As I began to float away, someone took my hand. And then the oddest thing happened. My hand began to grow warm, like I was holding a heating blanket. After a few seconds, the warmth became a tingling that spread from my hand up my arm and to my neck. By the time I felt it on my face and around my head, I realized what was happening.
Someone was giving me a jump start.
My energy started to come back little by little. The power I was feeling traveled down my body and into my legs, my muscles twitching with—I wasn’t exactly sure what. Excitement? Energy? Whatever it was, I wasn’t sleepy anymore. In fact, I was feeling totally rejuvenated.
My eyes sprang open and I sat straight up on the couch, scaring Emory and making her jump about three feet away. I was still holding Sascha’s hand and looked down at our entwined fingers and then up at her.
I had no idea what she’d done, but I was incredibly grateful. As I tried to tell her this, her hand slid from mine and she hunched over, placing her hand up to her forehead. I took a moment to study her face and saw that she was pale and looked a little sick. At first I worried that she’d been hit by a stray spell, but I quickly realized it was something else.
“What just happened?” I asked. “Are you okay, Sascha?”
“Yeah. I’m just… light-headed. It happens sometimes when I do this,” she answered quietly, still staring at the ground.
“What did you do?” I asked.
A body sailed over our heads and crashed into the entertainment center in the corner of the room. Sparks flew and shorted out a nearby lamp. Still, given the magic that was being cast around the place, there was plenty of light.
“Let’s talk about this later,” she said quietly. I was just now noticing how loud and chaotic it was in the house and tried to shield her from things that were flying around us. “You need to help the others.”
She was right. I didn’t want to leave her there, especially when she was looking so frail, but the others seemed to need my help. There might have been more of us at the moment, but the Parrishables had more experience with fighting dirty. And they were pulling out all the stops.
“Hadley! You’re okay!”
Oh, God. Asher.
I swung around to see him inside the house again, being held back by Fallon, Peter, and a girl named June. My persuasion must have faded when I’d almost passed out before, allowing Asher the free will to do what he wanted. Now he was trying to escape, but they had a tight grip on all his limbs. If he hadn’t looked so worried, I would have commended them on a job well done.
“Let him go, guys. It’s cool,” I shouted, putting as much influence into it as I could. “He’s on our side.”
Those seemed to be the magic words, because as soon as I spoke, they let go and Asher stumbled forward. He was by my side within seconds and right there, with everyone watching, he pulled me into a hug. I clung to him, just happy to be back in his arms.
Over Asher’s shoulder, I could see Emory rush toward the door where more of the Parrishables were coming in. With a cry befitting a battle, she disappeared into the kitchen. I moved to go after her, afraid of her being back there alone, but Asher held me tighter.
“I know you’re strong and fully capable of kicking anyone’s ass and I totally believe that you can take care of yourself. I even respect you for taking charge in messed-up situations,” he said, a little bit breathless from the struggle. “But don’t you ever tell me to leave you behind again. You know I’ll say yes to just about anything you ask, because, well, I like you, but when I thought you might be hurt back there… So from here on out, we’re in this together. You’re stuck with me, so you better get used to it. And don’t even try to talk me out of it, because I’m the one making this decision.”
I fought the smile that was threatening to break out. He’d just admitted he liked me. Sure, it was under the guise of telling me what to do, but in this case, I thought it was kind of sweet. Because, did I mention that he liked me?
I moved in to kiss him again, but something flew through the door and landed on an armchair in the corner with a thud. It was Emory, back from the kitchen, hurt but still alive. Thank God. She began to yell something at me, but before she could, a pillow raised up from its place on the floor and pressed itself up against the redhead’s face. Emory began to struggle against the invisible force, but it was too much for her. After a few moments, she went still.
“No!” I shouted and started off in her direction.
But before I could make it even a few steps, I was being pulled backward like a rubber band snapping into place and was thrown against the ceiling like a fly caught on sticky paper. I fought to move my head, my arms, even my fingers, but something held me there. As I stared down at the battle that was going on beneath me, I could see that there were about a dozen people packed into our tiny living room going head to head, fighting for their lives.
And then I caught sight of my adversary, the reason I was currently pinned to the ceiling.
He was dressed in black pants, a matching shirt, and a floor-length, worn-looking brown leather jacket. It was old, but not in the distressed kind of way that you’d find in a trendy store. It looked more like it had been lived in.
Moving up to his face, I wasn’t surprised to see the blackness of his eyes. We’d learned early on in magic class that when witches practiced dark spells, the caster’s soul turned dark as well. And since the eyes were the window to the soul… well, you get the idea. Only the darkest witches’ eyes ever turned black, and now that they were staring back at me, the effect was chilling.
A shiver ran down my body. Still frozen in place, I could do nothing to stop it. I was powerless.
He gave me a crooked smile as if he were reading my mind. But he couldn’t… could he? I knew it was something my mother could do, but I’d always thought it was because the gift ran in families. The thought that a stranger—someone who wanted me dead no less—could know what I was thinking was beyond upsetting. I felt violated. But as soon as I realized what he was doing, I built up the wall in my mind to at least try to block him out. Given the fact that I couldn’t move my body, it was all I could seem to do to fight against him.
In response, the man chuckled and winked at me.
“Well, you’re certainly not a disappointment, are you?” he said. And then with a flick of his wrist, he lifted his spell and left me to drop to the floor below.
Chapter Twenty
I watched as I got closer and closer to the ground in what seemed like slow motion and wondered what would happen when I hit. Would my bones crack instantly? I’d never broken anything before, although I’d always wondered how I’d managed to escape that rite of passage.
But if I was seriously hurt in this fall I might not be able to get myself—let alone everyone else—out of there alive. Maybe I’d be able to convince enough of the others to get out, so it wouldn’t turn into a total slaughter. This thought nearly made me sick to my stomach. Or maybe it was the fact that I was falling so quickly now that my insides felt like I was on a roller coaster. Either way, I wasn’t feeling too hot.
I was seconds away from going splat all over my living room floor when I clenched my eyes shut. Right as I was expecting to feel the floor come up to bite me in the ass, the strangest thing happened.
My body began to slow down, resisting gravity as if I were attached to an invisible bungee cord. And then I was being pulled sideways, arms and legs flailing as I tried to somehow navigate the flight. I had to open my eyes because I had no idea what had just happened. And what I saw didn’t make any sense.