Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,208

head of wild blond curls, puke- and blood-stained dress. And desperate eyes, because I didn’t know how to deal with this. And because Agnes had just let loose.

She sent everything at me at once, from all three directions, so I did likewise. There was no time to think, no time to plan, not even time to scream myself hoarse some more. No time for anything except throwing everything I had left into a time bubble that I didn’t send in any specific direction, just out.

And out it went.

“Oh, shit,” I heard the other Cassie say, but I didn’t see anything, because I was huddled in a ball, afraid to look, and more afraid to die, because if that hadn’t worked, I was a sitting duck. I didn’t have any energy left to defend myself with; barely had enough to stay conscious. And while this was supposedly a duplicate body I was in, it didn’t feel that way.

Which meant that dying was probably going to hurt like a bitch.

Only . . . I didn’t die.

I didn’t do anything but hunker there as the girls screamed, as Gertie cursed, and as something fell with a clatter, loud enough to jolt me out of my terror, metal on stone.

I finally looked up, peeking out from between my crossed arms, and—

“Oh.”

The crash had been one of the big curtain rods that had been holding up a huge swath of rich, burgundy velvet. It, or maybe the bolts holding it into the wall, had decayed enough to fail, as a couple centuries or more hit it all at once. Likewise, the once shining marble floor was now cracked and stained and had grass growing up through it, and vines were climbing the walls on fast forward, eating through crumbling plaster and shedding piles of leaves that sprouted, grew big, and then shriveled and fell, all in seconds, causing them to pile up in large drifts.

Like what I assumed were Agnes’ bones, which had made three small piles approximately where her doppelgangers had been standing.

I stared at them and swallowed, feeling ill. And then flinched when the piano caved in, in a cacophony of yellowed ivory keys. I glanced overhead, worried about the chandeliers, but they seemed okay, just cobwebbed and dust encrusted, like something out of a haunted mansion. None looked like they were about to fall on me.

Unlike Gertie.

She was glaring at me from beside the door, where she and a bunch of wide-eyed girls were clustered in the same little knot. Or maybe in a somewhat tighter one than before, because she was shielding them from the effects of my spell, I wasn’t sure how. Until I noticed: she’d thrown a time spell, too, one running counter clockwise to mine, youthening instead of aging.

And stirring up a whole lot of little bubbles along the borderline where the two spells met.

“Oh, holy sh—” I began, right before they exploded outward, peppering the entire ballroom with tiny holes—in the walls, in the ceiling, in every painting and piece of furniture. And in me.

My vision skewed and showed me that other viewpoint again, quickly enough for me to watch daylight stream in a hundred tiny spotlights through my duplicate body, which somehow stayed on its feet for a second. Before collapsing on the floor, not even twitching, while the room literally fell apart around me. Walls crumbled into rubble, half the ceiling caved in, a chimney fell through the now-Swiss-cheese-looking roof and exploded on the destroyed marble, sending a spray of bricks everywhere.

I barely noticed. I was too busy staring at my fallen body, still visible in the middle of a small lake of red, and wondering how many people get to see themselves die. And why I never seemed to get used to it.

And then I lost my remaining lunch, all over the pretty ring of intact marble under our feet.

“It doesn’t count as a win if you perish in the attempt,” Gertie snapped, and swept out.

I guess class was over.

* * *

* * *

Bang! Bang! Bang!

I almost jumped out of my skin when somebody started trying to hammer their way through my door. I’d finished changing into a less bloody dress, or was trying to. But the current fashions assumed the presence of a maid, which I didn’t have, or a boyfriend, who wasn’t here, because Pritkin was off at the depot. Leaving me fighting with a back full of tiny buttons when the door was attacked.

I jerked one of the little fabric-covered things