Page 47

“Less thinking, more magicking!” He said stepping back and double clapped to punctuate his command. “Bring me bunny stew!”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. I imagined all the times I had seen Fae use magic. It had been as natural as breathing, as simple as exhaling. I was a Fae. I should be able to do that, right? I imagined in my mind the rabbit at the group home I stayed in when I was sixteen. It was massive, the size of a small dog, dark grey fur with beaded black eyes and floppy ears. I imagined myself pulling it out of the hutch, felt the weight of it in my arms and felt myself set it down into the grass.

My imaginary fingers combed through its soft fur, feeling every densely packed hair. The image in my mind was like thousands of threads pulling together, less of an image and more of a sensation of thoughts of silk threads tying themselves together into the image of the rabbit.

The clearing had gone dead quiet. The breeze had stopped rushing through the grass. The trees had stopped swaying to the music of the wind. My friends didn’t move a single inch. I couldn’t even hear them breathing. The threads kept winding themselves around the rabbit, faster and faster as if they were suddenly born with the urgency of a pissed-off hornet rushing at an intruder. It felt wild. It felt out of control. It felt like electricity arcing through me in an uncontrollable rush, like an orgasm that had no provider at the other end, and I fought the urge to moan and bend into it.

I pried one eye open to see Green Man frozen next to me, his entire body sparking with energy unlike any electricity I had seen before, making tiny fibers glow around him. It wasn’t like the ball of purple lightning I had seen in TV shows—it was silvery, white-hot threads casting off into the world and disappearing like fishing line forgotten on a lakeshore. A shiver crept up my spine, and I opened the other eye to see that everything around me had gone still, as if time itself had stopped. Time had not stopped though. Green Man’s eyes slid over to me, panic shimmering in their wooden depths shadowed by the slowly growing light set before me.

Reluctantly, I turned my head and looked down.

I had managed to do magic! I wanted to scream and celebrate, almost completely forgetting about the fear inching into Green Man’s gaze. But the bunny wasn’t a real bunny—Green Man would have an empty plate. It was made of shimmering stardust and light that grew slowly brighter with every twitch of its nose. As the light grew, its outline began to warp and twist those tiny slivers of string knotting up on themselves.

“Run,” whispered Green Man through petrified lips. “Magic. Storm.”

Chapter 18

Cricket

The blob that was forming touched my bare foot and ice kissed my skin. It wasn’t bad, just cold, but as the sensation grew, it turned sharp and then brutal as the skin of my toe began to merge into the light.

“Fuck!” Panic beat through me, and I realized Green Man couldn’t move. Nothing could move. Not even the grass around us. Nothing but what I touched.

Trudging through the frozen grass was like wading through thick mud as I dragged Green Man away from the slowly rolling and growing magic storm. As my body shielded him from the light he regained movement. “Get the other two!”

I kept my eye on the magic storm as adrenaline screamed through my veins and my heart slammed against my ribs, my entire body shaking with fear. My palms grew slick, my hands sliding and slipping against Green Man as I hauled him behind the tree where Violet and Emerald sat like cheap gas station figurines I’d seen in a foster home once.

“Stay here! Stay out of the light!”

The other two were not as easy. The combined weight was too much, and I heaved with all my strength, my heels digging into the grass. The ball of light was slowly rising into the air like a bomb about to detonate by the time I got them halfway around the tree. Green Man darted from shadow to shadow, trying to make his way into the dense underbrush of the small thicket. The image of a wooden spider creeping along branches flashed in my mind.

“I told you, dammit!” hissed Violet when she could finally speak. Emerald was flashing like an annoyed cuttlefish, unable to move anything but the smoke within her.

“Yeah, you can kick my ass about it when we’re safe!” I shouted back over the strange crackle of magic as it grew over the pool.

Every inch I strained, the yarn ball of a magic storm grew, and though I tried to ignore it, there was a growing urge within me to fling myself into it. To embrace it and let it devour me whole. I fought not just the weight of my friends but this need within me to walk into the light and let it consume me. By the time I got Emerald behind the tree enough for her to claw at the dirt and pull herself into the shade, the impulse was so strong I was gritting my teeth against it.

“Go! Fucking go! Stay out of the fucking light. I’m right behind you.”

Emerald and Violet didn’t waste time questioning me. They knew what magic storms were more than I did. All I knew was that it felt like dipping your toe into an icy lake, and it called to me, making my blood sing with suicidal need. I followed my friends though, my entire body fighting me with every step, making me clumsy and slow.

I looked back. I shouldn’t have. Lot’s wife taught me nothing. The magic storm had moved, slowly bobbing through the air after me as if it were tethered by a long cord to my heels. Terror clawed at my face and shredded my throat as I fell into a holly bush, cutting my arms and legs on the points of its leaves.

The others were far ahead, deep within the safety of the trees. I could simply stand up, turn my face into the approaching light, and fall into the lake of magic like a pointy-eared penguin. They wouldn’t see it. They wouldn’t hear my gasps for air. They wouldn’t see me slip beneath its surface and welcome the solace of its chilled peace as it swallowed me whole.

An evergreen forest flashed in my mind, and the golden arms of a dawning sun broke through its branches as the claws of a phantom falcon pulled at my arms.

I was running again. Stumbling and crashing through the thicket with all the elegance of a drunk bull, and the magic storm kept following me, stalking me down like a bedraggled matador locked in on his mission. If I dodged right, it followed. If I tried to hide behind a tree, it found me. There was no escaping it. No shaking it.

I was catching up to the others though. And the closer I got to them, the faster it became clear that this was where we had to part ways. I would murder them if I followed them, and it would be my fault.

The craggy body of ancient mountains ground down into pockmarked rocky outcroppings rose above a dip just outside of the tree line. “Go left! Go left! Hide behind the rocks! I’ll pull it off course!”

“What? No! We stick together!” screamed Violet, the plates of her face clacking together.

Something stirred within me. It felt ancient and sharp, and it crawled into my throat, clamping it closed before possessing my hands. My fingers hooked around unseen threads and jerked. Violet shot to one side like a little marionette on a puppeteer’s strings.

Three sets of eyes went wide and owl-like, glossy with fear. Green Man snatched Emerald’s hand and began dragging her with all his strength toward the rock faces. Violet just watched me, bitterness and hate burning in her lavender eyes as she scrabbled to get upright. And when she did, she was charging me, coming straight for me and the magic storm on my tail.