Bayou Blues A Genie McQueen Novel - Sierra Dean Page 0,72
friend went. If you do that, I might not have to use this.”
Relief, a feeling almost as euphoric as an orgasm, flushed through my whole body. Wilder. Wilder was safe. He’d gotten away from this somehow, and they didn’t have him hogtied in another room. Just knowing he was okay made me let out a short whoop of pure, unadulterated joy.
If Wilder was free, that meant this might all still end okay.
I wasn’t depending on him to rescue me. His freedom just meant one less person I had to get out of this mess. Now I could focus on saving myself instead of worrying about him.
“Come closer,” I whispered.
“Do I look stupid?” He touched the blade to my cheek, but this time I didn’t wince.
“You’re wearing a ski mask in this weather. Of course you look stupid. It also makes you look like a coward.” The restraints tugged painfully as I spoke, but I couldn’t stop. My voice sounded raspier as I went, but I charged ahead. “You’re covering your face so I won’t know who you are. But what does it matter? If you’re really going to kill me, why do you care? If you believe in the cause you’re fighting for, why hide? The truth it, you’re terrified I’m going to get out of here. And you don’t want me to come find you when this is all said and done.”
He scoffed but lowered the blade. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Then you must just be fucking ugly.”
My pinky stretched out, practically disjointing itself, but I was able to curl it around one of the ropes holding me. I hope that one touch was all I would need.
This wouldn’t be easy. I couldn’t shift my focus; I could barely string coherent thoughts together. I’d need to say the words out loud, because casting any spell with just my mind would be out of the question. I would need to be on the top of my game for that, and this hardly qualified as my best form.
“Air, hear me,” I whispered.
“What?”
I ignored him, hoping I’d be able to get through the whole thing before he decided to slit me open. “Earth, hear me.” I stared down at the still-wet spots my tears had left in the dirt and smiled. Never let it be said crying wasn’t good for you. “Water, hear me.”
“What are you saying? Are you praying?”
“No. But you should be.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
The last words of the spell spilled out of me in a war cry. “Fire, hear me. Fire, yield to me. Fire, be my breath, be my touch. Fire heed me.”
My skin felt as if it might crack open like an aged blister and peel away at the lightest touch. I was coming apart, being ignited from the inside out. In the midst of the spell taking hold, I stopped being Eugenia, and I became the magic. I was no longer human, even on a small scale. I was pure; I was liquid energy. There was no body to contain me; I was time and emotion. I was the start and end of the universe. I was the molten core of the earth.
I was this motherfucker’s worst nightmare.
The rope holding me caught fire, burning up and turning to smoke and ash. I should have fallen. I braced myself to hit the hard wood face first. Instead I floated up, the charred bits of my restraints hovering around me like blackened snow frozen in place, flecks of ember trapped in midair as if they were fireflies. My feet weren’t touching the floor, and I hovered near the rafters, bright red flames encasing my arms up to the elbows, licking outward. The heat was real, I could feel it around me, but I didn’t burn.
I would take time to be scared of myself later.
I would think about the fact I could apparently levitate later too.
First things first, I needed to make sure later was a reality I could count on.
“I gave you a chance,” I snarled. My voice gave me chills. It crackled and popped, words roaring like angry fire into a room. The space around us was filled with my words, as if they were tangible weapons I was spitting at him. “You could have made this easy. You could have walked away.”
“I-I… Wh-wha…” He eyed the door as if it was his last salvation.
The lucid part of my brain tried to imagine myself as he was seeing me. I couldn’t decide if I appeared more