The footprints continue along in the standing snow and I follow them to where they disappear in a small clearing.
I’ve seen this clearing before. It’s where I’m supposed to die.
My breath is loud as I spin around, trying to look all directions at once, the spindly branch held aloft. The snow and the hint of sunrise make it bright enough to see, but everything has a hazy, washed-out quality that plays tricks on my eyes.
A rustle from behind and I whirl about, but don’t see anything.
An animal hiss sounds in my ear as fire shoots through my arm; I spin away as a knife slices through the air, missing my throat by the barest of margins. I stagger backward and put my hand to my neck, feeling wetness there.
But it doesn’t sting. I’m not cut.
Appalled, I realize in an instant that it must be spatter from the wound on my arm. But there’s no time to consider that. Daphne’s small body is on top of me and I grab for her hands, feeling the knife bite into my palm before I manage to grab hold of Daphne’s wrists.
Then she’s off me and twisting out of my grasp, running away before I can reach out for her ankles.
She’s smart. She knows I’ve got the weight and she’s got the speed. My wounded arm throbs painfully as I push to my feet, trying to hide the fact that I can’t see anything for a few seconds as my vision darkens—my bruised skull trying to drag me down into unconsciousness—and then slowly fuzzes back to life.
Luckily, occasional sightlessness is something my Oracle training has taught me to conceal.
After a few more seconds I can actually see again instead of just peering around, pretending. It’s still hard to accept that I’m terrified, from head to toe, of a ten-year-old—but I am. My bluff has kept me alive, but I’ve lost her again. There are sprays of blood dotting the snowy ground, but they point in three different directions and there are too many footprints to follow a trail.
My right arm is weak and I can feel cold, coagulating blood soaking through my denim jacket. Maybe she knows that if she keeps me on the run long enough—gives me enough small cuts—I’ll simply bleed to death in the snow, just like Mr. Richardson. The idea that a ten-year-old child might think of such a thing is chilling, but underestimating her is what got my mom killed.
I won’t make that mistake again. This is the only re-do I’m going to get.
Please, Sophie. Please be okay.
“Daphne!” I don’t shout, but I inject an urgency into my words that I hope she hears. “You don’t have to do this.” I screw my eyes closed for one second and prepare to lie my ass off. “Nothing terrible has happened yet. I know you killed your parents, but I also know what they were doing to you. I know about the closet. I know that you get locked into your room every night. I’ll tell the cops. I’ll help you.”
I almost choke on my words. The pile of evidence I thought pointed to abuse, that might simply have been two concerned parents’ ways of coping with Daphne’s obviously serious problems.
A chill breeze gusts through the clearing and I pause to listen for movement, but hear nothing. I don’t want to play hide and seek; she has the advantage there. And I don’t want to lose her. If she gets away from me before the cops arrive, more people might get hurt—or killed. It feels weird to be standing in a chilly clearing, hoping against hope that a killer would rather murder me than escape.
It feels much less weird to hope I can prevent her from doing either.
But how?
I feel a warm pulsing on my chest and my hands rise, almost of their own accord, to touch the necklace there. The focus stone.
But what the hell am I supposed to do with it? I grip it in my freezing left hand—my right feels too weak and I cringe to think how much damage Daphne did with that glancing blow. The stone is warm and glowing a deep, dark red.
I hate red.
What can I do? I’m certain I don’t know the full powers of the stone, but in addition to bringing others onto my supernatural plane, I do know that it allows me to choose certain unlikely futures—like slowing Smith down when he tried to flee at the train station, or shoving the cops away from me when they Tased Daphne. But I’ve only ever used it in desperation; I don’t really know how to use it on purpose.
That, and I can’t seem to find Daphne. I have nothing to focus on.
As though in answer to my thoughts, a giggle sounds from behind and I whip around. Except that a stick breaks on the other side and I spin again, then have to stagger to a tree to hold myself upright as sparks flicker before my eyes. I really hit my head hard. Time is not on my side.
