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“And Gabi might alreadybehurt.”
That was the end of that conversation. Gripping her wand in one hand and Peregrine’s elbow in the other, Joy staggered down the last steps. The corridor before them was scattered with pieces of stone and floorboards and drops of blood, but no sachets or vials or her beloved crystals. Accepting the universe wasn’t going to reunite her with her prepared spells, Joy gripped Peregrine’s arm harder, more out of fear than pain, and they edged down the hallway. Her chest burned with each breath, but she ignored every response of her body to the fear angling through her like a sword. Ignored the fear itself. Gabi—she thought of only Gabi.
“Gods,” Peregrine breathed, and Joy twisted to look at him, sucking in a panicked breath of iron and rust. “There are life signs, but they’re faint. If Gabi’s here, she’s in a really bad way.”
Joy stumbled forward, sheer desperation powering her now. Any trepidation she’d had vanished, her reservations scattered behind her. She would use raw magic, would allow her witchcraft to interpret her will with no potions or herbs or crystals as a guide. She would pay whatever price it asked of her.
“I can feel it with my magic,” Peregrine explained, as if Joy had asked, as if she had room for questions. She breathed hard, narrowing all her energy and attention on physically manifesting her intent, centering her focus on her will and the crystal in her hand. Her arms locked, more braced for pain and impact than a response to the witchcraft heating her insides. She pushed her desire into her witchcraft and down her wand, whispered it, coaxed it, begged it. With relief, she felt it form and begin to rush out of her—and, gritting her teeth, her jaw grinding, she held it in place.Not yet, not yet.
“Find her, Peregrine” she said in a hard voice that was barely hers. “Use your magic. Find her.” She was panting hard, sweat beading on her forehead. The world narrowed to the battle between her and her witchcraft. Water dripped from a burst pipe running along the floor, soaking into Joy’s feet, but she ignored it. Warmth built inside her.
“Peregrine,” Joy bit out but—he’d stopped dead and brought Joy to a halt too, his hand clamped around her arm. With so much effort her neck muscles flared and felt like they would snap, Joy looked at him, ground her teeth as she followed his line of sight to the open lift doors at the end of the hall, mere metres away.
The doors were mangled, as if claws and inhuman strength had torn them open, blood smeared in an elongated handprint. Something about the stain reminded her of a mouth full of fangs. And inside the lift… Gods, inside the witch held Gabi against the far wall, claws carving into her chest. Not the way she had attacked Joy earlier, not simply a stab wound in and out. She was holding Gabi there as her nails twisted and tore, not in a straight line like Freya, not throat to navel, but across her collarbone, through the ripped shirt, coat discarded, through flesh and sinew. Blood poured over the witch’s hand and for a split second Joy just stared, unable to accept the maw of blood and gore Gabi’s chest had become.
And then fire and fury and something Joy didn’t have a name for—cold, and pure white, and stark—rushed through her veins. Joy ripped her arm from Peregrine, still frozen and gasping in horror, and she half ran, half stumbled to the lift. As soon as she was close enough to see the swaying strands of Perchta’s hair, inhale the disgusting stench oozing from her, Joy ripped the leash off her witchcraft and howled her rage. The power that surged from her, ice cold and burning like holy fire, met her rage and thrived on it, fed it and fed from it until it had grown into something wholly other. Power given form, given feeling and true purpose.
A swell of violet sparks like a wave of water, a storm to kill, to shatter, to devour hit Perchta’s back as she stooped over Gabi, her bone fingers dug deep into Gabi’s bones. The witchcraft knew what to do and it froze the witch, not like the freezing spell earlier but a true paralysing, a theft of motion and movement and will.
Joy still screamed, a vessel only for fury, as she looked and looked at Gabi. Gabi was unconscious, pinned against the back of the lift by Perchta’s clawed hands, pale from blood loss. Black hair had fallen from her ponytail, her shirt ripped, and buttons popped, and her coat puddled on the floor. She looked so unlike Gabi, the neatness and professional mask she prided herself on stolen from her.
Warm blood leaked down Joy’s skin, the tentative healing undone, as she hobbled closer, closed the final step between her and the bitch who’d hurt the woman she loved. Here, Joy could see the fragile veins in Gabi’s eyes, the flowing blood that began under her collarbone and poured from a vicious wound beneath. The healers had to be able to fix this. They had to.
Joy’s voice broke and gave out, her scream dying. She grabbed the witch’s hand and ripped it from Gabi’s chest, instinctive protective rage crushing her hand around Perchta’s fingers. The crunch and groan of bone shattering was satisfying as her witchcraft and her wand interpreted her will, breaking every damn bone in Perchta’s hand until it hung limp, incapable of hurting anyone else. Gabi slid to the steel floor.
