dress that skimmed her knees and black boots with heels low enough to make running easy. Or fighting.
And that was exactly what she was doing.
And doing very well.
Just like back at Officers Row, Chase was chanting and weaving glyphs in the air and filling them with magic she pulled out of the storm. Multicolored ribbons wrapped down her fingers and up her arm, where tendrils shot out to anchor in Greyson, feeding him. He was headed my way.
Romero, the family-man killer, launched himself at Greyson, the machete in his hand a blur of magic channeled from the sky.
Greyson fought him, fangs bared, then unhinged his huge jowls and sucked down the magic Romero threw at his head.
Chase clapped her hands together once and a gate sprang up. Greyson leaped through it. Chase slammed her hands together again, and the gate disappeared in a blast of black smoke.
I didn’t know how she was doing it. Those gates weren’t allowing any of the creatures that haunted the other side, the Hungers, to break through. But Greyson used them as easily as stepping though an open door.
One more clap, and the gate was open again, this time on the other side of the circle. Near Sedra and Maeve. And me.
Greyson tore out of the gate, and ran fast, too fast, a nightmare of bone and fang and claw. He launched at Sedra.
Sedra stood, cool and angry, hands raised in a block I’d never seen before. Greyson hit the block, and I swear I felt the thrum of that impact at the base of my skull, over the thunder, over the wail of magic in the storm, over the sounds of battle.
Maeve stepped up to Sedra’s defense. She wielded a long knife in each hand, blood covering her fingers and the blades as she cut glyphs into the air. She threw magic at Greyson. It wrapped him in dark lightning, filling the air with the sweet smell of cherries. Greyson sucked the magic down. Which was exactly what Maeve had wanted. Still connected by blood to her blade, and her will, Maeve yanked on the spell, tearing a brutal scream out of Greyson.
Greyson stumbled. Gave up his advance on Sedra and turned on Maeve instead. He leaped.
“No!” I yelled. I tried to take a step. The Grounding spell rooted me, anchored. I couldn’t let go of the spell, couldn’t break it.
Come on. Let go, undo, leave me now, go away, go away, stop.
Lightning struck, so close, rain sizzled. Thunder popped an ear-busting explosion and I tasted blood at the back of my throat.
Wild magic filled me, licked across my skin, catching fire down the ribbons of my arm and hand. Wild magic grew roots in me, different from the Grounding spell. I had felt this before. I suddenly remembered it now. The last time I’d tapped into a wild-magic storm and nearly died.
The crystal, my dad said. Or I think he said it. It was hard to hear anything over the thunder, the yelling, the fighting—worse because someone, I think the Georgia sisters, was supporting the dome of magic, keeping all the sounds we made inside.
I pushed my left hand into my pocket and pulled out the crystal. Deep fuchsia, the crystal was hot, glyphs carved inside it fluctuating with the magic I carried. I didn’t know how the crystal was going to help.
Direct the magic into it; use it to Ground. It is organic, unlike the disks, Dad said. It can act as a Grounder.
Okay, so all I had to do was recast the Grounding spell onto the crystal. One crystal to handle what me and a hundred disks were barely managing?
It’ll explode, I said.
It will hold long enough, Dad said.
Long enough?
For the storm to pass.
Maybe that was his idea of success. As a matter of fact, it probably was. I didn’t know what his stake in this was, except Violet’s safety.
Put the crystal on the disks, he said.
And that made sense. The excess magic in the crystal would bleed off into the disks, and they could help carry the load of wild magic.
But the Grounding spell wrapped me in concrete. It took everything I had to bend my knees and hold my hand out over the pile of disks. I opened my fingers, tipped my palm. The crystal fell, tumbling down and down. It struck the disks and a sweet, harmonic tone echoed back from the rain.
And then the world exploded.
My hands flew up without thought. Well, without my thought. Dad took