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“Go,” Serrish said, a glow surrounding her that made me suddenly grateful Hunter and Grant had kept me from opening my mouth around her much. “Go!” She threw her hands out and struck the shadow with the green from her palms. It seemed to vibrate, as if the frequency were wrong, but it didn’t disappear.
Serrish left the circle, stepping over the salt and continuing to strike the shadow with more of that green. The shadow lashed out, but she leaned to the side and only took a glancing blow.
The scent of burning flesh told me she wasn’t immune.
“This is our realm,” Serrish said when she reached the shadow, her body like a beacon of light. “This is the place of magic older than you, Morningstar. I suggest you not venture here again.”
The shadowscreamedas she shoved both her hands forward, into the smoke. Beams of green broke through the darkness, as if they dissolved away the shadowy being.
It was gone moments later, and when she turned, Serrish’s eyes were a bright enough green to light the tent. “You brought it here,” she said.
“We didn’t bring anything,” Grant argued. “That’swhat we’re trying to stop!”
Serrish pointed at me, and I noticed her nails were longer, sharper than they’d been. Her cheekbones and eyes were more pronounced as well, as though even she’d been hiding how she really looked before. “You brought it here—you let it follow you. You’ve gotten what you paid for, now take your half-breed and get out!”
Half-breed?
Hunter pushed me behind him, just as he’d done with the shadow, as if Serrish might be just as dangerous.
Then again, shehadsent that thing running without much trouble. I should have been far more believing when they’d warned me of the dangers.
Serrish waved her hand, and I flinched as though what happened to the shadow might happen to me.
Instead of searing pain, however, I turned to find myself back at the stump, with the sun beating down on us.
“She can’t do that,” I said and plopped myself down on the stump. “We needed more answers.”
“The only thing we will get if we go back,” Grant said, “is a quick death. She gave us all we were getting. Come on, let’s get back to town.”
I bit my lip, staring down at the stump, lost. I’d needed more…a direction, an understanding, something.
She’d told me nothing.
All I had learned again was how unprepared for this world—and this fight—I really was. She introduced me to yet again another large portion of it that didn’t want me and that I couldn’t stand against.
It was a lesson I was really tired of learning.
