Every other day(83)

Or at least, as safe as any place inside these gates could be.

How does the government not know about this place? I wondered. The simplest answer was probably that they did—or that they’d chosen not to. I consciously sidestepped that thought as we came up to the door. I was on the verge of kicking it in when it opened, and I found myself inches away from the one kind of adversary about whom my instincts had absolutely nothing to say.

Humans.

Even in the dim light of the evening, I recognized Rena’s lackeys from the school, and they recognized me. The fact that I was walking around when they’d left me for dead on the side of the road seemed like the kind of thing their type would take as an insult, but their faces remained completely impassive.

They didn’t draw their weapons.

They didn’t say a word.

They just waited.

That was when I noticed the light glow to the air.

“Fireflies,” Skylar said, thoroughly bewitched.

Not fireflies, I thought.

“Don’t look at it,” I ordered. Skylar smiled and tilted her head to the side. She walked right past me. I grabbed for her arm, but she pulled out of my grasp, following the tiny ball of light.

Beside me, I could feel Elliot and Bethany going slack, the tension melting out of their bodies as they took in the tiny dancing lights.

“They won’t remember a thing tomorrow,” one of the men in front of me commented. “Where they were, what happened … all they’ll remember are the lights.”

I cast my eyes downward, trying not to look directly at them myself.

Will-o’-the-wisps weren’t deadly. They didn’t feed on human flesh. They just confused people, led them off the path, made them feel like everything was all right, when it was anything but.

Even with my eyes cast downward, I could see Skylar tiptoeing farther and farther away.

“Skylar,” I said sharply, lifting my eyes to hers.

She tilted her head to the side and smiled. “Pretty.”

I could feel the magic working its way into my system, but I shook it off.

I wasn’t safe.

These lights weren’t pretty.

I shouldn’t follow them.…

“Well,” one of the men said. “Aren’t you going to help your friend?”

Turning your back on an enemy was always a mistake. Always. But Skylar was getting farther and farther away. Making a split-second decision, I turned and was halfway to her, my body blurring with inhuman speed, when one of the men I’d left behind drew his gun.

He took aim and fired.

Not at me.

Not at Skylar.

At her feet. I was fast, but the bullet was faster. It hit the dirt. I ran toward Skylar, ran toward her with everything I had, but my mind was still gummy from the will-o’-the-wisps, and the man in the suit had known exactly where to aim.

Undetonated mines.

I heard the explosion before I saw it. Flames lit up the night sky, and the force of it sent me flying backward—away from Skylar.

From what was left of her.

As I lay there on the ground, the smell of charred flesh told me that this time, Skylar wasn’t—couldn’t—be playing. Tears stung my eyes until the only thing I could see was the memory of her face the second before the mine detonated, the expression on her childlike features.

Bliss.





“Lay down your weapons, come with us, and no one else has to die.” The man’s voice was soulless and calm, as he aimed his gun at Elliot and Beth, and that was when I realized—

They’d killed Skylar to make a point. To make me malleable. To hurt me.

No.

Rage was a physical thing. It washed over my body until I was drowning in it, bubbled up from inside of me, like a volcano ready to explode. Inside and outside, hot and cold, it was everywhere, absolute.

I breathed it in, and I breathed it out. I swallowed the full force of it whole, because the alternative was giving into something else, that tiny voice in the back of my head that said that Skylar was …

No.

I tore my eyes away from the body that didn’t even look like her, not anymore, and I gave myself over to fury.

Blessed fury.

My eyes narrowed into slits. My fingers curled to claws. The man who’d killed Skylar must have sensed the danger, because he turned his gun from Bethany and Elliot to me.

I was on him in an instant.

He went down, hard, and his gun clattered down the hallway like a rock skipping across water. I could have snapped his neck like a twig, a Popsicle stick, a toothpick.

But I didn’t.

I straddled his body and backhanded him. I felt the crack of his cheekbone. I smelled his blood.

Beside us, his partner attempted to jab me with some sort of Taser. I reached back, grabbed him by the wrist and snapped it, angling the weapon back at his chest, his torso.