her. Aunt Evie, who loved her sister, who loved her mother, who talked about the importance of family as much as anyone, had just happened to have a water balloon filled with theobromine in her office, waiting to be flung. She’d prepared for this. She’d known that it was possible, and she’d prepared.
The second was that everyone else was still wearing their anti-telepathy charms. They weren’t flinching from the volume of Sarah’s mental voice because they couldn’t hear it. They didn’t know how angry she was.
“Guys, she’s pissed,” I said, stopping where I was. “Aunt Evie, you might want to run.”
The ball of compressed theobromine suddenly shot across the room like it had been fired by an invisible slingshot. I heard it strike something. I heard Aunt Evie start choking. Dad and Elsie ran to help her. Elsie was shouting, her words rendered incomprehensible by Aunt Evie’s increasing respiratory distress and the sound of footsteps thundering across the floor.
Mom was suddenly next to me, hands bristling with knives. Most Prices have trained, at least a little, in throwing knives. They’re less deadly than guns, but they’re quieter, and they get the job done. “I’m sorry,” she said, glancing to me, and pulled her hand back to start throwing.
Sarah looked at her, eyes flaring whiter still. Mom shouted in dismay as her feet left the floor. Then she slammed into the ceiling and stuck there, her arms stretched out from her body, her hands still full of knives.
“Mom!” I cried, in dismay. I looked frantically at Sarah. “Let her down. Sarah, you have to let her down.”
This isn’t the right location, and you’re all being irrational. I need to remove you. I need to remove myself. Fine. Sarah moved her hands for the first time, swiping them through the air in front of her like she was browsing through a touchscreen, pulling up the pieces she wanted and discarding the pieces she didn’t. There was a terrible, somehow meaty ripping sound, and a jagged tear appeared in the air at the middle of the living room, bleeding white light into the room.
I felt something run up my leg. The mice. They’d been watching this whole thing, and some of them were scared enough to take refuge with the nearest available divinity. More were probably hiding themselves in Annie’s hair and clothes. And none of that was going to save them if Sarah brought the house down on us.
“Sarah!” I howled, and started toward her again, or tried to. The air itself was pushing back against me. It was like wading through quicksand, thick and clinging and terrible. “Sarah, you have to stop!”
Annie was staggering to her feet, James by her side, one arm draped around her shoulder so she could support his weight. I wasn’t actually sure he was awake. I was sure that holding him like that was keeping her from accessing her fire. If she let go, he would fall down. Sarah didn’t seem to have noticed them. Her attention, such as it was, was divided between the impossible tear in our living room and me.
For the first time in my life, I didn’t want Sarah’s attention and I had it. It was getting hard to breathe. Mom was still pinned to the ceiling, and Dad and Elsie were still somewhere in the house trying to keep Aunt Evie from dying of theobromine poisoning. We were far enough away from the library that it was possible Uncle Kevin didn’t even know things had gone so terribly, terribly wrong.
This was up to us. Just us. And I didn’t know if I could do it.
“Sarah, please,” I said, still forcing my way through the heavy air toward her. “Please. It’s me. It’s Artie. You’re my best friend. Don’t you remember that? I . . .”
Annie was approaching Sarah from behind, James still draped against her. I didn’t know what she was going to do. I wasn’t sure she knew what she was going to do. But if there was any way to end this without hurting Sarah, she was going to find it. And with the anti-telepathy charm in her pocket, Annie was functionally invisible right now. Sarah didn’t know she was coming. As long as I didn’t think about it too loudly, there was a chance.
“Sarah, I love you.”
The white light in her eyes seemed to dim for a second. It could have been wishful thinking. It could have been the first sign that her body was running out of