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  And I mostly mean it. Because yeah, they tossed me out on my you-know-what. But we’ve got much bigger things to worry about now.

  Like how to take a thousand starving, terrified, despairing slaves and turn them into an army.

  After Wisty and I get cleaned up, we sit at the kitchen table, picking at the brown bread and dried meat that we were rationed. With my stomach growling in dismay, I close my eyes and picture a huge hunk of lasagna on my plate, with salad, and garlic bread, and olives, and… well, you get the idea. But instead of the heavenly scent of marinara and melted cheese, the odor of incense comes wafting into my nose.

  A moment later, in breezes Bea, our favorite aunt, wearing a crazy pink caftan and rocking more jewelry than a cross-dressing pirate.

  She deposits a delicious-looking yellow cake in the center of the table, and then swoops down and plants a kiss on the tops of both our heads. “So glad to see you both,” she says. “It’s been far too long! Whit, you need a haircut. Wisteria, you look lovely. I’m glad to see you’ve gotten your combination skin under control.”

  Old-lady-Wisty scowls and smiles at the same time, as Aunt Bea settles into the seat between us and folds her braceleted arms.

  “So,” she says brightly, “what’s new?”

  “Oh, not much,” Wisty says, eyeing the cake but obviously not wanting to be rude. “Just a little slave labor, a bit of starvation, and some murderous tyranny.… You know, the usual.” She picks up a crust of bread and starts gnawing.

  Aunt Bea chuckles, but then her face turns serious. “Things can’t go on like this,” she says.

  “No kidding,” I mutter, and my stomach rumbles loudly in agreement. “Every part of my body is in pain.”

  Aunt Bea takes the mug of tea my mom has just handed her and says, “Your parents and I have been told to report to Work Site number three tomorrow.”

  I suck in my breath sharply. Why hadn’t they mentioned it?

  My mom smiles sadly. “We didn’t want to worry you,” she says.

  “It’s going to be fine,” my dad says. “I’ve done plenty of manual labor in my day.”

  Not like this you haven’t, I think.

  “Have you figured out what the digging is for?” Aunt Bea asks.

  I shake my head. “Not unless you can tell me what ‘open deep gate’ means.”

  Bea looks thoughtful for a moment, but then she shakes her head. “No, that doesn’t ring a bell. But you’ve been organizing, yes?”

  “I’ve made allies,” I say. “Everyone’s exhausted and terrified, so it’s not easy. But I think I’ve got some people who’ll help me out when the time comes. I just need a few more on my side.” I reconsider this. “Well, a lot more.”

  Bea reaches for our hands. “Both of you will be crucial in this fight,” she says.

  “But what do we have to offer?” I ask. “I mean, Wisty’s bracelet dampens her powers, and me—well, I was Excised.”

  “The Book of Truths tells us,” she says. “It hints at the concept of how power can be divided and multiplied simultaneously.”

  Wisty wrinkles her forehead. “I know I skipped a lot of math classes, but that makes no sense.”

  “What does it mean?” I ask.

  “It’s not entirely clear,” Bea admits. “But I believe it has something to do with you two.”

  “The Book of Truths has been about as comforting lately as one of those fortunes you get in a cookie,” Wisty says. “ ‘News of a long-awaited event will arrive. Your lucky numbers are five, three, and nineteen.’ ”

  Bea smiles. “The Book of Truths is a poem and a riddle. Its words say as much about the reader as they do about the future.”

  Wisty snorts. “I don’t need it to tell me about me. I need it to tell me about how to kick some Darrius ass.”

  “Watch your mouth, darling,” Aunt Bea says. “What I do know is this. There is a way this regime can be defeated.”

  “Specificity would be helpful right about now,” I say.

  Aunt Bea laughs. “My dear, if I knew how it was going to work, believe me, I’d tell you. Right now you just have to trust.”

  “Trust what, though?” Wisty asks.

  “And trust who?” I say.

  “We all have many questions,” Aunt Bea says. “We must trust that the answers will come.”

  We all look at one another for a minute—worried, tired, scared—and then she says brightly, “Who wants cake?”

