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“More discussion on that note is possible, but first we need to confirm the exact nature of the magic you cast on your father and ex-fiancé,” the man said.
Before he could go on, Rose dismissed him with a flick of her fingers. “No. There’s nothing to discuss there, since you don’t even consider what they were doing tometo be a crime. This is just a distraction to try to take us in without causing too much chaos. But I promise you, if I have to defend myself and my consorts, it won’t be subtle. Do you really want half of Manhattan finding out that witching society exists?”
Of course. That was why they’d cleared the street. There didn’t seem to be anything her Assembly hated more than the idea of regular people finding out about their secret magic. The hawkish guy’s jaw had tightened. I smiled to myself even though my shoulders stayed tensed. Rose had his number, all right.
“I’d rather it didn’t come to that,” he said.
“So would I,” Rose said. “We don’t want to hurt anyone at all, even you. We’d just like to be left alone to live our lives. We aren’t any threat to you if you leave us alone. Is there any chance at all of negotiating that?”
The man paused, and I could see in his expression that the answer was,No way in hell.Rose must have seen that too, not that she’d probably had much hope in the first place. Her left foot slid slightly behind her in the witch version of a fighting stance.
The man’s fingers twitched with a gesture so quick I almost didn’t catch it, and the figures around us whirled into motion.
The air sizzled with waves of magic. My pendant quivered harder against my skin. Rose flung out her arms and swiveled on her feet, throwing out her own magic to shield us, to knock our attackers down.
My hand jerked from my pack. My pulse thudded in my ears.
One, two, three of the enforcers toppled over at Rose’s strike. But two more were rushing closer, the magic their hands were forming so potent it visibly glowed. Rose spun toward one, and my hand snapped up. I didn’t let myself think, just pulled the trigger.
The pistol recoiled in my hand with a hitch I’d almost forgotten in the months since I’d last gone to the range for target practice. I’d never had to fire a gun in an actual fight. The shot thundered in the air, and the bullet slammed into the witch’s shoulder. Blood bloomed stark red across her yellow T-shirt.
The woman cried out. The hawkish man who’d lead the group had whipped around at the sound. When he saw her wound, his face darkened. My gut clenched as he jabbed his hand toward us.
“Damon,” Seth said through his teeth, but another hail of spells was already descending on us, even faster and sharper than before. Gabriel stumbled to the side, his hand jerking to his temple, and I swung around. Make them regret this. Make them back off. Make them scared of people hearing and coming to see the magic they were throwing around. I didn’t care, as long as I got some of it done.
I fired off three more shots in quick succession:bang, bang, bang. My aim was shakier now. One bullet clipped a woman’s thigh, another sent up a puff of brick dust where it dinged a shop corner, and the last—the last slammed into the chest of one of the guys waving his magic baton.
His body crumpled. My stomach flipped over with a lurch, and then our remaining attackers heaved a searing blaze of magic toward us.
Rose whirled around faster than I’d ever seen her, the air singing with her own magic, but even that wasn’t fast enough. I rocked backward on my feet, little barbs of heat digging through my skull and rattling my thoughts, and Jin yelped at her other side. Rose’s arms whipped out. Her feet pattered against the ground as she moved through the form of her spell, and in another instant the barbs fell away. A wash of cold swept away from her and collided with the enforcers and the hawkish man, toppling them.
Jin swore, holding his arm. I caught a glimpse of it: the sleeve of his shirt charred, the skin all down from there mottled with red blisters. An angry red mark slashed across his neck.
“Come on, come on,” Rose was saying, choked and breathless. “I don’t know how long they’ll be out for. We’ve got to go.”
She wove her fingers in the air over Jin’s arm with a few darting circles, and the redness faded to a still painful-looking pink. He nodded sharply as if to say that was enough for now, and we all took off around the nearest corner.
“Put that away,” Seth gritted out beside me.
The gun. I still had it clutched against my sweating palm. I shoved it in the pack before we came onto the next street. The witches hadn’t cleared that one. Ordinary people were standing all around, many of them staring our way. How much had they seen and heard? Did it even matter now?
“You should get rid of it completely,” Seth muttered as we hustled past those gaping faces to another street over. “That was the stupidest move I’ve seen from you yet.”
“I took a couple of them down,” I said.
“You pissed them off even more,” he said. “Now they thinkwe’redangerous too. Maybe too dangerous to even try to keep any of us alive.”
He was just being the same old buzzkill Seth he always was. I told myself that, but my pulse hiccupped as I glanced at Rose.
She looked back at me, her expression tight. “I know what you meant to do. You were just trying to help protect us. It’s okay.”
She said that, but my stomach sank anyway, because I could hear the fear in her voice—not of me, I didn’t think, but of what her Assembly might do next. As we ran on, our feet pounding the concrete, the image of the one guy falling with a bullet hole in his chest replayed in my memory.
I’d had to do it. I’dhadto. But my gut sank even lower with each repetition.
I just had to hope I’d helped things more than hurt them.
Chapter Thirteen
