Max ran back inside and heaved a wooden bar against the door. “Cella,” he panted, “this is it. We’ve got to do the binding.”
“Okay,” I said, scrambling for my book bag. I pulled out the objects, still glancing out the window at the commotion outside.
Behind me, Max took a step backward. “Cella …”
“One sec, I’m just getting my stuff.”
“Cella,” Max said, more forcefully this time.
I looked up. Vern still dozed in his bed, head sagging on his chest. Luce was slightly more animated, neck whipping from side to side. But Dani wasn’t in her binds anymore. And she wasn’t in her cot.
She stood across the table from us—barely two arm’s breadths away from me. And unlike all the other times, when she had been fading in and out of consciousness, this time, she wasn’t just awake. She wasn’t just alert. She was staring right at me. And she was smiling.
Heavy purple circles ringed eyes that were so dark they were almost black. Her lips were bone white. And her hair was no longer plastered to her head from sweat, but flying about her like she flowed with an electricity all her own. She crouched, and a small voice inside my head screamed:
Run.
But I was frozen in place. All I could think was how frail her body had been before, so thin and ragged and weak. She shouldn’t have been able to stand. She shouldn’t have been able to move. Now she watched me like an animal, while my heart hammered in my chest.
“The objects, Cella!” Max yelled, and I remembered all too late what we had practiced. He already had the telescope planted on the ground. The comb hummed in my pocket.
I put it on the table, ready to grab my own objects and cast, but it was too late. Dani’s face twisted into a gruesome rage. She lunged for me.
She knocked me back. Her fingernails gouged at my skin, my eyes, twisted around my neck. Her breath was rancid and hot on my cheek. Adrenaline pumped through my veins.
“Max!”
Before the scream ripped from my mouth, he’d pulled her off me. She snarled, then darted across the room. All of our eyes locked on the door.
“Max, now,” I screamed.
I held my strip of leather in one palm and reached for the mug with the other, willing the Magic forward, harder and faster than ever before.
Come, I nearly screamed to it.
My Magic, however timid it might have acted in the past, crashed into me like a wave breaking on the shore. It hit me in three bone-crushing waves, rushing over me until I was suspended in water. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.
And then a single “Kick!” boomed in my ears. I kicked to the surface, and the water subsided.
My eyes shot to Dani. Her lip had curled into an ugly snarl. She rushed to Max, who in the moment’s distraction had clamped one of her wrists in a restraint on the bed. I rushed over to help, staying clear of her fingernails and snapping jaws. Already, I had a deep gouge on the back of my hand from one of her dirty fingernails. We managed to get the other restraint on.
Dani writhed, her blond hair whipping from side to side in a rage. It shook the bed so much, the cottage rattled in the sandy dirt. Rocks and pebbles rolled from corners; bits of dust shook loose from the wooden rafters.
I opened the book and started S’s incantations when Dani’s gaze turned on me, and all the shaking and writhing stopped.
For one long, quiet moment, everything was still. Dani smiled at me.
Then I was drowning.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
6 Hours Until Sunset
As I fell through water, watching as the surface drifted farther away and the water got deeper and darker the farther I fell, I remembered that this was what I was afraid of. Drowning just like that man on the beach. Slipping under the surface, with no one to see or hear or care. Sliding alone into the darkness.
The water crushed me under its weight. My ribs squeezed, and my head felt woozy and light. It felt as if there were hundreds of pounds on top of me. Three hundred pounds. Four hundred. I felt my ribs fracture, the bones jabbing into me, sharp and splintering. Pain filled my chest, puncturing my organs and my lungs. Blood filled my mouth. And water, so much water, and I felt myself, falling, falling …
And then with startling clarity, there was Max’s voice.
