Page 43 of Commanding Chaos

I also couldn’t believe Ember and I were helping them exact revenge on her innocent relatives. “How will you find Isabel’s descendants once your brothers are freed? What will you do to them?”

I turned in my seat to see Chaos’s expression as he answered. He held my gaze for a moment before looking down. “The three of us together will sense them.”

Ember tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “Remember this is for the greater good. Every war requires sacrifices.”

“I know.” It didn’t mean I had to like it. “Will you kill them all?”

Chaos took a deep breath, flicking his gaze to mine. “It’s within our right to take them all.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded before turning back to the front.

“However…” Chaos rested his hand on my shoulder, stopping me. “I feel that one will suffice. My brothers may feel otherwise.”

“What if they don’t know about the curse? What if they’re completely innocent? Light witches like me and Em?”

His eyes darkened, and he moved his hand to his lap. “A debt is a debt. It must be paid.”

“Okay.” I turned around and stared out the front window. One life in exchange for thousands of others. It made sense, I guessed.

“This is it.” Ember put the van in park. “Get out and see what you can feel.”

I did as I was told and exited the van to stand on the sidewalk on a historic street in Marblehead. Two- and three-story buildings dating back to the seventeen hundreds lined the road on both sides, and trees with golden leaves that would soon fall to the ground dotted the spaces between buildings.

Straightening my spine, I inhaled deeply and set my intention on finding Mayhem’s skull. I held still, searching the vibration in the air. I felt nothing. No tickle, no pull. Nada. I expanded my intention to include a possible trap laid to vex anyone who tried to revive the demons. Still nothing.

I got back in the van. “Let me look at the map. I’m not getting anything here.” Isabel’s pentagram ended at a point roughly near this area, but with everything that had been built, torn down, and rebuilt since her time, it was impossible to tell how close we were.

“It’s farther north,” Chaos said.

I returned the maps to my bag. “How do you know?”

“I can sense it. The pull is unmistakable. Mayhem is near to the north.”

It wasn’t so unmistakable for me. I felt zip. “Guess I’ve got work to do if I want to develop this newfound power.” If I even could. I never developed my fire magic, and I’d been working on that all my life.

Ember put the van in drive and continued north. “You’ll get it.”

“Will I?” Maybe the antique store was a fluke. Maybe I could only find insignificant things.

“Don’t you dare start that again.” She gave me the side eye as she drove.

“You will master your magic,” Chaos said. “Mayhem is my brother. It’s not surprising I would sense him first. I’m familiar with his vibration. You are not.”

“Yeah, okay.” He had a point. It took me years to master sigil work. I shouldn’t expect this to come easily either.

“Here.” He tapped the back of Ember’s seat. “I believe she hid his skull in there.”

We stopped in a parking lot in front of Fort Sewall, a coastal fortification circa the sixteen thirties, now a public park. It was used in just about every war fought on American soil, but the current structure, which wasn’t much, didn’t exist when Isabel would have been here.

Ember climbed out and opened the side door to gather her daggers. “How do you think she infiltrated a military base to hide a skull?”

“Isabel was a powerful witch, who practiced dark magic.” Chaos exited the van, and we stood outside as Ember strapped on her weapons, hiding them strategically inside her jacket and in her boots. “She could have used a number of spells to render the soldiers catatonic.”

I slung my bag over my shoulder. “Or she used her feminine wiles to get inside. Witches don’t need magic for everything.”

Chaos made a hmph sound, solidifying my suspicion that he and Isabel were lovers. She probably used her feminine wiles to trick all three of them. I had to give her props for that, despite the fact she cursed my bloodline. She commanded three Princes of Hell. I could barely manage one.

“It’s this way.” Chaos started toward the entrance, but I grabbed his arm.

---