“Everything.”
There’s a pause. Then, the voices return. Softer and satisfied. “So be it.”
A tremor shakes the pine needles below my knees, then the ground stirs in earnest. Fine red tendrils push up from the soil before thickening, darkening, and winding toward Max. They crawl over her boots to the skin of her calf.
Max’s fire vanishes as the roots coil gently around her leg, circling the bite in tightening spirals.
Above us, the pine tree sheds all its needles in one quick, terrible shiver. Its trunk splits along a hairline seam, and a thick red sap oozes from within. It doesn’t drip so much as bleed in a slow, viscous trail that patters onto the forest floor. The roots collect the sap and glide toward the wound, finally reaching their destination and slipping into the puncture wounds.
Into Max.
“Easy,” Nick says, though I can’t tell if it’s meant for her or for whatever he’s called up from the depths of this place.
Max gasps, her fingers digging into my sleeve. The fire still devouring what’s left of her clothes gutters and dies, shrinking back into her skin like it was never there.
For a second, nothing moves. Then her chest rises again. Slower this time. Deeper.
The roots finally retreat, out of her body and back into the ground. The flush of sickness drains from her skin, replaced by a faint, returning warmth as color creeps back into her cheeks. The tension in her limbs eases.
“She’s safe,” Nick declares.
“Nick?” Max croaks.
Her voice is rough, barely there, but it’s hers.
“I’m here, sis. Just rest, alright? I’m going to figure this out.”
“Where’s E?”
I squeeze her hand, still kneeling in front of her. “I’m right here, little fox.”
She smiles and nods. “Yes, I can feel you now.”
Relief crashes through me so violently that it leaves me shaking. I press my nose to her temple, her cheek, her hair. I kiss her there, again and again.
She sighs and lets her lids fall, slipping back into unconsciousness but still alive, still breathing, the two puncture wounds and purplish swelling gone from her ankle.
My eyes sting, and heavy tears fall into her hair as I hold her tighter. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t do anything but watch her slip away.
“Thank you. Thank you,” I tell Nick.
This wasn’t simple healing, but a bargain, and Nick essentially wrote a blank check to whatever power pulses underground, but I don’t care.
Nick wraps the cut on his wrist in gauze from his backpack, his eyes bright and wet with unshed tears. He looks shaken to his core and stripped of his usual bravado. “You really love her.”
“More than anything.”
“You know, I was wrong about you, Casper. You’re not so bad.” Nick’s eyes soften. “Please, let this be our secret—for now. I don’t want Max to feel guilty about what I had to do.”
“What do you think the price of her life will be?” I ask gravely.
Nick shrugs, as though the price is irrelevant. “Whatever it is…” His eyes don’t leave his twin's sleeping frame as he adds, “It was worth it.”
Chapter 30
Angels and Demons
MAX
