Stock turns slowly toward me again, his hands still extended.
“You kill me, and you never get out,” I say flatly. “I’m the only thing that can release us.”
Then I lean a little bit on the side of the glass box, which already hangs a couple inches over the balcony. It creaks a bit, shuffles forward, farther off the edge. “What are you doing? STOP!”
“Got very little to lose right now, Stock. I need you to tell me you’re with us.”
“You lost your mind?!”
In response, I shove the glass box forward a couple inches more, push us that much farther over the edge.
Stock folds into the opposite corner, throwing his weight back onto the balcony. “Enough!”
The fear is squeezing my throat closed, and instinct is clawing at my insides, roaring to push us back to safe ground and release the spell’s hold. But I can’t. This is it. They’re all counting on you. Grace, Billy, Ral, Ruby, and Ben—
I glance below to the atrium floor, to where Tommy and Rose are firing hopeless bolts of light toward our glass box. But deep down, I know as fiercely as I know my own mother, nothing can break it. Nothing can touch us, not when we’re bound by my sacrifice. The magic will keep us caged inside. “Tell me you’re with us or this entire box goes crashing to the ground.”
Stock closes his eyes. “Fuck, Joan, I’m with you.”
“Swear on your life. On your family’s life,” I say, taking another step, pushing the glass box forward another inch. The glass cage gives a little stutter and shake, like it’s balancing on a blade.
“Yes, devil woman!”
“Swear it.”
“Goddamn it, I swear on my life, my family—my magic, on whatever you want.” His voice cracks.
“Tell them.” I nod below.
Stock looks below him. Tommy and Rose won’t be able to hear him, but Stock points to me and then interweaves his fingers. When Tommy and Rose shake their heads, confused, Stock grabs my hand and shakes. I watch as the Carolina Boy, James, looks guardedly at Tommy and Rose, and then runs across the atrium to conjure a way out.
“I promise you, Kendrick,” Stock says. “Now get me the hell out of here.”
I raise my arms. “Release.” The blood-smeared glass disintegrates. The entire glass cage manipulation whips into a magic wind and swirls into nothing.
Stock shoots me a fearful, disgusted look as the two of us stare each other down on the balcony. “I’ve never seen anything like that.” He gulps. “What did you do?”
“What I had to. Come on.” Without another word, I head down the bridge, Stock trailing me as we approach Tommy and Rose on the floor.
“What’s going on?” Tommy says.
Rose eyes me up and down suspiciously, says to Stock, “Thought you were going to finish this Southern belle.”
“Change of plans,” Stock says as he looks at me guiltily, fearfully. “Kendrick and I had a little heart-to-heart. She won me over.”
I ignore Rose’s narrowed eyes and point toward the door I used to get into the atrium. “We need to get the rest of my team. Through there—I linked the door as an escape. Where are Gavin’s boys?”
“They’re searching for the rest of yours,” Tommy says.
“Follow me.” I thrust open my spellbound door, scramble through it—
And then instantly, through my linked trick, we’re all plunged headfirst into the trapdoor that leads into my team’s crawl space. The four of us force our way into the cramped sanctuary, right beside Ral, Grace, and Billy.
“My God, you did it,” Ral breathes out, as Billy cuts in with, “About time.”
Grace throws her arms around me, gives a deep gasp of relief. “Thank God.”
“Can you get us out of here?” Ral asks Stock, as I pull back from Grace.
Stock nods. “Rose made a magic link,” he says. “Show them.”
“It’s a ‘divide and seek to be completed’ charm, a version of a linked trick,” Rose says proudly, as she pulls out a ripped bottom half of a cigarette box. “You take an object, divide it in half, and the two sides are charmed like magnets to come back together. So you use one half”—she waves her half of the cigarette box as evidence—“to find the other like a compass. And the other half of this is lodged around the doorknob of the door to the clearing.”
“Clever.” Ral nods. “All right, lead the way.”
We climb out of the trap, the six of us trailing Rose, as she holds her charm out in front of her. The charmed box pulls us through Ral’s hallway, and back to the original hall. Rose walks down it slowly, and then stops walking, turns to her left to face the white wall.