“My mother made Cal’s spells,” Echo said softly. “Cal’s mom came to us when I was eleven, not yet a hekamist. She was terrified. I’d never seen an adult so scared in my life. I didn’t know what was going on. I thought it was good that we were helping that poor woman.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked, but no one answered. I thought about trying to carry Markos out to Mina in the car, but he was too heavy, and if his injury was bad it could be terrible to move him. It might loosen something that needed to stay in place.
Plus Diana would still be stuck there. I looked around for something that I could use to pick the lock, or cut the chain link. Not that I had any idea how to do either of those things.
“I didn’t find out what we were really doing until a couple years later, after I’d joined the coven,” Echo said. I wished she’d stop talking and do something. She was a hekamist; she should have a lockbreaker spell or some other brilliant idea on hand. A fire extinguisher, maybe—I looked around the woodshop but didn’t see one, so I got up and started pushing aside tools to see if one was hiding in a corner. “I thought it was awful, but necessary. Mom believed Cal’s spells were our protection, in case people found out about me. Money to live on—not that she let us spend much of it—and a family in the community that needed us. I think that she’s regretted making me a hekamist since the day we did it. She wishes she was strong enough to die and save me.” Echo’s smile seemed forced and bloodless. “We have different ideas about that.”
As she talked I gave up my search and circled back around to Diana. I thought about running out into the rest of the store and trying to find a fire extinguisher or a wire cutter—but I wouldn’t know where to look or if I’d ever be able to find anything, and I knew I’d get lost and might not be able to find my way back. Instead I got out my phone and called for an ambulance as calmly and firmly as I could. I hoped the spell wouldn’t work through phones, or 911 would forget about me as soon as I got off the line.
While I was calling, Ari unfolded from her crouch, swaying on her feet. I couldn’t see her face; she was looking at Echo so her back was to me. Echo’s eyes followed Ari’s every jerky movement. When Ari slapped her, the crack of it made us all—except Markos—jump. Echo held her cheek but didn’t fight back.
“What’s going on?” I asked Diana, hoping and praying that just this one question could be heard and answered.
“Among other things?” She tried to breathe deeply. “Nine years ago, Cal burned down Ari’s house.”
“Oh,” I said.
The sadness and sympathy were too strong, like all my emotions now. I could feel tears filling my eyes, not just for Ari and her parents but for Echo and her mom, for Markos lying busted on the floor, for Diana trapped, and for all of us broken by spells.
I reached out and took Diana’s hand through the cage. She held Markos’s with her other one.
She didn’t look at me. Probably forgot I was there. That hurt, too, very badly, but I would get through it, I would wait with her until I was sure she was going to be okay.
I’d made myself powerless, invisible, inconsequential, in order to save Diana from my spell, but it turned out I wasn’t the dangerous one after all. Now all I could do was keep my eye on her until help came.
I hoped it was worth it.
Echo’s skin, always pale, seemed clear and fragile as glass in the shop’s harsh bare-bulb light. When I slapped her and the bright red hand mark appeared, it only made the whiteness seem brighter. She swallowed and did not break eye contact.
“You knew this about my parents and you still blackmailed me.”
“I . . . You don’t understand. I’d been alone for nearly twenty years. Win was important to me. I was . . . upset . . . about what you did to him.”
“Why do people say I did it to Win?” I asked. “I did it to myself. No one can do anything to Win anymore.”
“That’s not how it feels.”
“Things you do to yourself do have an effect on other people,” Kay said from where she was kneeling with Markos and Diana. I hadn’t noticed she was there, and it was hard to focus on her. Even her voice sounded muffled.
Echo wrapped her black-clad arms around her stomach. “I have done some bad things, and I’ve done some good. But the world isn’t fair.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
Echo exhaled and spoke gently. “There’s nothing I can say to make it not true.” She reached into one of the many pockets of her jacket and pulled out a plastic sandwich bag. It was filled with crackers and cheese; she held it out to me warily, as if I might swat it out of her hand. “I made you your spell.”
“Is that supposed to be an apology? Here’s your dancing spell, everything’s better now?”