Page 72 of The Brightest Fell

“This is my house,” I said. “Punching me in the face doesn’t make it yours. If anything, it makes me less inclined to invite you over.”

August’s eyes widened before narrowing in sudden anger. She lunged forward, grabbing for my arm. That seemed to be her go-to move. When in doubt, attempt to hurt the person you’re fighting on a cellular level, one that they can’t fight against, but can only endure.

Not this time. When her hand closed, my arm wasn’t there. Instead, my shoulder was lowered and I was charging forward, bull in a china shop, crashing into her and carrying her backward into the hall. She couldn’t hurt me if she couldn’t touch my skin. I knew enough about our shared magical talents to know that, and right now, even if she could somehow focus after that impact, she didn’t have access to any skin. She had leather jacket and the heavy, too-dark fall of my hair, and if I was right, she wouldn’t know what to do without a better weapon than her magic. She was too specialized.

August’s back slammed into the wall with a concussive bang, sending several framed pictures crashing down. Glass shattered. I pulled back just enough to let her feet drop flat to the floor before I slammed into her again, harder this time, not concerned about hurting her. I knew how fast she healed. I was more concerned about incapacitating her long enough for me to get the duct tape and tie her hands.

Amandine had tried to turn me human when I was a child, and she had failed. Part of it was that she hadn’t wanted to hurt her baby, but part of it was also that I had fought back as long as it was possible for me to do so. My own magic was still alive and kicking, however human I might be, and it wasn’t going to go gently into that good night. Even if August got her hands on me again, I was pretty sure she couldn’t turn me wholly human without my consent.

That didn’t mean I wanted to test the theory. Call me weird, but letting other people try to mess with the balance of my blood for fun is not my idea of a good time.

August groaned, stunned by the impact. I stepped back and brought my elbow up at the same time, intent on catching her in the throat. She dodged to the side. I hit the wall instead. The pain was a great bolt moving through my arm. Nothing felt broken, and so I went for my backup plan, grabbing her by the hair and using it as leverage for slamming her head into the wall.

August shrieked. Behind me, I heard the door close and the latch click home. Most of my focus was on my sister and the need to keep her from touching me. I slammed her head against the wall again.

Bringing her hand up, she raked her fingernails across my cheek, drawing blood without actually touching her skin to mine. She looked a little startled when she realized that. I slammed her head into the wall again.

“Could you, perhaps, not break her?” asked Simon behind me.

“We’re sturdy!” I snarled, and went for a fourth slam.

August yanked her hair out of my hand, stumbling away. She stopped several feet down the hall. “Stop it,” she commanded, in a voice that was probably meant to be regal, but came off more as scared. “I demand you stop it.”

“You started it,” I reminded her.

There was a moment—one beautiful, shining moment—where I thought she might see sense and stop attacking me. We could talk this over like reasonable people. I might not even need to borrow Arden’s hope chest if I could convince August to lend me the necessary power to let me rebalance my blood. Quentin was probably asleep in his room, and if he wasn’t, if she’d enchanted him and stuffed him into a closet, I could wake him up. It was going to be okay.

Then she snarled, “I don’t start things. I finish them,” and lunged, hands outstretched to grab the sides of my face and yank the last of the fae blood from my body.

I forced myself to stay where I was until she was so close and moving so fast that she couldn’t possibly change her trajectory. Then I stepped to the side, sticking out my foot and hooking it around her ankle. She went down hard, sliding several feet across the floor.

It didn’t buy me much time. It bought me enough to grab the baseball bat out of the umbrella stand, where it had been sitting unused for long enough to have gathered a thin patina of dust, and bring it down across the back of her skull. Something cracked. It wasn’t the bat.

August lay still.

TWENTY-TWO

THE BASEBALL BAT HIT the floor with a clatter, rolling until it came to a stop against the wall. I bent forward, resting my hands against my knees and panting hard. The scratches on my cheek stung like fire. It had been so long since I’d had to deal with the long-term effects of my injuries that I wasn’t used to them anymore.

“Mortality sucks,” I said finally, and pushed myself upright. Simon was standing next to the door, eyes wide and face pale. I guess seeing his stepdaughter bludgeon his long-missing biological daughter with a baseball bat had been a little much for his delicate sensibilities. “Help me with her. We need to get her into the kitchen before she wakes up.”

“Before she—October, you hit her in the head with a club!”

“Baseball bat, and yeah, I did, so I figure we have maybe five minutes before her skull puts itself back together and she wakes up. Probably pissed, because I did just hit her with a baseball bat. Come on.” I bent again, this time reaching for August’s arm. I paused at the last moment, before my fingers would have touched her skin.

Could she hurt me while she was unconscious? My magic sometimes did things when I was asleep, when it thought I needed it to act on my behalf. I pushed my shoulders forward and bent my elbows, until the sleeves of my jacket covered my hands, like I was a five-year-old playing dress-up with Mommy’s clothes. Thus protected by a layer of leather, I wrapped my effectively mittened hands around August’s right wrist.

Simon still hadn’t moved. I looked up and frowned at him.

“You can help me move her, or you can stand there while I wrench her arm out of its socket dragging her,” I said. “The choice is yours.”

“This seems wrong,” he said, and moved to grab August’s left wrist. Unlike me, he didn’t cover his skin first. He didn’t need to. As a pureblood, there was nothing in him that she could use as a lever.

“Everything about this is wrong,” I agreed, as we dragged August down the hall toward the kitchen. “I’m not supposed to be this mortal. This isn’t how I wanted to meet my sister, if I ever did. You’re not supposed to be the last man standing on my list of allies. I’m not supposed to be asking myself where my squire is and fighting not to panic before I have my sister who, again, I just hit in the head with a baseball bat, safely tied to a chair. So, yeah, it’s wrong. It’s also the only right we have.”

Simon said nothing, but he kept dragging, and under the circumstances, I was willing to accept that.

The kitchen was empty, save for Spike, who was sitting on the counter taking in the afternoon sun. It sat up and rattled when it saw us, like an animate maraca. I smiled.