  And we demolish that thing in two minutes flat.

  Chapter 48

  Darrius

  WAITING ON THE marble steps of the City Capitol, he bounces on the balls of his feet, flickering in and out of sight in agitation.

  Where is the redheaded witch?

  He’s spent altogether too much time thinking about Wisteria Allgood.

  With her family, he is unconcerned. Her brother has been neutralized, and the parents’ powers are laughable—if Darrius’s magic was a sword, theirs was a toothpick. But Wisty holds a power so great that even she can’t comprehend it.

  How close Darrius has come to her so many times. And she’s always danced away, never appreciating either the power of her gift or the luck of her survival.

  It galls him.

  He really should have killed her when he had the chance.

  He spots Diana, Sybil’s replacement, striding across the square toward him. She’s tall and dark haired, with eyes such a startling and mesmerizing blue that she almost always wears sunglasses to hide them. She claims not to like the attention, but her low-cut dresses suggest otherwise.

  Darrius waits until she’s climbing the Capitol stairs, waits until she’s on the step just below him. “Stop,” he says. “What is the report?”

  A flicker of confusion crosses her face. Normally he kisses her in greeting.

  “The report,” he says again.

  She sighs. “The witch is still at large,” she says.

  “Her apartment?”

  “Trashed,” Diana says. “Empty.”

  “What about her brother’s place? Her parents’ house?”

  “No signs of her there, either. But I have regular patrols watching those places, Darrius.”

  Darrius says nothing. A patrol is a fine idea, of course. But the Horsemen are a half-witted, inattentive lot, better suited to murders than stakeouts. If Wisty walked by them with a hat pulled low over her eyes, Darrius doubts they’d recognize her.

  Must he do everything himself?

  He has no interest in walking the streets of this wretched City of slaves. He wants Wisty brought to him, as the saying goes, on a silver platter.

  “We’ll find her,” Diana assures him.

  Darrius leans down and plucks the sunglasses from her face. Her eyes are so very blue.

  “But why haven’t you found her yet? That’s the question I’m interested in.” He runs a finger along the plane of her cheek. Her skin is cool and smooth.

  She reaches up and takes his hand. Kisses his fingertips.

  “I can’t understand why you’re so obsessed with her,” she says. “I really don’t see what the big deal is.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he says.

  Diana stiffens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You disappoint me,” Darrius says softly.

  “How? By not knowing the whereabouts of some freckled witch?” Diana sniffs derisively. “She can’t be that important.”

  She reaches up for his belt buckle, and then she pulls him down to her step.

  Darrius sees that she’s already abandoned her duty—that she thinks failure is acceptable. She stands on her tiptoes and kisses him on the mouth. Delicately at first, and then harder.

  Darrius feels a surge of anger that turns to desire. And then the feeling shifts again, to what could almost be called sadness. Diana does not understand the gravity of the situation, and there is no room in this world for those who do not understand.

  He stands with his arms hanging at his sides. He kisses,
but he doesn’t embrace her.

  “What is it, Darrius?” she asks, pulling back. “Are you really so mad? I’ll find the little minx if it means so much to you. Tomorrow.”

  Darrius shakes his head. It’s too late for that. He bends down to kiss her for the last time. Bittersweet.

  And then he raises his hands, and he touches Diana’s slender waist with only the tips of his fingers. Instantly he feels the rush of his magic flow into her body. It happens so quickly: one moment she is a living girl, and the next she is nothing but ash.

  He’s alone on the white marble steps again. Alone with a pile of cinders. “I’m disappointed in you, Diana,” he says. And then he walks away.

  To find Wisty.

  Darrius is brooding, still flickering in and out in annoyance, until a pleasant idea comes to him. Rather than looking for Wisty himself, he’ll send his new deputy. That homely but clever young fellow.

  Byron Swain.

  Chapter 49

  Wisty

  EVERYONE SAYS I’M the reckless one, but if you ask me, Whit’s little exercise in team spirit is going to get us killed.

  Despite not yet knowing what we’re digging for—or toward, or away from, or whatever—he has just informed everyone nearby that we need to quit doing it.

