“I am the only one who can save you,” he roared, his fury making the fire flare brighter, incinerating everything.
She wouldn’t. She would never. She would die first. This would end with her.
“Mallory!”
She opened her eyes and dared to look up.
The ghosts were there—all five of them, kneeling at the edge of the roof.
Her heart lifted, but it was a brief hope. Ghosts could not help her.
“Listen to me,” said Gabrielle, staring at her with those bottomless black eyes. “You know this spell. I watched you as you studied it, memorized it. Now, repeat.Verzolar involaris, arausch flischwalen, arausch fligeto.”
Mallory gaped at her. Her fingers started to slip.
“Repeat it!”
“Verzolar inflo—”
“Involaris.”
“Involaris—”
“From the beginning, Mallory!Verzolar involaris, arausch flischwalen, arausch fligeto.”
“Verzolar involaris, arausch—”
The gargoyle sneered. A growl vibrated through its stone throat.
“—flischwalen, arausch…”
Its maw opened; its teeth grew long as razors.
She screamed and let go.“… fligeto!”
Mallory fell. Flailing arms and absolute terror and a vision of her own death in her eyes.
And then, suddenly, she flew.
Mallory didn’t feel the change. Didn’t know how, exactly, it happened. Only that one second she was falling and the next she was gliding away from the house on open wings, smoke and flames billowing behind her.
She felt free. Like she could climb to the very top of the sky.
Then she remembered Armand, and she plummeted back to the ground.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
For a moment, Mallory feared that she might never be human again. But as soon as her small, scaly feet touched the wet ground and she willed herself back to normal—the magic faded and she stood in her body once again, a little off-balance and still trembling with the rush of fear and adrenaline and the nearness of certain death, but alive and herself.
To her unbridled relief, Armand’s eyes were open when she dropped to her knees beside him, his lashes fluttering in a daze. He had landed in a garden bed full of young, fragrant lavenders. The foliage had helped to break his fall—though Mallory could see the pain etched onto his features.
“You,” he said stiltedly, “make for a very pretty bird.”
She sobbed, bending over and pressing her forehead to his chest. He raised one hand to her hair, trying to brush it back from her face, but his fingers caught in her knotted tangles.
“Barn swallows are disgusting creatures,” she said. “I thought for sure I’d be a hawk.”
Armand wheezed a halfhearted chuckle, then winced in pain.
