Chapter 1
She’d never wanted to see this place again.
Mia Marquee peered at the château from where she stood cloaked in the drooping branches and snarled vines of the forest just on the other side of the crumbling stone wall. If anyone was waiting for her at the house, they’d have trouble picking out her short, slight frame from the night-thickened trees.
She squinted, trying to make out any light or movement, any sign there was someone else there. The château looked almost as it had in her childhood: a stoic front of windows and peaked roofs, the previously white marble stained a rotting brown by the harsh elements.
Now the windows were shuttered. Weeds choked the garden where the once immaculately trimmed hedges and flowers had been left to rot. Not a tremble of movement. Not a flicker of a mouse scurrying by or flutter of an owl taking off to hunt.
Still, she knew she wasn’t alone.
Mia took a steadying breath and stepped out of cover. She kept her eyes trained on the house as she walked up the long, sloping lawn toward the front. Her family always left charms for unwelcome visitors. Which applied to anyone and everyone. Most of the charms simply alerted the family of a newcomer’s presence. Others did far, far worse.
But there was no telltale shimmer of magic here. Whatever protection this place had was rotted away along with everything else.
“Good riddance,” Mia muttered, then immediately snapped her mouth shut. Her voice seemed to double in size, echoing over and over in the quiet. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She needed to stay quiet. Someone else was here. After all, it was their note that’d brought her back:
Your family needs you, Mia. Come home and set things right.
Well, she was home. But she wasn’t sure if there was anything that could be set right. The Marquee family had never been right. Nothing she did now could ever change that.
She crouched when she heard voices outside the wall. Figures were moving down the road, their heads bobbing in and out of sight. Mia dipped further into the bushes as the group stopped at the busted gate.
“Keep going…” Mia mumbled. “Keep going...”
There were a dozen other chateaus, estates, manors, and mansions in their valley, remnants of the powerful Supe families that’d ruled this area for generations. All of them sat empty now. This group could search any one of them for who they were looking for.
Mia cursed as the group stepped over the gate and began to fan out across the lawn. One of them was yelling to the others, “Restez à deux. Ne le laisse pas te prendre au dépourvu.”
It took Mia a moment to switch back to her native French tongue. She really hadn’t been home in a while, but she bristled at the man’s words: Stay in pairs. Don’t let him catch you off guard.
Mia stayed crouched as she skirted across the garden path and into deeper cover. The group of men and women continued breaking off into pairs. They sounded like they were native to the region, but Mia had no doubt they’d been sent by the Academy in Paris. She was sure the entire countryside was being combed. She didn’t blame them, not after what she’d seen in Paris.
The destruction the escaped prisoner left during his escape had remained burned into her memory. She’d overheard the Red Guard talking about it. How it’d come without warning. How it’d been brutal and ferocious. How he’d been a monster.
Mia hadn’t been sure who the note was from at first. Now she was almost certain. She’d tracked the prisoner here following his breakout. It was too much of a coincidence. But what did he want? And why did he want her?
Mia was about to step out of cover when a pair of men circled around the nearest statue.
“Not sure why we’re together,” one of them grumbled, his regional dialect thick. “Not like we haven’t done this before.”
The man’s partner slapped him on the back of the head. “You been listening? Thirty dead in Paris! You think you can take that alone?”
The other man rubbed the back of his head, grumbling, “Thirty? Heard it was maybe a dozen. And they were injured, not dead.”
“Lucky they’re not dead, with what he’s done. Make it ten life sentences ‘stead of two.”
The pair stopped right in front of Mia. She didn’t dare take a breath. If she extended her left arm only a little she could touch them.
“So…what’d he do?” the second man asked.
The first one gave a barking laugh. “You’re so cocky, but you don’t even know?”
“I would if you’d tell me.”
The first man lowered his voice, his tone taking a frightening edge, “They say he ain’t natural. Say he’s got powers no one’s ever seen.”
Despite her tension, the scrunched, skeptical look on the other man’s face nearly made Mia burst out laughing. “You mean like that woman from that Society? The one who attacked the Denmark Academy? They were saying she can control shadows.”
“That’s absurd. The academy was unprepared, that’s all. And those Society crazies are nothing to be afraid of. No, he has something worse. Something terrifying. You saw what he did in Paris. That’s why the reward’s so high. So if you can stop talking for a minute, we can—”
A high-pitched whistle made both men jump. The rest of the searchers had reformed and were waving at them over the top of an iron gate at the opposite end of the property.
The two men cast one last look around before leaving to join them. Mia didn’t relax until the entire group had continued down the road to the next mansion. She stood. Why hadn’t they entered the château itself? That was the most likely place the person they were searching for would be. Then again…
She looked up at the imposing building. This place had a haunted energy to it. It’d never felt like home, not even when she’d lived here.
