Page 113 of Truly Madly Magically

The Undine’s eyes glow more fiercely.

Carol clearly takes that as encouragement. She sucks in a breath and faces the crowd, her chin trembling, her eyes wet, and her Medusa frizz more disheveled than usual.

Something cold and foreboding slithers down the length of my spine.

“As we prepared for the Undine’s call, taking what comfort we could in the notion that soon this display of overconfidence and youthful arrogance would soon be over, we could not get ahold of...”

Carol trails off, makes a snuffling sound as if the pain is too great, then dabs at her eyes.

“Happy Ambrose has been murdered!” Maeve shrieks out, as if she can’t contain herself a moment more.

Murdered. The word echoes through the night, a symphony of confusion in all of us and the crowd alike.

“Perhaps he has finally seen the error of his ways and has taken himself off—” Frost begins, seeming the least upset at the very notion of murder.

Before he can finish the sentence, a body thumps down on the dais between the Joywood and us. It’s clearly good old Happy Ambrose—or, I correct myself, because I don’t trust the Joywood on any level, some approximation of him.

The crowd is less skeptical. Some of the gathered witches in the crowd scream and jump back. The muttering is practically a shout.

The Undine says nothing.

“This is...shocking,” Emerson says, peering down at Happy. “And terribly sad.” The if it’s true rings through all of us. Emerson takes a deep breath. “You can’t honestly blame us for this, Carol. For a wide variety of reasons, but the bottom line is that the ascension rules should prevent us from hurting each other.”

She says this pointedly, since obviously the Joywood managed to hurt us just fine tonight. I have to restrain myself from holding up Zander’s burned hand and forearm as proof. Meanwhile, I’m trying to work out what their game is here. Did they fake the death of one of their own to cover up what they did to us? Or worse...

Could they have actually done it? Just so they could blame us?

“We’re not accusing you,” Carol returns with a sniff and another dab at her eyes. “We caught the perpetrator in the act. It wasn’t a witch, but then, you know that, don’t you? It was a human under your control, clearly, because this is what happens when bloodlines are polluted.”

Everything in me goes cold. I’m the one “polluted,” and—

That’s when my sister appears.

Poor little Sadie, thunked down on this raised dais, much too close to what’s left of Happy Ambrose. They’ve tied her hands behind her back and her feet together, and while there’s nothing covering her mouth, I can tell she’s been hexed mute.

I want to kill them all. Every last standing member of the Joywood, all of them smirking at us now, when not pretending to be deeply disturbed for the crowd. I want to call down the gods and rain fire all over them—

But I don’t.

Only partially because I’m sure they’d love that.

Another part has everything to do with the way Zander laces his fingers with mine. Not to hold me back, but a simple, nonverbal, I’m here for whatever we do next.

If I had time to sink into that, I think it would make me break.

Instead, all I can focus on is my sister. “Sadie.”

She’s clearly been crying. Her eyes meet mine in terror and confusion.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I demand of the Joywood—our audience and the Undine be damned. I try to reach out for Sadie and pull her to me magically, but they’ve put some kind of shield around her. “She’s a child. She’s a human child who has no idea she’s related to a witch. She shouldn’t be here.”

I bang at the shield a little with bursts of my magic, though I know it’s no use. Panic will only make things worse. I remember Elizabeth urging me to be calm earlier, but haven’t I used all the calm in my arsenal at this point?

“She is a murderer,” Carol says flatly.

I can see the gleam of triumph in her eyes.

“This is beyond ridiculous,” I say, and reminding myself to be calm has also let me remember to broadcast my voice. The voice that wouldn’t work if I was a liar like Carol. “Sadie couldn’t kill a witch if she tried. We all know this. Failing to take me out tonight during our ritual must have messed with your heads. No one out there is going to believe a thirteen-year-old human killed one of the Joywood.”

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