The air out on the ocean stung, cold and merciless. Nor could barely feel the tips of her fingers. After turning her face away from the wind, she wiped strands of wet hair from her cheek and looked back at Anathema Island. All she could see of it was the aegises looking out across a haze of smoke.
Gage pulled the skiff up to the dock at Halcyon Island. Like the rest of Halcyon, the marina was quiet and empty; only a small dinghy remained afloat. The rest of the boats had sunk and stuck out of the water at odd angles, like sinking graves in an abandoned cemetery.
“You sure this is it?” he asked.
Nor nodded. Before them loomed the abandoned hotel, the quintessential witch’s castle in a dark and twisted fairy tale.
“Then I think we both know why that body was found here last fall,” Gage said. He paused to stare at the limp rope in his hand, trying to decide if more pain would come from hoping to live or from preparing to die. “You know,” he said, “there’s no guarantee we’ll get back to Anathema.”
Nor ripped the rope from his hand and wrapped it around the post. “Quit being so damned dramatic,” she said, as if saying so would quiet the sound of her own hammering heart.
They climbed the steps of the marina and had to fight their way through a thicket of fast-growing thistles. They had barely made it to the top when the entire stairway was swallowed by it, and a vine even shot out and grabbed Nor’s ankle. She dug at it with her fingers but couldn’t break its hold. With effort, she pulled out the knife wedged in her boot and hacked at the vine.
It yelped, let go of Nor’s leg, and dragged itself back into the carpet of foliage choking the dock. Nor tossed the knife onto the ground and bounded after Gage, the plant’s screams echoing in her ears.
They found their way into the hotel’s open courtyard. There, a bonfire raged. At first, Nor thought it was lawn furniture that was burning.
“Bones,” Gage said flatly. He was right: a pile of bones stacked and lit like sticks and branches.
Nor was quite certain they were the bones of the Resurrected. The Resurrection Spell didn’t last very long, and the only thing to do once the spell had worn off was to burn the undead.
Vines covered the old hotel’s stone facade, and most of the windows were broken. “You should stay out here,” Nor suggested.
Gage rolled his eyes. “Now who’s being dramatic?”
Except for a few disemboweled couches, the lobby inside was empty. A chandelier hanging in the center of the round room swung eerily, and the mirror behind the lobby desk was shattered. The walls were covered in crude graffiti.
They crept up the stairs leading to the second floor. Suddenly the staircase rocked and bucked. Nor lost her balance and started to fall, but Gage caught her. He wrapped his arms around her, bracing them for another quake. Nor felt the wild beat of his heart against her back. The tremor lasted only a moment, and then, with the world steady once more, Nor pulled away from Gage.
They took the stairs two at time. At the end of a long hallway, an ornate door was marred with carved gashes. They walked down the hallway, wondering if they’d find someone on the other side of that door.
The room had been meant for happy occasions: weddings, formal dinners, cocktail parties. It had once been decorated with large waving palm trees, and the walls had been covered in tiles the color of rich jewels, reminiscent of a Turkish bath. Only bits and pieces of those palm trees and brightly colored tiles remained and were scattered across the floor.
The few people inside the room moved as if drugged. One writhed across the floor. Another looked like a robotic toy whose batteries were running out. A woman stared into a piece of cracked mirror she held in her hand, transfixed by her skeletal reflection. Next to her, a man walked into a wall again and again on a permanent repeat. A low moaning filled the room: the sound of despair and desolation.
From out of a darkened corner stepped Fern, tattoos unfurling sensuously from her porcelain skin. They rose and arced over her head, like Medusa’s hair of snakes. Nor and her mother locked eyes. The ferns retracted, whipping through the air with a snap.
“Nor,” Fern crooned, putting on a honeyed smile. “I am so glad you came to see me.” Fern moved closer, followed by Catriona. Nothing was left of the jovial girl who used to sell fish at the farmers’ market on Saturday mornings. A scarf covered her face, but did little to hide the angry red tattoos that spread across her cheeks and forehead.
Nor caught a glimpse of her own reflection in the fragmented mirror on the back wall and almost gasped. She and her mother couldn’t have looked more different from each other right then. Nor was still wearing the clothes she’d worn to bed. They were ripped and covered in dirt and blood. Her hair — what was left of it — was a wild halo around her head. Her face was plain. She was just a kid. Fern’s glamorous red hair cascaded down over her shoulders. She was wearing a high-collared green dress, more sheath than gown, slit from ankle to thigh; a long black silk glove concealed her left hand and arm. The other arm was wrapped in deadly but gorgeous green tattoos.
