Page 17

"I’m okay."

"Your hands, kiddo."

I looked down. Gold was crawling up both forearms, bright enough to throw its own light onto the gravel. The pentagram on my forefinger was burning so hard my eyes watered.

I closed my fists to redirect the pain unsuccessfully. Of course, it wouldn’t go away. That's the joke my magic has been running on since the day it woke up. It comes when I'm furious and it leaves when I need it. Until that very moment it had never in its life come faster than it did looking at Sasha Airborne on her knees in the road.

"Byrne." Her voice was raw like she’s been screaming for days. She got one foot under her but slipped and toppled over. She didn't manage to stand up. "Byrne, you have to open the gate."

"Do I."

"There is something out here that I can’t see." Sasha groaned and got on her knees again. “I can feel it but cannot see it.”

"There are things on every road. It's a whole thing now, Sasha, there was a memo." I walked right up to the iron and put both hands on it. The wolf beside me shifted its weight to give me room without being asked. "What are you doing here?"

"Bleeding, mostly."

"Try again."

She laughed, and it turned into a cough that rattled her chest. She spat something onto the asphalt and looked at it with a kind of detached professional interest before lifting her head to look at me.

"Two years," she rasped. "Two years I've been sleeping in cars and motels that take cash and one very memorable barn. All because I put a video of you on the network and the covens decided I was the problem. Not you. Me." Her chin came up, and there it was. The old face, the one from the training hall, sharp and mean and above it all, even with her hair stuck to her head. "You destroyed a library and got a bounty. I filmed you and got erased. Funny world don’t you think?"

"You wanted me dead."

"I wanted you ruined." She got the other foot under her this time and stood, swaying. "There's a difference. You'd know it if you'd ever wanted something small. But no. There are no small humble things for a Byrne."

Behind me somebody growled. Ace, or Alex, or one of the wolves.

The wind came up off the lake and moved through the cut tree line. It sounded thin and wrong the way it had for eleven days while I ignored it. Under it, from somewhere back down that road in the dark, came the sound I'd heard on Davon's voicemail.

A great flock of birds taking off all at once.

Except no birds do that in the dark. And they don't do it in November. Birds don't get quieter as they come closer, which this did. Something that should be impossible. Something always true about anything that has ever tried to kill me.

Every wolf in vicinity turned to face the road.

"Open the gate," Sasha said again louder. This time the sharpness had drained out of her tone and what was underneath was so plain and so young it twisted something in my chest. "Hazel. Please. I've got nothing. I've got no coven, no house, no name, and a car in a ditch with the tank on empty. I drove here because a witch called Delores told me the only place in this country where the Council can't reach is behind this Alpha's fence."

Delores.

The High Priestess of Spain, whose life I'd saved in a ritual chamber while my grandmother tortured her. Who had watched me pin twelve of her colleagues to a wall and applauded, grinning from ear to ear, flashing bloodied teeth at me.

"Alex." I didn't turn around. I couldn’t look away from Sasha and the fear written plainly on her face. "It's your gate."

"It's my gate." He came up on my left, close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him. I have never in my life been so glad to have something enormous and deadly standing beside me. His mismatched eyes were fixed on the dark past the car when I glanced at his profile. "And that's my road. Whatever's coming up it is going to be on my land in about ninety seconds either way." He looked down at me. "So I'm going to ask you a question, kiddo, and I need the honest answer. Not the brave one."

"Ask."

"If I let her in, is she going to be safe here?"

And there it was.

Not is she dangerous. Not do you trust her. He wasn't asking me about Sasha Airborne at all. Alex Greywood had one hundred and six people behind him and a sanction letter in his back pocket. His own trees were cut down for a hundred yards in every direction, and he was standing at his own gate asking me whether he could safely open it, because the thing on the other side had once put me on the floor when I was a magicless child.

My magic was still lighting up my arms like a lantern.

"You're asking if I'm going to kill her?"