Page 111 of The Lies We Conjure
Hex is so indignant with rage that his movements are unmoored, even as he stays rooted to the ground before her—Ruby. His hands flex, the point of his Cerise family ring still exposed and winking. He’s absorbed her blood, which means, at least temporarily, he has control of her if he wants it.
“Are you kidding me?”
“No! Check my room. Look in our purses. It’s all right there—our driver’s licenses and debit cards have our real names on them.”
“You know what? I’m going to do that,” Winter announces. Then she grabs Infinity’s hand. “And you’re going to come with me and check for your master.”
They leave, up the stairs to the terrace without so much as a look back.
“Wait.” Hex fixes Ruby with a sneer. “So let me get this straight. You were paid a couple thousand dollars to pretend to be witches at a dinner party?”
Ruby’s beautiful face is now mottled with bloody ash and tears, her despair and desperation as palpable as the ley line beneath our feet. I don’t know how anyone here can question this story. Every ounce of it is true. My gut twists tighter with each word.
I believe it. I believe her. And it fucking sucks.
“We didn’t know Lavinia and Kaysa were witches—that any of you were!” Her fear-streaked gaze ping-pongs between our faces,but her round of pleading expressions starts with me and ends with me. “We had no idea.None.We were instructed to make small talk, deflect any direct questions we couldn’t answer, and stay close to Marsyas with our fake accents on as tightly as possible. That’s it.”
She nods to the trashed table and my grandmother’s earthen shroud.
“And then Ursula keeled over, Marsyas disappeared, and magic—literal magic—happened right in front of our faces.” She shakes her head, brows crashing together. “And, and—so you know—Marsyas obtained the driver’s keys from himbeforewe walked into the party. They took forever and we thought she was being weirdly territorial about them, but she probably killed him right there with magic while we were gawking at the mansion.”
Evander sounds like I’d imagine Horace the bear did after taking the first of the three bullets it took to kill him, all bite and bile. “All that and you didn’t think to say anything? You had ample time to tell us.”
“We were shocked—stunned.What the hell could we have said that would’ve made a difference?”
Evander scoffs. “The so-called truth you’re telling us now.”
Ruby laughs, dark eyes shining beyond the mess of tears, smudge of ashen blood, and the flood of blush in her cheeks. “You’re telling me that any of you were in the frame of mind toacceptthat two non-magical people had not only gained entry to what seems to be the most exclusive witch event of the year, but that we’d also seen your leader murdered in cold blood? That we witnessed a potential shake-up in the balance of secret Four Lines witch power? You guys would’ve beenokaywith our being here for any of that?”
A glacier of heaviness settles in my gut. She’s right.
Hex laughs back, cruel. Like the true visage of his father exposed in this game. “I’m still stuck on the fact that you took money to impersonate people at a dinner party. Like, who does that?”
“People who need the money!”
“But a couple grand?”
“We need it!” Ruby insists. She runs her hands through her hairnow, grimy ash smearing on her temples and the soft curve of her neck as she finishes one exasperated swoop. “A couple grand is a lot of money tonormalpeople. Not everyone can afford boarding school or has the generational wealth for a sixteen-bathroom manor on ten thousand acres in one of the most expensive states in this whole damn country!”
“She’s telling the truth.”
Winter’s voice cuts across the dead grass and cracked tiles. Two wristlets dangle from her arm, and she’s holding a wallet in each hand. “Ruby Jourdain, seventeen, of Grand Lake; Wren Jourdain, sixteen, of Grand Lake.”
Beside her, Infinity is empty-handed. For a moment, everyone’s eyes skip to Wren’s dress pocket. Ruby scrunches her eyes shut and draws in a thin breath, steadying herself—she didn’t know what her sister was up to. She truly didn’t.
Winter passes the wallets around. “Do you have correspondence with Marsyas?”
She swallows, relief in the set of her shoulders. “Yeah. Including a file she sent us to study on all of you.” Ruby produces a phone. “Here.”
“Open it,” Winter orders, as I’m stunned enough to ask, “She sent you a file?”
Ruby addresses me but she’s looking down and away—embarrassed, then, not lying.
“Yes, with pictures and basics—family, hobbies, interests. It didn’t say anything about the fact that you were witches.” Ruby unlocks the phone, and this time Winter accepts it. “We googled you but couldn’t find any information online, so what you see there is exactly what we knew before we walked in.”
“Ursula keeps—kept—all High Families and initiated witches completely scrubbed from the web.” I don’t know why I’m explaining this, but it seems like a bookend to this corresponding thought. One truth met with another.
Winter dismisses the app we’d used to find the Celestial master, scrolls, taps, scrolls again. Mutters a curse and tosses the phone atEvander. He catches it easily. I lean over to view the screen, and there I am:
