Page 64 of The Lies We Conjure
On their knees, Infinity draws up their hands to the sky, letting the bare sunlight soak into their palms. Then, with the precision of a piano player, all that gathered power and magic sluices into the tongueless mouth, to the vacant eye sockets, to the maw of the driver’s throat.
The body immediately seizes.
Infinity presses both hands down, pinning the man and his spinal column convulsing wildly against the brick. All the while, they bend and whisper in the dead man’s ear.
The driver shudders in one, two, three more huge flailing movements before he jerks to a sitting position, throws his head back, and spews black smoke from gaping lips.
At first it’s a plume, then it spreads outhorizontally.
The gaseous horizon begins to dip and swirl but stays parallel. It doubles back on itself and straightens in places, and then it stops.
And… it’s readable.
Not a symbol, calling card, code. An actual, literal signature, straight from the victim’s mouth to the rest of us.
Marsyas Lavinia Blackgate.
“Well, that’s definitive,” Luna concludes. “Good job, child.”
Infinity smiles weakly at their grandmother and looks up at the rest of us from their spot, still kneeling at the man’s side. “Should we bury him? Or perhaps give him a shroud? It seems so uncivilized to leave him to rot on the driveway.”
“I can give him a shroud,” Auden volunteers. “Just like Ursula’s—nonpermanent but private. It’s the least we can do. Murdered over a set of car keys.”
“No.” Luna’s tone is completely inflexible, her usual orneriness evaporated. “He’s not a witch. Shrouds are not for non-witches, no matter how unfortunate or magical their end. Cold storage. Safely inside. Away from here.”
PART THREETHELIES
CHAPTER20
AUDEN
The search for more dead bodies goes quickly.
The magic does its work easily between the three of us, as we toil in silence. Within minutes, we not only know there aren’t any more, but that every other person who entered the property through the gates is accounted for.
The five permanent employees, ten contractors, and the single remaining driver—the Starwoods’ chauffeur because Hector always insists on driving the Cerises—are all accounted for. All sleeping soundly under Ursula’s spell.
The magic is definitive. It is the eleven of us, alive and moving about. No one else.
And so, as soon as we get the Blackgates’ former driver into the house’s root cellar and spell the body to an appropriate temperature, my cousins seal the exits to the cook’s kitchen in which we’re standing, seeming intent on murderingme.
Not with magic, but with pent-up accusations and withering glares of disappointment.
Evander is the first to speak, of course. He crosses his arms and leans against the central island, still dusted with flour from Chef Maggie’s toiling before our guests’ arrival. The hearth fire in the old kitchen throws shade on the profile of his face, already bruised with sleep deprivation and he’s silently simmering with a level of perceived betrayal he’s been holding in since the driveway.
“You knew about that body, and not only did you not tell us about it, youcovered it up.”
I should’ve figured out something to say by now, but instead I fumble. “I—”
“Auden,” Winter cuts me off, grimace as sharp as the tilt of herclavicles above her aggressively folded arms. “Don’t deny it. We’d know your magic anywhere, and even if you hadn’t been stupid enough to cover it up, evenIbelieve Hex’s account of you walking right past it.”
I lean against the pantry door as leisurely as possible and pretend to be unbothered, inspecting my nails but wishing I had a book to feign reading. “Congratulations. You’ve caught me with something I finallydoknow.”
My sarcasm might as well bounce straight off Evander, his body language and expression as hard as stone. “Something you purposefully kept from us.”
“Something youliedabout,” Winter adds, more to the point. Like Sanguine, she has a habit of drawing blood with her admonitions. “Why?”
“We know the Blackgate girls don’t know of their grandmother’s plans, butdo you?” Evander goes further, for blood. “Are you working with Marsyas?”
