Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
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Ginny didn't flinch, but Kirishima's sharp inhale silenced the rest of our reactions. It seemed to suck all the air out of the apartment. I felt my heartbeat in my ears, felt the blood circulating to each of my fingertips, pulsing, pulsing, throbbing.
"She's not down there," Ginny conceded with a quiet blink. Not twitching a muscle, she looked up at me. "Neither is he."
As if her words were their own incantation, some form of magic wove through me. My heart. It was back. In my chest. Not in my ears, my fingers.
The steady thrum sparked to life like an old car, and I realized it had been nestled in my rib cage all along, right where its home was.
He wasn't...there. In that madness.
My brow furrowed. Why not? What could Patty's reasoning be to hide one of her most fearsome players?
"And I suppose you're here to tell us where that is," Bella harassed, tone scathing.
Ginny didn't flinch. She looked down at the teenager sprawled at her feet. "Talia," she said, and it landed like a gavel on the cherry tree of justice. "Are you still unable to call for it?"
Talia swallowed loudly. "No, Third."
My ears perked up at the specific address, recalling that Talia had been the one to inform me of Ginny's high status in the coven. A third degree...right? The only level after that was...Patty's position.
They had also told me how common it was for covens to have two high priestesses/priests. I couldn't imagine Patty sharing power with anyone. Even Sam was treated more like a puppet than a genuine successor. The whole thing reeked of one woman's ungainly pursuit of things that she shouldn't be allowed to have.
"If I tell you where she is," Ginny's reddish brows rose, "what will you do about it?"
Talia couldn't look up. Couldn't meet Ginny's eyes. It was hard to look at their delicate neck twisted down, just like a swan's.
"I would—" they began, then stopped, as if suddenly realizing they had no idea what they would do with that information.
I didn't know, either. And wasn't that the whole point? It was like the decision-making part of my brain had gone on vacation, and now I was just done. Maybe I'd made all the decisions I would ever need to make in my lifetime. I'd used them all up, and now that part of my brain had gone dark.
Even when clues dangled before my face, the carrot, the piece of cheese, the shiny lure bobbing in the dark, I still could not make use of them. What did it matter that Sam and Kakashi were not downtown? What did that change? The place they were in would still be guarded, still have more trap spells. This time, we didn't have a single witch who could currently use magic. So we either had to go through them or parachute from the sky directly into the room they were in. And that would only work if they were in the same room, and it was on an upper floor.
