“But pulling someone back from death?” I guided her rope toward the spell. The spell tugged on the rope, on the ghost of her, like a magnet pulling to metal.
She didn’t answer me. Maybe she couldn’t hear me. The spell was drawing her in.
“Live,” I said.
I released my hold on her, concentrated on sending her spirit into that floating glyph.
She poured into it with violet light, filled the spell, and triggered it.
Sunny and Eleanor drew closer to the spell, like moths drawn to a flame.
The spell arced through the air and hovered above Mina’s body. It draped over her like lavender lace. The black rope between us dissolved.
Our tie was gone, broken. The spell really had carried her soul, her spirit. She should be firmly back inside her body now.
Good. This was good.
She’d been dead maybe a few minutes at most. All systems were go. Lots of people had been revived after a much longer death.
I took a few steps back so I wasn’t deathing up the area around her. Gave her space to revive.
I waited.
She’s not breathing, Sunny said.
Eleanor bent down next to her, touched her face. Mina. Wake up, Mina.
Shame, Sunny said. Do something. Get someone.
Someone could do CPR. Not me. With the Death pulsing through me, I’d either rekill or reghost her.
I jogged to the house. Maybe Dash could help. Or Cody.
“Help,” I said as I stepped into the living room. “I need help out here.”
Cody and Dash hurried into the room.
“Shame?” Dash said. “What?”
“The doctor. Mina. She needs help.”
“What happened?” Dash asked as he stormed out the door. “What happened to her?”
I didn’t turn. I didn’t have to. I knew the exact moment he found her there, dead on the ground. I heard him call for Cody. I heard him tell him to call 911.
“Me,” I whispered. “I happened to her.”
Eleanor and Sunny were just outside the door, watching. We waited. A full minute. We waited two.
She’s dead, Eleanor said. Gone. Oh, Shame. She didn’t make it.
Sunny swore, and paced past me, her knife clenched tight in her hand as if it could protect her from me. Protect her from death.
“You killed her?” Davy asked.
I turned. I hadn’t seen him in the room. Probably because he hadn’t wanted me to.
He sat on the floor again, in front of Sunny’s corpse. The glow of blue magic leaked light through the bandages someone must have wrapped him in.
Mina. Bandages Mina must have wrapped him in.
His hair hadn’t been cut in too long, and fell into his eyes. He didn’t bother to brush it out of his way as he stared at me, waiting for my reply.
“Who?” I asked. Not that it would matter. The answer would be yes.
“Do you know what I’m going to do for you, Flynn? I’m going to give you a head start. If you’re smart, you’ll track down Eli Collins and kill him. Before I find you. And kill you for what you’ve done.”
He hadn’t moved an inch, but the rage in him was a palpable thing pushing out toward me.
“Well, then, mate,” I said quietly. “Until we meet again.”
I walked away. Away from the house, away from the dead bodies. I thought Davy might have the right of this situation.
My best use, hell, my only use right now, was Death. And Eli was the man we all wanted dead. After that . . . well, it would be interesting to find out if the spells Eli had carved into Davy, the things he had done to change Davy, would be enough to kill me.
Wind dragged cold across my sweat-covered skin, sticking my jacket to my back and sending a chill up my bare neck.
Dash yelled my name.
I ignored him and jogged to the SUV, got in, started the engine.
I might still be able to find Eli.
But I’d be damned if I was going to kill any more innocent people tonight.
Ever.
A gunshot ricocheted off the vehicle. I glance in my rearview mirror. Dash was there, took a second shot, for the tires, I thought.
Hit the car, missed tires.
Too bad, mate. But I had no time to stay and explain things. I had a killer to take down.
• • •
I pulled off to the side of the road about twenty minutes later.
I’d left my boots back in that ditch near the house. The gravel on the shoulder of the road was sharp and cold. That was fine with me. I just needed enough contact to the earth for Death magic to find Eli’s heartbeat again.
Almost instantly, I caught a heartbeat that could be him about two hundred miles northwest of here.
Somewhere near Portland. But where, exactly?
Even with Death magic feeding on my anger and adrenaline, I was fatiguing, my legs shaking.
Careful, now, Flynn, I thought. Don’t blow this. Just focus on the area surrounding him.
I concentrated on the Eli heartbeat, then pulled my perception carefully up away from the beat to his body surrounding that beat, to the room surrounding that body, then the building surrounding that room.
I knew that building. It was part of a shipping yard in St. Johns.
He was in Portland. Close to Allie and Zay.
And I could guess why.
Three Soul Complements died today, but Eli wasn’t done doing Krogher’s dirty work. Allie and Zay, my family, people I loved like siblings, were next on the list.
And I was so not in the mood to be fucked with.
I focused to take this shot—twice as far as the last time I’d tried to kill him. Magic flared, blurred; my concentration slipped. I couldn’t keep that tight a focus from this distance. I was too damn tired.
I came back to my own body standing in the deserted road in the middle of nowhere.
Blood trickled from my nose, and I wiped it away absently. I had a headache that could swallow a city raging in my head, but I didn’t care. I knew where that bastard was now.
I hauled my ass back into the SUV and checked to see if any cell phones had been left behind so I could warn Allie and Zay that Eli was about to come knocking.
Nothing.
Hell.
I revved the engine and tore off down the road to Portland.
• • •
Eleanor and Sunny had given up trying to talk to me. They sat in the backseat, probably planning my end.
A phone rang and I nearly hit my head on the ceiling.
“Jesus,” I yelped.
It wasn’t on me, not in the side pocket, not in the passenger’s seat. I finally found it in the glove compartment. It wasn’t my phone. Maybe Sunny’s?
I glanced at the screen. Dash was calling.
I thumbed it on.
“What?” I said.
“Where are you?”
“Driving.”
“Shame, listen to me.” His voice was shaking. Yeah, well, he’d just watched me kill Terric. A good man. His friend. And there was the mess I’d made of Mina too. Plus, Sunny was still dead on the couch.
“Eli’s in Portland,” I said.
“What?”
“He’s in Portland. Somewhere near St. Johns. I’m headed there.”
“How do you know where Eli is?”
“I found his heartbeat.”
Dash paused. “Did you call Zay?”
“No. You do that. Tell them he’s nearby. Tell them he might have those drones with him. To kill them.”
“Fuck. Okay. Shame, you need to listen to me. What you did to Terric—”
I chucked the phone at the door. It shattered and fell to the floor.
That might have been important, Sunny said.
“Shut up.”
I was ragged-edge exhausted. The last hour of driving hadn’t exactly been hands at ten and two, safety first. It was everything I could do to stay in the lane.