“The Lupara’s out of shells now.”
I drew harsh breaths through my nostrils and took an indecisive step. Then another. Lon was saying something behind me again, but I blocked him out. Three steps to the balcony. I extended my arm. I could do this. Two steps. Almost there. My fingertips reached for the wooden railing—
Glass doors swung open.
A green halo swam in front of my eyes as Merrimoth burst onto the balcony. The gray-haired Earthbound was in his early seventies. He wore perfectly ironed gray slacks and a white shirt that gaped open three too many buttons to expose a plush thicket of curly gray chest hair.
“How stupid do you think I am?” he said breathlessly as rain soaked through his shirt. No horns, no fiery halo. He definitely wasn’t transmutated, so how could his knack be potent enough to create fire?
“Merrimoth!” Lon shouted. “Let us inside. We’ll discuss this like adults.”
“There’s nothing to discuss, m’boy. Dare wants to sic his hounds on me? And not even worthy hounds—Jonathan Butler’s privileged ragamuffin son and his witchy Sheba, barely old enough to tie her own shoes, much less bind me properly. Don’t think I’ve forgotten that little stunt you pulled in the Hellfire caves. Dare blamed me for the vermillion binding circle you broke. He flayed me for it.”
The crazy Earthbound held out an upturned palm. My rain-bleary vision took several seconds to register that his hand was striped with pink scars.
“Dare said I couldn’t touch you or I was out of the Hellfire Club. But I don’t need them anymore, not with power like this!” The beginning of a laugh was choked in his throat as his gaze narrowed and landed on Lon. “Get out of my brain, Butler. I feel you poking around. You want to know how I started those fires? I’m not telling. But remember that my knack always went both ways—hot and cold. Would you like a demonstration?”
“Merrimoth—”
“Look at you, little birds perched on my house. The footing on that ledge looks awfully dicey. Would be even more precarious if the temperature dropped a few degrees . . .”
The rain surged and swirled as the Earthbound flicked his wrist. A volley of cold, sharp raindrops flew against my body and pinged off the house, sounding like a thousand marbles had been scattered into the wind. Hail. He’d frozen the rain around us.
Ice quickly formed on both the ledge below and the wooden siding at our backs. My fingers slipped. Merrimoth swooped his arm in a downward arc and a long strip of ice solidified at our feet. It shot out into the night air like the enormous, curling tongue of a mythological Nordic Frost Giant.
Lon’s leg banged against mine, then his foot gave way. I turned just in time to see him careen down the icy slide. He launched into the air, rocketing into the night sky as if he’d been released from a slingshot. I watched in horror as his body hung for a split second, then dropped, heading straight for the rocky coastline below.
I didn’t have time to make a plan. No option existed but stopping Lon’s fall. And after all the trouble I’d been having summoning up my moon power to bind Merrimoth, in that single moment—the second Lon dropped—the erratic magick immediately submitted to my will and lashed out like lightning. I had no particular spell in mind, not even a sigil. Only one thought ballooned inside my head and crackled through my synapses: No.
Magick whooshed out of me with my breath. I blinked, drowsy and momentarily disoriented. I knew I’d done something big, but it took me a moment to realize exactly what.
Time had slowed.
I glanced around in shock. A peculiar silver light swathed my vision. Raindrops hung suspended in the air—illuminated by light from the house’s windows, they looked like clusters of misshapen glass beads. And on the balcony, Merrimoth’s body stood stock-still, his mouth open, hand poised in the middle of some unrealized gesture like a wax figure. As if I’d pushed a pause button. I peered over the arch of ice at my feet, dreading what I might find.
Lon!
He was suspended in the air a floor below me, caught in my magick, falling facedown, his halo and long hair streaming behind.
I’d never, never done anything this big—never even imagined I could. But the amount of energy it took to power it was already draining me.
Screwing up my courage, I chanced a couple of small, cautious steps on the