more than breath to be alive.
Another hand fell upon my right hand. Cold, trembling. The unfamiliarity almost made me lose concentration.
“Positive and negative,” Terric said, and I knew it was he who held my other hand.
I don’t know what they did, don’t know how they did it. I couldn’t access magic, but they did. Magic, a pure, even stream of it, poured in through my hands. And I sent that magic, willingly, carefully, gently into Zay, told it to knit, to mend, to fill, to support.
“Heal,” I said.
And magic leaped to my desire, rushing through Zayvion’s body and mind with a pure wave of healing.
He inhaled. Without me.
His heart beat. Steadied. Caught and lifted by magic, magic Shame and Terric accessed, magic I sent to blend with the small magic I carried. Magic that healed.
His heartbeat fell into a solid rhythm. Another breath. Another. The rhythm of his heart beneath my hand, against my wrist, beat stronger, strong.
Alive.
I opened my eyes.
Zay didn’t stir. There was more blood covering his face. He was breathing, though, on his own. With my hands still on his chest, with Shame’s hand still on my left, and Terric’s still on my right, I bent, and kissed Zay, his blood salty against my lips.
He didn’t move. I didn’t sense a flicker of his emotions, his thoughts. It was like kissing a hollow doll.
A new fear washed over me, so like claustrophobia, I swallowed back a whimper. “Is he alive? Shame? Is he alive? I can’t feel him. Can’t—can’t feel him.” My voice was ragged, too high, too fast.
I wanted this nightmare to end. But I couldn’t make myself wake up.
Shame’s other hand turned my face so I was looking at him. “He’s alive.” Fierce. No Influence, but the power of his conviction was a slap across my mind.
“Hurt,” he said, “but breathing. Alive. Panicking will make it worse. Got that?”
I blinked, nodded. Those words, his anger, was like pulling blinders off. I could see the world around me again, could smell again, could feel my body, my feet numb beneath me, the rain falling cold and hard against my head, face, hands.
The rain, at least, had arrived. How much longer until the wild-magic storm hit?
Shame, drenched, squatted on his heels next to me, one hand on mine, the other releasing my chin. He smelled of sweat, blood, cigarettes, and fear.
On the other side of me, of Zay’s prone body, was Terric. I thought Shame looked bad. Terric sat tailor-style, his hand still on mine. His head hung so that his heavy hank of shock-white hair fell over his left shoulder. And his hair was sticky, wet with more than just the rain. He did not look up, did not move. If I hadn’t felt his heartbeat at my wrist, I wouldn’t have thought he was alive.
“Stone?” I asked.
Shame shook his head. “I don’t know.”
I looked over where Greyson had been. Where Chase had been. Where Stone had been.
Nothing. They were all gone.
“When I got here,” Shame said, “it was just you and Zay and Terric.”
“We need to find them,” I said. “They can’t just do this and disappear. I want them dead.”
“First Zay,” he said. “Then we find them. Then we make them dead.”
Rain fell in a steady stream into his eyes. He didn’t seem to notice. There was a darkness in him that burned hot, strong. A killing hatred.
I liked it.
“Do we carry him?” I asked. The very mundane mechanics of getting Zayvion out of the rain and safe were suddenly more complicated than I had the brain to handle. Using magic, all that I had, all that they gave me, had left me weak, shocky, and not thinking straight.
Of course Zayvion dying might have something to do with it too.
“No,” Shame said. “They’re coming.”
And it was like magic words. Because I suddenly realized there were people walking toward us through the rain.
Even in the low light, even through the rain, I could make them out. Lean Victor, wearing a trench coat and carrying a sword that slicked silver and black in the rain. Next to him, tiny Liddy wrapped in an ankle-length coat that kicked open to show the whip she carried strapped to her hip.
The twins Carl and La strode step in step, heads up, moving as if the rain didn’t exist, curved scythes clenched in Carl’s right and La’s left hands. Other people too—short and fit Mike Barham, who wore glowing, glyphed gloves; Sunny, dark, angry, knives in both hands; the Georgia