“No. But I get the feeling this isn’t optional.” Worry clouded his features again.
I kissed the wrinkles on his brow. “It’ll work.” It had to.
He pursed his lips and huffed through his nose, unhappy, but still he nodded and put on the spectacles.
Magic was happening, even though you couldn’t see it directly. The temperature dropped, and my breath turned to foggy mist in front of me. There was a crackling and tinkling sound, like when you swish a drink with ice cubes. I could see Kato’s eyes focused intently through the lenses. His lips quivered, and a bead of sweat rolled down the side of his face, then froze before it could drip off.
The rainbow faded from view.
Rexi took a tentative step. “Did it work? Are the barriers gone?”
I took a deep breath and steadied myself. “Let’s find out.” I walked toward the bright green patch of clover that marked the leprechaun’s final resting place.
“Wait!” Kato protested.
I’d left out my part of the plan on purpose because I knew Kato wouldn’t go along with it if he knew that I was going to be the one to test the barrier. But I couldn’t ask any of them to risk their lives for my crazy idea.
There were more cracking sounds ahead of me. I called back to Kato. “Focus only on the ice. If you don’t, I’ll get zapped and soggy.”
He set his jaw and stared ahead with a single-minded purpose.
I needed to make sure it was safe for Rexi to cross. That meant I needed to stretch my hand across where the barrier should be but hopefully wasn’t. I stuck out my arm and inched forward. Then a little more. When I was ten paces past the clover patch without getting electrocuted, I finally exhaled the breath I’d been holding. It was probably safe to call for Rexi.
To the side of me, there was a shimmer in front of a tree. My eyes refused to focus on the glitter, blurring the outlines of the bark. A seam of light formed a door in the trunk of the tree, and out stepped a tall, thin man. He had a hard gleam in his eyes that matched the razor-sharp, rainbow-colored tips of his Mohawk. His face and body were dotted with metal spikes and balls that hooked through and pierced his multicolored skin. With a name like Rainbow Sprite, I had been expecting a small, winged, fragile creature, not the sharp and very angry man in front of me.
Hydra remembered her role just in time. She tossed her head at the sprite, and he, acting on instinct, put his hands out in front of him to catch the projectile. When Verte told me to use my head, I don’t think this was what she’d had in mind. The sprite didn’t expect it either though, and so, understandably surprised at holding a head in his hands, he didn’t pay attention to where he put his fingers. Hydra bit him. And her teeth were wicked sharp.
The sprite yelled in pain and tossed Hydra’s head away from him. Hydra yelled as her head flew past me. I yelled for Rexi to run and for Kato to let go of the spring. Kato yelled at me to watch out.
The sprite stopped yelling when a stormball crashed into his back.
A lot of things happened at once. I saw Griz, the Tinman, and a few demon puppies on the other side of the clearing. The spring became visible between us even before the sprite hit the ground. Kato released his control of the ice magic, allowing the water to move again, spitting droplets of disenchantment. I ran as fast as I could, but some still landed on me. It felt like I was being stabbed in the head with a pickax.
I made it to Kato and looked back at Griz. She was throwing stormballs, but when they hit the water, the balls dissolved. She couldn’t attack or come any closer with the water between us. The same applied to me; I couldn’t blast her with emerald flame and I couldn’t get any closer either.
When I had played chess with Verte, she’d called something like this a stalemate. But I still had a pawn on the board. Rexi stood at the edge of the clearing, doing her best impression of Pinocchio before he came to life. I couldn’t even see her breathing, she was so terrified.
Come on, come on. Move. I willed it silently because, if I called out to her, it would draw Griz’s attention.
Finally, Rexi took one step. Then another. I could see the bulge of the star in her pocket. If she would have ran, she might have gotten rid of it before Griz noticed her. But she kept advancing slowly, and Griz and I both watched in complete silence.
Rexi made it within throwing distance of the spring and stuck her hand in her pocket. But instead of pulling out the star and tossing it in, she turned and looked at me. Her face had droplets of water running down it and maybe a few tears. Her eyes were wide with sadness. She opened her mouth to speak but closed it again without uttering a sound.
Then she dropped her head and kept walking.
To Griz.
“In the end, it was her or me. I chose me.”
—Hans, quoted from Candy Kills about his decision to leave his sister in the cottage
34
Gone with the Storm