A Necklace of Water (22 page)

“Daedalus!” I choked. “Daedalus! Something’s wrong!”

It took almost twenty seconds for my words to register. Slowly he opened his eyes, stilling the spell. He looked angry.

“Clio! You realize I’ll have to begin again.”

“Look! Look!” I pointed all around us. “The birds—birds are dying everywhere! Something’s wrong! Stop the spell! Break it! We did something wrong!”

Daedalus didn’t even flick a glance over my shoulder. In that second I realized he wasn’t shocked, wasn’t horrified. Wasn’t even surprised, in fact. This was the spell he’d had me memorize yesterday: a spell to take power from birds by taking their lives and adding them to ours.

“Oh goddess!” I cried.

“Clio, don’t overreact,” Daedalus said more calmly. “This is what we talked about; this is what you wanted. Everything has a price, and you said you were willing to pay that price.”

“Not
this
price!” Littering the ground like crumpled tissues were ten, twenty, thirty,
more
songbirds, too many to count. I knew their names, I had memorized these and so many more, as part of my working magickal knowledge. Carolina wrens, brown-headed nuthatches, thrushes, sparrows of various kinds, and even some tiny, delicate, jewel-like painted buntings,
which are so rare to see. All dead everywhere I looked, and others still falling.

Tears flooded my eyes. Choking on sobs, I got out the words that would break any spell I was working. Daedalus lunged across the fire and grabbed my shoulders, looking furious.

“Stop it!” he shouted. “How dare you! Now you’ve made their deaths in vain! We need their power to open the Source! This is what you wanted! You don’t understand! Stupid girl!” He shook me so hard my teeth rattled, but I still managed to draw the end sigils in the air, managed to get out the last words, and then it was over. Beauty, life, and power left me, and I dropped to the ground like a sack of dirt.

“You don’t understand!” Daedalus cried again, sounding close to tears of rage and frustration. “You don’t understand!” He sank to his knees by the fire, then dropped to all fours, gasping and trying not to cry.

“No,” I said. I lay on the ground, feeling like I would never be able to move. Without magick, the whole world was in shades of washed-out gray. I was diminished to a point where I wasn’t sure I was human, or alive, or anything. But something had occurred to me, the answer to a puzzle. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. Now I know why Cerise died that night.”

“What?” he rasped, raising his head with effort. “What are you talking about? She died in childbirth! Many women did back then.”

“No.” I managed to shake my head, though it felt leaden. “You didn’t see it—you didn’t want to see it. Cerise died because Melita took her life to get her power—the power of Cerise’s life is what’s kept all of you alive all these years. You stupid
idiot
.”

Daedalus gaped at me, his eyes now bloodshot, his face deathly pale.

“No—you’re wrong,” he insisted. “You don’t know anything about it.”

“I’m right,” I said with certainty, feeling like death. “Cerise died to give you immortality. Like these poor birds died to give us power.” I started to cry hard, sobs racking my chest, threatening to break my throat.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Daedalus freeze and then look up. I focused on him in time to see confusion cross his face.

“Wha—”he said faintly.

With huge effort, I turned my head. And saw Thais, my sister, walking toward us with a wand in her hand.

T
he first time a dead sparrow pelted my shoulder, I gasped and jumped. The second time a little bird bounced off my shoulder, I caught it in my hands.

It was a small brown bird, nondescript, the kind you see thousands of over the course of your life. Nothing special. Its eyes were closed, feet curled, feathers soft and light and warm—a thing of beauty. In my hands it felt as grotesque and repulsive as the earthworm had after I’d stripped its powers. I smothered a shriek and dropped it, and then I saw that more were falling like rain, like slow, feathery raindrops splashing onto the wet leaves on the ground.

What was happening here?

I rushed forward, no longer trying to be stealthy. I’d followed Daedalus’s car pretty easily, then parked out of sight and taken a roundabout way to the circle of ashes.

