“What night?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
Isla clutches her teardrop pendant, her eyes wide and watery. Even her braids seem to be trembling.
“Ani,” she says softly. “The night Ani unleashed his witchfire to save us all from Janelle and Casey.”
Still standing at my side, Baz shakes his head. “It wasn’t him.”
“Baz,” Doc says, “you didn’t see him that night. The fire, the intensity, the scorched ground… Other than the scale of this attack, it looks identical to what Ani conjured at Breath and Blade.”
Baz drops my hand, folding his arms over his chest. “So you’re all saying Ani just… what? Magicked himself out to California while we were asleep and lit the whole place on fire?”
“We can’t rule it out,” Doc says.
“Yeah, Cass. We sure as fuck can.” Baz points toward the guest bedroom. “Ani is in a fuckingcoma. Inthatbedroom, where he hasn’t moved from since Harvest Eve. He’ll be lucky if he can even remember his own name after this, let alone mastermind devious plots to incinerate entire cities. He’s practically a vegetable, and—”
“He’snota vegetable,” I snap, Baz’s grim pronouncement igniting my anger. “He’s alive, and some part of him is fighting like hell to get back to us. He said my name, Baz. Goddess, what iswrongwith you?”
“Maybe you misheard him, Stevie.” He gives an exaggerated shrug. “Or maybe these guys are right, and Ani’s totally fine, calling your name and coordinating magickal attacks against innocent people while the rest of us stand around with our thumbs up our asses, casting spells and praying to the goddesses that we somehow survive this shit.”
“You know as well as I do Ani didn’t cause that.” I jab my finger at the television, anger spilling over in hot, fresh tears. “And he’s not a vegetable, and hewillwake up, and if you have any doubts about either of those two things, you can gofuckyourself.”
“Stevie, listen to me.” Doc grabs my shoulders, pinning me with a gaze so full of sadness and fear, it nearly steals my breath. “You have to understand—”
“It wasn’t him, Doc. We’re talking about Ani.Ani! And you’re all acting like Ani’s the cause of this random act of violence, when there’s no way he even—”
“What happened today,” he continues, his voice breaking. “It wasn’t random. Moonlight Bay Beach? That’s… that’s Ani’s hometown.”
I blink up at him, the words banging around in my mind, trying to stick.
Moonlight Bay Beach. Ani’s hometown. Not random…
No matter how hard I try to hold onto them, to make sense of what Doc told me, I just can’t. Sure, maybe this senseless, gruesome attack is happening in Ani’s hometown, but I can’t believe he has any connection to the violence playing out on the screen behind us. To the devastation that will echo across the country for years and decades to come.
Over four thousand dead.
Scores more missing or fighting for their lives.
A nationwide roundup of witches and mages—a roundup few will ever escape.
It’s all too much to comprehend. Too much death, too much fear, too much sadness filling up the house. Filling up my head.
“Air,” I finally gasp, pulling out of Doc’s grasp. “I need air.”
The room spins, bile rising in my throat. Ignoring the sound of my name and the weight of their oppressive energy, I bolt for the door, throwing myself out into the wide-open space where I promptly and unceremoniously drop to me knees and retch.
Twenty-Seven
STEVIE
I’m only outside for a few moments when a calm, stately presence washes over me, and Jareth swoops down from his hiding place, perching on a waist-high sandstone slab in the backyard.
“I knew you’d come,” I tell him, wiping away my tears. “You always know when I need you, huh?”
In response, he lifts a wing, inspecting his plumage as if he couldn’t care less about my predicament one way or the other.
But I know he senses my pain. Just like I can sense his presence now, always close to me, always watching.
“Yes, you’re quite handsome,” I confirm. “There’s no denying it.”
