Banishing the Dark (Arcadia Bell #4)(80)

“And have your demon lover shoot me in the process? I don’t think so. Come here, and I’ll release him in exchange for you.”

“Cady!” Lon warned. “She’s fading. Let her go.”

But I couldn’t.

I began walking toward her, slowly, hands still in the air.

“Don’t do it!” Jupe cried, tears streaming down his cheeks.

But I had to.

No other choice, really. If I didn’t, she’d kill Jupe before she got yanked back to the Æthyr, when she realized she had nothing to lose. And what kind of life would Lon and I have left if that happened? No life at all.

Three more steps, and I’d be within her reach. Last chance to change my mind.

A movement behind her made me lose my focus. The girl who’d raced down here with Jupe stood in the shadows outside the circle of light beaming from the shed. I’d never seen her before, but I recognized something familiar in her face. This had to be Leticia Vega, daughter of the grandmaster at the lodge in Morella. She was gesturing wildly, pointing at my mother, drawing shapes with her finger on the front of her clothes, tapping her back between her shoulder blades, shaking her head, pointing at my mother again.

I hesitated in midstep, realization sending goose bumps over my arms.

An Achilles’ heel. My mother had painted the symbols on herself; she must not have been able to reach her own back. Did this matter or not? I wasn’t sure.

I closed my eyes for a moment and tried to still my thoughts. Maybe I was going about this all wrong. When I’d needed my Moonchild abilities in the past, they’d shaped themselves without conscious thought. Could I count on that again?

“Cady!” Lon shouted to me in desperation. He was moving again, racing to get around Priya, and my mom was twisting, trying to shield herself with Jupe without losing sight of me. Or was it that she didn’t want to turn her unprotected back on me?

And that’s when a strange idea came to me, one I wasn’t sure would work. But what did I have to lose?

Trust me, I told Lon in my head at the same time as I told my mother, “Take me” out loud.

And when she released one of Jupe’s arms to reach for mine, I avoided her grip, slapped a hand on her back, and unleashed what I prayed was an actual knack and not just some fleeting, f*cked-up magical vision.

Everything around me vanished.

Jupe felt the grip on his arms loosen, but he was too scared to move—not until he saw his dad’s expression change. Spiraled horns and fiery halo blurred toward him as he wriggled out of the woman’s stiff hands and propelled himself away.

His dad grabbed his arm and jerked him to his side, and that’s when Jupe swung around and got a look at Cady and her mother. They looked frozen in place. Like storefront mannequins or one of those stupid artist hippies in the Village who painted themselves to look like statues and jumped out at people.

And Cady’s eyes were all messed up. Her pupils had disappeared. They were nothing but silver.

“Get behind me!” his dad snapped.

But he couldn’t, because—

“Leticia!” he shouted, seeing her move in the shadows.

“Don’t go near them!” Dad shouted toward her as he steered them all toward Priya. “Circle around this way.”

Leticia jogged and met them, Foxglove bounding behind. Jupe grabbed her hand and pulled her behind his dad. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, but he could tell that she was freaking out. And how could he blame her? Dad had gone all Hellboy, Cady had turned into a black and white reptile, a body-painted psychopathic witch just fell out of the sky and nearly broke his arms holding him hostage, and a shirtless boy with a broken wing had crash-landed at their feet.

Sort of put Leticia’s naked-altar-sister, racist-grandma family to shame.

Still, Leticia was a warrior. So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Jupe that she managed to keep a level head in the middle of all this crazy shit. She didn’t scream, and she didn’t run. She just looked up at his dad and said, “What’s happening to them?”

“Cady said she was going to let her mom take her body,” Jupe said. “Does that mean her mom’s soul is inside her?”

Dad’s eyes flicked back and forth between the two frozen women. “I’m not sure.”

“Maybe they swapped bodies, like some kind of bad ’80s movie,” Jupe suggested.

Dad shook his head. “Cady looked like this yesterday, when she had a . . . vision.”

“What kind of vision?”

Dad held his shotgun as if he wasn’t sure if he should be aiming it or not. “Like an out-of-body experience. She traveled somewhere.”

“Where?” Jupe asked. “Do you think she took her mom back into the Æthyr?”

“She is still on this plane,” a pained voice said at their feet. “I can feel her, but I cannot hear her anymore. I cannot verify exactly where she is or whether her mother has control over her, and I am not sure if I can locate her in this state of injury.”

Jupe bent down to inspect Priya. “Dude, are you okay?”

“I need to heal, or I won’t be able to fly again,” he said through gritted pointy teeth.

“We know healers. I can call one,” Jupe offered.

Priya’s skin crackled with static. “I can find a healer in the Æthyr, but I cannot stay here much longer. And if I leave, Enola may return with me.”