“Jo,” Devon says. “You have to let go. You haven’t prepared for this. You can’t hold this much at once.”
No. I can’t. But if I let go, I don’t know what will happen. Dimly, I’m aware that there will be consequences if I dispense this much life. I don’t know exactly what those will be, nor do I have the capacity to contemplate it right now. But that’s enough to keep me holding on.
Devon looks past me for a second, gaze pleading.
“Jocasta.” Carter’s voice. Gentle, coaxing.
He appears in front of me, next to Devon. Carter kneels in front of me, and I tremble, caught in a torrent of mixed emotions.
“It’s okay, you can let it go,” he murmurs to me, his hand on mine, guiding me to kneel on the floor next to him.
“I don’t know how.” The word turns into a howl, and life trickles out of my mouth with it. But not enough.
It’s going to tear me apart. I can feel myself disintegrating at the seams.
Carter leans in closer, ducking to make me catch his gaze. I reach up to touch his face. So beautiful. A beautiful face for a beautiful liar.
“Just let go,” he whispers, wiping a tear away from my cheek. I hadn’t even realized I was crying until that moment. “You can do it. You’ve been braver, smarter than anyone should ever have to be. You know what you need to do.”
I don’t. I don’t!
Except, in the storm raging inside me, I find a tiny calm center. Instinct, maybe. It whispers to me.
I close my eyes. Pulling my hands away from Carter, I slapthem palms-down against the cold floor, imagining the iron beams and concrete holding up the floor and the building itself, dug deep into the earth.
The second I have that image fixed in my head, it’s as if a valve twists open. The power funnels down my arms through my hands and into the floor.
The floor trembles in response, and then the power… spreads.
I feel it when it finds the emptiness in Carter, Devon, and Maggie, where they have shared their energy with me. It fills them as it pours out, but then it keeps going. Taking part of me along with it.
I throw my head back and scream. Images flash and flicker behind my closed lids. Tree roots, wires, stop signs. Houses, yards, asphalt streets. Campus. Quimby, P. Edgars, Wibberley, Branwick.
And it keeps rippling outward, until I smell and taste salt. The ocean.
Then it just… stops. Abruptly.
I lurch forward, catching my weight on my still-outstretched hands on the floor. My face is damp with sweat, even in the creases of my eyelids. Blood slows to a drip from my nose, splatting onto the tile.
Arms trembling, I drop to the cool floor on my side, and then, after a moment, flop to my back, panting.
I’m here. I’m alive, I think.
I hold my hand up in front of my face, half expecting it to be see-through or just not there.
All five fingers are present and accounted for, though. They even wiggle on command. I still feel… off somehow, though. Different.
“Holy shit.” Devon leans over me, an astonished grin on his face. A faint glow seems to encompass him. “You did it.” He presses a kiss on my forehead.
When he takes my hand and tugs me upright, I brace myself for a wave of dizziness. But it doesn’t materialize.
“Are you all right?” he asks with a frown, his gaze searching my face.
I smear a hand under my nose to wipe away the blood. “I feel… strange.” Connected. Like thousands of invisible strings are spiraling out from me in every direction. But I’m at the center, and I’m tethered to each one. Every time I move, the strings shift with me.
Realization dawns in a sudden blaze. “Oh, shit. I think… I think I claimed Beecher.”That’swhat this is.
Devon hesitates. “I think you did more than that.”
