CHAPTER 5

I stared at her. “And you guys thought I would do that, why, exactly?”

“Torin said you’d fight for—” Izzy interjected, but Aislinn held up her hand.

“Enough, Isolde,” she said. “It doesn’t matter now, anyway.”

“It matters to me,” I said. “Who the heck is Torin? And what were you gonna do, use me like your very own magic bomb?” Mom’s arm tightened around my shoulders. I shrugged her off and walked to the table to face Aislinn.

“That’s what they wanted to do, you know,” I told her. “The Casnoffs.” My voice wavered a little as I thought about Nick and Daisy, the two demon kids I’d…well, befriended was a strong word—I’d gotten to know at Thorne Abbey. The last time I’d seen Daisy, she’d demoned out and tried to kill me, all thanks to Lara Casnoff. Same with Nick, who attacked Archer and nearly killed him. Because Lara had turned them into demons, Nick and Daisy were under her control.

There was a part of me that missed them, weird and homicidal as they’d been, which was probably why my voice got louder when I added, “The Casnoffs and the other members of the Council want to use demons to fight you and The Eye.”

Aislinn didn’t seem angry anymore. Just defeated. She ran a hand through her hair. “Is that really what you think, Sophie? That they’re raising demons to keep mon—your kind safe?”

“I…yeah, I guess so. I mean, they were always saying you were going to kill us all.”

A weird look crossed Aislinn’s face, almost like she felt sorry for me. Finley gave a disgusted sound. “Right. The only reason those Casnoff chicks want to make demons is so that they’ll have their own secret service. Having their very own demon army wouldn’t be convenient or anything.”

Thankfully one of those folding chairs was pretty close by, so I was able to sink into it.

“I don’t get it,” I said, looking over my shoulder at Mom.

Her mouth was set in a grim line. “Let’s just say the Brannicks have never believed that Lara and Anastasia’s father, Alexei, was so interested in creating demons to protect other Prodigium. That much power? He basically had the equivalent of a magical nuclear weapon under his control.”

Alexei, with the help of another witch, had turned my great-grandmother, Alice, into a demon. She’d been just a regular girl, but once Alexei Casnoff was done with her, she’d become more or less a monster, the dark magic inside of her driving her insane.

So, yeah, you could create a demon, but controlling it wasn’t that easy.

“The first night I ever spent at Hex Hall,” I said to Aislinn, “Mrs. Casnoff showed us this big slide show of all the ways humans had killed Prodigium over the years. Not just Brannicks or The Eye, but regular people, too. Mrs. Casnoff basically made it seem like we Prodigium are under attack all the time.”

“Yeah, because regular people stand a chance against monsters,” Finley scoffed.

“Do you know how many Brannicks there are, Sophie?” Aislinn asked softly. When I shook my head, she said, “You’re looking at them.”

I stared at her. “What, just…just the three of you? And one of you is like, twelve?”

“I’m fourteen,” Izzy called from the couch, but no one paid any attention.

“Four when we had your mother,” Aislinn replied.

“Okay, but you’ve teamed up with The Eye,” I said. A few months ago, the Prodigium Council Headquarters in London had burned down. Seven members of the Council had been killed, and according to Dad, it was L’Occhio di Dio working with the Brannicks.

Aislinn just laughed. “The Eye? Team up with us? There’s no way. Our family is descended from a witch, remember? The Eye wants no part of that.”

“So, what—The Eye attacked Council headquarters by themselves?” I asked.

“They didn’t attack it at all,” Finley said. “That was all your buddies, the Casnoffs.”

I felt like I’d just been plunged into Bizarro World, and I shook my head again, like that would somehow make my brain work faster. “But why would the Casnoffs—” And then it dawned on me. “It’s just like the slide show thing. Make everyone even more freaked out about The Eye and the Brannicks, and suddenly no one cares that you’re turning kids into demons. Not if demons will keep them safe from The Eye, or all of you,” I said, gesturing toward Aislinn and Finley.

Aislinn nodded. “Exactly. And now they’ve laid the destruction of Thorne Abbey and the possible death of your father on The Eye, too.”

My chest ached at that, and I felt Mom’s hand on my hair.

