says. “It’s a setup. It must be.”
Again, Mom’s prophecy echoes in my mind.
Soldiers marching for our doom…
“Regardless of current legal status,” the voiceover continues, “all witches and mages in the United States are required to report to local authorities for immediate questioning. Any magickal persons who do not report within the next twenty-four hours will be considered fugitives.”
“Are they fucking serious right now?” Carly asks. “They can’t do that.”
“They can, and they are.” Baz clicks to another channel, this one showing footage from stoplight and retail security cameras capturing the precise moment of the so-called attack. One minute, everything is normal—people walking down the sunny streets with ice cream cones and shopping bags, a pack of motorcycles racing by, a guy on the corner dressed like a clown, waving a big sign about cell phone deals inside. Then, out of nowhere, streaks of silver-blue light tear across the pavement, one right after another, igniting an inferno that burns so hot, it literally melts the pavement.
And everyone on it.
My stomach churns, my knees nearly buckling. It happens so fast—maybe three seconds onscreen—and then the image cuts out.
The security cameras were destroyed.
The screen switches to an arial view, a traffic copter catching the same moment. From the sky, it looks like a nuclear attack—a flash of bright white light, then nothing but fire as far as the eye can see.
All around me, the energy in the room turns to ice. Panic and dread, confusion, fear, sickness.
“It’s so much like that night at Breath and Blade,” Doc finally says. “I can’t get it out of my mind.”
“It really is an uncanny resemblance,” Professor Broome says.
“What night?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
Isla clutches her teardrop pendant, her eyes wide and watery. Even her braids seem to be trembling.
“Ani,” she says softly. “The night Ani unleashed his witchfire to save us all from Janelle and Casey.”
Still standing at my side, Baz shakes his head. “It wasn’t him.”
“Baz,” Doc says, “you didn’t see him that night. The fire, the intensity, the scorched ground… Other than the scale of this attack, it looks identical to what Ani conjured at Breath and Blade.”
Baz drops my hand, folding his arms over his chest. “So you’re all saying Ani just… what? Magicked himself out to California while we were asleep and lit the whole place on fire?”
“We can’t rule it out,” Doc says.
“Yeah, Cass. We sure as fuck can.” Baz points toward the guest bedroom. “Ani is in a fucking coma. In that bedroom, where he hasn’t moved from since Harvest Eve. He’ll be lucky if he can even remember his own name after this, let alone mastermind devious plots to incinerate entire cities. He’s practically a vegetable, and—”
“He’s not a vegetable,” I snap, Baz’s grim pronouncement igniting my anger. “He’s alive, and some part of him is fighting like hell to get back to us. He said my name, Baz. Goddess, what is wrong with you?”
“Maybe you misheard him, Stevie.” He gives an exaggerated shrug. “Or maybe these guys are right, and Ani’s totally fine, calling your name and coordinating magickal attacks against innocent people while the rest of us stand around with our thumbs up our asses, casting spells and praying to the goddesses that we somehow survive this shit.”
“You know as well as I do Ani didn’t cause that.” I jab my finger at the television, anger spilling over in hot, fresh tears. “And he’s not a vegetable, and he will wake up, and if you have any doubts about either of those two things, you can go fuck yourself.”
“Stevie, listen to me.” Doc grabs my shoulders, pinning me with a gaze so full of sadness and fear, it nearly steals my breath. “You have to understand—”
“It wasn’t him, Doc. We’re talking about Ani. Ani! And you’re all acting like Ani’s the cause of this random act of violence, when there’s no way he even—”
“What happened today,” he continues, his voice breaking. “It wasn’t random. Moonlight Bay Beach? That’s… that’s Ani’s hometown.”
I blink up at him, the words banging around in my mind, trying to stick.
Moonlight Bay Beach. Ani’s hometown. Not random…
No matter how hard I try to hold onto them, to make sense of what Doc told me, I just can’t. Sure, maybe this senseless, gruesome attack is happening in Ani’s hometown, but I can’t believe he has any connection to the violence playing out on the screen behind us. To the devastation that will echo across the country for years and decades to