All at once the strength and fury fled Joy and left her gasping, fumbling for the wall of the lift to stay upright as her wounds made themselves known again.
Peregrine exhaled a curse behind her, edging around her slumped body, and Joy lifted her heavy head to apologise, or ask for help, or beg him to get Gabi to the clinic, but his eyes were fixed on her hand, still clenched around Perchta’s shattered one. It was blue. Fear skittered through her, rocking her stomach and clenching her throat, as she stared at her own hand. Her fingers, her palm, the back of her hand, all blue. Icy, pale, unnatural blue. Not glowing, not veins of colour, but flat and cold as if her skin colour itself had changed. As if her hand was made of chalcedony or sea glass.
Even in pain, as if guided by something apart from herself, instinct or a guiding presence, Joy lifted her hand and touched Perchta’s throat, at the base of her neck. Her hand pulsed, once, a brighter flare of blue, deeper than the cool sky colour of her skin. Joy caught her breath, about to be sick as Perchta’s rotted skin changed. Veins went deep blue-black all the way along Perchta’s arms and neck, up to her face, and under her clothes, maybe along the rest of her body. Joy stumbled away, that guiding hand releasing her, and vomited.
“What the hell?” Peregrine touched her shoulder, but she recoiled. “Joy, what the hell?”
She just shook her head. She didn’t know. Shedidn’t know.A sob wrecked her breathing. A terror so unlike anything she’d ever felt before pushed into every part of her, set her hands shaking, her legs quivering. She was suddenly, abruptly, sure that hurting Perchta had ruined something inside her, altered her forever. And worse, there was no darkening of the veins along her arms, no slowing of her blood flow. The undeniable, always-present signs of raw witchcraft. Without those dark veins … what was this? Something Perchta had done or something within Joy herself? Every breath was shallower, her head beginning to swim, as she backed away.
Peregrine pushed into the lift and while Perchta was still immobilised, while Joy was staring, stunned and horrified, at the blue skin—of not just the hand that had crushed Perchta’s butboth hands—he scooped Gabi easily into his arms, her head hanging over his arm, hair trailing.
Joy couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, as Peregrine carried Gabi—carried his sister—around the paralysed witch and into the tentative safety of the hallway beyond, as he set her down and came back for Joy.
“Joy,” Peregrine’s voice was gentle. Why? What she had done … her hands … whatwasshe? Using raw witchcraft was one thing, documented and understood, but Joy had never heard of this. This was … she was…
“Joy?”
She shook her head, kept shaking it, her hands trembling violently at her sides until her wand was a blur and she almost dropped it. The blood from her reopened stomach wounds had reached her legs, her knees. Was that why she felt weak, dizzy? Or was that … whatever had been done to her? The blue fingers? She looked at them now and—they were lighter, more like her own porcelain tone, barely an icy hue. What washappeningto her? Joy stared at her hands, feeling like they’d betrayed her.
Peregrine moved closer, squeezed her shoulder. “Not here. Keep it together until we’re out of this place. Wait until—what the hell?”
Joy couldn’t take anything else. Movement flashed in the corner of her eye and Joy panicked. Disregarding her injuries and her pain, she scrambled out of the lift. She collapsed a few steps away, breathing fast, her head turned to watch Gabi beside her. She was unconscious on the floor, breathing jaggedly. They needed to get her to Mrs. Stone, to the other healers, but Joy was shaking too hard, and once she’d squeezed her eyes shut, they wouldn’t open.
The sounds that met Joy’s ears didn’t make sense. A woman crying huge, shuddering sobs. And then a familiar voice asking, “Where is it?” Joy locked her body against a shudder. That voice … Katrina’s voice … Joy had no choice but to open her eyes.
Peregrine had positioned himself in front of her and Gabi, protecting them, but Perchta hadn’t moved. She knelt in the open lift, her skin pink again, her hair white and sleek, not cobweb strands. No lethal needle teeth, no blood-streaked claws and elongated fingers, no painfully thin limbs. The tan suit, the blouse, the high blush and pretty features, all of them were back.
Joy stared, her mouth hanging open, as Perchta cried to herself, “Where’s my power? Where is it?”
Joy couldn’t deal with this. Gabi needed a healer; that was all that mattered. So she got to her feet with Peregrine’s help and leaned on him as he once again pulled Gabi into his arms, following him up the staircase and leaving Perchta on her knees in the lift, weeping.
Joy’s stomach poured more blood down her front and her vision swam, dizziness claiming her entirely, but images were playing on a loop in her mind: Perchta’s claws deep in Gabi’s chest, the wound torn between her breasts, the blood seeping steadily to the ground. Joy gripped Peregrine with white fingers and dragged her legs up two floors, the world swimming, weakness batting her back with every step, her muscles fighting her the whole way. But they reached the ground floor and stumbled through the lobby and staggered between the stone pillars outside.
