Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

Green smoke whooshed , spinning around me in a noisy, breath-taking whirlwind.

With the wind tearing at my clothes and hair, I grabbed Victor’s bound hands and slipped the anti-ward ring onto a finger. “I do,” I quipped, but probably shouldn’t have when the green smoke spun me up in its vortex, stealing the remaining air from my lungs and lashing my skin with invisible claws.

Green eyes burned in the whirlwind. I tasted sand, and heat, and felt those claws sink inside. But under all the burning pain, those eyes seemed... familiar. And sad.

The green smoky whirlwind suddenly withdrew, washing off, leaving me gasping for air and my skin on fire. Victor stood with the clamshell cage open, vacuuming up whatever the smoky creature had been. He clapped the clamshell shut. “Adam?!” Panic fractured his voice.

He couldn’t see me.

“Adam, answer me!”

Maybe being invisible wasn’t helping anyone, especially as I’d begun to feel less than well. Clinging to the worktop, I pulled off my ring. Victor’s arms instantly swooped around me, holding me up. His powerful voice rumbled in my ear, telling me everything was going to be alright. I believed him. I had to. He said it so it was true. And this blood on my shirt didn’t matter. Whose blood was it anyway?

“Damn you, Agatha!” Victor’s growl rumbled with power. “You think me weak? You think we’re weak? You have no idea the depths from which we have climbed to get here, or the lengths we will go to for each other.”

“Victor, you are all bark and no?—”

Snap .

I’d felt him let me go—enough to grab the workbench counter so I didn’t collapse in a heap—but I didn’t see him leave my side, just the result of it.

Agatha continued to stand by the workbench. She wore the same smile she had a moment ago. But her head was bent at a right angle to her neck.

I’d heard the crack, knew what he’d done, but it didn’t seem possible. One moment she’d been talking and the next—snap. Broken neck. Dead.

Her lifeless body teetered and crumpled in a very unfaelike heap on the floor.

“Adam, you’re bleeding. I have to get you out of here.”

“Where’s Jimmy?” Why did my own voice sound so far away?

“I don’t know.” Victor’s bespelling silvery eyes locked onto mine. “He vanished into a vent when Agatha appeared. Can you stand?”

“Is she dead?”

“Very . . . Adam?”

Gideon Cain wasn’t going to like that—or any of this. Good.

I tried to get my feet under me, but they didn’t seem to be cooperating, and flopped, dropping me into Victor’s arms again. “I don’t think my body is working right.”

“You’re losing blood.”

“It’s fine.” I tried to wave him off but my hand blurred across my vision. “I’ll heal any second now.”

Victor cupped my face and made sure I couldn’t look anywhere but deep into his eyes. “No, Adam. You won’t.”

Oh dear. Was I dying again? Did all humans die so easily? How did they get through each day without dying all over the place?

Victor scooped me off my feet, cradling me against his chest where it was warm and safe. I could stay there a while, maybe close my eyes... But we’d come here for a reason, and it wasn’t over... Why was it so hard to think? What had we forgotten?

“The magic bean—bead!”

“Not here,” he said. “Close your eyes and hold on. I’m going to move at speed.”

I nodded, and buried my face against his chest. At speed jerked my insides, almost making them my outsides, and stole all the air available to breathe. The sudden rush was over as quickly as it had begun, and we were back outside beside the Love Wagon and a whole bunch of noisy gremlins.

“Tadah!” Little Jimmy said in his deep, drumming timber of a voice.

He held up a shining gold bauble that had to be the locket we’d been looking for. I gave him my thumbs up, but his little face fell, and all the gremlins went very, very still.

Victor laid me in the back of the van, and all the little gremlin faces gathered around. “I’m okay, guys,” I mumbled. “Just a bit cold.” Why was it so cold?

“It’s about fucking time, there’s only so many renditions of fuckin’ “Spicy Margarita” I can do before the vampires?—”

“Demon, drive ,” Victor growled, cutting Zee off.

“Oh fuck! Adam?! He’s bleeding! Why’s he bleeding?! Why didn’t he stay in the van?!”

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, shivering. Why were thirty pairs of gremlin eyes staring at me?

“Zodiac,” Victor snapped, his voice like thunder. “Drive this van to the nearest hospital, immediately, unless you can carry him quicker?”

“No, I . . . can’t fly.” Zee’s voice wobbled. “My wing . . . Adam?”

“Then drive!”

Doors slammed. The van rocked. Its rattling engines roared. Then we were racing through the dark, and I watched the pretty stars through the window slide by, wondering if I’d ever get to fly under them again.