“Give everybody a crystal and have them face north, south, east, and west respectively,” she answers, pointing in the right directions as she reads over a page in the spell book several times before closing the book with a snap and shoving it in her backpack. “Then lay the fifth crystal on Xavier’s chest.”
I do as she says, my throat tightening a little as I place the crystal in the center of Xavier’s Guns ’N’ Roses T-shirt. I whisper a quick prayer for him, then head back to Macy to see what else I can do to help.
Jaxon must have the same thought, because he asks, “What do you need from us?” as he staggers over to where we’re standing.
I grab on to his hand, send him a stream of energy through the mating bond.
“Stop,” he tells me, pulling away. “You can’t afford that right now.”
“Yeah, well, I can’t afford to have my mate get sick, either. So let me do this right now. We’ll figure out the rest when we get back to school.”
He doesn’t agree, but he doesn’t argue anymore, so I feed him a little more energy. Not enough to weaken me significantly, but enough that he doesn’t look quite so gray and pallid.
“Just stand over there, where Grace put you,” Macy answers as she slides her backpack onto her back.
“Now what?” I ask Macy as she turns to face the ocean.
“Now I’m going to try a spell Gwen told me about when I was preparing for tonight. I’ve never done it before, so all I can say is it’s either going to work and get us back to school, or it’s going to fail and splinter us into a thousand beams of light.” She looks over at me. “So here’s hoping.”
“Umm, yeah,” I answer, eyes wide and stomach flipping all the different ways. “Here’s hoping.”
She hands me one of the crystals and says, “Hold this for me, will you, please? And check to make sure everyone is where they need to be.”
“Of course.” I do as she instructs, glancing at the others before wrapping my fingers around the crystal as she pulls her athame out of her pocket instead of her wand and holds it dagger-side up. “Ready?” she asks as she grabs on to my hand.
“To splinter into a thousand beams of light?” Flint asks. “Sure. Why not?”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say,” she answers and then tilts her face to the sky. “Here goes everything.”
I hold my breath as Macy lifts her arms to the sky in a circular pose worthy of a ballet dancer. Her athame is in her right hand and she points it straight at the heart of the aurora borealis dancing above us as she moves her other hand in small, circular motions, over and over again.
At first nothing happens, but slowly—so slowly that it takes me a few seconds to realize what’s going on—the crystal in my hand starts to pulsate against my palm. A quick look shows me that the others’ crystals are doing the same thing, glowing brighter and brighter as they begin to vibrate in their hands.
I look to Macy, but she is so focused on the sky that she doesn’t so much as glance my way. I think that means she can’t see, so I start to lift my hand up, to show her what the crystal is doing, but a small, nearly imperceptible shake of her head has me freezing in place.
But as the crystals continue to vibrate, to glow brighter and burn hotter, Macy’s circular hand motions get bigger and bigger and bigger, until she seems to be encircling all of us with the gesture, wrapping her magic and her protection around the whole group of us even as she continues to channel energy from the sky.
All of a sudden, Macy gasps at the same time the crystal in my hand starts to burn superhot. I cry out, trying to hold on to it, but the heat gets more and more severe with each second that passes, until I have no choice but to open my fingers. For one second, two, the crystal lays flat against my palm and then it starts to rise, floating higher and higher above our heads until it floats into the athame’s path.
The others’ crystals do the same thing until they line up between the athame and the sky in rainbow order. The second the last crystal slides into