Katherine carried her phone and food over to her couch. Cheez-It plopped onto her lap as soon as she sat down.
“You knowchillis not my strong suit.”
“Yeah, no shit. But Silas is nice! He was asking me where we liked to hang out, and—”
Katherine tightened her grip on the spoon. “—And you told him nothing because you would never betray me by sharing our deepest, darkest secrets with my mortal enemy.”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “No, Katherine, I did not give away the secret of Bar Lubitsch. You came in and pulled the hot man away before I had a chance to tell him about my skills at tearing up the dance floor.”
“Thank god.”
“Speaking of god, did you see his arms? Because they were—”
Fiona’s words went hazy as a shock of anxiety hit Katherine. Herspoon clattered onto the floor, everything going tight as she was taken by the sudden bone-deep feeling that something was very, very wrong.
“Fiona, stop.”
Katherine’s phone dinged with a Citizen app alert. She didn’t read it, didn’t need to, her body already warning her what was going on.
“Holy shit,” Fiona interjected. Katherine stood, Cheez-It jumping off her lap as she dropped her phone on the couch and grabbed her shoes. Her heart pounded, stress surging over her like a tsunami. She knew, sheknewsomething was wrong, and she needed to—
“Katherine.” Fiona’s voice was loud and tinny through the phone. “Someone just said that a bomb went off at Hollywood and Highland. What—”
Katherine grabbed her phone and hung up on Fiona, then ran out the door, every instinct in her screaming, her dread telling her she needed to see this for herself.
She didn’t think it was a bomb.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Katherine arrived to Hollywood Boulevard in chaos.
She’d left her car a mile back, when the traffic had become unpassable, and had run the rest of the way, following the sirens and screams toward the epicenter of the destruction. She was out of breath already, but the smoke filling the air as she ran into the massive Hollywood and Highland shopping center made it even worse.
She ground to a halt as she took in the scene inside. A few of the massive pillars that dotted the lobby had fallen, breaking apart in pieces of rubble that littered the floor. Police were starting to arrive, paramedics moving through the crowds of screaming people, firefighters working to lift fallen stones and catch the small blazes from broken lights and gas lines before they could turn into anything worse. The cops were making attempts to control the scene, but it was impossible—the area was too crowded, dotted by dozens of entrances and exits that ordinaries crawled through like ants. Streaming in, trying to help, to find friends or loved ones, or just to witness one of Los Angeles’ famous spectacles.
It was a nightmare.
Katherine knew a snap had caused it. And there was a sick feeling in her stomach saying that the snap had come from Lily.
She had to find her. Had to figure out where she was, what happened, how Katherine could get her out of it. If she justfoundLily, she could fix all of this. She could—
She tripped over a pair of feet. She looked down—cleats, knee-highsocks, legs stretched out on the tile like the man was taking a quick rest on a long walk. His blood had splattered in a halo where his head had hit the wall, his neck slumped at an angle it shouldn’t have been able to achieve.
The man couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, baby fat still clinging to his cheekbones. He was wearing a soccer coach’s uniform, a can of beer that had rolled out of his hand still dripping fizz onto his pants.
Katherine stared at him, and suddenly she was back in the hallway of her high school, the lines blurring between then and now, so the shattered building in front of her was the same shattered building she’d run from at sixteen, so the body on the floor was the body of Tommy, and Lorelei, and Finn, so the burning scent of spent magic was once again pouring out of her. She thought she might pass out.
Find Lily. She had to focus on finding Lily.
She turned away from the body as she reached for her caster, letting the pain of it digging into her palm ground her as she focused all of her thoughts on one person, on one desire:Not again.
The locator spell flashed blue on her palm, and then the path lit up in front of her, a sparkling line that she forced her vision to follow as it tried to stray, again and again, to the carnage around her.
The spell burned hotter against her palm as she made her way up the stairs and down the hall. She focused on her steps and nothing else. Careful of the broken floor. Walk slowly.
One foot in front of the other.
Until the sparks coalesced in front of the door to the single-occupancy bathroom, lighting the deep gray paint in shades of navy. Katherine’s chest pinched, fear of what was behind that door causing her magic to spike, making the sparks shine even brighter. Beckoning her to a future she wouldn’t be able to avoid.
