A hellish shriek rent the air, and Addie slumped over, her body aging rapidly before my eyes. Her lush blonde hair grew stringy and gray. Her skin turned sallow and shriveled into a thousand wrinkles. Her gorgeous figure shrunk, bending into her drab medieval dress and cape. Behind her, the self-perpetuating serpents began to deflate like damaged tires, dissolving into putrid lumps of ebony slime and ash on the floor.
Pure, unadulterated shock crossed Addie’s rapidly aging face. Her eyes became huge and buglike as she clutched at her throat. “What have ye done?”
“What someone should’ve done a long time ago.” I released Kenna’s fingers. This one I could handle on my own. Stepping forward, I balled my hand into a fist and punched the old woman smack in the face. “That’s for hurting Jamie!”
“And for calling me a sidekick!” Kenna added as the hag dropped to her knees and crumpled into a heap on the floor. Stripped of her wickedness, she appeared nothing more than a pathetic old woman. Innocuous, if not benign.
I stared at the miraculous ring on my finger, wondering how such an innocent-looking object could harness the power of the Almighty Protector of Doon—who somewhere along the way had become my guardian as well. I harbored no delusions that Kenna and I possessed latent superpowers; it’d simply taken an unwavering belief in the light to extinguish the dark.
Jamie rushed to my side and gathered me in his strong arms. I gratefully leaned into his solid warmth, clinging to him as fatigue washed through me. Being a warrior was seriously exhausting!
“How did ye know?” His voice was as gentle as I’d ever heard it, filled with wonder and something more intimate, meant only for me.
Leaning back, I searched his dark eyes. “Know what?”
“How did you know that you had to be willing to die to invoke the power of the substitution?”
“It was something the king—your father—said to me. That when the time came I’d have to be willing to make a sacrifice for your sake.” I lowered my head and then glanced at him from under my lashes, tapping the left side of my chest with two fingers. “It wasn’t a hard decision. I just followed my heart.”
CHAPTER 40
Mackenna
Just when I thought real life couldn’t get more theatrical, hag-Addie started to cackle again. Her hateful, brittle laugh scraped over me like dead branches in February. Vee spun in Jamie’s embrace just as Fergus and Duncan moved toward the witch with weapons drawn. But with a puff of wind, she … vanished.
The room went oddly silent as scenes flitted through my mind: the Phantom vanishing on Christine, Sondheim’s witch disappearing into the woods, the Wicked Witch of the West shrieking, “I’m melting!” That was always the end, right? There ought to have been music underscoring the moment so we could rejoice it was over and that we’d won.
Fergus kicked Addie’s empty cape with the tip of his boot. “She’s gone.”
When Vee started to frown, Jamie picked her up off her feet and twirled her in a circle. “Tha’s a good thing. Ye did it! You beat her.”
Over their whirling forms, I looked to Duncan for final confirmation. As he watched his brother and my best friend, he grinned, his smile equal parts smirky and awestruck. He brushed his dark hair back from his forehead so that it stuck up in those fantastic damp spikes. There was something so familiar—so comfortable and endearing—in the gesture, as if my heart had known him a lifetime. Our eyes locked. His velvet brown gaze radiated with expectancy that tugged at my soul.
The gossamer strands of a long-forgotten memory floated across my consciousness. Sunshine and summer heat. Someone standing on the Brig o’ Doon waiting for me. As I struggled to remember, a clock chimed from somewhere in the house. The melody of the bells pierced the thought and snapped me back to the present.
Duncan’s face grew pale, his smile slack. Heavy with shock, he murmured, “Midnight.”
With a gasp, Vee pushed out of Jamie’s arms to face me with round eyes. “Please tell me you set the clocks ahead.”
A couple of minutes. “Not enough.”