“Daphne!” I call again, desperate now and unable to hide it. “We can fix this. I know you’re scared, but—”
“I’m not afraid.”
With a gasp I turn, and there she is, standing in the center of the clearing. Her eyes are filled with that unnerving calm, that inky blackness. It makes my spine feel like jelly, and I’m glad I’m next to a tree so I can lean against it when I sway.
She stands there, barefoot, seemingly untroubled by the cold, in a too-big shirt flecked with blood. She doesn’t move a muscle—just stands there. Her hair is still wet from her shower and I can see the ends have already frozen. Even if whatever is happening inside her head keeps her from consciously registering the cold, hypothermia can’t be far away.
The bloody knife is clutched in her hand, brandished in front of her, and even if I thought I could move quickly enough to get to her without passing out, I wouldn’t be able to avoid getting stuck with that knife.
I grip the focus stone even harder and fix my eyes on her so she can’t disappear from sight again. Grasping for the memory of the last time I used the stone, I picture a future a mere thirty seconds ahead of this moment and see—will—Daphne walking forward and handing me the knife. Not her choice; mine.
I pour every drop of energy I can muster into that scene and stare at Daphne with what must surely look like hostility, but I have to risk it. My head starts to ache with the effort but I clench my teeth and hold my focus.
Daphne takes a step forward.
Then two.
Confusion clouds her face and erases that flat intensity, which improves my confidence immensely. A buzzing pain begins to spread from the back of my head and I feel my knees weaken, but Daphne is still walking toward me.
“Stop it! Stop it now!” Her scream is like carpentry nails being spiked into my eardrums; I flinch.
Don’t close your eyes.
And somehow, I manage to keep them open.
Daphne is almost to me and even though she squirms with every step, struggling to tear herself away from the future I’ve chosen for her, her iron will almost too strong for me to bend. Almost. She’s holding out the knife. I just have to be brave enough to reach out and take it.
Brave enough and steady enough. Even though it’s a future I chose, watching her walk toward me with her knife-hand outstretched is enough to curdle my blood. And I can’t let go of the pendant, which means I have to let go of the tree and take the knife with my bloodied arm.
When the knife is within my reach I take a breath and lock my knees. I pull my steadying hand away from the tree and am beyond relieved when I manage to remain standing. I reach for the knife, but Daphne has both hands clenched around the handle. I have to wriggle it out of her fingers, already slick with blood.
“Give it to me,” I order, trying to wrangle it away with one hand.
“I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!” she shrieks, her voice inhuman.
Almost, almost.
She lets out a long, wordless scream and it does me in. The pain radiates in my skull and I put both hands to my head.
The spell is broken.
She leaps on me, knocking me over as though I were the little girl instead of her. One tiny hand grasps my neck with surprising strength, and the other raises the butcher knife high in the air. I push one bleeding hand out to deflect the blade, grasping with the other for my pendant.
Daph
ne stops, poised to strike her killing blow, fighting my powers, her tiny muscles shaking visibly, blood dripping onto my shirt from her mouth, where she must have bit her lip deeply in her struggle to resist.
Then, slowly, inch by terrifying inch, the knife approaches my throat.
Daphne is winning.
Desperately, I release the focus stone and twist away, but I’m not fast enough. A scream of agony rips from my lungs and my vision goes red as Daphne’s butcher knife sinks into the meat of my shoulder, beside my collarbone.
Summoning every ounce of strength I can muster, I ball my right hand into a fist and clock her across the face.
Her weight comes off my chest with a sickening thud. I push my head up, knuckles smarting, fire licking down my arms. Daphne sits, stunned, at the base of a tree, her hands covering her face. A broken, little-girl sob escapes from her mouth. I draw a noisy breath, but I haven’t won yet.
Before I can let myself think too hard about it, I grab the handle of the knife and yank it out of my shoulder. Another scream pierces the air and only distantly do I recognize it as my own.