The front door was locked, sealed tight with more than just a deadbolt. It seemed at least some of the protective charms were still active. Perhaps her mother or sister had stopped by to ensure the place wasn’t being vandalized while they hid in their other mansion out in eastern Europe.
As if the thought had summoned them, the back of Mia’s neck prickled. She spun around to scan the grounds. They remained still and empty. The house continued to loom. A howling wind rattled the shingles on the roof.
Mia shivered. She wished Skylar and Colson and Asher were here. She missed the safe way they made her feel. Skylar’s well-meaning bravado. Colson’s strong, unwavering loyalty to stay by her side (just the thought made her cheeks heat), and Asher’s cocky but sure attitude.
It’d killed her to leave them behind, but she needed to do this alone. Whether her family was truly behind this or not, this needed to end. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, live in their shadow any longer.
She walked around the entire house until she found it: a lone window that had never locked properly. She pressed at the glass until the window was stopped by the mansion’s locking charm.
“Retexo,” Mia said.
She expected her unraveling spell to meet sharp resistance, but the locking charm must have been more worn than she thought. Her spell uncurled the threads of it until the window eased open and she was able to prop herself over the lip and drop inside. A plume of dust kicked up where she landed. Just how long had her family been gone?
Mia wasted no time starting her search. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for, only that something—or someone—had to be here. The note said so. Her gut said so. Perhaps she’d find clues to what the writer wanted. Perhaps someone from her family had left instructions, indicating that they were finally severing ties from her forever for disobeying them.
Or maybe…
Mia’s steps slowed as she entered the great sitting room. It’d been one of the few places her family had gathered together, one of the few places she’d felt part of an actual family. The expansive landscape oil paintings stretched across each wall, their colors faded. Her mother’s normally shined pieces of silver—the few they hadn’t taken with them—sat dully in the exact same spot Mia had spent many bored hours staring at them while her mother made her recite their family’s ancestors, and her father smoked his oak pipe, the sweet smoke lulling her to sleep.
Now, a fire crackled in the fireplace. Mia could see the outline of someone occupying one of the great armchairs.
Mia immediately tried to back out of the room but the figure lazily waved a hand. The door behind her slammed shut. The other three doors did the same. Now she was trapped.
As though that would stop her. If this person thought she would be nothing but helpless prey, they would painfully discover that they were mistaken.
“What do you want?” Mia demanded. She raised a hand, magic crackling on the tips of her fingers. If it was her sister, Mia was sure Cherise would try to bat her around before getting to the point. And if it were her parents…
She really hoped it wasn’t her parents.
The figure rose, hunched and dirty and covered in rags. He turned toward her and smiled. Mia felt her heart stop. It wasn’t possible. He was gone. He was dead.
“Hello, Mia,” he said. “It’s so good to see you again.”
Chapter 2
There’s nothing like visiting a shop full of deadly weapons that can turn a lousy day into an amazing one.
“I need these in my life,” I sighed, balancing the twin daggers in the palm of my hands. The blades had been fashioned by my Grandpa Brune, honed to edges sharp enough to slice through steel, then charmed by the dwarves so they’d never dull. Basically, they were my new best friends.
“I’m already scared enough with you carrying one sword around,” Asher said. “Add in two more pointy objects and I’ll be terrified.”
I mimed hurling them at him as he browsed through the stacks of bombs neatly displayed next to the traps and nets. On the other side of the cramped shop were jumbled bins full of powders, salts, casting chalk, and herbs. Above them were precariously hung blunt weapons beside plates of half-finished armor. My mom told me she’d spent hours organizing this stuff as a kid. It was part of the reason she was so adept with pretty much any weapon she could get her hands on. My childhood afternoons with Grandpa Brune mostly consisted of doing things outside the shop. For reasons that were becoming quickly apparent. There was a lot of trouble someone like me could get into with highly explosive, sharp objects.
My eyes settled on an iron mace just over my head. I reached for it.
“Don’t,” Asher said without even turning around.
I shot him an annoyed look. Just because he was my partner at the Academy didn’t mean he got to be my babysitter, too. And my fingers needed something to do while we waited for Colson and Grandpa Brune. In the two days since Mia had run off, I’d chewed my nails practically to the quick. I felt like a raw bundle of nerves. If I didn’t get to cause some sort of mayhem, somebody was going to get hurt.
“You’re no fun,” I said.
Asher picked up some shadow powder and let it sift through his fingers. Then he flashed me a grin of those white-as-freshly-fallen-snow teeth. My heartbeat picked up a little. Even more when he swept back his honey-blond hair. His grin grew. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“I’m lots of fun.”
I crossed my arms. “Yeah? Prove it.”
“I was trying to, before all this craziness happened.”