This was it. Clio would never forgive me, but this was the perfect opportunity. Carmela didn’t think I was ready, but I was. I’d learned the basic form—and I’d crafted a short section that I would insert into the spell where the earthworm part had been.

Death was everywhere, morning light showing the stark corpses. I lost count of how many birds dropped around me, and I tried not to step on them. It was a nightmare, so desolate and horrible that I thought these woods would feel tainted forever.

Especially after what I was about to do.

At the edge of the woods I stopped. I heard Clio crying, saying something about the birds, and I saw Daedalus grab her and shake her hard. Trying to tamp down my anger, I quickly began the spell. It was long and took minutes to set in place, with the limitations and having to exclude Clio. I sang very softly, even after Clio dropped to the ground sobbing and I wanted to run to her. Then Daedalus fell to his hands and knees. Clio’s words about Cerise came dimly to my mind, but I couldn’t process them: I was ready. I aimed my wand at Daedalus and held out my left hand, which had a black silk cord wrapped around it.

I walked out of the woods toward him, and he felt it, looking up in surprise. With four words I hit him with the binding spell and pulled the cord tighter around my fingers. He froze, and part of me couldn’t believe it was working.

Steadily I kept on, weaving the spell line by line, phrase by phrase. I drew runes in the air for victory in battle and the one that meant frozen, obstacle, delay. I drew sigils in the air, big, with my whole corded hand, the one that tied the spell to this place right now, the one that solidified my strength right here.

“Thais?” Clio asked brokenly, trying to get up. “What are you doing?”

I couldn’t answer, but now Daedalus was wideeyed: he knew. I felt him trying to move, to break free like a bug from a spider’s web, but I held him there.

The spell was grueling, draining my energy. It was down-to-the-bone terrifying—I knew it was wrong, so wrong. There was a road in front of me: to one side was light, to the other was dark, and I was taking the dark path.

I thought about Daedalus chanting the spell that had made the car jump up onto the sidewalk. I thought about how scared my dad must have been to see it crashing toward him. It must have taken Daddy minutes to die, minutes where he thought about me, about my mom, about my twin who he thought was dead.

I hadn’t been with him. He’d been gone by the time they got to the hospital and called me. I didn’t have a chance to say good-bye.

Daedalus’s mouth opened and his lips formed a terrified “No!” but no sound came out. Still I kept going, thinking of my dad dying, thinking of the life I’d lost. Daedalus’s magick began to leave him. I caught it with my spell and began to pull. He screamed and collapsed on the ground, curling up in agony.

Clio shouted, “No, no!” and tried to get up. I held out one hand, trapping her on her hands and knees. I’d had this all planned out for days, waiting for the right opportunity, and I had to execute it. Daedalus writhed on the ground, a tortured old man, and still I kept going, pulling his magick from him as if I were uncoiling wool from a skein. He lay among the ashes of the circle, their dust streaking his face, his hands. Clio watched the scene with astonished horror, but she was helpless to stop me.

Still I pulled it from him, and it was infinitely harder than it had been with the orchid or the earthworm. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I gritted my teeth, feeling an indescribable pain at working magick too advanced. Daedalus’s power felt ancient and dark and unknown, and I
knew it was so much more than what an ordinary witch would have. It flowed through my wand and I dissipated it out into the world because I didn’t know what else to do with it. My studies hadn’t gotten that far.

I don’t know how long it took—once I started, there was no telling how much time had passed. But finally I felt Daedalus’s magick lessen, his thread become thinner and weaker, and I saw his body lying like a shriveled husk on the ground. The last of it came away from him gently, dandelion fuzz releasing itself from him as lightly as air.

I had done it. I had taken my revenge on the man who had killed my father.

The spell collapsed on itself ungracefully, leaving me standing there as if I’d been hit by lightning. I met Clio’s horrified eyes, saw her blur, and then I too fell to my knees onto the damp, leafy ground. The world was spinning crazily, and I dry-heaved, my stomach empty. I felt horribly ill. But I didn’t care what happened now.

