Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
The second round of bullets also went wide. The giants had come prepared, and the silencers on the ends of their weapons muffled the sounds of the shots. No lights snapped on inside the neighboring mansions. They wanted to keep this quiet—well, so did I.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
Two of the bullets went wide, but the third punched into my right shoulder, spinning me around. Still, thanks to my magic, it didn’t blast through me the way it would have otherwise. I skidded on the ice coating the street, but I managed to regain my balance and charge forward again.
But instead of heading toward the giants, I ran straight at the SUV. When I was in range, I leaped up onto the hood, then scrambled up onto the roof. Before the giants realized what I was doing, I raced forward and leaped off the vehicle’s roof, pushing off hard and trying to get as high in the air as possible. Lucky for me, they’d parked close to the curb and the narrow sidewalk. A second later, my hands hit the top of the wall that fronted the mansion, and I dug my boots into the slick stones so that I could pull myself up onto the top of the wall. Fedora wasn’t the only one who could do gymnastics.
I rolled off the top of the wall and dropped ten feet down to the other side. I paused a moment to palm one of the silverstone knives tucked up my sleeves, then darted forward across the lawn. The ice-crusted grass crunched like brittle bones under my boots.
The light spilling out from the office perfectly illuminated Fedora, who was fifty feet ahead of me and moving fast, her breath streaming out behind her in a trail of frosty vapor. She must have heard the disturbance out on the street because she picked up her pace, pulled a gun out of her trench coat, and shot through the lock on the patio doors with one smooth motion. A second later, she was inside the mansion.
“Hey!” a man’s voice shouted from inside the office. “Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?”
I didn’t hear her reply, if there even was one.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
More and more shots sounded behind me, but the giants weren’t aiming at me anymore. Phillip must have gotten into the fight. He could take care of himself, so I focused all my energy on sprinting across the lawn, trying to get to the mansion, even though it was already too late.
Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!
Sure enough, gunfire flashed inside the office, as bright as the holiday lights had been earlier. Someone had just been shot.
A second later, Fedora stepped through the doors and out onto the stone patio. I squinted, but the office lights were behind her, and all I could really see in the darkness was the pale glitter of her eyes. She gave me a mocking salute with her gun before ducking back inside the mansion. Now that her mission was accomplished, no doubt she’d leave through one of the back doors and disappear into the woods. All without my even getting a look at her face.
I cursed. Even though I wanted to rush inside the mansion, I forced myself to slow down and approach the patio doors with caution, just in case she might be lying in wait to try to kill me too. I also grabbed hold of even more of my Stone power, hardening my skin as much as possible on the off chance that she decided to blast me with elemental magic and bullets. As a final touch, I reached out with my magic, listening to all the emotional vibrations that had sunk into the stone walls of the mansion.
Harsh, shocked mutters echoed back to me, from the shots the woman had just fired. Alongside that was a high, whiny chorus of worry, fear, and paranoia. But there were no sly whispers or dark murmurs of evil intent that would have signaled that she was hiding in the office, ready to put a bullet in my head the second I stepped inside. Whoever the woman was, she was long gone.
Still, I was careful as I eased my way into the office, my knife still in my hand, my other hand up and lightly glowing with Ice magic, ready to blast whoever might challenge me.
But only one person was in the office: the man I’d been watching.
Jonah McAllister, my old nemesis, lay sprawled across the floor.