Alistair wasn’t giving him a chance—not really. Scout had fallen for this “last chance” bid too many times. There was always punishment at the end of Alistair’s rainbow. Scout ignored him, continuing to build his own spell in the static crackle of Alistair’s sudden stillness.
Alistair bunched his muscles for the throw, and right when he was about to release, far too committed to turn back, there was a commotion across the sand.
“Scout, no!”
Scout didn’t need to turn toward the voice to know Lucky was there. Kayleigh too, and Marcus and Helen and even Piers and Miller Aldrun.
How did they get here so fast, he wondered, just as Alistair’s power came charging for his chest.
Gracefully he stepped aside, using a deft gesture to deflect the ball of malice up over the clearing, to the dark and dreadful presence that had so threatened him not three nights before.
Alistair gasped, as entangled in his own magic as a wizard ever was, and as Scout watched, his father sailed up, over the stretch of beach they stood on, heading straight for the darkness above the clearing, the thing that blocked out the stars.
His own magic was starting to blow a mighty wind through the beach, starting at the clearing and pulsing out. The force of darkness opened its great gaping maw and pulled Alistair inside.
Alistair reached out with a tendril of power, and as Scout made sure the darkness would slam shut, trapping Alistair inside, he felt an unbreakable cord wrap around his waist and haul him into the darkness as well.
He’d known this would happen. Alistair wasn’t stupid.
But Scout could keep them both trapped inside the thing until Alistair wasn’t a threat anymore. Scout could set Kayleigh free.
“I’m sorry, Lucky,” he called, hating that it should come down to this, to this terrible choice, just as the magic rope between him and his father tightened and he hurtled toward the void over the clearing, the one so black there were no stars to be seen.
Holy Wow
LUCKY STAREDinto the empty place on the ferry deck where Scout had stood not moments before.
Gone?
He was… gone?
I’ll be at the clearing.
Desperately, Lucky whirled to lean over the prow, searching the waters beyond. For a moment, he could see nothing but a vague smudge in the distance, where his island sat—no,theirisland, the center of their world, the place that had held both of them as they’d built a world of safety together.
Lucky took a deep breath, and in that stillness, he felt his coin burn in his pocket.
It was trying to tell him something.
“Yeah, well, where the hell were you when Scout’s father descended on us like the fury of angels, huh?” Lucky asked sourly, but he was reaching into his pocket at the same time.
It was both hot and cold in his hand, and he rubbed it between his palms, trying to get his brain in a place where he could ask questions.
What…? Heads they’re on the island, tails they’re somewhere else?
No sooner had he thought it than the coin leaped out of his palm like a jumping bean and landed heads up.
“You are being very helpful,” he said on a sigh of relief. “And I forgive you. Now, if only I could figure out how to get there, like,now.”
The coin jumped again.
Lucky stared at it. “But if I ask you an open-ended question,” he explained patiently, realizing that he’d begun to regard the thing as an old friend, “you just hover there in front of me looking creepy.”
The coin jumped again—and landed heads up.
“O… kay….” Lucky stared at it one more time. “How do I get to Scout right now?” and with that he flipped it in the air.
And it started whirling, looking surprisingly like the rings Scout had flipped about the day before, spinning them until they formed a great big—
