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I push past the men filling buckets at the edge of the river. The clatter of my boots on the long wooden pier is lost in the shouts of the fire brigade and the roar of the flames and the hiss of the hoses.
I’m still three yards away when magic explodes from my body. Inez staggers back toward the edge of the pier and the six-foot drop to the water below. At the last moment, she catches herself on a wooden piling and turns. When she sees me, her brown eyes go wide with shock, but she recovers quickly.
“This is all your fault,” she seethes, and her ability to playact, to manipulate the situation, hardens my resolve. “Exposing us like this? How dare you take such a step without consulting me. ”
“How dare you act as though you didn’t try to have my own sister murder me!” I shout.
Elena freezes, then swipes black curls away from her face. “Maura?”
Pain seizes through me at the sound of her name, at the knowledge that I won’t ever call it and hear her respond. Such a small thing. “Tess. ”
Inez turns to Elena. “This is nonsense. Tess has been unstable. Everyone’s seen that. She’s going mad, like Brenna Elliott. I’ve got nothing to do with it. ”
“Liar. ” I push her backward again, but this time she anticipates my attack and doesn’t move. “Lucy told me the truth. You threatened her into tormenting Tess. Then, when you’d convinced Tess she was going mad, you compelled her to kill me. Aren’t you the one who’s been saying she’s a child? She’s twelve years old!”
Elena folds her arms over her chest. Despite her tiny stature, she radiates power. “Is this true?”
Inez throws up her hands. “Cate has been a liability from the moment she set foot in the convent. Tess had a vision she would kill her sister. It was inevitable. The prophecies are never false. ”
“But oracles can be mistaken. ” Tess has crept up behind us. I spin around, establishing a wary distance, but her storm-cloud eyes are hers again. Right now they’re wide with wonderment. “You were so still, Cate. You didn’t move when I called you. I thought you were dead. It was just like my vision; I thought I’d killed you. ” She reaches out, as if to reassure herself I’m not a ghost, and I let her touch me.
“No. ” My voice chokes a little, thinking of Maura, how she saved me. “I’m alive. ”
Tess whirls on Inez, her blond curls flying out behind her. “Stay out of my head, Inez,” she hisses. “I can feel you poking around, looking for a way in. I will never attack my sister again. If you know what’s good for you, neither will you. ”
Inez’s mouth twists. “Listen to the child! Do you think I’m frightened of you? You were so easy to manipulate. So easily frightened. So weak. ”
“Weak?” Tess frowns, and quick as that, Inez tumbles backward with a splash.
She paddles frantically to keep herself above the waves, but each time she reaches toward the dock, the waves push her back and Tess dunks her and she comes up choking.
“I could keep this up for days,” Tess says, and there’s something new and vengeful in her voice. “I daresay your arms would give out before my magic does. ”
“Tess,” Elena reproaches.
Inez’s chin has sunk below the water now, the weight of her boots and heavy skirts and cloak pulling her down. Elena steps toward the edge of the pier and kneels.
“She doesn’t deserve your help,” I warn.
Elena ignores me, stretching a hand down to Inez. “It’s terrible, what she tried to do to you. To both of you. But you can’t drown her. ”
“Can’t we?” I cast, and Elena sprawls backward on the dock. “I think I could, actually. ”
Inez uses the momentary distraction to clamber back onto the pier. She is dripping and panting, her brown hair plastered over her chiseled cheekbones, but her brown eyes are narrowed and unafraid. Around us, the wind kicks up. The flames in the shipyard leap higher. Sparks scatter into the sky.
“I haven’t lost yet. ” Inez sneers. “I might not lead the Sisterhood directly, but Maura will be my voice. She’s a very tractable girl, your—”
“Don’t say her name. ” I break two pilings and send them flying toward Inez from either side. They seem to hesitate in the air before her, then rocket back toward me. She’s quick; I’ll give her that. But so am I. I cast, batting them aside, and they clatter to the dock and roll into the river.
“Where is Maura?” Tess grabs my sleeve. “Cate, where is Maura?”
“She’s dead,” I say, my voice brittle. Nearby, the skeleton of a great schooner collapses into the water. The pier beneath us rocks.
Elena flinches as though someone has dealt her a bodily blow. “How?”
Tess’s shoulders hunch; her hands press over her mouth. “No. I never meant—but you’re here. You’re all right. Maura can’t—”
“I watched her die. ” I stalk toward Inez. Behind her, one of the remaining pilings begins to smolder. “You swore to Maura on your husband’s grave that you wouldn’t hurt Tess. How do you reconcile that?”
Inez reaches for the ivory brooch at her throat. “I am sorry about your sister. She was a clever witch. But I made an older oath to avenge him. ”
I focus on the high neck of Inez’s black dress, peeking out from beneath her cloak, and the cold glint of ivory there. I cast, and the brooch rips from Inez’s bodice and arcs into the river. Inez cries out—a high, eerie shriek like a trapped animal.
I am unmoved.
“Jump in after it,” I suggest.
She turns to me, eyes narrowed over her hawkish nose. The wind shifts. The bucket brigade and the firemen begin to move back, but before they get clear, the buildings of the shipyard collapse. Several men are trapped beneath the flaming wreckage. Debris whips across River Street, sailing over the heads of the witches and firemen. The roofs of the tenement buildings begin to billow black smoke.
“This entire district will go up in flames, and the Brotherhood with it,” Inez vows. I can understand her better now than I ever have before. There is a part of me that could stand back and watch everything burn and revel in the destruction. My sister is dead. Why should the world go on turning?
“We won’t be hunted anymore,” Inez continues. “Soon we’ll be the ones everyone fears. ”
“No,” Tess says, and the last section of the pier snaps, separating Inez from the rest of us. Tess’s face is unforgiving, implacable.
“Elena!” Inez reaches out as the dock tilts crazily beneath her. “You’ve always been an ambitious girl, you—”
“I loved her,” Elena interrupts. She turns her back on Inez, tears falling over her cheeks. “I let ambition ruin that. ”
Inez turns to Tess. “You don’t want to be a murderer. ”
“No,” Tess agrees. She hesitates—just for a moment—and hope lights up Inez’s face. But then Tess casts, and Inez stumbles back into the flaming piling. Her wet skirts begin to smoke, and she shrieks and slaps at them with her gloved hands. The pilings snap, leaving the dock unmoored, and she’s thrown off balance. She topples into the river, surrounded by jagged, charred bits of wood.