  Just look like you’re digging, Whit tells us. But don’t actually dig. Don’t give them what they want.

  And the people around us nod like this is a good idea!

  Now, I’m all for skipping out on manual labor—that’s part of the reason I’m still in old-lady disguise, because even those barbaric Horsemen aren’t going to murder an old lady for being slow. But they’d have no problem whatsoever giving a granny ten lashes, which is the punishment for “insufficient effort.”

  How do you fake digging? It’s a lot different from faking paying attention in physics. I should know, because I was excellent at that.

  Whit demonstrates what he’s talking about. He heaves his shovel into the dirt, and the muscles in his arms and back strain visibly with the effort. Then he wrenches the shovel back out—but instead of lifting up a pile of earth, he withdraws a mostly empty blade. Then he dumps a smattering of pebbles onto the jumble of rocks behind him.

  “The Horsemen aren’t close enough to monitor the piles,” he tells us. “They just watch to make sure we’re moving.”

  Again, I seem to be the only one feeling skeptical here.

  Whit narrows his eyes at me. “You in?” he asks. “Or are you working for them?” He nods up toward the guards on the lip of the pit, to the Horsemen with their cudgels and guns.

  “Oh, I’m with you,” I say. “Blood relation, loyalty, blah blah blah. But where’s the uprising, Whit? When do we get to start that?”

  “When we come up with a plan, Wisty,” he says through gritted teeth. “Unlike some people, I like to think things through.”

  “Unlike some people, I get a little impatient for action,” I retort. I smash my wretched bracelet against a rock, which hurts it not one bit. I would kill for a dose of magic right now.

  I try to summon it again. Surely my powers are stronger than an enchanted piece of silver! I clench my blistered hands into fists and will myself to burn.

  And that’s when I see him.

  Darrius.

  Adrenaline floods my limbs and my heart skitters wildly. But something’s wrong with my fight-or-flight response, because I just freeze. I might as well be a granny-shaped rock.

  I keep my face pointed to the ground, even though I look nothing like myself.

  Just dig, I think. Just dig for real this time.

  Darrius speaks for a while to one of the foremen, and then descends the steps into the pit. Perhaps it’s Take Your Despot to Work Day. All of us are filthy, wearing ripped and bloodstained clothes, but Darrius sports steel-gray slacks and a carefully ironed collared shirt. He steps scrupulously over piles of rubble. Over prone bodies, too—the fallen slaves that the Horsemen haven’t yet carted away to jail or worse.

  I start shoveling faster, and pretty soon I’m flinging rocks like they’re grains of sand. I’m going to make a mountain behind me in record time.

  Whit hisses, “Slow down.”

  At first I think he’s just being uptight about how I’m actually working instead of pretending to, but then I realize that he doesn’t want me to draw attention to myself. Considering the level of exhaustion and demoralization around here, anyone moving faster than a trudge is going to stand out.

  I shovel more slowly, but I can tell Darrius is getting closer. I don’t even have to see him or hear him now, because I can feel him.

  I don’t know if anyone else notices it—the way the air around him carries an electrostatic crackle. But I can feel my body responding to it. My M drawn to it, magnetically, against my will.

  If he comes much closer to me, I’m going to catch on fire, bracelet or not. And all the disguises in the world aren’t going to cover that up.

  I can’t let it happen. So, closing my eyes in concentration, I imagine showers, rain, a deep, cool bath. The depths of the ocean, the polar ice caps—anything but heat. Still, my shirt prickles with electricity, and the little hairs on my arms stand straight up.

  It’s not working. I open my eyes again. Next to me, Whit’s hammering away like a model slave. His knuckles are white, except for the part where they’re bloody from the work.

  Watching him, I suddenly remember a time when we were little, when our parents took us to the ocean. I played in the water, and Whit spent the entire day building a sand castle. It seems like a million years ago. But thinking of it now—of the waves, salty and cold, and the wet sand being coaxed into towers and moats—calms me. My pulse slows. My skin stops stinging with heat. I’m no longer on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

  And yet I can sense Darrius approaching our corner of the pit. I put my hand to my face: has the spell worn off? Is my skin freckled and unlined?

