“How do we get in?” Hank anchored his fists on his hips. “There must be a way.”
There was, goddess help me, and I ran to find Bishop before it was too late.
Tisdale spotted me and tapped Bishop on the shoulder. He turned, saw me, and met me halfway.
Swallowing my fear, I asked, “Can you do what you do and get me in their circle?”
“Are you sure?” He found places other than me to look. “You want to risk it again?”
“Yes.” I glanced back, unsurprised to find Midas had followed me. “I’ll do anything to save him.”
“Hadley,” Midas said softly, so much love packed into two syllables it made my heart squeeze to hear it.
He extended his arm, his fingers within reach of my cheek, then his eyes rolled back in his head.
A cry of fear and outrage rose from a dozen yards away, and I knew Tisdale had fallen too.
The curse…
…it was striking at them through the circle, its focus was so powerful.
“Midas.” I fisted his shirt, but there was no time to pull on Ambrose for strength, and Midas’s weight fell on me. “Wake up.” We hit the dirt together. “Do you hear me?” I dragged him into my arms. “Wake up.”
A slight angling of his head toward me confirmed he could still hear me.
“You can’t die on me now. I haven’t seen you in Spock ears. You owe me that much.”
The heavy rise and fall of his chest was his only response.
“Hadley.” Bishop rested a hand on my shoulder. “We have to go.”
“I can’t leave him.” Tears stung my eyes. “He’s… He’s…”
The word hung in my throat, kept me from swallowing, and it cut me each time I tried.
“You can save them.” Bishop dug in his fingers. “But you can’t do it from here.”
I wasted precious seconds indulging the war between my head and my heart.
“Okay,” I exhaled, knowing he was right, but I didn’t budge from the spot.
“Go.” Remy reappeared after fetching my swords from her car and stood over him. “I’ll protect him.”
Heart thundering in my ears, I shook my head, unable to feel my legs. “I can’t do it.”
“He’ll die if you don’t.” Bishop hauled me upright. “You can do this, kid, but you have to do it now.”
“I won’t let anyone touch him,” Remy promised. “I’ll slice off their fingers if they point in his direction.”
“Thank you.” I wiped my cheeks dry then turned to Bishop. “Let’s do this.”
Linking our fingers, he dragged me into the deepest shadows, through a thin membrane of resistance, and into the icy heart of Faerie in winter.
The path might have been the same, or it may have been different. With no landmarks to dot the way, I couldn’t tell. That disconcerted me, but I took comfort in Ambrose’s companionship. He had shifted into a dog again and frolicked around us like he was exploring snow for the first time.
Amusing as it might be, I couldn’t focus on him when my heart kept pounding out a single word.
Midas. Midas. Midas.
“Just there,” Bishop said, his voice arctic. “Brace yourself.”
Expecting the sculptures again, I goggled up at an enormous manor built from bricks of ice using snow as mortar. The shadows it cast were deep, alive, hungry. Bishop jogged toward them, hauling me after him, and leapt, feeding us to their waiting maw.
We burst through to the other side before I could do more than wonder at the enormous house or who lived there and hit the ground on my side hard enough to jar my teeth.
Impact knocked the wind out of me, and I nearly got my head stomped in for emerging from a shadow cast by one of the witchborn fae. Her sister kicked me in the ribs, but I rolled out of range before she did any real damage. They had to keep their hands linked and their voices raised to fuel the curse, which limited their range of motion.
Spry as a cat, Bishop had landed on his feet. He offered me a hand up then placed himself at my back.
The angle gave me a clear view of Midas, crumpled in the grass, with Remy standing over him.
A few pack members kept an eye on her as she watched over him, but they didn’t risk getting any closer.
“Natisha.” I forced myself to block out the sight of him. “I’m giving you one last chance to stop this.”
Eyes holding mine before they closed, she lifted her chant higher in response.
She had come too far to back down now.
Pride wouldn’t allow her to stop before she got what she wanted, the rest of us be damned.
“Ambrose.” I waited for him to appear. “Drain off as much of their magic as you can.”
He couldn’t break the spell that way, not a casting on this scale, but he could slow it down and give Midas and Tisdale a fighting chance.
Zipping around and around the circle through their joined hands, Natisha included, Ambrose noshed on their magic, but they had gathered too much.
“Break their concentration,” Bishop barked at me, “but not their grips.”
The order brought to mind Remy’s earlier warning, and a cold sweat settled over me.
“You do know spells can go boom if you set them off ahead of schedule?”
Darting in, I waited for the same woman to kick at me then caught her ankle. It forced her to hop on one foot, which couldn’t be good for her focus. Her lips kept moving, but her attention wavered along with her balance. Only her sisters’ ironclad grips kept her from being torn free.
“Hadley,” Bishop cautioned as he positioned himself across the circle from me. “Have a care.”
“I’m caring,” I assured him, dragging my prize. “I’m caring.”
With a snort, Bishop grabbed a different woman’s ankles and yanked her legs clear out from under her.
Now two women hung suspended from their sisters’ clasped hands, and the others began to strain.
“Bish,” I tsked him right back. “Have a care.”
“Oh, my bad.” He faked contrition. “I thought you said carry, not care.”
The power inside the circle grew in intensity until it blistered my skin. The air steamed, and my vision wavered in the heat, making it impossible to see beyond the perimeter. The circle was about to be dropped, the curse was about to be flung, and I only had one plan left.
Goddess, I hoped it worked better than plans A through D. Or were we all the way on F now?
Adjusting my grip on the woman’s leg, I dragged her bouncing toward the portal.
Bishop took his cues from me and started hauling his that way too.
The circle bent into a U shape, but it didn’t break.
Judging from the wide eyes of several practitioners, they were all in a panic over what might happen if it did.
Ambrose appeared beside me and mimed helping me haul the woman into the portal he’d created to get us home. Sadly, the only way to ensure she didn’t pop right back out again was to go in with her. I stepped in, and the sense of vertigo swamped me. The nausea returned, and I would have collapsed if Ambrose hadn’t caught me.
Between the meal he had just eaten and the power of Faerie, he was growing substantial again.
Grateful we had set our circle in a wide-open field and not in the tangle of woods where the original faegate leading into the archive from Faerie stood, I dug in my heels and heaved until my arms twanged with the strain.