All the mainline members of the four families, waiting for whatever came next.

“She’s not hurt, per se,” Elena finally said, looking up at me, but there was no mistaking the harshness of fear in her tone. “She’s haunted. The ectoplasmic backlash of the magic hit her when it was so violently dismantled, instead of grounding itself or evanescing back through the veil—which created an opening, a connection. And now Natalia’s experiencing . . . an inhabitation. Of an unusual scale.”

“What does that mean?” I asked her, heart in my throat, my hands twisting into the mantle.

“It means that . . . that she’s essentially become an open conduit between this side of the veil and the other,” Elena said, her voice close to cracking before she gritted her teeth and, with a monumental effort, wrestled her poise back into place. “Anything can come through her—into her—and stay. There are quite a few shades inside her already, and if we don’t act fast, there’ll soon be many, many more. A legion of them.”

I thought of those mournful trees in the Witch Woods, twisted around the restless spirits that inhabited them; and those trees had to house only one ghost apiece, not some horror movie horde. Fear for Talia tore through me in wracking bouts, and I was suddenly, desperately sorry that I hadn’t at least tried to talk to her before the challenge. Now what if she never came back at all? How would I live with something like that?

“What do you need?” I asked Elena hoarsely, sick with fear for Talia, heart crashing against my ribs like cymbals. “What can I do?”

“We’ll have to cast a banishment, here and now. The biggest that we’ve ever done together. It’ll take all of us, down to the last Avramov.” She glanced over to where her other children stood, beckoning them into motion. “Micah, Isidora—muster the family, and quick. Tell them we need them all in here, now. Adriana, kitten, you fetch henbane and nightshade for us from The Bitters, and anything else we might need.”

As they rushed off to do her bidding, Igraine stepped forward a few feet, hands clasped in front of her.

“And what of the Gauntlet, Arbiter?” she said placidly, as if she was inhabiting some balmy reality completely divorced from this one. “How shall we proceed with the tiebreak challenge?”

“Igraine!” Gabrielle snapped at her, low and furious. “Mind yourself! This is clearly not the time.”

“Of course it is,” the Blackmoore elder replied, unperturbed. “What other time would there be? There’s been a dreadful accident, yes, but one that, it could be argued, the combatants’ own questionable strategy brought down on Scion Avramov’s head.”

“You mean one that your grandson caused!” Gabrielle retorted, her dark eyes sparkling with ire. “Own that much, at least.”

“As I said, an unfortunate mishap,” Igraine repeated with a magnanimous shrug. “My grandson may have been the catalyst, but Thorn and Avramov conduct clearly set the scene. Certainly we all saw as much. The question remains, how do we carry on? The Gauntlet rules state that the tiebreak challenge, should one become necessary, must follow on directly after the tie.”