So much for making things right and reversing the hook. So much for spells.
They couldn’t be counted on when it mattered. Spells would always find a way to trick you, to use your weaknesses against you, to come up with the ugliest possible solution to your problem. They were blunt instruments—but then again so were planks and flames. Fists and hammers. So were words and kisses.
Cal held the yellow flame of the Zippo far from his body. It came closer, a tiny sun, and I had to close my eyes.
“What’s in the bag?” Cal asked.
He held the Zippo a foot from Kay’s head, which was soaked in lighter fluid. I smelled barbecues and bonfires. Burned flesh.
If I ran I knew I’d trip and fall and get lost in the store before finding the door to the outside. I knew the place would burn down with me and Diana and everyone else in it.
Cal looked at my dancing spell, lying on the floor where Kay must’ve dropped it.
“It’s—it’s a spell,” I said.
Kay raised an arm and pushed the bag toward him.
“What does it do?” Cal asked.
“It’ll make you forget,” I said more steadily. “Like I forgot Win.”
He picked up the bag. Something flashed from the depths of his dead, blank eyes. Something alive—something that hurt—a flash of the person Cal had been, trying to claw its way out.
He blinked at the spell. The bright hot room lit up his face and the hope and desire and anger and fear in it.
Get ready.
I looked for Echo, and she was kneeling over something in the corner, muttering to herself.
Diana’s mouth moved, and she shook the chain link.
Kay turned her head and managed to half roll over to watch.
Tears streamed down Cal’s face. No longer a terrifying blank but broken, in agony and relief. He opened the bag and emptied most of the contents into his mouth. Chewed and swallowed.
A beat of silence, the Zippo still lit in one hand.
He made a strangled noise and his expression twisted. “What the hell . . .” He turned and crashed into something. “What did you—this isn’t—”
I ran to him, slipping on the lighter fluid. I landed hard on my knee and it twisted beneath me. Something snapped. Pain shot up my thigh to my back, but I dragged myself up and threw my entire body at Cal, knocking him down. I dug my knees, even the one that felt loose and shaking with pain, into his back.
There was a whoosh, and fire burst from the spot where he’d been standing. He had been holding the lighter—it was a live flame. Markos was still unconscious. Kay could barely turn over. Diana was locked behind the cage. We would burn up quickly from the fluid in our clothes and hair and mouths.
An easy way for Echo’s mom’s hook to eliminate the threat of Echo leaving would be for it to kill us all.
Echo—where was Echo?
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers ..................................................................
Breathe in.
Heat and fire. A table saw caught on fire, then a stack of plywood. Flames licked the sides of my head and chest and legs, but I couldn’t move.
Breathe out.
Diana tried to reach me. I could hear her crying. I opened my eyes.
She wanted to pull me away from the flames. She pressed the fire out on her side of the cage with her shirt. The room brightened like we were back at the July third bonfire.
Breathe in.
My head hurt. Cal had hit me in the head. My brother.
Breathe out.
It was hot. So hot.
Breathe in.
Out of nowhere, the room chilled and darkened. The flames seemed to freeze in place. The air pounded with the heartbeat of a creature much larger than us. In the corner, a single spot of light revealed Echo with her arm raised over a scrap of paper. She’d pushed up her sleeve, ripped off one of many bandages, and torn at the skin until a cut oozed over the paper.
The room seemed to shudder and something flashed in the smoke above Echo’s head. She screamed, and a second later the room was as hot and bright as ever. Echo stuffed the paper, wet with blood, into her mouth and swallowed.
Breathe out.
“What did you do?” Ari asked Echo as she dug her knees into Cal’s back, pulling his arms together past where they would normally stretch.
Blinking took effort. The smoke stung. I wondered what Echo’s new spell was for, in a remote corner of my mind that wasn’t in pain on the floor about to burn to death.
Echo looked dazed for a moment, then she snapped into action. She ran to the chain link cage and ripped the lock off in one quick motion. Diana stumbled out, coughing from the smoke.
“You got him?” Echo said to Ari. Ari nodded, though when she stood, pulling Cal up with her, she could only put weight on one leg. Echo turned next to Markos, smothering the flames covering his chest with her long black coat and hoisting him easily onto her shoulder. She went straight for the door to the woodshop, with Ari limping and dragging a moaning Cal behind her, and Diana shuffling last. Away from me and this hellish room.