I didn’t think. I reached for Jane’s grasping hands, my magic puffing around us, wispy and still weak. My fingers laced with hers, and silvery threads wrapped around our hands.
Jane’s eyes went wide and her mouth dropped open. Her horrified gaze met mine.
“I’m so sorry, Jemmie. I’m so sorry,” she whispered hoarsely. “It’s going to be you.”
Her prediction broke my concentration, and Hardy wrenched her away from me. Crowe tried to grab his friend’s arm, but Hardy lashed out with a side kick that sent Crowe crashing into a tree six feet behind him. I sank to the ground as Hardy took off at superhuman speed with Jane in his arms, leaving a vapor trail of ash and cloves and steel behind him.
Trembling, I crawled over to Crowe, who lay on his side with bits of leaves in his hair and dirt on his face. A haze of blue misted around me as I helped him sit up.
He clutched at his middle. “I think he broke one of my ribs,” he said with a wheeze. Amber and gold spread from his fingertips and across his torso as he healed himself. While he did, I sat with the realization of what Jane had told me.
It was going to be me. I was going to die.
A suffocating mixture of defiance, disbelief, and grief welled up inside me. Was this what Michael had felt like on that final day?
“Jemmie, you okay?” Crowe asked as he got to his feet and slowly approached Killian.
“Fine,” I murmured. If I told him, he wouldn’t let me go with him to the mill. And I had to. I was part of this. It was going to be me. “Killian was trying to stop Hardy from taking Jane.”
Crowe’s magic pulled away from Killian’s wracked body, and the Deathstalker president went limp, his eyelids fluttering. Crowe prodded him with his toe. “Does that mean I have to heal him?”
“If you want help getting all our people back alive,” I said. “Hardy and my dad were under the influence of Killian’s magic, but I smelled Darek’s power as well. Tollat magic. I never knew what it smelled like before.” I laughed bitterly at how stupid I’d been. “I bet that asshole didn’t even smoke—it was his magic that smelled like ash and stale cigarettes. I was sensing his power the whole time and didn’t even realize it.”
“That’s because he’s the only one who has tollat—you had nothing to compare it to,” Crowe said grimly, spitting blood on the ground. He knelt at Killian’s side and pressed his palm to the man’s chest.
Killian took a deep, shuddering breath, his face twisted into a grimace of pain. When Crowe lifted his hand, Killian abruptly rolled to his side and retched into the rotting leaves beneath him.
“Come on,” said Crowe impatiently. “You’re gonna be okay.”
“Fuck you,” whispered Killian, struggling to get to his hands and knees.
I bent over and hooked my hands under his armpits, then helped pull him to his feet. “Darek had you under his control earlier.”
“Sort of,” said Killian, wiping his mouth. “I was fighting as hard as I could. I was trying to warn you.…”
“But Darek had sent you to convince me that Crowe was the bad guy.”
Killian nodded, giving Crowe a bitter look. “It wasn’t that much of a stretch.”
Crowe’s lip curled. “That’s rich, considering you’ve been harboring a killer for years.”
“He’s family,” snapped Killian. “My brother made me promise to keep him safe. I had no idea he had tollat magic. He kept it from everyone.”
“You must have known something. You never let on that Henry had a son,” Crowe said.
“Should I have, knowing you assholes would hunt him down? He was a kid!”
“He might have been siphoning your magic and using it against you for years,” I said quietly. “Both Henry and Darek could have manipulated you into protecting him.”
As Killian stared at me, I could almost hear his heart breaking. “But Darek is my nephew,” he whispered.
“Darek is a psychopath,” Crowe said. “And he murdered my father.”
Killian blinked at him in genuine surprise. “I never would have condoned that.”
Crowe looked away. If he had thought Killian was lying, he would have called him on it, but it was too painful for him to acknowledge that he believed a man he’d been so invested in hating. “Help us stop Darek now,” Crowe finally said, “and you’ve got yourself a truce.”
Killian ran his hand over his hair. His glasses were nowhere to be seen, probably a casualty of the fight. “He’s got them at the logging mill,” he said bleakly. “All of them.”
“All of them?” I asked. “What about animus—who else besides you has that kind of power?”
“He said he has someone already,” Killian said. “Which means if we don’t get there fast, he’s going to complete the spell.”
“And then he’s going to tear everyone I love apart,” growled Crowe. His power pulsed around him as he started to run along the path Hardy had taken. I followed, with Killian just behind me, panting heavily.
I’m part of this, I told myself firmly. There’s no turning back now. It’s going to happen no matter what. And I was willing to risk anything to save Alex and my parents, so it didn’t really matter whether I was ready to die or not.
I reminded myself of that over and over again as I ran, even though the rest of my mind was screaming to stop, to run, to go far away and hide from the truth that had been in Jane’s horrified eyes.
It was going to be me. Somewhere beyond these woods lay my fate, but that fate wasn’t in question anymore.
I was going to die. But maybe, just maybe, I could help save everyone else first.
SEVENTEEN
WE REACHED THE MASSIVE CLEARING OF THE LOGGING mill a few minutes to midnight. In the darkness, the decrepit building hulked like a beast surrounded by the bones of its victims. Stacked lumber and unprocessed logs had been left to rot under the rain and the sun, casualties of a failed business that had shut down a decade earlier. Crowe and his family owned this land now, but they’d never done anything with this part of it. The Sable River rushed along the eastern edge of the clearing, where the logs used to be sent downstream. The mill had been built right here on its banks, and the curve of the water hugged its edge, threatening to carry it away someday.
Light glowed from the windows on the second floor of the main structure. I pointed at it as Crowe crept in next to me. We were crouched behind a stack of damp, spongy wood. Killian stared up at the windows from his nearby hiding spot behind a rusted-out truck. “I tried to influence him when I realized what he was doing, but he’s been siphoning locant magic and using it to conjure shields against me.”
“Against all of us,” Crowe muttered.
“I might be able to take it down,” I said.
“He has other ways of defending himself. He can siphon any magic with a simple touch.”
I met Crowe’s gaze.
“I’ll be able to warn you about what he’s doing so you can defend yourself,” I whispered. “I can try to conjure a shield, but…” I looked down at my hands. Pulling barriers apart was one thing, but Darek had completely drained my locant magic just over an hour ago, and I wasn’t sure I could actually conjure one that would be effective.
“Hey, they’re over there!” someone shouted from our right. We’d been found. From between piles of lumber, a twist of green magic wafted into the sky.
“It might be a trick,” I whispered as footsteps sounded off nearby. “I can see inlusio.”
“Or it could be Flynn, under the influence of Killian’s stolen magic,” Crowe said, rising to his feet.
“Got ’em,” shouted another voice, from our left.