“Don’t worry, I thought I was too. I’ll tell you the whole deal once we get you all the hell out of here,” I said as I began to saw through the ropes. I was quite surprised that the shifters could be held by something as simple as thick bonds, but I figured there had to be something magical about them—maybe evensilver or wolfsbane—and that was keeping them weak. But still, as I sawed, the entire situation felt so goddamn surreal.
If the water in the antechamber hadn’t been so cold, I was pretty sure I would have drowned. But as it was, the sheer drop in temperature had roused me before that happened, and I was able to swim to the surface long enough to hack up a lung and gulp in air before I was driven under again.
I’d really thought I was done for. My face had been aching, my chest burning, and every part of me had been in excruciating pain. But when I was finally deposited in an old storage area from the prohibition era—all the shattered barrels there had clued me in on that—I realized I need to haul ass to the Parracidas.
I couldn’t believe it was the Latin that had tipped me off, but it was just far too similar to be a coincidence. And once I made that connection, it was easy for my mind to stitch together the rest, especially with what I had learned during our Trojan horse expedition.
It was crazy how just a couple of hours earlier, I had been sure that the whole thing was a failure. But now, I knew that if it had never happened, I would have no idea who the Parracidas were or their history, so I wouldn’t have known to head there when I survived drowning.
“Sergio! Alexandria! Do something!” The cry of the matriarch caught my attention, but only barely, as I was already prepping to shoot my super soaker at either of her children. But to my surprise, the hulking son seemed almost frozen, looking between his still seizing grandfather, his mother, and Luther.
“Attack, you big idiot!” Mr. Parracida yelled, his face somehow even more purple than the fury pouring out from his ears like the most technicolor magma I’d ever seen. “Protect us! Protect our family!”
Yeah, that was my cue.
With one last slice, I freed Paul, then jumped to the side and emptied my entire canister all over Luther. Into his eyes, his mouth, down his chest. Pretty much anywhere flesh was exposed and all over his clothes too. Being that he was enchanted, he didn’t have the wherewithal to shield himself, and he went down.
I did feel fleeting sadness, as I knew he was in there and couldn’t help what he was doing, but I hoped he would be cheering me on. He seemed like the type who would rather die than harm his siblings.
I didn’t let that feeling slow me down, however, because as soon as he fell, I rushed to Penelope and started to free her. I knew Paul would help me if he could, but I doubted that he could help with the bonds, since I was sure it was infused with wolfsbane. Apart from that, he was still a little unsteady on his feet and shaking his head like he was trying to get water out of his ears.
“What kind of mixture do you have in there?” Paul asked, and while his voice sounded rough, I did hear a growing strength in it.
“Just about anything you’d want for taking down a supernatural enemy. Sourced from your secondary estate kitchen, of course. And the back garden. And a church I stopped at on the way here.”
He blinked at me, and I knew he was dying to ask how I’d done that, but he knew to wait. However, Jackson wasn’t nearly as well versed in being patient.
“And how exactly did you know what you needed for that?”
“Alchemy camp,” his three lucid siblings answered all at the same time.
Well, it certainly was nice to be understood.
“H-huh?”
A soft, barely there voice reached my ears as I finished freeing the VanMarche sister, and I was confused when it was a woman. I’d come in somewhere toward the end of the couple monologuing, and while I’d figured out a good portion of their motivations on my own, I had overheard something about Luther picking a human?
That had to be the woman I was looking at. I was pretty sure that Luther had been ordered to kill her last, but that was before a fight had broken out. And although I had downed him into a seizing pile of shaking limbs and foaming spit, he’d already stopped shaking and was fighting to sit up even though he was still smoking.
You’ve got to be kidding me!
But he most certainly wasn’t. I had a feeling this version of Luther couldn’t tell a joke even if he wanted to. But I wascompletelycertain that without the grimoire, we had very little chance of breaking Luther out from his spell on our own. In fact, although I was by no means well versed in any sort of sorcery, I’d only ever heard of a single thing being able to deconstruct such an enchantment.
“Paul, Penelope!” I cried. “Untie the woman and get her to Luther before he gets up! I’ll get Jackie and Chris free!”
They listened to me instantly, which was a huge testament to how I’d earned their trust. We’d come a long way in the short time that we’d known each other, but I was gonna make sure we had a whole lot longer together. Thatallof them had a lot longer together.
There was a huge flurry of motion as I tucked and rolled over to Chris. Paul went over to the woman and ripped her non-wolfsbane restraints, and Penelope ran for Alexandria, who had flung open a weapons chest and was pulling a long, silver blade out with a thick, protective glove.
Furiously sawing away with my piece of metal, I got to watch as Penelope shifted mid-leap, her limbs distorting and cracking while fur slid over her body in one big wave. For a beat, she was obscured by steam, but only a beat, and then she was biting into the material at Alexandria’s back and tossing her violently to the side.
“I’ve got you, don’t worry,” I heard Paul say. “You’re going to help me save my brother, okay?”
“B-but how?” the woman sputtered.
“By doing what you’ve always done and what my family forgot to do for far too long. Telling him that you love him.”
With that, he picked her up and hauled ass over to Luther, who’d managed to place both of his hands on the floor and was nearly fully sitting. Finally, I finished freeing Chris, slapping his arm as I did so he would know he was free.