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He was right; I knew he was. But for a minute, I just stood there anyway, feeling old, pitted glass slide under my fingers and cottony fear crowd my throat. I had to do this, and I had to get it right this time. And yet I just stood there.
And then I threw it back, a bitter, oily dose that moved horribly on my tongue.
“Feel anything?” Rosier asked.
?
?Nauseous,” I gasped, staring at the bottle, afraid that maybe I’d gotten a bad batch.
Until my hand spasmed, and I watched it fall to the floor as if in slow motion, while every cell in my body exploded with light and warmth and power, so much power that I thought for a minute it was going to rip me apart.
And then I was sure it was. Reality warped, time telescoped, and the chair beside me duplicated itself into a thousand chairs that receded into the distance, like fun-house mirrors placed face-to-face. Like the rest of the pub, like the hand Rosier put on my shoulder, like the world around us . . .
Until everything slammed back together again, wrenching me off my feet and into a maelstrom of light and shadow, sound and silence, and wind that I couldn’t feel but could hear in my ears, echoing in my head, screaming past us as we fell down, down, down, into nothingness so absolute that I wasn’t sure anymore if the wind was screaming or if I was.
And, okay, I thought.
I guess it was good after all.
And then I passed out.
Chapter Forty-one
“Cassie! Cassie! Damn you, wake up!” Someone was shaking me. And cursing. And glaring down at me out of evil red eyes.
And then slapping me hard across the face.
And then looking surprised when I slapped him back.
I blinked and realized that the face was Rosier’s, and that the weird eyes were reflecting the sky behind him. Which was red and dark and boiling with gray-green clouds. His hair was limned in red, too, and a whipping wind had it ruffling and sticking up in a good impression of his son’s. To complete the scene, somewhere nearby, something was burning.
“Are we in hell?” I croaked, confused.
“Close enough,” Rosier snarled. And then he snatched me up, supporting me as we stumbled for the scant cover offered by a nearby copse of trees.
They were on fire up in the tops, probably a result of the embers that were blowing about everywhere. But it didn’t matter because everything else was burning, too. The trees all along the riverbank, the bushes, the weeds. It even looked like the river itself was on fire, the surface reflecting the flames and the wind gusts sending little gold-tipped ripples everywhere. Pretty much the only thing that wasn’t alight—yet—was the old mill, but the dark hulk was visible because the moon had come out since we’d left, big and pale and floating serenely over the chaos below.
It was not illuminating Pritkin. Or if it was, I couldn’t tell with all the leaping shadows everywhere. And with my eyes watering and my head spinning. And with the explosions, I added mentally, as another tree went up with a crack and a burst of flame, the wind whipping the burning bits at our heads.
“What are they doing?” I asked as we ducked for cover, both from the fire and the too-pale figures that had started it.
“Trying to flush out my son!” Rosier said, furious. “They obviously can’t find him—”
“We can’t find him! How are we supposed to spot him in this?”
It looked like the fey we’d run from earlier had given up on subtlety and were just destroying everything in their path. Which was soon going to be Pritkin—and us—if we didn’t find him quick. And we weren’t going to. I was choking just trying to breathe, the smoke from the ring of fire obscuring the areas under the trees like low-hanging clouds.
This wasn’t going to work.
And, for once, Rosier seemed to agree.
“You aren’t,” he said, looking grim. “I am.”
And then he was on his feet and moving fast.
I grabbed for his arm, but missed because my reflexes hadn’t recovered yet. So I grabbed his leg instead. “I’m supposed to find him. You’re supposed to—”
“I know what I’m supposed to do! But I can sense when he’s near, girl; you can’t! So I will get him out.”
