“Grab Felix, and tell him to get Deah!” I yelled. “Press yourselves up against the side!”
Devon nodded and did as I asked. With one hand, he reached out and touched Felix, so that Felix would know where he was. Then, Devon wrapped his arm around me, shielding me with his body and pulling us both up as close to the wall as he could get. On his other side, Felix did the same thing with Deah.
By this point, it seemed as though the entire river was boiling at our feet, the water frothing and foaming like a science experiment volcano that was about to explode. Wave after wave of water dashed against us, soaking us from head to toe. Despite the day’s heat, the river was cold enough to make me shiver and I had to press my teeth together to keep them from chattering.
Despite the constant cascades of water, I peered over my shoulder, looking back toward the river. The others didn’t have my sight magic, so they didn’t see the pair of enormous eyes that glowed a bright, vivid, sapphire blue out in the center of the water, or how the lochness lashed out again and again at the Draconi guards with its thick, strong tentacles.
But I could see it all as clear as day, and it chilled me far more than the water did, even though the lochness was only protecting us as I’d asked it to. Maybe Seleste was right. Maybe I’d paid enough tolls for the lochness to think of me as a sort of pet, the way I did it. Or maybe the monster really was my friend, for whatever reason.
The lochness’s attack seemed to go on forever, although it couldn’t have lasted much longer than a couple of minutes. But the Draconi guards must have finally retreated out of the monster’s reach because the tentacles slid beneath the surface of the water, and the river slowly calmed until the current was as soft and steady as before.
Under the bridge, in the blackness, the four of us remained still and frozen, barely daring to breathe, much less move.
Finally, I heard the steady thud-thud-thud-thud of boots smacking against stone, as though someone were pacing back and forth along the street above us.
“They have to be dead.” Blake’s voice drifted down to me. “No one could have survived that. Not down there so close to the river. The other cars have come. Let’s get out of here before that, that thing decides to attack us again.”
The remaining guards quickly chimed in with their own murmurs of agreement, wanting to get away from the bridge and the lochness as fast as possible. More footsteps slapped against the street, and car doors slammed shut one after another. A few seconds later, the crunch-crunch-crunch of tires sounded, and several vehicles drove away, the rumbles of their engines fading to nothingness.
Slowly, the four of us relaxed, although we still didn’t move from our spots under the bridge.
Behind me, Devon shifted.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Something’s digging into my back,” he muttered.
“Mine too,” Felix chimed in. “Do you think it’s safe for us to move now?”
I stared out over the river, but I didn’t see the lochness’s tentacles or its blue eyes. “I think it’s gone . . . for now. Besides, we can’t stay here all night.”
I stepped away from Devon, and he pushed away from the wall. Beside him, Deah and Felix did the same thing. Devon and I had managed to hang on to our stolen swords, Deah still had her own weapon, and we all raised them back up, ready for another attack, while Felix fished his phone out of his pants pocket. It still worked and he used the screen as a flashlight and held it up to the wall.
Coins had been driven deep into the stone, all of them in neat rows, stretching from the bottom of the wall all the way up to the top and then across the underside of the bridge over our heads. Quarters, mostly, with some nickels and dimes mixed in. But no pennies. I guess the lochness preferred the way the silver shined, since all the coins gleamed as though they had just been polished.
At first, I didn’t see any order to the rows, but then I realized that symbols had been scratched beside some of them—vines, flowers, trees, and more, many of them looking like Family crests—almost as if the lochness had used the coins like a kid with a piece of chalk.
“The lochness,” I whispered, pointing to the symbols. “It looks like it actually keeps track of who pays its toll.”
The others squinted, but they didn’t have my sight magic, so they couldn’t see the faint marks, not even with the light from Felix’s phone. But the longer I looked at the symbols, the more I noticed that one kept appearing over and over again—a five-pointed star.