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My heart broke that she even had to ask. Did she think I was here to watch her die?
“Of course. Of course I’m here to help you. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”
“We got them,” she whispered. “We got our guy.”
I hadn’t been thinking about what had happened with the other teams. Since arriving at the hotel and seeing the state it was in, my primary focus had been making sure everyone was alive and relatively well. But I’d known they had to have done some damage, considering all the dead corpses in the street.
“I knew you would. You’re my tough, badass sister. If anyone could kill a necromancer, it would be you.”
While trying to keep her calm, I was racking my brain for ideas of how to use Aubrey’s power. It seemed to function on a very simplistic basis, at least for me. Think of something and make it happen. I could will the most basic concepts into existence. If I wanted fire, something burned. If I wanted strength, I was strong. But how could I conceptualize saving a life? And if I couldn’t do it for Genie, how could I try to bring Keaty back from the dead?
“Do you think you can stand up?”
She glanced at the rubble on the floor, and her eyes welled up, the trembling starting anew. “I-I-I-I—” She couldn’t get past that one vowel. Releasing her knees, she attempted to push herself up off the floor, but she was shaking so badly I feared the vibrations might be enough to send the whole car falling.
“Sweetie, I need you to calm down. Can you do that for me?” Asking the impossible was something I had mastered of myself, but to demand it from others seemed cruel. “You need to take a deep breath.”
Genie tried, but it sounded like she was breathing through the back of a fan. This would never work if she didn’t relax.
And there it was. My answer.
I might not be able to save her with a thought, but I was betting I could mellow her out. Aubrey had been able to manipulate Holden and me with almost no effort at all. He’d seized all of Desmond’s control in a matter of moments. If he could do all that, surely I could make Genie breathe a little easier.
Calm. I projected it at her like a mental weapon.
A final shudder rocked her, and she closed her eyes, letting her head thump against the back of the car.
I hadn’t wanted her comatose!
This power was too foreign to me. I still wasn’t sure how it worked. I was on the verge of panic when her eyes fluttered open again, this time pale white like those of the dead. She stared straight ahead, but now her breath was normal, and her body no longer shook.
I’d made her so calm she was basically a zombie. Now I wasn’t so different from the necromancers I’d set out to kill, except instead of controlling the dead, I could manipulate the living.
That was a very frightening ability to have.
“What’s going on?” Morgan asked. “What the hell is happening with her eyes?” She’d crawled back a few inches, obviously frightened of what she was seeing.
I was scared too.
Was this what it felt like for Sig to wield control over me? I had the power to do whatever I wanted with Genie, and the only thing I wanted to do was rid myself of that power. Being responsible for another human was too daunting a task to be enjoyable. No wonder Sig so rarely made me do his bidding. To have all this control over someone was too much responsibility.
“Stand up,” I whispered, and Genie did, smoothly and without any hesitation. Still, the elevator groaned.
Morgan’s gaze was now fixed on me. She’d figured it out, at least in part. She knew I was piloting Genie’s actions, though I doubted she could understand how deep my control went. I could do anything, damn near anything, provided I could come up with the right word for it.
“How…?”
I cut my eyes to her briefly, giving her a quick warning glare that demanded silence. How could I be expected to steer the SS Eugenia and explain myself? Explanations wouldn’t come easily. If I could get Genie out of this and get us all out of the building before it collapsed, I’d gladly take the time to explain my devil’s bargain with Aubrey.
Now was not the time.
Lucas, responding either to the instructions I was giving or to Morgan’s surprised questions, abandoned his efforts at opening the other door and came back over, looming above us like a threat.
“Walk to me,” I instructed.
“Her eyes,” Lucas breathed, steadying himself on the wall. “They’re white.”
Ignoring them both, I continued to focus on Genie. She came towards me like a sleepwalker, with her arms down beside her and her distracted vision off somewhere in the middle distance. Still, she moved with purpose, and every step she took made the elevator groan more.
