die?
I hope someone will take care of Maddy.
Shit. I should’ve fucking kissed Roman.
I should’ve kissed all of them.
No. I’m not ready to die, goddamn it!
Shoving aside the whirling, confused thoughts, I force myself to concentrate. The floor is rushing up to meet me, and I’m almost out of time, and I’m so fucking terrified…
But I manage to send out one more sonic boom.
It’s a baby one—I have to work hard to keep from unleashing too big of a blast—and as it bursts from my hands, the blowback slows my descent just enough.
I land hard on the floor, feeling like I just got rammed by a truck. The demon is gone—banished, I think—and Roman and Asher limp toward me, both looking like they’ve been through hell.
“Elliot?” Roman calls, and his deep voice soothes me. I’m glad I’m still around to hear it. I should probably tell him that one day.
But right now, I can’t quite get my mouth to work. I feel so tired.
My vision blurs as I see Asher run toward me. “Elliot!”
“I’m… okay…” I manage to slur.
Then the world fades to black.
Chapter 28
It takes about a week to clean everything up, all told.
Well, clean everything up to the point where classes can resume again. The storage room is going to need a lot longer to recover, and in the meantime, I’ve got no idea where the remaining magical artifacts will be kept. A bunch of them were destroyed in the fight, and it’s only thanks to luck and a small miracle that nothing as dangerous as the Brimstone Orb was set off, or the whole school could’ve been taken out.
The Circuit sends a team out to deal with the broken objects and the spells they’ve unleashed. One classroom has been completely overtaken by a black sludge that stinks of evil and is apparently sentient. There are several curses that need to be broken too, and a bunch of crates were knocked into a precarious jumble that needs to be sorted out without breaking any of them, like a giant game of Jenga.
Roman gets a stern talking-to from the admins for summoning a demon. Apparently, effective or not, summoning creatures from the underworld is frowned upon, especially when it results in structural damage to the building. Classes have all been moved into the common areas of dorms or outside while the construction crew that’s brought in does repairs.
Of course, I miss most of the excitement because I spend the week after the fight in the infirmary with the guys.
Roman comes by often to give us updates. He only had to stay in the infirmary for a couple days, but since we’re younger and our magic is less trained, the medical staff wanted to keep us students under observation a bit longer in case of weird side effects.
Asher later tells me that I was the one out for the longest.
“You slept the entire first day here,” he says as the four of us impatiently wait to be discharged on our seventh day in the infirmary. I can see his fingers moving, like he’s itching to reach out and hold my hand, but he doesn’t. “We were starting to get worried.”
“That’s what happens when you’re a badass,” I reply, grinning at him. “You gotta take a longer rest afterward.”
“Excuse me?” Dmitri points at himself, where his scrapes and bruises still stand out against his skin. “I was the first one to wake up, Princess.”
“Who are you calling a princess?” I sit up. “I will walk over there and kick your ass—”
A nurse pokes her head in, gives us all a stern look, and then leaves again.
“Sorry!” Asher calls after her, because of course he does, even if he wasn’t the one about to start a fight in the infirmary of all places.
Still, the room takes on a more serious air as silence falls for a moment. We really did get our asses kicked, all five of us, and even though Dmitri’s fine and Cam doesn’t look worse for wear—in fact, we’re all okay—it still took a lot to bring Raul down.
And that’s… that’s terrifying. The idea that just one person could be so powerful? I didn’t realize, until that fight, just how strong a person’s magic could get.
Speaking of Raul…
“Where is he?” I ask.
The guys all know who I mean immediately. Dmitri gives a low growl while Asher looks over at Cam.
The blond-haired mage sighs. “The Circuit arrested him. He’s not dead, although you really did a number on him.”
Something tight and