I can’t see, I can hardly move, I’m bleeding from multiple cuts; I’m going to have to fake it. I roll to my knees and do my best to simply stay upright, pointing my knife in Daphne’s general direction. “You’re done, Daphne,” I hiss. I’m so tunnel-visioned that I’m effectively blind, but everything rests on my not letting her know that. “It’s over.”
I hear her crying, the little girl sound again. Like she really is a normal kid with an owie.
I can’t afford to believe that. My arm stretches in front of me, knife aimed at a child, and I do my best to look threatening. “Show me your hands.”
For a second I think she’s going to cooperate, but abruptly she’s scrambling away from me, first on hands and knees, and then sprinting, barefoot, through the trees.
She’s getting away!
And there’s just no way I’m going to catch her.
But I stagger after her anyway, following more by sound than sight, occasionally stumbling into branches, sharp twigs scraping at my face. I’m almost to the tree line when flashing lights start interfering with my vision again.
“No,” I whisper, forcing myself to take a few more steps before falling to my knees. But it’s not in my head this time, and now can I see well enough to look around me and realize Daphne’s mistake.
She went back out the way I came in.
Back to my house.
Right into the arms of the cops my aunt called. I stay where I am, kneeling in the snow, watching as two cops grab Daphne and force her facedown into the snow in my front yard.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
My knees are going numb in the snow as I watch them drag Daphne away. If it’s possible to help her, I’m sure they’ll get her the help she needs. And if she’s beyond hope, well, at least they’ll make sure she can’t hurt anyone else. I wonder what could possibly make a child so young behave the way she has. I wonder if she ever really had a chance at a normal life.
She’s screaming, and it’s that same inhuman sound as before. But after all I’ve seen her do, it’s grotesquely fitting. Still, I’m glad when she’s shut into the back of a police cruiser and I can’t hear her anymore.
I look over toward the front of my house and see a cop talking to Sierra, an EMT standing by. Sierra hands over what I recognize vaguely as Daphne’s bloody clothing and I remember how carefully she collected them. It didn’t matter to me then, but now I see it for what it was: Sierra expected to die. She collected evidence so that justice could be served—even posthumously.
Suddenly Sierra points toward where I’m kneeling and I think she sees me. But then she turns away again—she’s just telling them what direction I went.
Of course they’re going to look for me now.
I take a page out of Sierra’s book, dropping the knife into the snow where the cops are sure to find it. They’ll need it, and all the blood evidence on it. But they can’t find me—not just yet.
One thing at a time.
Now that I’m done with Daphne, now that my mother is safe, I have one more thing to do.
One more person to save, if I can.
If it’s not already too late.
I steal a final moment to look at my house, at my mother, sobbing in her chair on the front porch. My heart aches for her—especially since her agony is completely my fault—but I turn away. She’s going to have to suffer a little while longer. I’m afraid that’s the price she has to pay for being alive.
Because at this moment there’s only one person in the world who needs me more than she does. And I owe that person everything.
As I walk, keeping to the trees before popping out on the side of the high school parking lot farthest from my house, I tear strips of denim from where Daphne’s knife shredded my jacket’s sleeve, bandaging my wounds as best I can. I’ve lost enough blood that I’m feeling dizzy; my head is pounding and blackness keeps swimming across my vision, forcing me to pause and rest several times as I wind my way around the high school. It’s a longer path, and it’ll cost me precious minutes, but it’ll keep me out of sight.
But for all that, my whole world seems to be sitting at the opposite end of a tunnel that keeps getting longer. My entire skull aches and I finally admit to myself that I almost certainly have a concussion on top of everything else. The urge to lie down, to sleep, is almost overpowering. I want to sleep so badly. But I can’t.
Not just yet.
I don’t bother knocking when I get to Sophie’s house. I’m betting that Sophie’s mom hasn’t left her side since I let myself out her front door less than an hour ago, which would mean she didn’t lock the door behind me.