  I nearly sigh with relief when I feel the thin, papery flesh of my cheek. I still look ancient.

  But still—as if drawn by some invisible, supernatural signal—Darrius comes ever closer.

  Chapter 50

  Wisty

  THE FOOTSTEPS HALT directly behind me. I stiffen. I swear my heart stops—and then, a second later, it comes to life again, beating so loud and wild I’m sure he can hear it.

  Darrius is mere inches away. Did he pause here at random? Or did my magic pull him toward me? I can’t turn around to look; I just have to keep shoveling, the terrible drumbeat of my heart pounding in my ears.

  Then I feel the warm, insistent pressure of a hand upon my shoulder. The fingers dig into my collarbone, and then they turn me, ever so slowly, around.

  I’m face-to-face with beautiful, golden-eyed Darrius, the latest in the line of men who’ve wanted me dead. His brow furrows, and he looks at me carefully. I can’t move, I can’t breathe. I can’t even look away from his eyes, no matter how much I want to.

  For a second, for a minute, or maybe for a thousand years, I don’t know—we stand that way, gazing at each other. I can feel my M inside me, roiling, smoldering, aching to come out. I can feel his, too, but it’s different.

  It is icy cold.

  Then Darrius’s mouth shapes itself into a kind of smile. “Tell me, what are you doing here?” he asks. His voice is almost amused.

  “Just working,” I manage to croak.

  He clucks his tongue. “A shame that someone such as you would labor like this.” He gestures to the muck all around us. “A bit strenuous, isn’t it?”

  I tear my eyes away and look at the ground, shrugging. I still don’t know if he’s talking to me as Wisty, or me as an old woman. Considering it’s a matter of life and death, I wish I knew the answer.

  “Actually, you’re doing important work,” he declares. “So important, you have no idea.”

  I decide to risk a response. “I thought we were just here to dig until we died. Sir.”

  Darrius throws back
his head and laughs. “Oh, no. It’s much more complicated than that.” He glances over to a girl who’s crying as she shovels; she can’t be more than twelve. “Citizens of all ages, coming together as one, united in pursuit of a fantastic goal.”

  And that’s when I realize I’m safe: Darrius thinks I’m really an old woman. I almost shout with relief, but I catch myself.

  I’m emboldened now. “Please, young man,” I warble. “What is our goal? I… I heard something about a ‘deep gate.’…”

  A flicker of something—surprise? uncertainty?—crosses Darrius’s face, and his hand shoots out and grabs my throat. I gasp and stumble forward, my heart racing. “Where did you hear that?” he demands.

  But I can’t talk, because his hand’s around my windpipe.

  He looks around at all of us, and I can tell he’s itching to turn someone—anyone—to ash. I can’t breathe, and my sight grows dim. Just when I’m about to lose consciousness, his expression returns to its familiar cold calm, and he releases me. “That is not for you to know, old woman,” he snaps. Then, offering me a flinty smile, he turns to go. “Until the time comes,” he whispers savagely.

  When he’s gone, I have to sit down and catch my breath. It was a narrow escape—but it was an escape. And that’s what matters. “Did you see that?” I crow to my brother. “Darrius had no idea who I was! Guess he’s not as all-powerful as he thinks.”

  Whit whips around, his eyes blazing. “You got lucky, sis,” he says. “So don’t go around congratulating yourself too much, okay?”

  I’m so sick of his nagging I could scream. But inside me is a new flame of hope. I felt my magic leaping when Darrius was near me, bracelet be damned. And if I’ve got magic, I will not be afraid.

  Chapter 51

  Wisty

  MY AUNT MUST have gotten off slave duty early somehow, because she’s waiting for us when we stumble into the house. As I yank my boots from my blistered feet, I allow my face to return to its normal, unlined pallor. So long, wrinkles, see you tomorrow!

  There’s a pot of thin soup on the stove, but Aunt Bea’s out in the living room, half-buried among stacks of ancient books and yellowed, crackling papers.