I reached the front door and carelessly threw the bar to the side. My motives here weren’t entirely altruistic: I wanted out. The door swung outward and the day poured in, blinding me for a second.
As my eyes adjusted, a rat ran out the door. Well, it tried to run out the door. No sooner had it crossed the threshold than green fire burst from its body and it collapsed, lifeless, on the stoop outside.
Everyone saw, I think, because I threw out my arm to block the way but no one tried to leave.
“The window,” Brynn said.
I tossed back the shutter from the nearest window and opened the pane. I couldn’t see anything, but that meant nothing. I edged my soulless hand out the window, and sure enough it tingled and glowed pale green.
On the street outside, Mr. Dawson lay motionless on the street. Sebastian knelt over him with a hunting knife in an ice-pick grip, stabbing the corpse of his friend over and over. It must take a massive amount of pain to raise the barrier.
Sebastian saw me looking and raised his head to meet my eyes. “I can’t believe you killed him!” he shouted in a sarcastic tone. Then he switched to menacing. “You’ll wait in there until everyone comes back from whatever chaos you tricked my wife into causing. I’ll let down the barrier and you’ll see how the town of Pendleton, Montana, deals with a bunch of freak murderers like you.”
Crack.
I jumped at the sound of gunfire. I’d never been a particularly jumpy person before all of this.
Adrenaline kicked in.
“Turns out bullets don’t have souls!” Thursday shouted from the door. More gunfire. He and Doomsday were both shooting.
Sebastian reeled, maybe hit. He spun a little and dashed behind the hood of the nearest car. Bullets wouldn’t get through the engine block, sadly, or the Days might have still had a chance. If they brought him down, the barrier would drop with him.
They stopped firing.
“What now?” Thursday asked.
“Told you we need a drone,” Vulture said.
“Not helping, Vulture,” Doomsday said.
“I’ll check all the windows,” I said. I was the only one who could do it safely.
I thought doing the rounds would give the adrenaline a chance to clear my system, but I was just too jacked up and nervous for my body to consider calming down. Each time I put my hand through the barrier at a different window, I inched closer and closer to overwhelming nausea. It needed doing, though.
The last window, the fifteenth one, was in the living room upstairs. I put my hand through, felt that green fire, and dry-retched. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate something.
There was no way out.
The townspeople would come back and see Arthur Dawson stabbed to death on the asphalt. Sebastian would drop the barrier, and dozens of angry, armed, innocent townspeople would storm this place. And what? Citizen’s arrest us? Lynch us?
I could only come up with two sources of hope: the Days might kill Sebastian—maybe he was already bleeding out, or maybe he’d stick his head up at just the wrong second—or maybe Isola or Gertrude would find their way back and . . . and I guess kill him themselves.
Slim hope, either way.
Maybe one of us could rush the barrier. The witch’s fire took a while to kill Heather. Maybe one of us could rush the barrier and kill Sebastian and the rest of us could make a break for it.
I sat down on that same fucking chair I’d spent way too much of the past couple days sitting on, and dropped my head into my hands as my brain and stomach raced.
It should be Vasilis. I mean, mostly because he was the odd man out and I’d rather lose him than anyone else. It should be Vasilis because he was the one who didn’t do anything for months when he knew there was something evil going on. He was the one who didn’t step up. Hell, he was the one who was too afraid to let Heather heal on her own time and rushed the ritual and got her killed.
Cold logic became a sort of hate as it coursed through my brain. Vasilis deserved to die, and noble sacrifice was about the best he could do. I could talk him into rushing Sebastian.
No, the fuck I couldn’t.
That snapped me out of it. There’s only so far our thoughts can wander outside our ethics before something kicks in and brings us back.
If Vasilis deserved anything, it was to run a library and drink tea and study magic and maybe fall in love again one day. To get over Heather.
Shit. Heather.
I looked over. She was still on the table where she’d died. Atop her, The Book of Barrow sat where Doomsday had set it down.
She could get through the barrier.
“Hey!” I shouted down the stairs. “Hey, guys!”
* * *
“I would like the record to state my objection to this plan,” Thursday said, “so that when it goes horribly wrong I won’t even have to say I told you so.”
“I would like the record to state I think this is metal as fuck,” Vulture said, “so that no matter how this goes I’ll be right.”
“Boys!” Doomsday said.
“If this works,” Vasilis said, “she will be alive so long as Doomsday and I hold the ritual space. Our own life energy will hold open the gate. Unless we condemn another soul to death and send it to Barrow in her place, she will die again as soon as we drop the ritual. We might be able to hold it an hour, without risking our own lives. Once it’s over, once Heather has passed through the gate that second time, there’s no bringing her back. Not even temporarily. Barrow, uh, won’t be happy with any of us when he doesn’t get his due. He probably won’t seek revenge, but he probably won’t heed our call ever
