Kindling the Moon (Arcadia Bell #1)(91)

The mage who presided over the Moonchild ritual? That name didn’t sound right. “I thought that was Frater Oben? Who is Frater Blue? Is that another magical name, or another member of the E∴E∴?”

“A rogue magician,” my mother said. “We met him in Dallas a couple of years before you were born.”

“You lied to the caliph? Why did you tell him it was another mage?”

My dad laughed. “Work with someone outside the order? We’d have been expelled.”

I didn’t think that was true; the caliph had been okay with the fact that I’d worked with other magicians over the last few years. Or was that a lie? Confusion clouded my thoughts. I strained to see the robed man, this Frater Blue. He had light-colored hair. Maybe white. I couldn’t tell. Wait … the Tamlins, the crazy couple in San Francisco who told me about the glass talon and the mystery man they saw running from the crime scene in Portland … was Frater Blue the man who committed the murders? The man who conjured the white demon? I laughed out loud. Surely it was the drug talking. I was making connections that weren’t there.

“Why is he here, Frater Blue? Why are we all here? What are you doing?”

A soft night breeze fluttered my mother’s graying hair. “Magick requires patience and time. Rituals take too long. All the summonings and spells require manual work.” She spoke dramatically, with an intensity behind her eyes. Like she was giving a speech to an audience at some occult gathering. I’d sat through more of those speeches than I could remember when I was a teenager. “Technology improves and science continually advances,” she continued. “But we use the same crude techniques that were used a thousand years ago. We’ve made no progress. Humans no longer use typewriters, they use computers—magicians use the same crushed minerals. We labor to draw the same old symbols to conjure and control the Æthryic spirits one at a time.”

My father chimed in, cheeks flush with excitement and the warmth of the fire spirit behind us. “We tried to get people to think outside the box, but no one wanted to change. Everyone was happy with the status quo.”

“They won’t be now,” my mother said. “Because we can finally prove to them that progress is possible. With your powers inside of us, we will have an army of demons at our disposal, instantly. There is no need for any of this.” She gestured toward the hand-carved ritual circle surrounding us. “The old ways can stay in the past. We will tear down the tower and build a new aeon. We will change the world.”

They sounded like crazy people. I fell into their semantic trap, though, unable to see past the words.

“You always said ritual was important. You made me learn all the old ways … I’m the one who thought outside the box. I experimented with spells and mixed traditions—not you.” The red spiderweb was tickling my nose. I tried to blow an upward breath to push it away.

My father leaned in close. “We wanted you to have all the knowledge within you, but it’s your birthright that makes you think differently.”

“That stupid Moonchild bullshit?” I said, as fury rose up in me.

“Do not curse, Seléne,” my mother scolded. “It is unfitting for a messiah.”

“I’m not a messiah.”

“Of course you are. Everyone believed in the beginning, when you were a child, but their faith wavered when they became impatient for results. They doubted us. Talked behind our backs.”

My father nodded. “They made us doubt it too. When your powers didn’t manifest at puberty, we were all confused. We waited and hoped for several years, but nothing happened. You wore the silver crown of the messiah, but did not wield her power.”

“Who cares? Why are you talking about all this crazy stuff? What about the council? I came to prove your innocence—the Luxe Order will start a war if we don’t.”

My father laughed. “Let them! Once the ritual is complete tonight, there won’t be a single magician in the world who will doubt us or wield enough power to stop us.”

“Besides,” my mother added in a practical voice, “we aren’t innocent.”

I looked back and forth between them, my altered vision making it hard for me to differentiate who was who.

“We killed the three,” my mother said … or maybe my father. “Our plan was to kill all five heads of the major orders, but we were sloppy.”

“You—”

“When you didn’t manifest the Moonchild powers, it hurt our reputation as magicians. No one believed in our abilities anymore. People stopped inviting us to conferences to speak. Our book sales declined. Your father lost his job.”

“We realized that we had to do something big to shake things up,” my dad explained. “You don’t build a new city without razing the old one. And we tore it all down.”

My world began shattering. As pieces broke off, I tried my best to catch them before they were lost forever, but it was happening too fast. “Tore what down?”

“The entire occult community!” My father swept his hand across his throat. “We tried to get the orders to unite under a larger umbrella—”

“What?” I said in disbelief. “You killed those people because they wouldn’t back your stupid United Occult Order? You can’t be serious.”