Ah. Right. He was talking about the date we’d almost gone on. Back when we’d said we liked each other, and I may or may not have confessed to having an uber-attractive dark prince unwantedly occupying space in my chest cavity. Asher hadn’t gone screaming in the other direction after what I’d told him, and for that I was grateful beyond words.
But things had turned insane since then. Between trying to learn where Mia had gone, and dealing with the fallout of the Society attempting to kidnap the Cursed One, we’d barely had time to sleep, never mind figure out what Asher and I were.
Whatever we were.
Asher waved his hand and bits of silver from one of the bins leapt to life, forming a line like stardust. He waved his hand again and the silver began to twist and turn, creating a cord mid-air that spiraled around me, the cool metal brushing my skin.
“Silver, to match your hair,” he said.
A few of the silver pieces lifted the silver streaks in my mostly black hair, a gift from my mother. “Very suave,” I said. “Anything else?”
“I could charm some of the gunpowder. To match your explosive personality.”
“Har har.”
The line of silver pressed against my back and pushed me closer to Asher. I tried not to break eye contact with him as he smirked, even as I grew more nervous with every passing second. He still made me nervous. In a good way. In a way no one else did. Because he knew me like no one else did.
Asher reached out and gently cupped my chin. He was full-on smirking now. The silver danced and twirled, cocooning us.
“How about this?”
“It’s…moderately impressive,” I admitted.
“And suave?”
“Don’t push it.”
“Then how about this…?”
He leaned in. My heart threatened to leap out of my chest. I closed my eyes.
There was a loud thump as somebody pounded down the stairs. I jerked back as the curtains parted and Colson lumbered in. He grunted when he saw us.
“Sorry. Didn’t know you two had gotten here already.”
“It’s fine,” I squeaked. “Totally fine.”
I hoped my face wasn’t as flushed as it felt. I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans as Asher directed the silver back to his bin, frowning with annoyance. It wasn’t as if Colson didn’t know about…well, us, but it was near impossible to get a moment alone. And until we found my best friend, I felt guilty even wanting one.
“Brune’s on his way down,” Colson said.
“Did you two work together today?” Asher said.
“On my ‘giant’ problem?”
Asher and I shared an uncomfortable glance, but Colson broke out in a rare smile. “It’s okay. And yeah, we did.”
I breathed a small sigh of relief. At least he could joke about it. Colson being half-giant meant he had the potential to lose control of the supernatural part of himself. It’d nearly gotten us into trouble a couple times when looking for the Cursed One. I was glad, in just the short time he’d been learning to control his magic with Brune, the lessons seemed to be helping.
“You two haven’t…there hasn’t been any word on Mia, has there?” Colson said.
“None,” I said. “That’s why we’re here.”
Colson nodded. “I thought…” He didn’t seem to want to finish. “I thought I knew her. I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s more like, I wish I’d known if there was something she needed help on. Something she could have told me about before she left.”
The same thoughts had been spinning around in my head for the last couple days. More than once I’d asked myself if there was something I could have done, if I’d missed the signs telling me that Mia would run off to face whatever she had to alone.
“We all wish we’d known more,” Asher said. “And we still haven’t ruled out her being kidnapped.”
“You know that’s not what happened,” Colson said. “She left. I’m not sure why, but she left.”
“Her family,” I said. Asher and I had discussed this a little in the days following her disappearance.
Colson looked at me. “What about her family?”
I sighed. “Just…we think it has to do with her family. That’s all we really know.” I gave a humorless grin. “Seems I didn’t know as much about her as I thought, either.”
“People can hide what they don’t want you to see,” Asher said. “Even those closest to us.”
The brief glance he gave me told me he wasn’t just talking about Mia. I might have told him about the Dark Prince, but I wasn’t ready yet to reveal my darker side to Colson, or Mia, when we found her again.
“Mia comes from one of the oldest, most powerful Supe families in Europe,” I went on. “She didn’t tell me much about her relationship with them except that it wasn’t great.”
“How ‘not great’ is not great?” Asher said, and his tone told us he’d considered what we all had: Was their relationship bad enough that they would kidnap her?
I could only shrug. “She never told me much more than that. And…I never asked. Wish I did now. All I know is they’re powerful, and they don’t want her here at the Academy. Apparently they think it’s some sort of disgrace.”
“What kind of Supes are they?” Colson said.
“Spellslingers. At least her parents are. She mentioned she had a sister, but I’m not sure if she’s the same.”
The ceiling groaned. A moment later, the stairs creaked as Brune made his way down and squeezed into the shop.
“Skylar!” he boomed.
“Grandpa Brune!”
Brune wasn’t actually my grandpa, but since he’d practically raised my mom, I’d never seen him as anything else. He scooped me up in his massive, half-giant arms and squeezed me so hard I was sure I wouldn’t need to go to a chiropractor for a year. His eyes twinkled from behind his tiny glasses the dwarves had fashioned for him, his mouth smiling through his thick beard, filled with more gray than black now. “I’m so glad you’ve come to visit!” he continued in his low, slow voice. “You’re all so busy, busy, busy at the Academy.”
