In the mind of the beast, Ilsa’s rage and despair purified into something merciless and instinctual, until the bloodshed she was about to face felt almost right.
“They’re Oracles. They know what you’ll do,” Cassia said. “Don’t hesitate.”
Then they appeared. Two pallid faces with dead, empty eyes filled the doorway. They were snarling, their teeth bared, and armed with pistols.
Before they could shoot, Cassia extended her hands and cast a shielding spell like the one she had used to protect them from Fyfe’s projectile. A bubble formed around her with Ilsa safe behind it. It repelled the Oracles’ bullets with a sound like tin.
But more of them were appearing, and edging around Cassia’s bubble. Two ducked behind the couch where Bill still lay and took aim at Ilsa. Just when she thought her only hope was to lunge and hope she was faster, their pistols flew from their hands with an explosion of light. Cassia’s bubble had vanished, and she was aiming her palm at one Oracle after another, and firing something like lightning at their weapons.
So, that was what Oren meant about watching for spells.
But the Oracles were still coming. Eight all together had poured into the room and separated them.
Ilsa turned on one to find him moved already. Another made to lunge at her, but at the last minute targeted Cassia instead, and tackled her to the ground.
They know what you’ll do, she had said. Don’t hesitate.
They could see her every move before she knew she would make it.
Without a thought in her head she leapt at Cassia, caught the leg of the Oracle on top of her in the vice of her jaw, and pulled him off his feet. He went down with a thud, but he was only dazed for a heartbeat before he started to push himself up. Ilsa reared up and landed her front paws on his back. The second time his head hit the ground there was a crack, and the Oracle went limp. Without pause, she turned; a haphazard, sweeping movement to catch anything in her vicinity, and knocked another to the ground. She leapt at anything and everything that moved, lashing out with her claws. One Oracle was crushed when he charged at her, his momentum helping Ilsa throw him against a wall with her full weight. Another, she bit into at the neck, until she could feel hot blood spraying onto her tongue. Cassia wielded her magic ruthlessly. There seemed to be no limit to the speed with which she could let her spells fly. Some of her hits elicited cries, some sent weapons flying. One met its mark right between the eyes and he crumpled, dead, against the wall.
The last two Oracles fled. Or, at least, Ilsa had thought they were the last two. As she dropped onto all four paws, something leapt at her from behind, nearly buckling her. The Oracle dug his fingers down into her fur, to her skin. Ilsa thrashed and twisted, consumed by panic, but she couldn’t shake him. She heard him unsheathe a blade.
“Duck!”
Cassia, stood over a body, was brandishing the dead Oracle’s pistol at her.
Ilsa ducked.
Cassia fired, her arm steady, her gaze straight down the line of the barrel.
10
There was a clatter of furniture breaking as the Oracle fell. The gunshot – louder than she expected, and so close to her sensitive canine ears – shook Ilsa enough that she shifted, and as she fell to the floor, her own arms stretched out to brace her.
“Thank you,” she gasped. The tang of blood coated the inside of her mouth and clung to her chin, hot and sticky. As a dog, it hadn’t seemed so awful to draw blood with her teeth, but before she knew it she was running to the kitchen to vomit into a bowl. Cassia found a cloth and helped her get the worst of it out of her mouth and off her face. She had tucked the pistol into the waistband of her coat.
“We need to find Oren,” she said. “We can’t wait for him here. There’ll just be more of them.”
With an aching weight in her chest, Ilsa forced herself back to the couch and knelt beside her magician. “Bill.”
The last time they had spoken, she had called him a bad teammate, but how would she know? He was the only person who truly knew her; next to Martha, the only teammate she’d ever had. They were supposed to see each other again that evening, when they would pretend like nothing happened, but be a little kinder to each other than normal.
But his eyes stared through her. His skin was colder still. The blood had left him through several clean wounds in his chest and abdomen.
There would be no kinder words; not ever.
Bill Blume was dead.
“Ilsa, I’m so sorry.”
A delicate hand rested on her shoulder, but Ilsa shook it off. The violence she’d already done suddenly wasn’t enough. She wanted to leap out that window after Oren and track down whoever had done this.
But Cassia was right – they needed to leave.
“What ’bout…” the bodies. The scene was worse than the fish market. Ilsa had killed three of them; the one slumped against the wall, the one face down near the kitchen, and the bloodied mess by the couch. She stared unwaveringly at Cassia to keep from looking at them.
“I’m sure the other tenants are already fetching the police, what with the commotion. They’ll take care of it,” said Cassia. Her fingers grazed each of the Oracles’ bodies in turn, then the couch, the table, the doorframe. Everything she touched rippled like heat haze and then righted itself. When she reached for Bill, Ilsa blocked her path.
“What are you doing?”
Cassia’s eyes were sympathetic, but her tone was matter-of-fact. “It’s a glamour. So no one will find anything unusual about this.”
Ilsa gave
