They’d agreed that after freeing Ridley’s father and grandfather, Nathan and the others would send earthquakes through the ground around the rest of the wall, cracking and breaking it apart as much as possible. The earthquakes were supposed to be controlled enough that the rubble fell toward the wastelands and not toward the city. Which basically meant they would be begging the elemental magic around them to help make that happen.
Ridley would then follow and burn through everything that fell. She could, of course, burn the wall while it was still standing, but that had never been part of the plan in case enormous, fiery pieces of arxium fell toward the city instead of away from it. That certainly wouldn’t leave anyone feeling favorably disposed toward the elementals who’d just revealed themselves to everyone.
She soared above the demolished research facility, waiting until she could no longer sense Archer or his father nearby. Then she shot down, transforming into a blazing ball of fire. She struck the rubble and fragmented, sending flames racing across the ruin to consume all the arxium. Further, faster, hotter. Burning, burning, burning. Barely a minute had passed when she pulled herself back together and spun upward as air to see her progress. An inferno blazed across the entire ruined section, leaping up toward the intact parts of the wall on either side.
There were more cracks further along, and other colossal sections of wall screeching and groaning and toppling to the ground. Ridley raced toward them, ready to burn—then slammed up against an invisible force and went tumbling backward on the wind. She held her elemental form this time, recognizing the odd magical force she’d knocked into as another elemental. An unnatural elemental.
Dammit. Alastair was knocked out and his lab was gone. Doc was probably gone too. They couldn’t possibly have injected new volunteers in the time since this attack began. And it couldn’t be Lilah, because if so, Ridley would have been able to sense her.
Lilah’s dead, she reminded herself with a pang.
So maybe Alastair had been constantly making new elementals, losing them every few days as they died and then making more—
No. Ridley remembered him barking an order into his commscreen just before Saoirse showed up and shot him. Something about standby subjects … and she was pretty sure he’d used the word ‘activate.’
Doesn’t matter, she told herself. There was definitely a manmade elemental somewhere close by, and she had to get past him or her and continue burning. She whirled up and then around, hoping to avoid whoever was in her path. But there was another—she changed direction to avoid the presence—and then another.
Furious, Ridley summoned a cyclone wind and sped away from the city, tossing her thoughts out to the magic around her. How many? Where are they? How do I get past them? I thought I was supposed to be incredibly powerful?
The answers came in flashes of knowledge, one tumbling over the next over the next as they filled her mind. There are others, more, everywhere, more, you’re stronger, focus, the stone, alone now but not alone.
Alone now but not alone. It was the sense of comfort Ridley had received from magic before, but it was also telling her … she was alone? What about the others? she asked. She pictured Nathan and Malachi, reaching out for them with her thoughts. They should be nearby, in the ground, forcing cracks through the earth. Her mind filled with the answer, images of their solid earth forms ramming up against other solid earth forms, pushing their way up to the surface, transforming to air, elemental and fake elemental tangling together like two interlocking vortexes.
You have to do it, magic whispered to her, and she understood that it meant she had to do everything. She had to be the earth and cause the quakes and break the wall and burn the panels. Fear filled her at the idea of earth, but at the same time, she understood that she could do everything. That’s what it felt like she was being told. She just needed that darn stone. She needed an extra boost, extra focus, extra strength.
Where is my mother’s stone? she asked, wondering if it might possibly be that easy and if she should have asked days ago. She sensed magic drawing her in a certain direction. Like a game of hot or cold, she followed as best she could, dodging the manmade elementals when she sensed them nearby. At times, the trail seemed to disappear. Or perhaps magic didn’t actually know where the stone was and it was searching, listening, feeling just as intently as Ridley was searching, listening and feeling.
She soared over the city, this way and that, responding to the tug when she felt it, until finally, she figured out where magic was leading her: Aura Tower. The penthouse. Which made sense. Alastair Davenport must have hidden the stone somewhere in his home. Ridley just had to find it.
She swooped down until she found a floor that was low enough to have windows that actually opened. Up at the penthouse, where storm clouds swirled dangerously close and deadly winds sometimes rocketed past, not a single gap could be found anywhere. Ridley made her way swiftly up through the skyscraper until she conjured a hole in the penthouse floor and drifted up through it as air.
Once again, she was in the Davenports’ vast, flawless, magazine-worthy home. Exotic artwork, vases of fresh flowers, glass boxes on marble pedestals displaying priceless artifacts. It was becoming quite familiar to Ridley these days. She moved forward, then stopped, her heart squeezing at the sight of a familiar antique music box. It was made of wood with a flower-shaped mother-of-pearl inlay decorating the lid. She had sold this to Archer and Lilah the evening they’d come looking for a last-minute birthday gift for their mother. It was so soon after Archer had returned to the city that Ridley didn’t even know yet that he was back. The other thing she didn’t know at the time was that he’d come to Kayne’s Antiques that evening specifically to see her.
She took a moment to slow her racing, invisible heart, then continued past the music box. She floated through the open-plan living space, turning a corner to where the grand piano sat in front of floor-to-ceiling windows. Rain pattered quietly against the glass. Her gaze skimmed across statues and painted bowls and furniture she doubted anyone ever sat on, hoping she might spot a large stone pendant on a chain. She couldn’t help feeling a little as if she’d come full circle. The threads of her life had begun to unravel the night she crept in here to steal a gold figurine, and now here she was again, hunting down another ancient artifact inside the Davenports’ home.
“Ridley.”
Ridley spun around at the sound of her name, her heart almost jumping clear of her chest. She vanished a split second later—more of an instinct than anything else—then reappeared, recognizing Lilah’s voice at the same moment her eyes fell on the dark haired girl standing by the piano.
Lilah. Who wasn’t dead.
The last time the two of them had been inside this home, Lilah had filled the place with arxium gas and told Ridley she would be caught. This time, when Lilah’s hand moved, it was to touch the chain that hung around her neck. “You’re looking for this, aren’t you.” She lifted the chain and pulled a large pendant free from beneath her sweater. It was Ridley’s family heirloom stone.
29
“You’re alive,” Ridley breathed. Immense relief seeped through her body, leaving her feeling weak and exhausted and oddly happy, given how cruel Lilah had been to her at times over the past ten years. Ridley found herself almost smiling—and then almost laughing. Hadn’t she thought to herself that it should be impossible for anything to wipe out a force like Delilah Davenport? Turned out she was right.