Rose’s grin of triumph turned into narrow-eyed alarm at Lena’s face. Jackson got the door open and Rose ushered the girls out ahead of Lena.
When Lena entered the hallway, she kept going, moving through and past them. She had to get as far away from the combined angry, confused, and excited male energy in the room behind her as she could.
She could feel Alex behind her, moving up fast. “Lena, stop.”
“I can’t,” she gasped out, “I have to get away. It’s too much energy.”
“Let me help you!”
Her feet couldn’t get her away fast enough. She’d cut it too close. The energy was inside of her now, building, burning into her own Dust, and she didn’t know what to do. How did she get it out? Not even grounding could make this go away. She’d be fried, if she even made it all the way to the Grounding Pad. Her heart throbbed in her chest, the panicked beat of it hard and fast in her ears as she built to overload. Heat flared across her cheeks. Cold sweat ran down her spine.
She couldn’t make sense of the sound of a scuffle behind her.
“Get back with them, dammit,” Rose shouted. “You’re part of the problem!”
The other woman appeared beside her.
Lena cringed away, hitting the wall. She didn’t know what would happen to Rose if she touched her.
“Look at me.” Rose stood before her, calm and certain. “You are my match. Remember? We were meant to be paired. You don’t know what it means, but I do. Let me help you.” The woman reached out for her.
Lena focused on her hands. Rose’s hands shook.
“You have to share it, Rose, like you’ve seen us do in the lab.” Phoebe’s urgent voice floated down the hall. “But don’t try to take it all. Hers is too much.”
Rose grasped Lena’s hands. “Let me help. Let it go.” Rose said more, indistinct noise.
Lena gasped for air. The small, ineffectual breaths sounded like crashing in her ears but did nothing to feed her body oxygen. The energy spiraled around her, coursing in.
Rose’s fingers, clamped onto hers, were intertwined and white with pressure. Rose dropped to her knees to get Lena’s attention. She looked up into Lena’s face, her mouth moving, eyes urgent.
If she released it, if she gave it to Rose, she’d kill her. Rose was strong, but she wasn’t used to doing what Lena did. Could Lena control it? Could she let the excess energy bleed out into the other woman little by little, enough for Lena to regain control? Lena’s head rocked back against the wall and she squeezed her eyelids shut, holding back with everything she had.
Control it. Control it.
She opened herself to the connection.
Chapter 24
Lena’s head rested on her curled arms. She fought nausea and the mother of all headaches at a desk in the small room Alex had hurriedly opened for them. They’d told her Jackson stood guard outside as the Wards and Guardians leaving the auditorium streamed past. Lena could still feel their energy buffeting her like a wind through a canyon. It slowed as their massed numbers dropped.
She would never again allow herself to be trapped in an area with a large group of powerful Sparks. Small groups, she told herself. Small groups only.
Rose paced, back and forth, back and forth.
The girls and Alex were lined up against the wall, avoiding the static discharges still crackling between Lena and Rose. The girls giggled at Rose’s manic energy.
“Is this what it feels like to be you, all the time?” Rose asked again.
It was possibly the tenth time. She waited for the corollary question.
“Is this what it will feel like to be me?”
And there it was. One of the twins murmured a number. It set off a cascade of muffled laughter.
Lena took a deep breath, coughed back the nausea, and lifted her head. She squinted across the room at them.
She was acutely aware of Alex’s concern.
He shifted, watching her carefully. “How’re you feeling?”
“Pretty shitty. How close did I come to blowing everything up?”
“Pretty close. Let’s try to make sure that doesn’t happen again, okay?”
She nodded. “Okay.” She allowed her gaze to follow Rose for a few seconds before her stomach heaved at the constant motion. “Is she glowing?”
He frowned. “It’s more like a corona. And it’s fading fast.” He assessed Lena. “You’ve stopped glowing.”
She processed that. She couldn’t make heads or tails of it right now. Her head felt like someone had driven a spike from the base of her neck up at an angle into her brain.
She squinted at the girls. “How are you all doing?”
Marissa, leaning comfortably against Alex’s leg, popped her thumb out of her mouth long enough to smile at Lena. Charity and Constance grinned across at her for a moment, and then returned to tracking Rose’s movements. Phoebe and Marin murmured that they were all fine.
Hania cleared her throat. “You shouldn’t worry about us. You get better.”