“So now it’s like the Casnoffs have free rein to raise as many demons as they want,” Finley said. “And no one will stop them.”

“I will,” I said automatically.

“How?” Finley scoffed. “You don’t have any powers. They have the most potent magical weapons ever.”

Inside my chest, my magic surged and shook. “We’re people,” I said, and to my horror, I felt tears spring to my eyes. I really, really did not want to cry in front of Finley. “Raising a demon just means pouring really dark magic into the soul of a regular person, or Prodigium, or whatever. That person, who they are, doesn’t go away. Nick and Daisy. And me and my—my dad. We’re not things you can use and destroy. We’re not weapons.” On that last word, I grabbed the edge of the table so hard, I broke one of my fingernails.

Mom stepped forward, wrapping her hand around my elbow. “Enough,” she said. “The point is, we’ll find some way of stopping the Casnoffs that doesn’t involve using Sophie as anything.”

“That isn’t your decision, Grace,” Aislinn said.

Mom whirled on her sister with a fierceness I’d never seen in her before. “She is my daughter.”

“And we don’t always get to pick the paths our family members take, do we?” Aislinn replied, holding Mom’s gaze.

A low chuckle reverberated throughout the room, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Izzy jumped, and both Finley and Aislinn turned to glare over their shoulders. For the first time, I saw there was something hanging on the wall. I wasn’t sure what exactly, because it was covered with a heavy piece of dark green canvas, but from its large, rectangular shape, I guessed it was a painting of some kind.

“Ah, Grace and Aislinn arguing. It’s like old times again,” a male voice said, sounding vaguely muffled. “Could someone take this blasted thing off so that I can see?”

Once again, my magic was thumping and bumping inside me, so I knew whatever was speaking, it wasn’t human. Still, when Aislinn crossed over to the thing hanging on the wall and ripped down the canvas, I was taken aback by what I saw.

It wasn’t a painting after all; it was a mirror, reflecting the dingy, gloomy room. It was weird seeing the tableau we made. Mom stood with her hand still on my elbow, her expression wary. Aislinn was looking at the mirror with something like disgust, while Izzy had gone even paler, and Finley was scowling. As for me, I was shocked by my reflection. I was thinner than I remembered being, and my skin was dirty, tears leaving trails on my dusty cheeks. And the hair…you know what? Let’s not even go there.

But my looking like Little Orphan Sophie wasn’t what had my powers going nuts. It was the guy.

In the mirror, he was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the round table, smirking out at all of us. Even though I knew he wasn’t really there, I glanced at the center of the table anyway. The same maps and papers that were crumpled under him in the mirror were still unruffled and smooth. His shaggy hair was dark blond, and lace dripped from the cuffs of his shirt, brushing the papers on the table as he rested his wrists on his knees. He was also rocking some pretty impressive tall boots and ridiculously tight pants, so he was either way into Renaissance Faires over there in Mirror-Land, or he was very old. I was guessing the latter.

“So this is the girl all the fuss is over,” he said, studying me. His voice was low, and I think he would’ve been hot if he weren’t radiating this air of “I Am Super Evil—No, Really—And Not In The Sexy Way.” Still, I was pretty sure he was just a regular warlock. Demons gave off a stronger, darker vibe, and while this guy was definitely bad news, he wasn’t that dark or that powerful.

Aislinn whacked the frame of the mirror with her hand, causing the table the guy sat on to rock and nearly tip over. The table in the room stayed still.

Clutching one side of the table, Mirror Boy frowned, then opened his mouth to say something. Aislinn cut him off. “You were wrong, Torin. She doesn’t have powers anymore.”

Torin shrugged. “Does she not? Well, that certainly makes things more interesting.” He smiled. Maybe some women would’ve found it charming. I just found it skeevy. That must have shown on my face, because his grin quickly collapsed, and he turned back to Aislinn with a shrug. “It’s no matter. I’m never wrong. I told you that Thorne Abbey would be consumed in fire, and it was. I told you this girl would be returned to you, and so she has been.”

He pointed at Aislinn. The surface of the mirror bowed out around his finger, like a stretchy bubble. “And I told you that you would lose Grace to one of the beasts. No one wanted to believe that one,” he said to me. “And yet, here you are. Proof that my prophecies are always correct. And what I told you is true, Aislinn,” he added, turning to her. “This girl will stop the Casnoff witches.”

