Ms. Terwilliger stared at me for several quiet moments. A gray tabby cat rubbed up against my legs, ruining the seriousness of the moment. "You're right," she said at last. "I do owe you an explanation. Have a seat."
I sat down on one of the stools by the table, and she sat opposite me. She clasped her hands together in front of her and seemed to be having a hard time gathering her thoughts. I had to force myself to stay calm and patient. Otherwise, the panic that had been gnawing at me since the desert would completely consume me.
"You remember that woman you saw in the picture?" she asked at last.
"Your sister."
Ms. Terwilliger nodded. "Veronica. She's ten years older than me and looks half my age, as you could undoubtedly tell. Now, it isn't difficult to create an illusion. If I wanted to appear young and beautiful, I could - emphasis on appear. But Veronica? She's actually managed to make her body young and vibrant. It's an advanced, insidious kind of magic. You can't defy age like that without making some sacrifices." She frowned, and my heart pounded. Creating youth made all my Alchemist sensibilities reel. It was nearly as bad as Strigoi immortality, maybe worse if she was talking about a human doing it. That kind of twisted magic had no place in this world. Her next words drove home the wrongness of it all. "Or, in her case, sacrificing others."
Sacrifice. The very word seemed to poison the air. She stood up and walked over to a shelf, producing a newspaper clipping. Wordlessly, she handed it to me. It was a recent article, from three days ago, talking about a nineteen-year-old UCLA student who'd been found comatose in her dorm room. No one knew what had caused it, and the girl was hospitalized with no indication of when or if she'd wake up.
"What is this?" I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.
I inspected the article more closely, especially the picture it contained. At first, I wondered why the paper would show a sleeping old woman. Then, reading the fine print, I learned that the coma victim also displayed some unexplained physical symptoms: gray-streaked hair and dry, cracked skin. Doctors were currently investigating rare diseases. I cringed, unable to believe what I saw. She was hideous, and I couldn't look at her for very long.
And just like that, I suddenly understood. Veronica wasn't sacrificing victims with knives and stone altars. She was conducting some kind of perverse magic on these girls that bent the rules of nature, putting them in this hideous state. My stomach twisted, and I gripped the table for support.
"This girl was one of Veronica's victims," confirmed Ms. Terwilliger. "That's how she maintains her youth and beauty - by taking it from others. When I read this, I thought - almost hoped - some other magic user was doing it. Not that I'd wish this on anyone. Your scrying spell confirmed she was in the area, however, which means it's my responsibility to deal with her."
I dared a look down at the article again and felt that nausea well up again. The girl was nineteen. What would it be like to have the life sucked out of you at so young an age? Maybe the coma was a blessing. And how corrupt and twisted would you have to be to do that to someone?
I didn't know how exactly Ms. Terwilliger would "deal with" her sister and wasn't sure I wanted to find out. And yet, if Veronica really was doing things like this to innocents, then yes, someone like Ms. Terwilliger needed to stop her. A magical attack of this magnitude was one of the most terrible things I could imagine. It brought back all my ingrained fears about the wrongness of magic. How could I justify using it when it was capable of such horror? Old Alchemist lessons came back to me: Part of what makes the Moroi particularly dangerous is their ability to work magic. No one should be able to twist the world in that way It's wrong and can easily run out of control.
I tuned back into the present. "How do I fit into this, ma'am? I already figured out where she is. Why am I in danger?"
"Sydney," Mrs. Terwilliger said, looking at me strangely. "There are few young women out there with your abilities. Along with youth and beauty, she intends to suck someone's magic away and use it to make herself that much more powerful. You, my dear, would be the ultimate coup for her."
"She's like Strigoi," I murmured, unable to repress a shiver. Although those undead vampires could feast on anyone, they preferred Moroi because they had magic in their blood. Drinking Moroi blood made Strigoi more powerful, and a chilling thought suddenly hit me. "Practically a human vampire."
"Something like that," Ms. Terwilliger agreed. "This amulet should hide your power, even from someone as strong as her. She shouldn't be able to find you."