motherâs eyes after I had slain her child.â
He reached for my face, hesitating for only an instant before completing the motion. His fingertips caressed my cheek, and the spell that held me wouldnât even allow me to shudder.
Simon looked at me, eyes pleading, and said, âI transformed you to save you, and then I ran. I had no way of knowing Iâd be branded a traitor by the one who had set all these things in motion or that, in my absence, Luna and Rayseline would remain captive. I swear. On your motherâs name, on my sisterâs grave, I swear it.â
It was strange, but I almost believed him. He sounded so earnest, and so sad . . . and that did nothing to change the fact that I was held suspended in a stasis spell in my own kitchen, and that I couldnât stop him from touching me.
He took a deep breath. âOctoberââ he began. He never had the opportunity to finish.
âHey, fucko!â
Jasmineâs shout was loud enough to wake the dead. It would almost certainly wake anyone else in the house who was still asleep. I guess thereâs something to be said for having someone naturally diurnal around. She charged into the kitchen and into my field of vision, my old friend the aluminum baseball bat clutched firmly in her hands. She had it raised like she was going to hit a home run, using Simonâs skull as the ball.
Simon turned toward her, raking the fingers of his free hand through the air. The smell of smoke and rotting oranges rose around him in an instant, thick and cloying. Jazz made a sound that was half human, half challenging raven, and swung her bat. Simon swept his hand down, pointing at her, and said a word that was less language and more the sound of water on rocks.
Jazz screamed as she fell. I could live to be older than Oberon himself, and I would never be able to forget that sound.
The echoes of Jazzâs scream were still ringing in my ears when Simon turned back to me, eyes blazing with a strange combination of fury and sorrow. âI didnât want it to happen like this,â he said, and followed the statement with another of those horrible, misshapen words. The smell of rotting oranges grew stronger, all but obscuring the smell of smoke.
I donât know what I did. I donât think I could have done it if Iâd understood what needed to be done; I wouldnât have known where to begin. But I was angry, and I was scared, and when he flung his spell at me, I reacted on instinct alone. The stasis spell was an inconvenience, and so I pushed it aside as I snatched the shape of his magic out of the air and flung it back at him as hard as I could.
The spell burned my hands, and I fell as soon as the stasis broke, hitting the kitchen floor in a heap. Somehow, that didnât matter. Simon screamed, a shrill, agonized sound, and turned, running for the hall. There was something wrong with the way he was moving, but that wasnât my concern; not right here, not right now. All my attention was reserved for Jazz, who was crumpled in a heap on the floor, her hands webbed together and covered in shining scales, her face mercifully concealed by her hair.
She wasnât breathing.
âOh, sweet Maeve, no.â I scrambled to her side and rolled her onto her back, trying not to look at the twisted outline of what had been her face. The raw pink slashes of newly formed gills scarred her neck, lying flat and unmoving against the skin. I didnât know where to start looking for a pulse, and so I didnât bother to try; I just braced my hands on her chest and shoved downward, calling on what little I remembered of CPR as I tried to force her to respond. âCome on, Jazz,
come on
! Youâre not allowed to die on me!â
She didnât respond. I heard the front door slam. I kept doing chest compressions; I couldnât think of anything else to do. There was a scuffing sound from the direction of the hall. I
S. Ravynheart, S.A. Archer
Stephen G. Michaud, Roy Hazelwood