Page 176 of Silver in the Bone

A neighbor’s TV came through the thin wall that connected our houses “—reports are only just emerging out of Glastonbury, where, overnight, officials claim a massive seismic event has unearthed previously unknown ruins of an earlier settlement and forest. We’re getting a live shot now—”

“God’s teeth,” I choked out. “Are they going to be able to see everything in the tower? The books? The springs?”

“Anything still possessing magic will be hidden to those without the One Vision,” Olwen said. “Anything made by hand will not.”

She clutched the basket containing Viviane’s vessel on her lap, her legs jumping with unspent adrenaline. The vessel inside had shattered with the blast of magic from the ritual, but she’d brought it anyway.

“I’m so sorry,” Neve said, agonized. Something broke open in her then, and her words spilled out with her tears. “If I hadn’t pushed you to perform the ritual, this—this never would have happened. I’m so sorry. So, so sorry—”

“No,” I said. “None of this is your fault. I’m the one who went to get the athame.”

“I’m the one who fought for the ritual,” Olwen said, her face crumpling. “I never questioned Bedivere’s identity, nor noticed he still possessed the hand he claimed to have lost—what sort of healer am I?”

“Why would we have questioned it?” Caitriona asked. “Only the High Priestess had ever laid eyes on the living Arthur and true Bedivere, and Lord Death ensured she was dead before coming to the tower.”

She stood and began to pace, catching each of our eyes in turn. “Listen to me. We will not play this game. We will not bear the burden of blame for what that monster has done. We will only make right what he has wronged.”

My brows drew together. “What do you mean?”

“We have unleashed Lord Death unto this world, along with the Children,” she said. “Whatever he has planned for the sorceresses, for all of this realm, we will stop it. And we will bring Cabell back.”

I closed my eyes, releasing a shaky breath. “I don’t know if we can.”

The brother I knew wouldn’t have stood by and let the last survivors of Avalon be slaughtered.

“He could be under Lord Death’s sway,” Neve said, wiping her eyes against her torn sleeve. “The way the Children are.”

I wanted to believe that, but ... that look on his face. You made me feel like I was a monster.

“The body at King Arthur’s tomb,” Neve said quietly. “It must have been the real Bedivere.”

“I think you’re right,” I said. “And the full story is probably etched into the missing piece of that vessel—the one Flea found.”

Caitriona raked a hand through her tangled mass of hair. “But we have no way of echoing—not with the vessel in pieces.”

The Bonecutter did love a challenge, though I wasn’t sure what they would make of this one. “We’ll start with finding the person I think can mend it, and then we’ll warn the Council of Sistren.”

“Oh, I’m sure they already know,” Neve said. “The eruption of magic was telling enough, but even sorceresses get cable news.”

“Are we all in agreement?” I asked, a strange, trembling feeling in my chest at that word. We. At the thought of us facing this together.

“And until then?” Caitriona asked, returning to her seat at the table. Olwen leaned forward, resting her head on her crossed arms.

“We rest,” I said.

In the exhausted silence that followed, the news anchor’s voice bled through the wall again. “We go now to Downing Street for a live statement about the events at Glastonbury this morning—”

Neve reached down into her fanny pack and pulled out the old, battered CD player inside. Flipping one of the earphones toward me, she pressed the other to her ear and turned the dreamy music’s volume up and up and up, until the anchor’s voice faded and there were only the delicate, cosmic waves of sound, the pearly dewdrops the woman sang about.

And, for a moment, even memory released me, and receded.

After charging my cell phone, I searched my bedroom for cash, then made my way to the alcove that housed our desks.

I slowed as I approached them, my eyes widening as I took in the acrylic drawers Cabell used to organize his crystals. With the One Vision, I saw what I hadn’t before—several pulsed with absorbed magic, like flame trapped within stone.

I didn’t want to look any more after that. Not at the crystals. Not at the crusted stain remover on the rug covering my dried blood—the last evidence of the fight with my brother I’d barely survived.

Digging around in my own disaster of a desk drawer, I found enough singles to order us a pizza. As I waited for my cell phone to turn on, I listened to Caitriona cursing and sputtering at the shower faucet on the other side of the wall.

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