But when Nor took a closer look at her wickedly beautiful mother, she observed chinks in her armor: thin black scabs on her cheeks, dark-red stains on her dress, tufts of hair missing from her scalp, dried blood clinging to her ankles, and on her calves, a lattice of fresh wounds.
“What did you do with my friends?” Nor demanded.
Fern sneered. “Oh, them. I don’t want to talk about them just yet. Instead, I’m going to tell you a story.” Her tattoos reached out again toward Nor, like pythons taking the measure of their victim. They sizzled when they got too close, and recoiled.
“Once upon a time,” Fern said, her voice still sickly sweet, “a beautiful witch fell in love with a prince. Sadly, the charming prince didn’t return the witch’s affections. So she tried casting a spell. At first, the spell didn’t work. She tried again and again, and eventually stumbled upon the secret for casting any spell — for fortune, fame, power, even spells to raise the dead; spells no Blackburn daughter had attempted since Rona herself. To work, the spells needed a blood sacrifice, and — this is my favorite part — the blood had to be the blood of someone from Anathema Island.” She paused. “Well, that’s not completely true. The spell will still work, just not as well. Plus, it’s more fun to kill people you know.”
“You’re talking about black magic,” Nor said.
Fern’s eyes flashed in anger. “I’m talking about magic that is rightfully mine as a Blackburn. The kind of magic that should have been giving me everything I’ve ever wanted. The kind of magic that I was forced to take for myself!” Fern pointed at the young woman staring at herself in the mirror. “What would you do if I killed her, Nor?” she asked, as if killing someone would be as simple as wiping lipstick from the rim of a wineglass. She laughed, a cackle that raised the hairs on the back of Nor’s neck. Nor imagined the woman’s head breaking open under her mother’s pointed heel.
“My friends,” Nor said through gritted teeth. “Where are they?”
Fern ignored her. “Would you try to save her, like you tried to save Madge? The woman utterly betrayed you, and still you tried to save her life.” Fern clucked her tongue. “Pathetic.”
“If you’ve hurt Savvy —” Nor blurted angrily.
Fern gritted her teeth. “Every hair on your friends’ heads — blue or otherwise — is intact. They may have received a few injuries on the way here, but some things just can’t be helped.”
Gage narrowed his eyes at Fern. “So if you weren’t planning on sacrificing them, what was the point of taking them?” he asked.
Fern leaned toward them, and Nor could smell her mother’s breath, equal parts sweet and rancid. “You’re here, aren’t you? And you’re afraid, aren’t you? When people are afraid, they are very easy to control.” Suddenly, Fern pointed to the woman at the mirror and barked, “Kill her.”
The zombies around them were instantly animated. They descended upon the woman like animals, clawing, biting, and tearing. The woman’s screams were quickly silenced.
The carnage over, Fern’s assassins drifted away, except for one who stayed to lick a last splash of blood from the floor.
“Are you afraid yet, Nor?”
Before Nor could respond, she heard the nauseating crunch of breaking bones. Catriona had reached over and taken Gage’s hand in hers, squeezing it until Gage fell to the ground with a cry of pain. Catriona ripped the knife from his broken fingers and then trapped his hand under her foot.
Catriona passed the knife to Fern, who used it to force Nor to her knees. “You can’t possibly think you’re as strong as I am, can you? Do you really think you can beat me?” She laughed. “Let’s play a little game then and see. It’s called, ‘I’m going to kill all your friends,’ starting with that pretty blue-haired thing I have locked in the basement. And then this silly little boy here,” she said, nodding toward Gage. “Not that he’ll be much of a challenge.” Gage trembled with fury.
“And then I think I’ll kill Judd. And Apothia.” Her eyes greedy with bloodlust, Fern held the sharp edge of the knife against Nor’s jaw. “I’m going to kill them all, Nor, because I want to and there’s nothing you’ll be able to do to stop me because you’ll already be dead.”
Fern pressed the knife into Nor’s skin and dragged it heavily along her jaw and across her cheek. Nor held her breath, waiting for the sting of the blade and the warm, wet blood to follow. Instead, she watched, dumbstruck, as a thin red line materialized on her mother’s face instead.
Fern narrowed her eyes and looked at Nor with some uncertainty. She touched her cheek, then pulled away fingers red with blood. Nor reached up to touch her own face. It was as if the knife had never touched her.
