And then…
“Oh come on!” Grace screams. She waves her hands again, thrusting them toward me with little rhyme or reason. “Do something!”
“Mmm, looks like you need practice, little witch,” I say, grinning at her. “You’ve played all your cards, and now you’re empty-handed.”
She whirls away from me, sprinting for her bedroom. I let her go. She’s probably going for her phone. Let her call. We’ll be long gone before the police arrive.
“Don’t kill me,” Tessa whispers. “Look, my name is Tessa McDowell. I’m twenty-six. When I was little, I wanted to own a Christmas tree farm. Now, I want to do something with animals, even though I’m allergic?—”
“Save your don’t-kill-me speech for someone else,” I grunt. I dig through my coat pocket until I find the blue and yellow vials.
I spin around, pressing Tessa’s back to her black bookshelf. Her eyes widen, and she opens her mouth, as if to scream. Before she gets the chance, I’m pouring both vials down her throat.
As much as I’d prefer to snap her neck and move on with it, Grace might be more amenable if she knows I didn’t kill her new roommate. If nothing else, she’ll make good bartering power in the future.
A strange gurgling sound bursts from Tessa’s mouth as I force the liquid between her teeth. She’s trying to reject it, to keep from swallowing, but I don’t give her the choice. I pinch her nose, force her to swallow, just so she can take a breath.
Once she has, she gasps erratically and starts sobbing.She’s gagging and spasming in my hands, and I briefly wonder if it was deadly to combine the potions. I should have asked Cora.
Something heavy smashes against the back of my head. If I were in sunlight, it would have undoubtedly taken me down. But here, in the darkness of night and in the protection of Grace’s apartment, I barely feel it.
I release my hold on Tessa, satisfied when her body folds to the floor.
“What did you do?” Grace sobs. She pushes past me and crouches beside her roommate.
“She’s fine,” I drawl. “Check her pulse if you must. She’ll wake tomorrow with a nasty headache and little memory of today.”
“You killed her,” Grace says. She’s patting at Tessa’s cheeks, shaking her shoulders as if to wake her.
“I didn’t,” I say. I roll my eyes, not at Grace, but at myself. Why am I even bothering? I don’t need Grace to like me, and from the fact she just tried to kill meagain,I should know better than to try.
“Help is coming,” Grace tells Tessa’s unmoving body. “They’ll be here any minute.”
Grace is too busy fretting over Tessa. It’s a massive flaw. Caring about people makes you vulnerable. She’s an easy target now that I understand her weakness—and what a pathetic human weakness it is.
Grace doesn’t see me move, and by the time the purple vial is at her lips, it’s too late to fight me. She coughs and thrashes and gags, but ultimately, she goes down as easily as her roommate.
She collapses to the floor, eyes open, slowly blinking up at me. Every other part of her has gone limp.
“Sorry, little witch,” I tell her. “Can’t risk those powers coming out.”
I swear, those blue irises turn to flame all over again.
I scoop her into my arms, stepping over Tessa as we go. I pause at the landlord. I should have given him a potion—the red confusion one would have been perfect.
Oh well. No changing it now.
I shift Grace to direct her eyes to the ceiling. She can’t see when I step on the man’s neck, but she might hear the way his throat collapses, the way his final breath chokes between his lips.
Once I’m sure he’s dead, I push through the door. I run the entire stretch from Grace’s apartment to my own manor, feeling the push of destiny—ofhope—for the first time in years.
6
THE LAST DESCENDANT
GRACE
Ican do this. Mom and I used to watch Dateline all the time. We’d get two bags of popcorn, bring all our blankets out to the couch, and binge several episodes in a row. We’d yell at the lady getting murdered, telling her how to escape, as if she wasn’t already dead. By the time I was eighteen, I felt like I knew all the tricks.
