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“Say it,” I urged.
She looked at me. “It sounds stupid though.”
“It can’t do any harm.”
"We can help you figure out if it’s significant,” Perdita said encouragingly.
“When he was drawing death to us, or whatever he was doing, I thought I saw hands behind him. They reached around to claw his face, but he didn’t react, so it couldn’t have been real.”
“Do you think you were imagining it?” Amelia asked. “Or your subconscious was trying to make sense of something?”
“It’s possible, except once I had a dream about him, and that exact thing happened in the dream, too.” She shivered. “I can’t shake the feeling that it’s important.”
“Margo had a dream of us on the mountain,” I reminded the others when nobody said anything. “Her warning saved us.”
“True,” Byron said. “Though I can’t see how this helps.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Margo said hurriedly. “I can’t explain it either, so maybe it was my mind freaking out. He was sending out death, and I couldn’t think of what to do. I remembered how I felt when Amelia and I…” She winced, and I knew she was embarrassed to bring up yet another incident. “I tried to reach for death, to block it somehow. I imagined my power shielding us. I stood between us and death. I knew he couldn’t get to Tammie or Alison anymore because I felt the death inside me instead. And I kept thinking about Pavel, so I tried my best to push back. For a minute there, I felt like he couldn’t hurt me, but it was so cold that I don’t know if I can do that again. I’m not completely sure how I did it. I don't know if I’m cold because of him or because of what I did.”
“Did he understand what you did?” Nathan asked. “Did he react to it?”
“He looked repulsed, but also excited somehow. He called me a monster. I kept trying to push death back towards him but it was hard, and I was exhausted. He didn’t like that, but I did it, if only for a little while. Then the police came, and he ran. I was barely able to hold out that long, so I don’t know if he realises how weak I am, or if he thinks I can stop him. But I can’t.” She shot me a plaintive look. “I can’t stop him. I’m not enough, and I’m too scared to try again. I’m useless.”
“You’re not useless,” Amelia said. “You saved Tammie and Alison from that cretin, and I bet you scared him, too.”
“This is exactly what we needed,” Byron said.
We all looked at him.
“I’m serious,” he continued. “We know so much more about this man now. He was working alone, testing Margo alone. He could have killed her, but he didn’t, which means he wants her for something. That keeps her safe, at least.”
“He can wield death,” Cecilia said. “How is any of this good news?”
“He’s not invincible,” Ryan said. “He can be harmed.”
“And he seems able to attack only one person at a time,” Byron said. “Margo said it herself. He chose one person then the other. He needed time to do it, too. It wasn’t instant. It wasn’t a blanket attack. He had to pick. He has weaknesses. That gives us more to work with.”
“He’s strong,” Cecilia said. “The only one who can fight off his power is Margo, and she’s a child who isn’t even sure how she did it.”
“If he was so strong, he wouldn’t have needed to run,” Nathan added. “If playing with death weakens Margo, then it makes sense for the same thing to happen to the other harbingers. They might recover more quickly, but they don’t have the pack to protect them while they recover.”
I nudged Margo, thankful that the others had focused on positives.
“We can’t rely on this girl to stop him,” Cecilia said, spoiling the mood.
“Margo’s not your weapon,” Niall said. “It’s not up to her to stop him.”
“Nobody’s saying that,” Byron said. “But if it comes to it, at least we know that Margo can protect herself from this man long enough for us to get her out of his way.”
“She’s too weakened by now to protect us anyway.” Cecilia stepped forwards to push her point across. “We can attack him, but he’ll get to one of us before we can take him down, and we don’t know how close he has to be to use his power. Besides that, he has others like him. If they attack us together, we don’t stand a chance.”
I glanced at Nathan. Perdita looked pale, her expression pinched. Jeremy’s mate wasn’t far off her due date. The last thing we needed was more stress on either of their shoulders.
“If they come for her, we’ll have to attack first,” Jeremy said, and for the first time, I was in total agreement with him. “We risk losses, but we can’t afford to hesitate. If we’re quick and unexpected, they won’t have time to react.”
“Eli was willing to harm innocent humans to test Margo’s abilities,” Byron said with distaste. “That means we can’t underestimate the lengths he’ll go to, but I believe that the odds are in our favour.”
“This is never going to end,” Margo’s mother whispered.
