The Mortal Heart

The key to the Truth.

“Your father gave this to me before the Transformation. It was passed down in the Ravenwood family for generations. Your granddaddy claimed it belonged to Grandfather Abraham himself, and I believe it did. It’s marked by his hatred and bigotry.”

She opened the box, revealing the ebony sphere. Macon could feel the energy, even without touching it—the grisly possibility of an eternity within its glistening walls.

“Macon, you must understand. Once an Incubus is trapped inside the Arclight, there is no way out from within. You must be released. If you give this to someone, you have to be sure with all certainty that you can trust them, because you will be putting more than your life in their hands. You will be giving them a thousand lives; that’s what an eternity would feel like in there.”

She held the box higher so he could see it, as if he could imagine the confines just by looking at it.

“I understand, Mamma. I can trust Jane. She’s the most honest and principled person I’ve ever met, and she loves me. Despite what I am.”

Arelia touched Macon’s cheek. “There is nothing wrong with who you are, cher. If there were, it would be my fault. I doomed you to this fate.”

Macon bent down and kissed her forehead. “I love you, Mamma. None of this is your fault. It’s his.”

His father. Silas Ravenwood.

Possibly a greater threat to Jane than he was, a slave to the doctrine of the first Ravenwood Blood Incubus. Abraham.

“It’s not his fault, Macon. You don’t know what your grandfather was like. How he bullied your father into believing his twisted brand of superiority—that Mortals were beneath Casters and Incubuses alike, simply a source of blood to satisfy their lust. Your father was indoctrinated, like his father before him.”

Macon didn’t care. He had stopped feeling sorry for his father long ago, stopped wondering what it was about Silas his mother could have loved.

“Tell me how to use it.” Macon reached out tentatively. “Can I touch it?”

“Yes. The person who touches you with it must have intent, and even then it’s harmless without the Carmen Defixionis.”

His mother removed a small pouch—a gris-gris bag, the strongest protection voodoo could offer—from the door of the cellar and disappeared down the dark stairs. When she returned, she carried something wrapped in a dusty piece of burlap. She laid it on the table and unwrapped it.

The Responsum.

It was written in Niadic. Literally translated, it meant “the Answer.”

It contained all the laws that governed his kind.

It was the oldest of books. There were only a few copies in the world. His mother turned the brittle pages carefully, until she reached the right one.

“Carcer.”

The Prison.

The sketch of the Arclight looked exactly like the one resting in the velvet-lined box, sitting on his mother’s kitchen table next to her uneaten étouffée.

“How does it work?”

“It’s rather simple. A person need only touch the Arclight and the Incubus they wish to imprison at the same moment and speak the Carmen Defixionis. The Arclight will do the rest.”

“Is the Carmen Defixionis in the book?”

“No, it’s much too powerful to be trusted to the written word. You must learn the Carmen from someone who knows it, and commit it to memory.” She lowered her voice as if she was afraid someone might be listening. Then she whispered the words that could condemn him to an eternity of misery.

“Comprehende, Liga, Cruci Fige.”

Capture, Cage, and Crucify.

Arelia closed the lid of the box and handed it to Macon. “Be careful. In the Arc there is power, and in the power there is Night.”

Macon kissed her forehead. “I promise.”

He turned to leave, but his mother’s voice called him back. “You’ll need this. Give it to her, too—if she’s really someone you trust.” She scrawled several lines on a piece of parchment.

“What’s this?”

“The only key to that door.” She gestured to the box tucked under his arm. “The only way someone can ever get you back out.”





It was the thing Macon wanted least and most—to see Lila Jane one last time. It had been weeks since he’d seen her, unless you counted the nights he had followed her home from the library, watching her from a distance, wishing he could touch her.

Knowing he couldn’t.

Not now, not when the Transformation was so close. But she was here in his subterranean chamber now, even though he’d told her to stay away. “Jane, you have to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

She walked slowly across the room to where he was standing. “Don’t you understand? I can’t stay away.”