“Very good, child,” I heard a voice say. Amazed, I looked up to see Carmela stepping out of the woods, her own wand raised.

“Who—?” Clio muttered, just as I said, “Carmela!”

“I thought you weren’t ready, but you decided different, I guess,” she said in her seductive voice. “It takes a lot to surprise me, but you’ve done it. Unfortunately, I really didn’t want you to strip Daedalus of his powers—at least, not yet. I needed him. But I suppose I can improvise.”

“What are you doing here?” My voice was thin and broken, and speaking made my head feel like it was going to explode. Carmela smiled pleasantly in a chilling way that awoke fear I hadn’t thought I could still feel. Now that I saw her in weak daylight, her features were clear in a way they hadn’t been before in the darkness.

“Melita.” The word was barely sounded. I whipped my gaze to Daedalus, who was staring at Carmela with hope and, I thought, humiliation.

“Melita? That’s not Melita,” I said, trying to swallow. “Her name is Carmela.”

Carmela smiled at me, and an icy hand seemed to seize my throat. I coughed as she shook her head fondly. “Thais, Thais,” she said affectionately. “So smart, so strong, so unexpected. But not smart or strong
enough
.” She raised her wand again, pointing it right at me. “You’ve thrown quite a wrench in my plans.”

“What plans?” I tried to say, but could barely make a sound.

She started speaking, and I felt rooted to the spot, on my knees on the wet leaves in this cursed place. Her eyes narrowed, she lifted her wand. I had time to think, Oh God.

“Wait!”

The voice came from the woods. Carmela and I both turned, dumbfounded. Petra rushed forward and threw herself in front of me just as Carmela snapped her wrist down. Petra’s own wand was pointed at Carmela, and she was hissing words I didn’t recognize.

Petra’s body jolted and Carmela snapped her wrist up, looking astonished.

“Maman!” she said, which made no sense to me.

“Carmela?” I said, feeling brain-fogged.

“Carmelita,” Petra said weakly, in front of me.

M
elita lowered her wand, then shook her head. Her face tight with irritation, she went and knelt in front of Petra, touching her shoulder. “Maman, tu est bçte comme un chou.”

Petra couldn’t argue with her.

Then Melita looked over at Daedalus, who was still curled on the ground, and at Thais, who was trying to get up, her face white, eyes huge with shock.

“Carmela is Melita?” Thais managed to say, and Petra wondered with dread how on earth Thais knew her and why by that name.

Slowly Petra got up, and her daughter Carmelita helped her. She hugged Petra briefly, and Petra closed her eyes, feeling deeply how long it had been since their last hug and how she might not ever feel it again. Then, stepping back, Melita pulled off her turban. Long hair as black as Armand’s spilled past her shoulders.

Again Petra looked at Thais. She was staring at Melita in shock and … what else? Shame.
Oh, Thais
, Petra thought.
What have you done
?

“Thais—Clio,” she said. “Are you all right?”

Clio nodded, getting up with effort.

Thais struggled to her feet, swaying slightly, looking green.

“Quite the pair you have here, Maman,” Melita told Petra. “They’re very smart, very talented. And, of course, very, very powerful. I felt their power all the way in Europe.”

“Is that where you’ve been?” Petra asked.

Melita laughed, and Petra saw Thais shudder at the sound. “I’ve been all over, Maman. Everywhere.” She looked pityingly at Daedalus, who seemed to be barely breathing, then focused on Thais. “I wish you had not been so smart, so talented, and so powerful.” She switched her gaze to Clio. “And you—you saw in a moment what the rest of them haven’t seen in two hundred and forty-two years.”

“What?” Petra couldn’t help asking.

“The truth,” Melita said simply. “The fact is, we’re not immortal, we Treize. Your lives have only been extended for thirteen generations.
Our time is running out. It’s time to renew our contract for another thirteen generations.” She smiled again. “That’s where your twins come in, Maman.”

“What do you mean, extended?” Petra asked. “I don’t understand.”