I took her hands. “Thank you. Without your spell, he’d still be out there.”
Devi smiled. “Just glad it did its job. Now we have to figure out what to do with it.”
Ethan knelt and reached for the talisman, but Devi stopped him and shook her head. He stroked his chin, studying the vile, pulsing thing. “We could lock it in our vault. It’s a labyrinth with a few billion combinations. No one would be able to get to him, and he’d never be able to get out if he broke free of the enchantment.”
If he broke free? More like when.
Jaxson grunted. “We need to destroy him. For good.”
“How?” Devi asked.
Silence hung in the air.
“I think I know how,” I murmured. “My aunt has a way.”
The Sphere of Devouring.
But that meant I’d have to face her. And Casey. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that.
Taking a moment to myself, I walked to the edge of the roof and looked out across the channel toward Magic Side. Home.
But was it? I couldn’t go back to the LaSalles, knowing what my aunt had done to me. And staying at Jaxson’s was out of the question. I knew we shared a mate bond—we had since birth—but I needed space to sort out what that meant.
And certainly, I couldn’t spend my life sleeping on Sam’s lumpy couch, for the sake of both our friendship and my back.
But even though I was homeless, Magic Side was still home. And today, it was safe.
I’d never seen the city from this vantage. It was beautiful. In the north, the towering skyscrapers were lit with fierce sunlight. The south was a sea of red brick apartments. The center of the island was cut by the green expanse of trees and parks where I’d run with the pack for the first time. The sky hanging over the city was bright blue.
But not over Bentham.
I craned my head back. Dark clouds still spun above us, and a cold wind tore at my wet and blood-soaked clothes. We had our own micro-climate on the island.
A deep dread settled in my gut, and I swallowed hard.
When we’d disrupted the ritual at Pere Cheney, the storm clouds had dissipated. But not now. While the glowing funnel cloud was gone, the vortex remained, spinning slowly and ominously.
We weren’t finished here.
I scooped up the glowing talisman and turned to Jaxson. “Take me to the Indies.”