Sure enough, the knob turns and I push the front door open with a soft whisper as it brushes over the carpet. The house is almost silent, but I hear a strange, rhythmic hissing coming from the back of the house. I tiptoe to the hall and make my way to Sophie’s room. A dim light shines out from under the door, but it’s not all the way closed. The hissing continues; it’s definitely coming from there.
The door opens easily with a slight push from my fingertips. An oxygen mask is strapped around Sophie’s face and a machine forces air into her lungs, hissing with every breath. Her thin, frail chest rises up and down in tandem with the mechanical whir.
She can’t even breathe on her own.
Sophie’s mom sits beside her daughter with fingers on her wrist and I can almost hear her counting every heartbeat in her head. Sophie did this to herself for me. Trusting her mother to keep her alive, and trusting me to get the job done.
The movement of the door must have caught her mom’s eye because she looks up in worry. Her face darkens immediately—I must be quite a sight. But she doesn’t seem to care that I’m dirty, disheveled, and covered in blood. All she sees is me—the troublemaker who convinced her daughter to backslide on her recovery twice. “You dare show your face here?” she whispers.
I recoil as if struck, even though I know it’s only her grief speaking. Grief I understand now, at least to some degree. It was that terrible, desperate grief that brought me here to begin with.
“I have an idea.” My voice shakes as I speak. Because even if my idea works, it’s a terrible, terrible risk to myself.
But is it any greater than the risk Sophie took for me?
Sadly, after Smith, I know that it might be a bigger risk.
I can practically hear Sierra’s words echoing in my mind: I believed with my whole soul that he was someone I could trust. She’s not wrong, but has anyone ever proven themselves more worthy than Sophie? The answer to that is a resounding no.
I have to do it.
“I may be able to help her.”
Sophie’s mom is watching me skeptically, but there’s a spark of hope in her eyes.
I only pray I can deliver. It’s just a theory.
“At worst, it won’t do anything, but …” Darkness is encroaching on my vision a
gain and I know if I don’t sit down, I’m going to fall down. “Will she be okay if I lie beside her?” I can hear the slurring of my own words, but I force myself to remain conscious for just a few more seconds. Almost there.
Her mom nods curtly, skepticism still the most prevalent emotion in her expression. But then, she’s watched Sophie do this her whole life. I’ve known Sophie for one whole week. I’ve known about the existence of Sorceresses at all for one week. But the way Sophie felt when I had a vision I’m sure … I think … it’s got to work.
I lower myself onto the bed and carefully curl up beside Sophie. I almost pull back. She’s cold. She’s not breathing on her own, her heart is barely beating; she really did bring herself to the very brink of death to save my mom. If I had any doubts about what I’m about to do, they’re gone.
I dig out my focus stone out, grasp it with one hand, and lay the other gently across Sophie. Before I can lose my nerve, I close my eyes at last. My eyelids are too heavy to lift again, but I force myself to say, “I hit my head pretty hard today. If I don’t wake up on my own, you have to shake me awake in an hour. An hour should be enough,” I add in a mumble. And hopefully not too long for me. I’ve heard too many stories of people with head injuries going to sleep and never waking up again.
But I can’t consider that now; it’s time to work. The last time I did this it was an accident.
And it was with Jason Smith.
I try to picture that night, the same night I found out he was the murderer. The night I showed up physically—switching places with Michelle, choosing to face her would-be killer in her place. The killer who turned out to be the same man I thought I was working with to stop the killings. In that moment I was desperate to keep him from escaping. It was an instinct, really. Something my body—my mind—knew I could do, but I’d never been taught.
Still, I did it once—I have to believe I can do it again. I grasp Sophie tighter, ignoring the pain in my arm, and I remember the sensation of reaching out and grabbing Smith, pulling, yanking, sucking him with me as I leapt into my supernatural plane.
I reach for Sophie and prepare myself to break a solemn promise. It was a good promise—a promise I made to protect myself and the world both. But what good are promises if you can’t save your friends?