I twisted around, my scalp screaming at me, to see Goldilocks’ black patent leather boots.
Well, this was a familiar position. Except Dad never had a knife in his hands. Crap.
But there was that one time…
He had me by the hair. All I could do was stare at his shiny black work shoes again.
“Witch,” he whispered. It was better to take it. Better than resisting. I’d done that a couple of times. It always ended worse. But this time he had a broken beer bottle in his hands, too drunk to realize he still had something in his fist after he smashed it into the fridge.
“Witch,” he said louder, yanking my head closer to the floor. “Thought I wouldn’t figure it out, huh? I know she isn’t mine.”
Great. He’d gotten so drunk, he thought I was Mom again.
I wished I wasn’t his kid. Not having him as my dad would do wonders for my self-esteem. As it was, I looked too much like him to be anything other than his.
“You killed her!” he roared.
I stared at the glass bottle, knowing what was coming next.
I exhaled and breathed in again right before he swung his fist up.
I brought my hands down in an X—the way Caleb and I had drilled so many times, catching his hand and twisted, bringing it up as I heard the broken bottle crash onto the floor. Dad wasn’t falling like we’d practiced, so I improvised and went to knee him in the groin. I got his thigh instead.
Crap. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.
He bellowed and swung his fist into my face.
I blinked, disoriented, splayed out on two overturned blue chairs. I craned my neck to see Goldilocks wiping off a bit of blood from her mouth. My upper arm felt damp and on fire.
The stooge came into view, her eyes wide. “Did she just…”
Goldilocks stepped toward me, backhanding me. My head snapped back.
Stooge grabbed her arm. “Eolin, if they were wrong—if she has power, maybe we should wait.”
Goldilocks shrugged her off. “For what? She’d need a lot more than that to be worth the risk.” She shook her head. “We’re not taking any chances.”
“But Edon said—”
Goldilocks brought out her blade once more. “Time to die,” she said as my head still spun from her last hit. My swirling vision splintered her blade into a carousel of circling knives as she swung it down.
The classroom door shattered, pieces of wood exploding across the room as something catapulted toward us.
I watched in frozen fascination as Goldilocks lifted, her back arching as red spilled like ink across the front of her pale pink blouse. Her green eyes widened, mouth open in a surprised O.
My jaw went slack from shock.
Bridgette—bubbly, mildly irritating Bridgette—loomed behind Goldie. Strands of her white-blond hair clung to Goldie’s shirt as she gripped Goldie’s shoulder and jerked her blade out. Bridgette spun, leaving Goldie’s body to crumple to the floor.
Stooge had her hands up, but there was no hope in her eyes. Bridgette shot through the room like a vengeful ninja, her sword slashing across Stooge’s throat, executing her swiftly.
Before my mind could catch up to the fact that there were two dead bodies in my English class, Bridgette landed beside me like a cat, sinking low into a crouch as she bared her teeth at the front of the room. I slowly swiveled my head.
Ms. Cochran continued to write on the white board.
“Well, Daelle?” Bridgette’s voice was barely above a whisper.
The writing paused. Ms. Cochran slowly turned and barely glanced at me.
“Still alive, I see.” She turned back to the white board, continuing to write. “Pity.”
Bridgette let out what could only be described as a hiss. “A very thin line you’re walking.”
Ms. Cochran didn’t answer. She capped her marker and calmly stepped over bits of wood as she left through the gaping hole in the room.
Bridgette snorted and looked back at me, scouring my body for injuries and focusing in on my upper arm.
“You’re bleeding.” The way she said it was cold, detached. Like she’d said it a thousand times before, and it wasn’t a big deal.
I nodded, refusing to look at my arm. I knew what would happen if I did, and I wasn’t going there right now. Especially not now. There were two dead bodies and I was not going to go all PTSD and miss out on what was gonna happen next.
“I’ll wrap it for you.” She knelt in front of us and sliced a strip of black that I recognized as Goldie’s pants. I shuddered as she turned to wrap my arm so tightly that I began to wonder if she was applying a tourniquet.
She looked into my eyes. “You in shock?”
“Um.” I started to sit up a little, trying to get a handle on this very unreal situation.
Until I looked down. Then I realized that this unreal situation would stay just that: impossibly and totally unreal.
Where Goldie had been laid a different kind of corpse. One I recognized, since it’d been with Goldie since the day I met her, except it was now in color. Goldie’s hair had changed to straight white with a set of pointed ears just barely peeking out. Her blank eyes were still green, but her face was thinner, her body leaner. A pool of red spread out like halo around her, dyeing the ends of her hair crimson.
I felt my face flush, the asphalt on my knees, the warm stickiness of blood as my hand trembled to find a pulse.
Don’t die. Caleb, don’t die.
Chapter 15
I was dreaming again; I had to be, since Caleb and I were standing in the white space once more.
“Caleb!” I ran over and hugged him, burying my head in his shoulder.
“Hey, short stack,” he said.
I kept hugging him, tightening my arms around him like a vice. I wasn’t about to let him go.
“Hey, what’s going on now?”
“Everything is going crazy. This is real. Like, this thing here with you
