It took four tries for my hand to latch onto the raised edge. Above me, the banshee screeched and Trey shouted. I couldn’t hear Aaron and Adrian, which meant Trey was on his own against her.
I tried to climb up, but there were no footholds, and the more I moved, the more the metal edge bit into my fingers. I didn’t dare look down. This was nothing like hanging from the ferry. I would have survived hitting the river. There would be no surviving a twenty-five-story fall, even for a faerie.
An agonized scream came from above. Trey.
Strength surged through me. I pulled my body upward with such force that I cleared the bottom of the window and flew through it. I hit the floor in a roll and came to my feet in front of the banshee and Trey. He was on his knees facing me, and she was behind him with her gnarled, hands on either side of his head.
Her head snapped up, and her dead eyes locked with mine. I felt a frisson of fear until I realized her stare had no effect on me because I was no longer human. I rushed at her, and she released Trey as she backed away from me.
“Jesse! Jesus, I thought you were dead,” Trey said between gasps. “How…?”
The banshee whirled to flee, and I leaped, tackling her. We went down in a tangle of limbs, and she shrieked so loudly in my ear it sent needles of pain through the side of my head. I managed to clamp a hand over her mouth, but even my new strength wasn’t going to hold her for long.
“Trey, shackles,” I grunted. I heard movement behind me, and it seemed to take forever before Trey appeared holding a pair of shackles.
The banshee screamed against my hand and bucked viciously to throw me off her. I lost my grip, and one of her arms flailed, hitting my cheek with such force that I saw stars.
Trey dived into the fight, and between the two of us, we finally managed to pin her down. Looking around, I found the shackles three feet away, and I was the closest to them. I moved my hand so Trey could put his over her mouth, and then I went for the shackles.
My head jerked back violently when the banshee’s bony fingers snagged my hair. Tears pricked my eyes as I pulled out of her clutches and felt my hair coming free from my ponytail. Ignoring the pain in my scalp, I reached for the shackles and snatched them up.
Waves of cold nausea slammed into me, and I swayed on my legs, which were suddenly unable to bear my weight. I fell to my hands and knees, gasping for air and fighting not to pass out.
“Jesse!”
Trey’s shout penetrated the roaring in my ears. I lifted my head to see him staring at me as he struggled with the banshee. I tried to push up off the floor, but I was like steel stuck to a powerful magnet.
It wasn’t until I caught a glimpse of strands of red hair in the banshee’s fist that I realized what was wrong with me. When she’d grabbed my hair, she had pulled the goddess stone from it as I had done with the kelpie.
A horrifying thought hit me. The goddess stone was the only thing protecting me from the iron in this world. What if the stone passed to her now? Without it, I didn’t know how long I could last.
Fear propelled me forward, and I crawled the few feet to Trey and the banshee. It took supreme effort to reach up and catch her hand, but as soon as I made contact with her fist, energy flowed into me like rainwater into parched soil. I forced her fingers open, and there on her palm was the stone in the exact same shade of red as my hair. I touched it, and it disappeared. The strength flooding my body told me the stone was back in my hair where it belonged.
“The shackles,” Trey shouted.
I snatched up the shackles from the floor and made short work of securing the banshee’s wrists. Her thrashing stopped, and she lay weakly in Trey’s hold while I pulled off my backpack and found the muzzle I’d stuffed in there earlier. Trey took his hand off her mouth, and I fitted the muzzle in place, ignoring the hateful glare she shot me. She might have been scary when I first saw her, but she was no danger to anyone now.
Sitting on the floor, I stretched my jaw to relieve my ears that still ached from her wailing. My fingers touched the cold head of a hammer, and I jerked my hand away as if the metal had burned me. A shudder went through me, and I tried not to think of what it must feel like for the banshee to wear those shackles.
I stood. “Watch her. I’m going to check on the others.”
Trey grabbed my arm before I could leave, and I met his eyes, which were round with shock. “You… You’re a faerie,” he whispered. “But how?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Trey.” I pulled away from him.
He scowled at me. “I know I’m not as smart as you, but I’m not an idiot either. I saw what just happened to you, and the banshee didn’t affect you at all when you looked at her.”
I shook my head, intending to deny it, but his expression told me it wouldn’t work. Any explanation I came up with would sound lame after what he’d witnessed.
“You can’t tell anyone about this,” I said.
His eyes grew even wider. “You’re really a faerie? When? How?” He paled as he connected the dots. “You were shot. Oh, Jesse…”
One of the twins groaned somewhere off to our left.
“Yes,” I hissed at Trey. “Can we not talk about this here?”
His look was incredulous. “It’s not like you can keep it a secret.”
“I will for as long as I can. And you are not going to tell a soul, not even your dad.”
“But…”
I leaned in to whisper, “If you breathe a word of this, I will tell the whole Plaza about the time you were so afraid of the clown at the neighborhood Halloween party that you peed your pants.”
He stared at me aghast. “I was a little kid, and he was dressed like Pennywise.”
“You were fourteen.” I gave him an evil smirk. “I have the pictures to prove it.”
I left him sputtering and went to check on Adrian and Aaron. That clown incident was Trey’s most embarrassing secret, and I had happened to be in the right place at the right time to witness it. I wasn’t lying about the pictures, but I would never humiliate him that way. He didn’t know that, though.
Adrian was out cold, but Aaron was coming to when I found them. It took half an hour to get them both on their feet. I suggested they go to the hospital, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Neither of them was happy when they saw the bound banshee and Trey’s smug look. We’d all get credit for the capture, but this was going to leave a bad taste in their mouths for a long time.
We gathered our stuff and got into the elevator with the banshee between Aaron and Adrian. It was their job, so it was only right for them to bring her out of the building. Trey grumbled under his breath until I shot him a warning look.
Out on the street, we got plenty of stares from passersby who gave us a wide berth. Bounty hunters were common, but it wasn’t every day you saw a real live banshee.
“Our van is around the corner,” Aaron said. “Do you guys want to follow us to the Plaza?”
“Not unless you need us to go,” I said, speaking for Trey and me.
Adrian shook his head. “We can handle her from here. We’ll leave your shackles and muzzle and your share of the bounty with Silas.”
“Sounds good.”
We said our goodbyes, and they limped away with the banshee between them. Aaron looked like he’d gone a few rounds with a prizefighter. Adrian hadn’t fared much better than his brother. Trey was sporting a black eye, but that was from me, not the banshee. He’d gotten off the easiest among us. I didn’t have any facial bruises, but my ribs felt like they’d been kicked by a kelpie. I’d soon find out if faeries healed as fast as I’d heard they did.