A carriage had just rattled to a stop across from the alley, and with a sinking weight in her stomach, Cela recognized the woman who got out of it. She walked to the mouth of the alley as Evelyn started toward the building.
No. As soon as Evelyn had closed the entry door behind her, Cela stepped out of the alleyway and started hooting again. Abe tried to pull her back, but she shrugged him off.
“What are you doing?” he asked, looking at her like she had lost her mind.
“If that woman who just got out of the carriage finds him, there’s gonna be trouble. I’m not going to just leave him.”
“His trouble doesn’t concern us,” Abe said, putting his arm around her.
“It concerns me,” she said, allowing herself a moment to enjoy her brother’s warmth and strength. Abe. Alive. “Jianyu saved my life when you were off hiding without sending me so much as a word,” she told him, her voice clipped and her nerves feeling like live wires. Abe is alive. He was into more than she’d understood, but he was alive.
He was quiet a moment before he let out a long-suffering sigh. “Then I guess we’d better go in after him.”
Cela let Abe take the lead, since she knew they’d waste time arguing about it otherwise. They didn’t run into anyone or any trouble in the building, but they stopped just down the hallway from Cela’s open apartment door. She could hear someone talking, but she couldn’t make out what was being said. From the voices, she knew that Evelyn and Jianyu were still in there, and that Evelyn wasn’t happy.
“Let me go first,” Cela whispered.
“No—” Her brother was adamant.
“Evelyn knows me,” Cela explained. She didn’t tell Abe how the bitch had also locked her in a room and stolen the one thing of value Cela had left. “I can distract her long enough to get an advantage.”
“I’m not letting you—”
But Cela was already walking away from him. She didn’t really have a plan, except that she’d lost her brother once that week. She’d lived through that pain, that horrible knowledge that he was gone, and she’d do whatever she could to make sure she never had to feel that again—even if it meant putting herself between Abe and that red-haired she-devil.
She didn’t bother to knock or make any sound to introduce herself—the bigger the distraction, the better as far as Cela was concerned—but when she stepped into the open doorway and took in the scene unfolding, she realized she was in over her head. Evelyn’s eyes were lit with some unholy light and she was holding a handful of the blond boy’s hair as he knelt next to her, but across from her Jianyu had a knife to his own neck. The strain on his face was clear and his hands were shaking, like he was fighting to keep himself from pressing the blade into the soft skin of his throat.
Magic, she realized. Evelyn was one of them too. Her whole life she’d lived in the city and thought that the old magic had never touched her. She’d known it to be a dangerous force, a fearsome thing that the ordinary person had to be protected from, so it had come as an unsettling realization to know that she’d been living side by side with it all along. First Jianyu and Darrigan and now Evelyn. And while Evelyn was a dangerous hussy, Cela didn’t figure it was the magic that made her that way.
Evelyn glanced up and saw Cela standing in the doorway, and her expression turned dark and thunderous. “Ah, Cela, I’d wondered where you’d scurried off to, and here you are.” The corners of Evelyn’s painted mouth curled up to reveal her teeth. “What an unpleasant surprise. But since you’re here, do come in.”
Cela felt herself softening, wanting to move into the room even though she knew it was a bad idea. She took a step toward them without meaning to, and then she fought against taking another.
“I was just entertaining a couple of unexpected guests,” Evelyn told her. “Or rather, I should say, I was just teaching a couple of thieves a lesson. Perhaps you’d like to join us?”
“I’m just here for my friend. And what you took from me,” Cela said, gritting her teeth against the strange pull she felt. Even though she knew what Evelyn was, what the woman was capable of, Cela felt drawn to her, enticed by her.
“You mean this?” Evelyn lifted her hand, and the ring that Darrigan had gifted Cela flashed in the light. “You’re welcome to try to take it from me.” She laughed. “Though I doubt a Sundren like you could manage.”
Cela’s feet were inching toward Evelyn. One and then the other, no matter how she fought. Abe. I need Abe.
She got the burst of a gunshot in answer.
The sound echoed through the cramped room as Evelyn crumpled to the floor with a gasp, grabbing her right arm. At the same moment, Jianyu dropped the knife he’d been holding and collapsed to his knees, his breathing heavy, and the boy Evelyn had been holding by the hair fell to the floor. He seemed too dazed to get himself up.
Abe was standing in the doorway, a pistol sure in his hand. “Let’s go,” he said.
“You shot her,” Cela said, the shock of it still fresh and numbing as she watched Evelyn grab her arm, writhing in pain. The brother she’d known wouldn’t have hurt a fly. Who is this man who looks so much like him?
She’d been content to see him through little-girl eyes for so long that she hadn’t realized how strong and certain he’d become. But she should have. For two years Abel had taken care of her and protected her after their father had been killed. For two years he’d been her rock. She should have known that he would have had their father’s sureness and their mother’s stubborn strength inside of him, just as she did.
Cela turned back to the scene behind her. The blond boy lay there, not moving, as Jianyu climbed to his feet and went to Evelyn. He took her hand and tried to pull the ring from it, but even with her injured arm, she lashed out at him. He drew back, out of her reach.
“We have to go,” Cela told him.
Jianyu glanced at her, his expression still slightly dazed and his forehead damp with the exertion of what he’d been through. “We can’t leave without the ring.”
“Then you’d better get it fast,” Abel said. “Somebody will have heard the shot.” He had Cela by the hand, but if her feet had moved on their own a moment before, it seemed like she couldn’t move them at all now.
Evelyn was struggling up from the floor, her eyes glowing again with that strange, unholy light. “Come and get it,” she purred, taunting Jianyu. “If you can . . .”
But Jianyu’s face had gone slack, and his body was suddenly deathly still.
“Jianyu?” Cela asked, ignoring how her brother was trying to pull her from the room.
Jianyu was on his feet and his eyes were open, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
Even as blood pooled beneath her, Evelyn was laughing, a deeply maniacal cackling that twisted into the pit of Cela’s stomach. She took a step back.
“That’s right,” Evelyn said to Cela. “Run away. Run far, far away, little Cela.” She laughed again, her face pale and her voice ragged. “The boys are mine.”
“We can’t leave them here.” She ripped herself away from Abel and went to Jianyu, whose gaze was on some unseen thing in the distance. He wasn’t listening to her, but she could tug him along. “Get the other one.”