Page 14 of The Lies We Conjure
Above, the chandeliers flicker. Every light in the house too. The mountain wind kicks up, the sounds of the night flooding in for one eerie moment until the winking lights snuff out completely. The three chandeliers crash to the table, shards of shattered porcelain and crystal flying through air filled with gasps of surprise and shrieks as Ursula’s magic fails.
Then I’m up—muscles firing finally—and diving to her crumpled form. Winter and Evander too, but I get there first.
I scoop my grandmother’s head into my arms. Her eyes are gone and glassy. Lips gagged open. I bend my ear, listening for breath I know isn’t there.
No sight. No breath. No mistake.
Ursula Hegemony is dead.
CHAPTER6
RUBY
Condensation sweats from my cold glass to my trembling hand, and a blast of pain radiates up my arm. I’d shot to my feet when the light fixtures fell, knocking over my chair, and leaping away from the table.
In a blink it’s no longer pitch black—the flickering chandeliers lie on the table, beached on their sides like burning whales in a sea of spilled pink soup, crushed tableware between them. It’s dimmer than before, the floating lights that’d lit the rest of the garden still out, the house an obsidian void, absorbing the weak illumination like a black hole.
Swallowing, I can see now what I felt before—shards of fractured porcelain embedded in the meat of my arm, pinpricks of blood surfacing like beads of sweat between globs of pink gazpacho.
Bile burns the back of my throat as I catch sight of a slick of red on the corner of the table and seeping out from beneath Ursula’s fall of dark hair. The wind kicks up, carrying the scent of pine, mingling perfumes, and the coppery tang of blood.
Plunking down my ice water with unsteady hands, I scramble for my purse, furiously digging for my cell phone. I get a grip on the phone and yank it out so forcefully I nearly drop it. The screen comes alive. Still no bars of service. No Wi-Fi. No emergency call button.
“Does anyone have a signal?” I have no idea the volume of my request. My tone feels both meek and frantic, panic billowing out of me like a mushroom cloud as it rises above the garden. If I remember my accent, I don’t hear it. “Anyone?”
No one answers me. Everyone is staring at the knot of Hegemonys. Sanguine whispers something to Hector, but no one else is saying or doing anything.
I pivot toward Marsyas, ready to run for the car—if we can’t call an ambulance, we can drive Ursula to the hospital.Ican drive Ursula to the hospital. I know Marsyas has the keys. I saw her slip them into her bag.
But Marsyas isn’t there.
I find Wren across the table, and she’s frozen on her feet, just like everyone else. Then the stunned silence breaks with another sound. A mournful wail.
Winter crying.
Balanced on her teetering heels, she’s sunk into a squat, her shiny floral dress tight against her calves—she’s clutching her grandmother’s hand. They’ve got her prone now, Auden cradling Ursula’s head in his lap. Beside Auden and opposite Winter, Evander has removed his jacket and is rolling up his sleeves. Workman-like, he applies two vigorous pumps to his grandmother’s sternum, before bending to blow air into her lungs.
Ursula’s chest doesn’t expand. My heart lurches. As Evander goes in for the next set of compressions, Winter reaches over and roughly shoves him backward. Evander is basically as muscled as a Greek god, but her fury and his surprise tips him back on the heels of his dress shoes. “That won’t work!”
I want to argue with Winter. I’m on Evander’s side—this isn’t over. It isn’t too late. Ursula fainted. Hit her head. We can get her breathing again; we can get her to a hospital. Hook her up to every machine available and bring their grandmother back to life.
“Evander, no! Let me do it! It’s my choice!”
Winter’s voice is shattered and pleading. I see now that she’s trying to get both hands on her grandmother’s body. Evander is pulling her away—maybe they’ve switched positions on life-saving measures? But Auden has a forearm up too, physically blocking his cousin’s desperate reach.
Evander yanks Winter to her feet and away from the body, holding her tightly by the shoulders. “Win, I won’t let you pay that price. Not—”
Across the table, a waiter pitches over into Marsyas’s empty seatwith a sick thud and shattering clatter of the second course he’d been balancing on a tray. Remnants of arugula salad litter the lawn around him as he stares up, limp and glassy-eyed.
In the distance, more bodies fall—another waiter, the bartender, the security guard. All around, people drop—thud, thud, thud.Not a scream or complaint. Just the muted sound of bones and flesh hitting the grass or stone.
Suddenly a massiveclangreverberates off the sleeping mountains.
The iron gates. Slamming shut.
Then, another collective gasp, soft and sharp.
A wisp of something like smokerisesfrom Ursula’s still form.
