but they sure knew how to play along. “And if you change your mind later—”
“What, you’ll kill me?” She had a little of her former sneer back now.
“You’re goddamn right. I will kill you, and I will take your life force and put it into Becca’s body. Because she was worth ten of you, and you murdered her as an afterthought.”
I was bluffing about killing her—at least, I was pretty sure I was bluffing—but this kid had heard stories about the curse of boundary magic her whole life. I was not above using that.
Something on my face made Odessa’s sneer fade away, replaced by horror. “You wouldn’t do that.”
I laughed and lifted my chin. “I’m a boundary witch, Odessa. I’m the monster that vampires are afraid of. Of course I would.” I held out my hand. “Give me the trigger. Do not even think about setting it off.”
She held it out. “I put rubber bands on it,” she admitted. “You don’t have to actually keep squeezing it.”
I took the switch carefully, but she was right—two thick black rubber bands secured the trigger to the handle. Goddamn, she was smart. This whole thing had been such a waste.
While I was putting the switch in my pocket, though, Odessa turned around, mumbling something I couldn’t hear, and stretched her arm through the rows of Unsettled, slamming her tattooed fingers down on the bloody cord.
There was an audible pop as the circle broke.
Chapter 43
Odessa hadn’t cut the rope; she’d done something to dismantle the circle. So I didn’t die—but she could run.
I started forward, but Odessa grabbed the book and exploded to her feet like an Olympic sprinter, jumping over the brick gutter and onto the asphalt path dividing the Confederate Cemetery from the memorial park. I expected her to keep going past the flags, but she immediately veered right, her feet pounding along the path forming the edge of the cemetery. She was going to try to lose us in the streets.
The Unsettled gave me alarmed looks, and I understood—the circle may have been broken, but they couldn’t follow her outside the cemetery.
But I could. I yelled something to Simon over my shoulder, but any response was swallowed up by the rain and fog. I sprinted after Odessa, holding my injured left hand tight against my chest.
She wasn’t particularly fast—her muscles were clearly suited more to riding horses than running, because she went chugging along with terrible form, elbows clutched in close to her body. Then again, I wasn’t in any shape to judge. I was a practiced runner, but I’d lost a lot of blood and been poisoned . . . and that was before crawling up a muddy hill through gravestones.
For the first twenty seconds I kept up with her, but then I began to flag. I fumbled at my pocket, looking for my cell phone, but I’d managed to lose it during the muddy climb, or maybe when I rolled Simon away from the sniper. I cursed and focused on keeping my eyes on Odessa ahead of me. Maybe Simon—or, even better, Tobias—would come after me and take over the chase.
As she neared a corner, Odessa lifted her wrist to check her watch, then abruptly switched directions, turning left to run north. She clearly had a destination in mind, which worried me even before I heard the whistle and saw the tracks running north–south along the eastern side of the cemetery.
She was going for the fucking train. Goddammit, I hated this kid.
I did my best to put on another burst of speed, fuming to myself. Of course she’d had an escape plan. But if Odessa made it to the train and I didn’t, I might never be able to stop her. She had the book; she had the tattoos. She could start a coven somewhere else and keep making spirit bottles. She could keep selling spirit bottles.
I could not let that happen.
I wished for my gun, or for one of the rifles the other witches had brought to the cemetery. Hell, in that moment I would have settled for a fricking boomerang. Since I didn’t have any of that, though, I just kept plodding along, losing ground, until the train came into sight up ahead.
It looked old-fashioned and was moving relatively slowly, but still a lot faster than I was going to be able to run. Odessa had increased her lead on me, and I knew with terrible certainty that I wasn’t going to be able to catch up