“I want to kill her. Just let me kill her. Damn it, Celia. Will you look at me?”
“I am looking at you, Taran.”
The shock of my experience receded as Emme encased me in her healing aura and Shayna threw about seven blankets over my shivering form. Except Emme’s gift and Shayna’s attention failed to erase the images of the fight. They continued to haunt me, but at least now I could function. Sort of.
Taran paced around the kitchen, balls of blue and white forming, disintegrating, and reforming in her palms. Her agitation and growing hate threatened to burn down our house. I wanted to calm her and reinforce that only one challenge remained. Yet I couldn’t even stop my body from shaking. I’d killed myself. And while my rational side insisted that it was just part of Larissa’s mindscrew, it remained one hell of an illusion. The other Celia’s skin had felt like my skin. Her eyelashes fanned out thick and long like mine, her green eyes sparked just as intensely, just as sharply. Larissa had mimicked my physique to a tee, down to the freckle on the knuckle of my right pinky. Witches vowed to do no harm.
I supposed that remained true. So long as you didn’t piss one off.
Shayna’s back rested against our new granite top, her arms crossed. She no longer cried. No one did. I wished then she would, hoping the release might soothe her. “I could have killed you.” Her head angled my way. “I never miss. You know I never miss. This was the first time I didn’t hit my mark. If it wasn’t for your tigress side I would have . . .” I expected her to burst into tears then, but she only shook her head before turning toward the window.
“Shit.” Taran abandoned her fire and leaned into the counter, burying her face into her hands. “We all could have killed you, Celia.” Her carefully applied mascara smeared down her cheeks. She clenched her jaw when she regarded me once more. “I’ll find that bitch Larissa, Ceel. And when I do, I swear I’ll end this.”
“And have every last witch in the Tahoe region after us?” I shook my head. “No. You’ve already seen what one can do. And I think both of us have done our share of killing. Don’t you?”
Taran didn’t answer. She pursed her lips. In the end, murder was murder, no matter how just. Emme and Shayna had never experienced taking a life. And I hoped they never would. That’s one of the reasons I’d pounced on the Ninth Law. I didn’t want them to have someone’s heart stop by their hands. Taran and I? Hell, some nights I still woke to the screams of those who’d killed our parents. They’d begged me to spare them when I hunted them down. I didn’t. Not a one. Most people would have expected a fifteen-year-old to show some mercy. But I suppose most people would have given me too much credit.
I rubbed my face, willing my thoughts to concentrate on the here and now. Fatigue weighed on my muscles like a heavy mound of sand. Emme took almost ten minutes to heal the damage Taran, Shayna, and Larissa had unleashed. A personal record for her, but my injuries had been extensive and now my body griped from its exhausted efforts to help her. “One challenge left,” I managed to mutter. “Tomorrow, at midnight, this should all be behind us.”
Shayna raised a brow. “Will you make it till midnight, dude? These challenges aren’t getting easier.” She played with the edges of her long ponytail. “And God knows we’re not helping.”
“It all ends tomorrow night,” I promised them. And it would. Except I couldn’t predict who would stand as the victor. I never expected the challenge to be easy. And yet my naiveté never prepared me for this.
“Celia, I’m not sure what to think of all this,” Emme said almost silently.
Which part—the newt, the challenge, or Celia vs. Celia? “What do you mean, sweetie?”
Emme reached for the ice cream in the freezer and pulled the milk from the double door fridge. “I thought witches were like vampires in that they couldn’t cross our threshold to do us harm—unless we invited them in, I mean.”
I massaged the tense muscles of my left shoulder. “Technically they didn’t harm me. I harmed myself. My body—or whatever—did have a right to be here.”
Emme smiled softly. “But they needed a bit of your essence to enter. And I presume they managed that through the use of your hair. But how could they obtain such a large clump without entering our house?”
“They took it from the hospital.” I elaborated when Shayna stopped fumbling beneath the counter for the blender and frowned with obvious confusion. “I had too much slop on me following the first attack and showered at work. I normally finger-comb my waves after I wash my hair and let them air dry. But all the body fluid had glued my strands together. I borrowed your comb from our locker, Shayna, and worked it through my hair to get everything out. It was pretty much shot when I finished with it, so I tossed it. Larissa could obviously see me. That’s how she’d caught me in the dirty utility room. She or her witches could have seized my leftover hair from the drain or fished the comb from the garbage.” Shayna blinked back at me. “I, um, owe you a new comb,” I said in response to her blank expression.
Shayna rushed to her feet and threw her arms around me. “I don’t care about the stupid comb,” she choked. “I care about you. She could have cast a lot worse spell with your hair and blood in her hands.”
“God damn it.” Taran scooped the vanilla ice cream into the blender like it had called her a bitch and poured in what remained of the milk. Most of it sloshed off to the sides, spilling all over the brown and black marble counter. I grabbed a towel to wipe it, but she ripped it from my grasp. “For shit’s sake, Celia. Shayna’s right. Who knows what else Larissa plans to do? With your hair, your blood— Aw, hell. Why didn’t you throw in a tooth while you were at it?”
“If the newt had managed to pry off a molar, maybe I would have.” My dark humor was supposed to make them laugh. Only silence greeted me. Silence, and the still air that came with an ill-fated future. Taran hit the mix button on the blender. She poured me a milkshake the moment the mixer stopped. I downed it and she poured me another, giving me the much needed calories I’d need to fight. Popeye had his spinach. My tigress, well, what could I say. She liked her milk.
Shayna rushed down to the basement and returned with more ice cream and more milk. My appetite surprised even me. When I had my fill, I dumped my empty glass into the dishwasher and headed up the back steps, hoping my tired body would surrender into sleep the moment it hit the bed.
Taran gripped my arm as my bare feet felt the crush of our newly carpeted steps. Her irises sparkled so clearly, they resembled diamonds instead of sapphires. “Just know this, Celia,” she said. “If she hurts you beyond repair, if she doesn’t stay true to her word, or if she steals you from us, we will go after them. All of them. And God help anyone who takes their side.”
Chapter Eight
Weres could sniff lies. So could vampires. And even witches sensed a fib to some extent. I didn’t have that gift. But I knew my sisters, sometimes better than I knew my own tigress. Taran meant what she said. And it scared the hell of me. But what scared me more were the definitive nods from Shayna and Emme.