Fallon still hadn’t let his arms drop to his sides, clearly not trusting the frozen figures around him. I had to respect his skepticism, but I needed his help if we were going to get out of there in one piece. Sascha looked a little shell-shocked and hadn’t even noticed that the chaos around her had come to a stop.
“Fallon! Sascha! We have to get to the car!” I shouted, attempting to snap them out of it.
Jasmine emerged from where she’d been lying behind the bench and groaned, clutching her head. Sirens began to sound in the distance and I rushed over to where Jinx was sprawled and crouched down to pick her up.
“Sascha, go help Jasmine. Fallon, grab Jinx’s other side,” I commanded. When we lifted her limp body, I noticed with terror that she felt cold and her clothes were completely soaked in blood.
There was so much blood for such a small girl.
I started to feel sick as it dawned on me that Jinx hadn’t even cried out when she’d been wounded. The quiet girl had remained that way through the whole thing.
Shuffling as fast as we could through the parking lot and to the car, we scrambled to get inside. Fallon, Sascha, and a dazed Jasmine pulled Jinx across their laps as I climbed into the driver’s seat.
I wasn’t sure how long I was going to be able to hold back the attackers; for all I knew, the spell had already worn off and they were about to burst into the parking lot behind us. But I had to at least try to keep it going until we were out of town. So I attempted to split my focus between holding back the Parrishables and starting the engine and pulling out of the lot. The others were crying and shouting from the backseat, but I tuned them out as we entered the flow of traffic on the highway. Once I felt that we had enough of a head start, I finally turned around to assess the damage.
A wave of fear and nausea swept over me. Within a matter of minutes, Sascha’s bruises had grown into full-blown welts and she was looking more like she’d been hit by a truck than beaten up in a fight. Jasmine was fading in and out of consciousness and I worried she was suffering from injuries that I couldn’t see.
But it was Jinx who had me truly worried. The blood had soaked through her entire shirt and had even seeped onto Sascha’s and Fallon’s clothes. There was so much of it, though, I could hardly believe it was all hers. I grabbed my jacket from the passenger seat and passed it to Fallon in the back.
“Where is it all coming from?” I asked, watching him in the rearview mirror as he tried to find the source. Finally he pulled up Jinx’s shirt to reveal a blackened hole in her side. It looked like she’d been hit by lightning. The skin was charred as if she’d been burned, but blood was flowing out of the gash like lava out of a volcano. I was mesmerized by it for a few seconds and nearly veered into the median. Swerving back into my own lane, I placed both hands on the wheel so that I didn’t hurt anyone else before we could get Jinx to the hospital.
“Fallon, you have to stop the bleeding,” I instructed with a voice that was much calmer than I felt. “Take my jacket and press your hand firmly over the wound.”
He looked in my direction, horrified by what I was asking him to do. “I’m going to hurt her if I do that,” he stammered. It was the first time I’d seen signs of his age since he’d shown up at the fight, and for a moment I felt bad that he had to be here instead of off doing normal kid things. But life wasn’t fair.
We all knew that now.
“She’s going to die if you don’t,” I responded gently.
He looked back down at Jinx’s face and then whispered, “I’m sorry,” and did as I said. Sascha began to sob again and Jasmine’s head was lolling back and forth like her neck was made of rubber.
I knew it was risky to stop before getting to the cabin, but I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t get the others help. So I pressed my foot on the gas and crossed four lanes of traffic to follow the first sign I saw for a hospital.
I just hoped it wasn’t too late.
Chapter Sixteen
“Where were you guys?” a voice rang out across the room as we trudged inside. It was hours after darkness had fallen, and I had no idea who was talking. In fact, I couldn’t have been sure at that moment that I hadn’t imagined it. The events of the day had been so surreal that I wasn’t processing reality very well anymore.
I didn’t bother to answer and instead walked straight past the others who’d been at home the whole time and entered the kitchen. I needed to be alone to think. There’d been too much going on at the hospital for me to even begin to sort out what had happened at the mall—who had been hurt and what I’d learned about the Parrishables.
How could they expect me to just talk to them like everything was okay? We’d been attacked and I was pretty sure that our enemies wouldn’t have stopped until we were… could they have actually killed us? I mean, taking out a bunch of adults was bad enough, but would they really have been able to kill a bunch of kids? It had sure looked like things were headed that way before I froze everyone and got us out of there.
I hated to think about what might’ve happened if the spell hadn’t worked.
I went to the fridge and retrieved a bottle of sparkling water before collapsing at the kitchen table. I took a big swig and stared blankly out the window.
“They’re asking questions out there,” Fallon said, traipsing in a few seconds later. “What are you going to tell them?”
“Nothing yet,” I said.
I didn’t even glance up as Sascha joined us at the table. She still had on the same blood-stained clothes from earlier and I couldn’t stand to look at the reminder of what had happened to my friends because I couldn’t protect them.
“Are you kidding?” Fallon asked. “We were gone the entire day and now we just showed up in the middle of the night looking like extras from a Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. Jasmine and Jinx are in the hospital and you expect the others not to wonder what’s going on? You can’t just ignore this and expect it to go away.”
The combination of stress, fear, and exhaustion was finally catching up with me and I could feel myself begin to lose it. I was like a rubber band that was being pulled all the way back—I knew I was about to snap.
“What am I supposed to say, Fallon? That our worst nightmares came true today? That the Parrishables really are after us and they’re not going to lay off just because we’re kids? They’d have filleted us alive if they’d had the chance. Or maybe you want me to let everyone in on the fact that we’re down two people, one of whom is currently fighting for her life! We got away today because we were lucky. And chances are, we’re not going to be that lucky again. Is that the kind of honesty you want me to dish out?”
“Yes!” Fallon yelled back. “This is exactly why I took off earlier. You keep treating us like dumb kids, when we’re in this thing too. You’re not the only one who can handle bad news, Hadley. We all lost our parents back home. We’re all being chased by these guys. We all deserve to know the truth!”
“You want to be treated like an adult, Fallon? How about not running off, so we don’t have to chase after you and endanger our lives to save yours,” I said.
It wasn’t what I’d intended to say, but I was emotionally bankrupt and physically drained and once again Fallon had pushed me to the brink.
“I may have left, but you know as well as I do that this was not my fault,” he said nastily. “I heard what that guy said to you back there.”
My heart began to race double time and I suddenly felt faint as I realized what this could mean. Was it possible that Fallon had heard what the muscle-head and I had talked about at the mall? The noise levels had been so loud and we were all so focused on not dying that I’d figured our convo had been lost to everyone else.