Rituals (Cainsville 5)

Another flashed middle finger as Pepper took off back down the stairs while we continued to climb.

"Any clue what this is about?" Grace said. "A summary will do."

"Pamela's free, and she's come to kill Seanna."

"Cach."

"Exactly."

I yanked open the third-floor door to see Patrick lounging in the hall.

He straightened. "Liv. And Grace. Lovely. Come to keep me company in my murder-watch? No sign of Pamela yet, but I'm really hoping she'll show. I do hope to meet her."

"Where are Helia and Alexios?"

He pointed at the apartment door. "In there, of course. I decided I was more comfortable out here. They can be rather tiresome."

I started for the apartment.

Patrick caught my arm. "Before you go in there, I wanted to ask--"

I yanked away. "I need to see her."

He leaned in to my ear. "Don't worry--I'll help with any excuse you need. Just another minute and it'll be over, and we'll all be much happier."

"You-- She's--"

I wrenched from his grip and lunged for the door. He tried to grab me, but Grace interceded, throwing him aside like a prizefighter with a toddler.

I opened the door and raced inside. Helia and Alexios lay on the sofa, curled up together, fast asleep, a bottle of wine on the coffee table. I tore into the bedroom. And there was my mother, with a pillow poised over Seanna's sleeping face.

I saw that, and I stopped. I just...I couldn't process. That sounds ridiculous. I knew what my mother was. I knew she'd killed four people to cure me. Murdered them in cold blood. But I ran through that doorway, and I saw her poised over Seanna, and a memory flashed, a woman leaning into my crib, brushing back my hair and kissing my forehead as she whispered, "I'm going to fix you, baby. Whatever it takes, I'm going to fix you."

"Mom?"

Pamela froze. Lifted her head, saw me, and backed away, pillow in one hand, a knife in the other.

"Stay away, Eden," she said.

"Or what?" I said. "You'll kill me, too?"

"Never. You know that. But this"--she waggled the knife--"will finish Seanna off much faster than this"--she lifted the pillow. "She's sound asleep. Drugged by the fae. If you want to show her mercy, allow me to do this the easy way."

"Let her finish, Liv," Patrick said. He appeared in the doorway, Grace holding his arm pinned behind his back.

"I can't--" I began.

"Fine, then. Grace? Release me, and I'll stop Liv so she can't stop Pamela, and we can get this over with, no one at fault but Pamela Larsen. Well, and me, but I'm fine with that."

"Are you all right with condemning Seanna to an afterlife as a melltithiwyd?" I said.

"What?"

"She's marked."

Patrick exhaled a curse. "All right. Maybe she doesn't deserve--"

"They didn't just mark her," I said. "They took a down payment on her debt. Borrowed her soul, her humanity, her conscience--whatever you want to call it. That's the only way they could guarantee she would do everything they needed. The fact that it meant Gabriel grew up with a soulless monster for a mother? Irrelevant. Or perhaps, as someone once told me, that's how you forge a good blade."