“Weagree to give up their powers,” Jamie pointed out, “before they become a risk. A liability.
Before we have to take from others.”
“A very interesting conclusion, Ms. Riley, but with a flawed center. Why should you protect humans who are not strong enough to take care of themselves? What advantage is there in stepping forward to protect those who are so obviously weak? Whose egos vastly outpace their abilities? Those who are gifted with magic are elite amongst humans.”
As if bored with the conversation, he waved a hand in the air. “Enough of this prattle. Are you willing to see the error of your ways? To come back to the fold? To leave behind those who would rip you from your true family?”
Reaper or cult leader? I wondered. It was hard to tell the difference with this one.
“Are you high?” Michael asked.
Jeremiah’s nostrils flared. “I’ll take that as a juvenile ‘no,’ ” he said, then turned on his heel.
“Ad meloria. Finish them.”
“Aw, this is my favorite part,” said Alex, then outstretched her hands.
But before she could shake the earth, Jamie wound up her left hand as if bracing for a pitch.
“Keep your issues,” she said, then slung her arm forward, “to yourself.” A wave of heat blew past us as pellets of white fire shot from Jamie’s hand like sparks from a sparkler.
“Holy frick,” I muttered, instinctively covering my head even though the fire wasn’t meant for me. But it was enough to temporarily subdue Alex, who drew back her hand and hit the ground,
wrapping her arms around her head to avoid the burn.
“Help me off this thing,” Scout muttered, grasping my arm. I pulled her to her feet as Michael glanced around at the movement.
“Green,” he yelled over the crackle of falling sparks, “get behind the table!”
“Garcia,” Scout said, fingers biting into my hand as she kept herself upright, “I’m the spellbinder here. You getyour ass behind the table.”
“They’re reloading,” Jamie said, turning to grab my arm. She pulled me behind the table, and I dragged Scout with me. “Let’s all get behind the table.”
We’d just managed to hit the deck when the pressure in the room changed. I knew what was coming, deep in my bones. I clapped my hands to my ears against the sudden ache, as if my blood and bones remembered it,feared it.
The air in the room vibrated, contracted, and expanded, and the light seemed to shift to apple green, the table suddenly flying above our heads with Sebastian’s burst of firespell. I covered Scout’s body with mine and we were both saved the impact, but the move stripped us of our cover. We were all but naked, nothing but air between us and two Reapers who appeared to be better equipped for the battle than we were.
“I’m on it,” Jamie yelled, turning from her crouch, fingers outstretched in front of her, her irises shifting to waves of flame again. There was another crackle of sound and energy as a wall of white fire began to rise between us and the Reapers. I kneeled up to sneak a glance and saw Sebastian on the other side, black brows arched over hooded blue eyes. He stared at me, his gaze intense, one arm outstretched, his chest heaving with the exertion of the firespell he’d thrown,
lips just parted.
I don’t know why—maybe because of the intensity in his eyes, in his expression—but I got goose bumps again, at least until the growing barrier of flame blocked my view. I guessed it was a foot thick, nearly six feet tall, and it crossed the room from one side to the other, a blockade between us and the Reapers.
For a moment, as if entranced, I stared at the wall of white fire, the heat of the dancing flames warming my cheeks. “Amazing,” I murmured, turning to gaze in awe at Jamie.
“More amazing if it could withstand that earthquake business,” she said as the ground rumbled beneath us. “I braided the strands of flame together. It’s hard to penetrate, at least at first, but it won’t hold forever. Flame acts like a fluid. It flows, sinks. The strands will separate.”
“Scout,” Michael called, “can you do anything? Reinforce the wall?”
She squeezed my hand, closed her eyes, and was quiet for a moment. And then she began to chant.
“Fire and flame/in union bound/from parts, a whole/ from top to ground.” Her body suddenly spasmed; then she went limp. I glanced behind us at the wall. It shivered, seemed to ripple with magic, then stilled again.
She’d tried, but whatever she’d done hadn’t quite taken.
Scout tightened her grip on my hand, then opened her eyes and glanced over at Michael. “I can’t,” she whispered, tears pooling in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I don’t have any mojo left.
They took it, Michael.”
“It’s okay,” Michael said, pressing his lips to her forehead. “You’ll heal. It’s okay.”
“I can spark them again,” Jamie said, “but I need to recharge for a minute, and the wall isn’t going to keep them away for long.”
I inched up to peek over the fire, assessed, and quickly sat down again. “There’re two more of them. Are we toast?”
“Reaper toast,” Scout agreed, then leaned into a fit of coughing.
“Scout?” Michael asked.
When she looked up at him, there were tears in her eyes. “It was a nightmare, a black hole. They trapped me, and they’d have kept going until there was nothing left. No energy, no magic—just a shell.”
“They must have doubled their efforts,” Michael said, his eyes scanning her face, like a doctor checking her injuries. “Siphoned more greedily than their usual one-day-at-a-time protocol.
Probably weren’t sure how long they’d be able to keep her.” He glanced at me. “Energy taken from Adepts is more potent, more powerful, than energy from folks without gifts, so they’d have taken what they could get while they could get it, passed it on to elders like Jeremiah. You said they trashed her room, right? Maybe they were looking for herGrimoire , her spell book,
something to try and capture some of her gifts, as well as her energy.”
“They’ll keep coming,” Scout said quietly. “They won’t kill us. They’ll just suck us dry until there’s nothing left. Until we leave everyone and everything else behind and do exactly what they want.”
“Like magical brat packers,” I muttered, sarcasm the only way I knew to deal with a future that terrifying.
“What can you do?” Jamie suddenly asked me. “You said something about lights? If we could distract them, maybe we could make a run for the door? Scatter through the tunnels?”
I nodded, my heart pounding, and looked up at the fluorescent lights overhead. I stared at them,
concentrating, trying to speed my heart into whatever state was going to trigger the magic. Into whatever state was going to turn off all the lights.
“You can do it, Lil,” Scout whispered, leaning her head against my shoulder. “I know you can.”
I nodded, squeezing my fingers into fists until my nails cut crescents into my palms.
Nothing.
Not even a flicker, even as my heart raced with the effort.
“Scout, I don’t know how,” I said, staring up at the lights again, which burned steadily—not even a hiccup— in their fixtures. “I don’t know how to make it happen.”