“Hey, Brune.” Asher tried to shake Brune’s hand but was immediately squashed in a side hug. I thought I heard Asher’s shoulder pop.
“I can make you all something to eat?” Brune said. “I have radishes, and just bought some squash. I like that name a lot. Squash. Squash.”
“We actually can’t stay very long,” I said sadly. “Our friend’s gone missing and we need to find her.”
It killed me to see Brune’s sweet face fall. “Yes, Colson told me some about this. He said she’s gone.”
“Colson said you also knew a little more about what’s going on,” I pressed.
Brune looked at Colson, who shrugged. “You did,” he said.
“I only heard about what happened from the other Supes in Ember’s Landing. They’ve been very nice to me since your mom became Mage. They talk to me and bring me gifts.”
“Did they tell you anything important?” Asher said.
Brune thought about this. “Europe was having some problems with something called the Society…”
That was an understatement. And something we kind of already knew. From first-hand experience.
“…and I heard that Croatia has a Vrag infestation,” Brune continued. “Oh, and I heard a prisoner escaped in Paris. It was a big deal because Paris never has anybody escape.” His face wrinkled in confusion. “Do you know what Paris is?”
Geographical quandaries aside, something about that last bit of news stuck out to me. “Didn’t Lucien mention something about an escaped prisoner?” I said to Asher.
“They had a liaison from Paris come by yesterday to talk about it, yeah,” Asher said. “Whoever escaped must have been dangerous enough that they wanted to make sure we were on the lookout over here.”
I frowned. “What the heck did this guy do to get them that ruffled?”
“Besides being an escaped prisoner?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Not sure. Apparently he was in one of Paris’ high-security supernatural prisons, so I imagine something pretty bad.”
Colson coughed. I realized he and Brune had been watching the two of us go back and forth, engrossed in our own little world.
“Not that that means anything,” I said quickly. “The prisoner has nothing to do with Mia.”
“Didn’t you say her family was from Europe?” Colson said.
Hex it all, I had said that. Of course that would make Colson more worried. “From France, yeah. But I’m not sure where. Lucien doesn’t even know. But she wouldn’t go back there…”
“Unless she left because of her family,” Colson finished. “Which we think she has.”
There was an uncomfortable silence.
“Your nice friend, she’s not in trouble, is she?” Brune said.
“That’s why we’re here,” Asher said. “Colson said you might know someone who could help.”
“Me?” Brune said.
“Neither we, Lucien, nor the Academy knows exactly where Mia is,” Colson said. “We have to find her, Brune. She could—” His voice broke. “She might be in danger. You said there was someone Skylar’s mom knew that helped her a couple times. Someone who might be able to help us now.”
Brune’s eyes grew wide. “Carsisiphus!”
“Carcinogenic-what-now?” I said.
“No!” Brune said, his voice booming loud enough to teeter the mace over my head. “He’s nasty! He’s mean! Aspen would be so, so upset if you went there!”
“My mom’s not here,” I said firmly. “And if he can really help us find Mia then we need to see him.”
Brune shook his head so hard I swore I could feel a draft. “No, no, no. He’s mean and bad and he’ll eat your dreams!”
Now Asher was looking slightly concerned. “Just who is this guy?”
“It’s fine,” I told him, even though I had no clue if it was fine or not. Because we couldn’t back out now. If this really was our best chance to find Mia, we had to take it. “Brune.” I lay a hand on his arm.
“No.” He shook his head again.
I hated to keep pushing him, but…“If you came along, you could keep us safe,” I coaxed. “We’re just asking this cartographer—”
“Carsisiphus.”
“Sure, him. We’re just asking him one thing. That’s it.”
“You can protect us,” Colson agreed. “We know you can.”
“Skylar,” Brune implored. “Your mother…”
I wasn’t particularly worried about what my mother would think. Ever since I’d seen how her and Kasia’s pasts intersected, I’d been burning from the inside with questions. If half of what Kasia told me was true, going to this Carsisiphus guy’s shop would be nothing compared to what my mom had supposedly done.
“Just one visit. Real quick,” I said. “Then we won’t ask you for any more favors.”
“And you’ll stay for dinner? I have pumpkin, too.”
“Of course we’ll stay for dinner.”
I could see Brune wavering. The promise of dinner was the clincher. At last, he gave a great, big nod. “All right…But let me get ready.”
At once he was a blundering flurry of movement as he went around the shop, throwing powders and traps and herbs into the deep pockets of his coat, strapping bows and swords and cutlasses to his sides, so many of them that by the time he was done he looked like an uber-jacked porcupine. He waved a massive hand at us. “Follow me to the demon.”
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