for me to be deceased, something tells me I wouldn’t stay ‘totally not dead’ for long.”

“What do you think the Casnoffs’ purposes are?” Mom asked.

Dad glanced at her, then over to me. “To terrify the Prodigium population to the point where using demons seems like the only course of action. They have Daisy, and they may have managed to corral Nick. There haven’t been any other attacks linked to him.” The same night the Casnoffs had used Daisy to fight The Eye, Nick had gotten loose and gone on some kind of rampage. The thought of it still made me shudder.

“Did she say anything about the demons at this big meeting?” I asked Cal.

He shook his head. “Not specifically. All she said was that she and her sister had a plan to rid the world of the Brannicks and The Eye once and for all.”

“Speaking of—” Dad broke in. “Sophie, have you had any contact with Archer Cross?”

Every eye in the room was on me, and I had this bizarre urge to cover my face. I knew everything I was feeling was painted all over it. “No. I thought maybe…” I turned to Cal. “Did you see him? When you went in to get Dad at Thorne Abbey?”

It’s not like I expected Cal to go, Yes, I did. In fact, I was keeping him in my pocket. Here you go. But when Cal met my eyes and said, “Your dad was alone in the cell when I got there,” the words physically hurt.

You’re lucky, I reminded myself. Your dad is here. So is Cal. And Jenna is safe. What were the chances that you’d get everyone back?

“The cell door had been broken down,” Cal continued, “so your dad and I figured The Eye took him.”

“You don’t remember anything?” I asked Dad.

A rueful expression was on his face as he shook his head. “I was unconscious, I’m afraid.”

Shoving my hands into my pockets, I said, “I’m sure you’re right. He’s probably with The Eye.” And they were either still keeping him as their pet warlock, or they’d found out about the two of us working together, and killed him. Either way, Archer was gone.

That thought was so painful, so loud inside my head, that it took me a minute to realize Dad was still talking. “…certainly not the only one to have vanished.”

Aislinn had retreated back to the doorway, arms folded over her chest. “So the Cross boy is gone, and both those Casnoff women,” she said, ticking off the names on her fingers. “As well as their demons.”

“And Graymalkin Island,” Cal said, so softly that at first I was sure I’d misheard him.

“Wait, what?” I asked.

“Hecate Hall and the island it was on are gone,” Dad said.

“How is that even possible?” Mom asked from her spot on the couch.

Dad glanced back at her, and once again something passed between them. “No one knows,” he said at last. “But a few days after Thorne Abbey burned down, the entire island seemed to vanish into thin air. One minute it was there; the next, nothing but empty ocean. It’s my belief that it’s not really gone, but that the Casnoffs are cloaking it for some reason.”

“You think that’s where they are?” I asked, once I’d found my voice again. I was remembering that feeling I’d had the day Cal, Jenna, and I had left Hex Hall. A premonition had come over me that we’d never go back. I shivered a little now remembering it.

“It makes sense,” Dad said. “Graymalkin Island was where they were raising demons. It’s been Anastasia’s home for years. I can’t imagine they’d just abandon it. And…” Dad trailed off, rubbing his eyes again. He went to move back toward the couch but stumbled. Mom leaped up and caught his arm while Cal moved to his other side. Together, they lowered him back to a seated position.

“The travel has wiped him out,” Cal said. “I’ve done protection spells on him, but he’s still pretty weak.”

“Please don’t speak of me as though I weren’t here,” Dad said, but the exhaustion in his voice canceled out any snappishness.

“That’s enough for tonight,” Mom said, and I noticed that she hadn’t taken her hand off Dad’s arm.

Aislinn nodded. “I need to tell Finley what’s going on.” A muscle worked in her jaw, and she muttered, “And have a word with Torin. You two,” she said to Dad and Cal, “stay tonight. In the morning, we can decide where to go from here.”

It cost her something to let them stay. I could see it in the tightness around her mouth. I think Dad saw it, too, because he gave a respectful nod. “Thank you, Aislinn.”

“They can use the tents,” Aislinn told me. I’d forgotten about those—the weird canvas structures extra Brannicks had used, back when there had been extra Brannicks. I thought about mentioning the cots in the basement, but maybe Aislinn wasn’t down with too many Prodigium under her roof.

Aislinn left the room then, Izzy trailing after her. As soon as they were gone, Dad leaned back on the couch and closed his eyes. “You should stay in here tonight,” Mom said to him. “Those tents are barely livable, and after all you’ve been through…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, neither of you needs to brave the great outdoors tonight.”

Dad just nodded without opening his eyes. But Cal shrugged and said, “I’m used to sleeping outside. Besides, you guys probably need, uh, family time.”

He turned to go, but as he did, Dad said, “Sophie, why don’t you show Cal to his accommodations? I wanted to speak to your mother in private for a moment.”

“Oh,” I said, shoving my hands in my pockets. “Okay. Right.” The last time I’d been alone with Cal, he’d kissed me. It had definitely been a kiss of the “We Might Die, So This Is Just Us Saying Good-Bye (Maybe)” variety, but still. He was, technically, my fiancé (you know, as if Prodigium aren’t weird enough, they also have arranged marriages). Being engaged brought a whole new level of weirdness to my and Cal’s friendship.

Cal gave one quick glance back at me, and even though I couldn’t be sure, I thought his gaze fell on my mouth for just a second. I tried hard not to gulp, and when he left the room, I followed him.