Instinctively, I rose and threw myself against the wall next to the front door, panting. I could hear shouts outside, but I couldn’t make out the words or voices—there was music playing somewhere in the house, and still plenty of screaming. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths, and concentrated on my radius. This was it, my first real test. I felt for the edges of my circle. It took longer than it had before, but eventually I was able to hold it all in my mind. I breathed in, breathed out, and thought expand.
And then all hell broke loose, because the first thing my circle found on the porch was Kirsten.
The second I felt her, I opened my eyes and dropped the expansion, but it was too late. I stepped awkwardly over Kevin’s body and burst onto the porch just as Jesse began firing at Olivia.
I took it all in in an instant. I’d made the wrong call. Olivia must have been on the porch when Kirsten came running out. The witch had managed to hold Olivia in place with a spell while Jesse advanced on her from the street, presumably to try to put handcuffs on her until I arrived. When I’d expanded my radius, I had killed Kirsten’s magic and cut the cord holding Olivia still. And the first thing the vampire had done was race farther away from me—and straight toward Jesse.
“The heart,” I screamed. “Shoot the heart!” Jesse’s face was frozen in concentration as he emptied his gun at the vampire—but she was too fast. She veered away from her direct course toward Jesse, and I saw bits of skin explode on her arms, her abdomen, her thigh. She had reached the line of cars when his gun clicked empty, and Olivia paused, a wicked smirk spreading across her face. Why was she pausing? Jesse moved to reload, and Kirsten started toward Olivia, probably trying to get far enough away from me to freeze Olivia again. I tensed to throw myself backward to get Kirsten out of my radius faster, but Olivia’s face changed again, and her hand moved into the nylon jacket she was wearing.
And I just…knew what she would do. Somehow.
“No!” I screamed, and lurched forward again. And as fast as everything had happened up until then, it sped up even more. I took the two steps it took to close the gap between Kirsten and me, and I grabbed at her roughly, getting a handful of her hair and one shoulder. I pulled her backward with everything I had, moving around her left side to cover her just as Olivia began firing the gun she’d pulled from the jacket. I heard two bursts, and in the same instant my back seemed to explode, and I was on the ground with Kirsten under me.
“Scarlett!” Jesse screamed, and everything went spacey for a moment. I hadn’t had the wind knocked out of me since I was a little kid on the playground, but I recognized the sickly frozen feeling as though it had been yesterday. Seconds passed, or maybe minutes. I heard the police sirens wailing toward us, and then Jesse was rolling me over, off of Kirsten. I was gulping for air, unable to do too much to help him move me—but as I finally flopped onto the ground I could feel the horrible lifelessness of Kirsten’s body.
“Olivia’s gone?” I gasped. My back ached with an agonizing, rippling pain that made it hard to think. I stayed where I was, with it pressed into the cool ground. Jesse nodded. “And Kirsten?” Jesse was frantically pushing loose strands of hair away from my eyes so he could search my face. As though there might be pieces missing. “I’m fine, check her,” I managed to say to Jesse. He ignored me until I added. “It hit the vest.” I wiggled a little so my back wasn’t against the ground. I’d never been shot before, but it felt like a major-league pitcher had fired a baseball into the muscles next to my spine.
Jesse met my eyes again and nodded quickly, shifting his attention to the witch next to us. I stared at the streetlight for a second, rejoicing in my now-working lungs, until Jesse reported, “She’s been shot in the side. I can’t tell how bad, but the ambulance will be here soon. She bumped her head when you tackled her, but it doesn’t look too bad. Maybe a minor concussion.”
“Is she gonna live?” I asked, panicked.
“I think so,” he said, using his professional cop voice. “But you need to stay calm. You did everything you could.”
“I should have come running around the outside of the house instead of running through it.”
Jesse gave me a sharp look. “And you were supposed to know that how? Olivia shot Kirsten, Scarlett. Not you. You took a bullet for her.”
I managed to roll myself over, onto all fours. I dug my cell phone out of my pocket and checked the screen. The little LCD face had a crack through it, but when I started pushing buttons everything else seemed to work fine. Beside me, Jesse was applying pressure to the bullet hole on Kirsten’s side. Blood covered his hands and stained the torso of her beautiful gown. It seemed like a really good time to call Dashiell.
He picked up immediately. “What’s happened? Did you get them?”
“No.” I told him about Olivia showing up at the party instead of the witch. “She brought a gun; she was prepared in case I showed up. Dashiell, you’ve gotta get people over here to press minds,” I said. “There’s a dead body, and Kirsten’s been shot, and some other witches may have been hurt, and the police are gonna be here in a second—”
“Scarlett, you’re babbling,” he said with exaggerated patience. “Don’t worry about Kirsten. I’ll come myself.”
I sighed with relief. That was kind of what I’d been hoping for. Dashiell was arrogant, pushy, and controlling, but this was exactly the kind of situation that made me glad to have him around. “Thank you.”
“I’ll talk to you more when I arrive. For now, just don’t say anything to the police.” He hung up.
I looked over at Jesse. “Dashiell’s on his way,” I said—thus speaking to the police. Then I groaned. “Oh, shit.”
He looked up from Kirsten in alarm. “What? Are you hurt somewhere else?”
“She shot Molly’s sweater. Molly is gonna kill me.”
He looked at me, and we both sort of…giggled. Before I could say anything else, though, three police cars came screaming up to the house, and I froze. I’d seen this in the movies a thousand times, but it was still kind of terrifying when you were the one lit up in the headlights. “Just be still,” Jesse murmured. “Keep your hands visible.”