“I had no idea.” She gives a breathless shrug, combing her fingers through her damp hair. “A detailed, interactive illusion, cast from a distance? That’s telepathy, projection, remote viewing…” She ticks them off on her fingers. “Honestly, I’m proud of myself if I can even match my socks in the morning. This was, like … a shitload of advanced magic.”

I lick my lips, and wind tosses the branches around us. Behind their chattering, however, the drumbeat of violence continues loud and clear. “Just so we’re on the same page … you told me you would do it, but you didn’t know if you could do it?”

“I told you I would try,” she corrects me. The color is already coming back to her cheeks, her hands steadying again as she pops the cap off a bottle of water. On Wednesday morning, Jude and Gunnar each left me a vial of vampire blood; tonight, I drank one and gave the other to Hope—and already it’s replenishing the energy we lost from our intensive spell-casting. Wiping her mouth and nodding toward the chain-link fence that separates us from the trees, Hope adds, “And look: We pulled it off!”

A smile steals across my face at last, because somehow? We really did. We got Rasputin to bring my parents into the open, at a location of my choice, making a rescue possible; we lured all my enemies into a trap to fight one another—including the Brotherhood, thanks to the notes Hope and Adriana scattered all over town; and we projected the illusion of my presence on the picnic grounds long enough to set the conflict in motion. I’m still worried about my parents, but at least I know Jude and Gunnar have them now.

Seated together inside a chalk circle, magic symbols scrawled around us on fissured pavement, Hope and I huddle in the shadow of the Trapans Glassworks factory. Old crime scene tape is strung around its perimeter, the broken windows a haunting reminder of what happened here a week ago. At most, we’re a quarter mile from the bloody skirmish being waged over the entity that continues to percolate inside of me.

“You pulled it off,” I point out, giving her a hug. Euphoria is building inside me, endorphins riding a wave of vampire blood, and my nerves are beginning to vibrate with it. “I was just here to hold your hand. You know, literally.”

The most critical step in my half-assed plan depended upon Hope’s abilities as a water elemental—to cast illusions and hear things she’s not supposed to hear. Without her, my parents’ rescue would have been impossible. The coven would still do whatever it is they plan to do, of course, and maybe I would be saved … but my mom and dad would have been killed for certain. It turns out that Hope, appropriately enough, was my only hope.