In a fury, Fern grabbed Nor by the hair, yanked her head to the side, and tried to slit Nor’s throat. Blood spurted instead from a wound that opened on her own neck. With an angry shriek, Fern lunged at Nor and scratched her with talon-like nails until her own cheeks were covered in gruesome claw marks. She brought her teeth down on Nor’s shoulder, and a bite mark appeared on her own. Fern stabbed at Nor with the knife again and again until, exhausted and blood-soaked, she fell to the ground.
Nor almost tripped over her mother as she scrambled back toward Gage.
Catriona moved to help Fern, but Fern swatted her away, leaving three red welts on Catriona’s arm. “Take them downstairs with the others,” she ordered. She coughed and spit a blackened tooth into her hand. “Go!” she sputtered.
Nor let herself be hauled away. Fern’s blood continued to spread across the floor.
Catriona dragged Gage and Nor deep into the entrails of the hotel, passing through one darkened hallway after another. Gage cradled his injured hand. Catriona raked her jagged nails across the graffitied stone walls as they walked, eyeing Nor suspiciously all the while.
Mutely, Catriona pointed them down a winding stairwell. The scarf wrapped around her face slipped momentarily, and before she could adjust it, Nor caught a glimpse of what Catriona had really been hiding behind that veil: Fern had cut out her tongue.
Nor closed her eyes in horror. Was there anything Fern hadn’t taken from this girl? Was there anything Catriona wouldn’t give Fern? Nor wondered if there was any point in trying to appeal to the Catriona she once knew. That person had probably been erased long ago.
The stairs ended at a long, dark grotto littered with hollow wine barrels and broken bottles. She recognized this place from her dreams. She was almost certain that if she looked down, she’d see Bliss Sweeney’s blood staining the stone floor.
The only light in the grotto came from the tiniest sliver of moon shining through a small window high above their heads.
A blue blur darted out from one of the shadowy corners and threw itself at Nor.
“I knew you’d come!” Savvy cried. “Didn’t I say they would, Sena Crowe?”
“Yup.” Sena Crowe was slumped against the back wall of the alcove. He had a nasty cut on his face.
Nor hugged Savvy. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“If by okay you mean will I have nightmares for the rest of my life and will I need loads of therapy to function in normal society, then yeah.” Savvy smiled. “Never better.”
“What is this place?”
“Pretty sure it was the wine-tasting cellar,” Savvy answered. She kicked at a few empty bottles, and they rolled across the floor with a loud clatter. “Please tell me you have a plan for getting us out of here. Sena Crowe is far too pretty to die in a wine cellar turned torture chamber.”
“No one’s going to die,” Gage said.
But, as if on cue, the ground trembled again. Nor stumbled and grabbed at Gage’s hand to steady herself. The moment their hands touched, she felt a sharp zap like an electric shock. Nor quickly pulled her hand away, but smoke poured from her fingertips, and the bones in Gage’s hand were mended.
The ground stopped shaking. Gage flexed his newly healed fingers.
“We don’t have a plan,” she murmured.
“Did we ever? I’m guessing the only plan you had,” he countered quietly, “was offering yourself up as a sacrifice in the hope that she’d let the rest of us go.”
Nor smiled in spite of herself. “I guess it wasn’t a great plan,” she admitted.
“It was a terrible plan,” he agreed. “It also didn’t account for one very important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That I wouldn’t let you do that,” he said softly. “I can’t risk losing you.” Gage cleared his throat, and if it weren’t so dark, Nor was certain she’d see his face turning red. “What I mean by that,” he was quick to clarify, “is that none of us can.”
Again the floor swayed beneath their feet. Empty wine bottles rolled from one end of the room to the other. “Unfortunately,” Gage said, “there’s a pretty good chance the only defense that we’ve got left against your mother is you.”
The ground continued to shake sporadically throughout the night. Water dripped steadily down the walls. A shallow pool of water skimmed the floor. Next to her Savvy shivered and huddled closer to Nor for warmth.
Through the moon’s faint light, Nor could just make out the hazy outline of Savvy’s profile, the ethereal glow of her unraveling blue braids. Someone else shifted uncomfortably on the floor, but no one had said much of anything for a while. Either a disquieting resignation had settled over the room, or perhaps they’d simply fallen asleep.
Nor thought of her mother’s malicious ferns. How easily they could hurt Savvy and Sena Crowe and even Gage. But they hadn’t been able to hurt Nor.
And apparently neither could Fern.
If Gage was right — if she was the last line of defense between Fern and everyone else — she still didn’t know how that would help her protect them. When it came to her mother, she’d only just discovered that she could protect herself.