Page 129 of The Lies We Conjure
“There’s the problem. I will never have anything polite to say to you.” That grin widens. “And I’m going to make sure you never have anything to say to me ever again.”
I can’t have her making declarations like that.
I buck and writhe beneath her, trying to slide her weight to no avail. Worse, Lavinia lowers her center of gravity, her torso folding into mine, upper body shifting so that one forearm and rabbit’s foot relic pin both my wrists now. To leverage it, her face is so close that the velvet swell of her cheekbone slides against mine, her breath hot on my neck. For a heartbeat, I think she might kiss me—or bite me, perhaps—but instead, she cuffs her freed hand against my throat.
Death magic surges through me, a smoldering, fetid tide, amplified by a pea-shaped talisman smashed between her palm and my skin. A feral shout tears from my throat as her magic dissolves the skin surrounding my windpipe like ash-black acid—
A screaming force plows into Lavinia.
Her hands lose purchase on my throat and wrists as she’s rolled roughly to the side in a blur of movement and cracking of tile. Gasping, I push myself onto my elbows, trying to skitter away, gain purchase,move.
Before me, already upright, is Lavinia with both hands windmilling forward at a figure holding her roughly by the hair.
Ruby.
Lavinia claws blindly, unable to right herself to see Ruby, let alone manage a direct hit. Ruby dislodges the hand stained black from where it had been tangled in the girl’s hair. A glint of metal flashes in that freed grip and then she’s stabbing at the closed fist of Lavinia Blackgate.
In the same moment I realize Ruby is slashing out with a butter knife, I understand why.
Ruby hits her mark, Lavinia’s balled grip flies open and a marble-sized bone fragment plinks onto the garden tile and rolls away.
“Auden!” Ruby yells, just as Lavinia kicks out, clubbing Ruby in the knees and sending them both rolling into the dinner table.
I scramble to my feet and dive for the bone shard. It wedges itself into a weedy gap that’s formed between the edge of the tiles and the fountain. I scrape my fingers in the crevice and pick it up. As soon as it’s between my thumb and forefinger, I glance up to see Lavinia barreling toward me, blood streaking like rainwater from shallow cuts spotting her hand.
Thinking fast, I call the murky water from the fountain’s basin and funnel it into a jet stream straight for Lavinia.
The high-powered spray blasts her back, and the Death witch lands in a heap, her skull dashing against the stone tiles with a crack. She moans but doesn’t rise as I tear my gaze away, wedge the shard beneath my heel, and stomp.
The bone fragment shatters to dust, a jet-black plume of magic rising from the snow-white powder like shimmering smoke.
“Youasshole!” Lavinia shrieks, trying to sit up, blood streaming from a cut above her brow and into an eye. “That was my master!”
Lungs heaving, throat burning, and fear stinging my veins, a smile touches my lips.
My victory is short-lived.
“Auden! Watch out!” Winter shrieks.
My head snaps up.
At first I find Winter, struggling with Infinity to offload Luna, attacking them with the full force of two relics through Marsyas’s machinations. I can’t see Evander, but I hope he’s shielding Wren and attacking Marsyas at the same time. The Cerises are off the board to my left, the four of them in a wrestling match on the grass.
And that’s when I realize Winter’s eyes are drilled past me, toward the Cerises.
I shift my gaze to the other end of the garden battlefield and—
Kaysa Blackgate has finally appeared.
Charging in from the direction of the estate cemetery, a feverish grin splashed under wild eyes and flying hair.
Athena Blackgate is nowhere in sight—but the girl is not alone.
Instead of her mother, Kaysa is joined by a literal army of the dead.
Spilling over the crest of the hill to the manicured lawn are at least two dozen skeletons under her control. My father, aunt, and uncle are there, I’m sure of it. Probably Shadrack too.
Worse, Kaysa also somehow hooked a few spirits. A handful of ghosts lead the charge high above her head, soaring against the cloud-dark sky, lightning-fast bodies marked by gaping, black-hole mouths.
