Page 112 of The Lies We Conjure
Auden Hegemony, age 17
Student at Walton-Bridge Academy; rising senior
Hobbies: varsity lacrosse, poetry club, running, hiking, fishing
Family: Callum Hegemony, father, deceased; Ursula Hegemony, Evander Hegemony, Winter Hegemony
My most recent school picture from Walton-Bridge is paired with the simple bio, and a half dozen photos—candids, sports action shots, a group picture from the last dinner party with Ursula and my cousins—tail it before the next section, aka “Winter Hegemony, age 16,” begins.
When I’m done, Ruby is watching me, her dark eyes a storm, lips still rosy from my own trembling. “I’m so sorry.”
I back away from the phone. From her. Ruby takes a step forward, imploring. Her words are for us as a whole, but she refuses to look anywhere but at me.
Her perfect target.
“I’m sorry that we lied to you. I’m sorry that we’re here. I’m sorry about your families. Wren and I… we’re not your killers. We never were.” Then, because maybe the real Ruby appreciates a good callback, she uses my wording from yesterday after the truth spell. “We were pawns.”
“You weren’t pawns, you were willing participants.” Ada stabs an accusing finger at the pair of them. “You’recon artists.”
Ruby’s chin begins to wobble as she finds the words to respond to that, and a new tear spills over. She doesn’t even bother to bat it away.
“Not intentionally,” she rasps, voice brittle. Her whole body is shaking now, and she does nothing to soothe it away. Just stands there and lets the trembling take her. Like she deserves it. “We would never have said yes if we knew what Marsyas had planned. Never in a million years. We didn’t know we’d hurt you; we didn’twantto hurt you.”
The girl looks absolutely miserable and wrung out.
And that’s when Winter explodes.
“You pretended to bereal people! For days! As people died! Knowing that it would matter if you told us, ‘Hey, Marsyas hired us to sub for her granddaughters.’ You don’t think we needed that information? We needed it two days ago!”
Evander snatches the phone from Winter and stares down Ruby with that serious, stoic face.
“That information is just as important as the dead driver—Marsyas planned to murder Ursula and get out of here, and she confounded us by trapping her magically inept granddaughters here, whom she claimed to love. This same information from you days ago might have allowed us to figure out her plan and taken precautions.”
Evander scrubs a hand through his short hair.
“Nowwe’re behind the eight ball and all we’ve confirmed is that there is a second part of the plan—something Auden pointed out a day ago… but I failed to fully investigate.”
He glances over his shoulder to me. I nod. “At first, I thought either Marsyas wanted to trap us in here forever and wreak havoc on the Four Lines from outside our bubble, or she was going to come back. Not for either of you—she’s probably hoping that we dispose of your lying asses for her—but for the relics. But with what we know now—”
“She’s already here,” Ruby says at the same time I do.
“But she can’t be!” Ada argues. “That’s not possible—the spell we did was definitive. Marsyas isn’t on the grounds.”
“But what if she isnow?” Ruby shoots right back. “I’m not a witch, but I understand enough to know that if Death magic is to blame for the murder of your parents, how can there not be a Death witch on the grounds with us in this very moment? Or at least when it happened?”
She isn’t Lavinia Blackgate, but it strikes me that her outsider’s perspective is still intact. And Ruby has just as much need to break the spell now as she did before her truth was revealed.
“The spell locks us in as well as it locks Marsyas out,” Ada answers,flatly. She looks to her brother but for once Hex doesn’t help. “No one can come in and no one has been here this whole time, unless they’ve been standing outside the gates since they locked, waiting to take us out the minute we solve this.”
“So what do we do?” Infinity cuts in, ignoring Ada’s ruminations. “Do we try to run the hunt spell again? See if we can find Marsyas this time?”
Evander shakes his head. “Something she’s doing is clearly tampering with the hunt spell.”
“Should we look for her?” Winter asks. “Like, spread out?”
“A waste of time.”
“So what do we do?” a frustrated Infinity repeats.
