I hover off the ground and float into the bottom apartment. Kaz follows behind at a distance, quiet, but also something of a comfort. Settling down in what must’ve once been the living room, I scan the floors, the blackened cabinets, the melted stovetop, silently begging whoever might be listening to help me remember. Pain and pressure wrap around my head like I’m banging it against an actual wall rather than a mental one.
Why can’t I remember? Is it because of some spell gone wrong like Ms. Alvarez suggested? Or is it because everything is torched and no longer looks familiar? That has to be it. But even if it’s not, if I can see what it looked like before, maybe it will come back. I need to get online and look up photos.
I turn back to toward Kaz, but it’s not his face I see. Instead, I find myself staring down the barrel of a gun.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I grab Kaz by the collar and yank him down before the gun goes off. A bullet whizzes over our heads, crashing into the wall behind us. It crumbles on impact in a cloud of ashy dust as Kaz and I scramble into the charred remains of a bedroom. We crouch, as close to the floor as possible, ducking under another spray of bullets.
“Why do they keep showing up. Am I like a beacon or…” I wince and try not to glare at Kaz.
“Billie, I swear I didn’t call them here. I know you have every reason not to trust me, but—” Another gunshot drowns him out and that familiar tug pinches at my form.
I push back with my own spell, pausing only to say, “We need to get out of here, now.”
“No arguments here.” Kaz grabs my hand, but the usual twisting, spinning sensation stutters to a halt.
“Kaz...what’s happening?” I rock back a little as their spell knocks against mine.
“They’re blocking me.” Kaz grimaces and squeezes my hand.
Nothing. Not even a slight spin.
“They can do that?” I pull out my staff as Kaz tugs his from his back.
“Only extremely powerful witches can.” His words shake slightly. “Concentrate on that counter spell, I’ll try to take down the one blocking me.”
Shield up, he drags me away from the half wall, through the window, and onto the lawn. A woman in a polo stands on the cracked sidewalk, aiming her gun at us and immediately taking a shot. Kaz and I spring apart. Bullets bounce off my shield, but it’s hard to concentrate on it and my counter spell at the same time. I squat behind a metal picnic table, as if its ridiculously flimsy structure will protect me.
A bullet rams the metal with a loud ping. Someone has to hear all this, is calling 911, the Enforcers, someone. We’ll just have to hold on until help comes. But everything in me shakes, and I know I don’t have enough strength to cling to either of these spells for very long. Heat floods me.
The woman with the gun runs toward me, forcing me to sprint from hiding. A bullet slips past my staff shield and grazes my upper thigh. Biting back a scream, I struggle to think. I need some kind of actual offense. Some way of attacking rather than just shielding myself. Then it hits me. The glass, the branch. Rafe and I both manipulated things in the plane of the living with corporeal telekinesis. Maybe I can use that now.
My feet tangle together. I spin around to face the Xer and a new spray of bullets. Without thinking, I throw out my free hand and concentrate on forcing them off to the side. They ricochet away from me, but then I feel that tug. My tenuous hold on my shield trembles. Its light fluctuates as if losing power.
I grip my counterspell again and back peddle further away from the armed Xer. Pain slices down my skull as I attempt to split my concentration between the counterspell and deflecting bullets. My vision warbles as my shield breaks. Black inches inward until I’m looking down a narrow tunnel. I stumble and land on my backside.
The Xer looms over me, gun aimed right at my face. Things slow down and little details spring out at me. The woman’s freckles, her sandy brown hair, her dark brows that look just like mine. My mouth dries out.
“Hailey…?”
Her eyes widen. “How-how do you know my name?”
“It’s me. It’s Billie…”
“No. No. It can’t be.” Her hands shake and she cocks her gun again. “You can’t be a ghost. It’s not possible. We...we…you...”
Nausea floods me as my brain fights to patch all of this information together. Memories again play out in front of me. I say them out loud as they weave across my vision. “Cody died.”
The Healers struggle to save him moments after a car plowed into his small body right in front of our apartment.
“Then he came to me as a ghost.”
His shimmery form materialized in the doorway of my room. A week or so after the Unleashing. At first I don’t quite recognize him. It’s a little like looking through a smeared window, but his voice I know deep inside me.
I remember now. After I’d lost my powers on that ski trip, Hailey continued to teach me spells in case they ever came back.
“I needed to say goodbye,” Cody says. “Then I’m going to go somewhere to figure out the rest of my unfinished business.”
“I was so happy to see him again that I told you about him and…” a sob catches in my throat. “You said he wasn’t supposed to be here, that we needed to help him pass on.”
“We have to burn his bones, BJ,” Hailey says. “It’s not good for him to be around, not natural. He can’t rest unless we perform the spell. Trust me. This is the