A heavy silence fell over the room as we all stared at the guy in the glass, and I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that the Brannicks, witch killers extraordinaire, were listening to a prophecy-spouting warlock, and that said warlock had apparently tapped me to end this big freaking magical war that was brewing. Still, I didn’t like my dad being referred to as a “beast,” so I tried my best to look disdainful as I stood up.

“You guys have a magic mirror? You should’ve mentioned that earlier,” I said to Izzy. “I mean, that’s way cooler than barbed wire and bunkers.”

“It isn’t a magic mirror,” Izzy replied, and I couldn’t help but notice the way her eyes never moved from Torin. “He’s our prisoner.”

“Guest,” Torin snapped, but everyone ignored him.

“How did you manage to trap a warlock when you don’t use magic?” I asked.

“The Brannicks didn’t trap him,” Mom answered. “He did that all by himself.”

Torin suddenly became very interested in straightening his cuffs, turning his back to us.

“He was attempting a spell that was just a little too big for him,” Finley added. “Ended up stuck in there, back in 1589.”

“1587,” Torin corrected. “And the spell was in no way ‘too big’ for me. It was just…trickier than I’d expected.”

Finley snorted. “Sure. Anyway, Avis Brannick found him…it, whatever, a few years later, and brought the mirror back to the rest of the family.”

“When Avis discovered that Torin had the power of prophecy, she realized he could be a useful tool. We’ve been his guardians ever since,” Aislinn finished up. I wondered if they always told stories in a round like that. It reminded me of the three-way glances that Elodie, Anna, and Chaston used to do, and I felt another one of those weird pangs in my chest. It wasn’t as if I’d liked those three, but now one of them was dead and two of them were missing. God only knows what had happened to them.

“They have been corrupted,” Torin said, and I startled.

“What?”

“You were just thinking of two witches you knew back at your school, wondering what happened to them,” he said. For the first time, I realized his eyes were so dark brown, they were nearly black. “You suspect the Casnoff women turned them into demons. They did.”

“Wait, so you don’t just tell the future? You know other stuff, too?”

He nodded, pleased with himself. “I know many things, Sophia Mercer. And you have so many questions, don’t you? Where were you for those seventeen days? Whatever became of your little bloodsucker friend and your father…?”

Without thinking, I crossed the room to stand right in front of the glass. “Is my dad alive? Is Jenna—”

I broke off as Torin started chuckling and backing away. “I can’t give away all my secrets,” he said, spreading his hands wide.

Every ounce of magic inside of me wanted to leap through the glass and blast him into tiny pieces. I settled for just grabbing the frame and shaking it. “Tell me!” I shouted as he fell to the ground, the mirror-table finally turning over, papers spilling onto the floor.

Strong hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me back. I spun around, expecting to see Aislinn holding me, but it was Mom. “Cover that damn thing back up,” Mom said to her sister. As Aislinn draped the canvas back over the mirror, Mom smoothed my hair away from my face. “We’re going to find your dad, sweetheart. And Jenna.” She shot a glare at the now-covered mirror. “And we’re not going to use Torin to do it.” Her eyes swung to Aislinn. “We never should have started listening to him in the first place.”

“We don’t have many choices left, Grace,” Aislinn said. She sounded tired.

Whatever had been in that green drink was starting to wear off, and I could feel weariness seeping back into my bones. I was just about to ask if I could go back up to my room when Aislinn sighed and said, “We can talk about all of this later. It’s nearly sunset.” She motioned to Finley and Izzy. “Come on girls, time for patrol.”

Without a word, the two younger Brannicks headed for the door. I watched them go, and was plotting when I could sneak back in here to have a word (or a thousand) with Torin when Aislinn clamped a hand on my shoulder. “You too, Sophia.”

“What?”

“All Brannicks under eighteen are required to patrol the grounds during evening shift.”

She handed me something, and it took me a few seconds to realize what it was: a silver stake. I blinked at Aislinn, not understanding. She grinned, and it was terrifying.

“Welcome to the family.”