With my hand held open before me, I beg another silent plea.
Calling on my powers of telekinesis, which lately have been tenuous at best. But right now, it’s all that I’ve got.
Well, that, and my intent. Which, according to Paloma, is magick’s most important ingredient.
And yet, despite my best intentions, despite my fervent prayer, the dagger, now just a razor’s width away from Dace’s soul—refuses to alter its path.
It slams straight down.
Straight into the space where Dace’s soul once stood.
I scream an unearthly involuntary sound. Gape in outraged disbelief.
Silencing when I see the way Phyre stares at me and I follow her gaze to my hand.
My intention was to save Dace’s soul, and it appears I did exactly that.
My telekinesis didn’t fail me.
It merely forfeited the dagger in place of the object that truly mattered most.
While the dagger fell, the soul found its way to my hand.
With eyes blazing as bright as the flames that she set, Phyre lets out a horrible wail and charges straight toward me. The force of her body slamming into mine knocks the air flat out of me, as the soul slips free of my grasp.
It hovers above us, as we both desperately claw for it. Though it’s not long before it begins to drift into the sky.
Phyre shoves off me, jumps to her feet. As I scramble to catch up, keep her from claiming it.
Because of the fires she set, the once heavy blanket of snow is now melting around us. Turning to a thick, viscous mud that bungles the chase, leaving us slipping, sliding, losing our balance but never our will in pursuit of Dace’s soul.
“You can’t save him,” she shouts, racing before me. “It’s the Word. It is written. It is already happening. There is nothing you can do to change it.”
I lengthen my stride, fight like hell to overtake her. And when my feet finally hit a patch of dry land, providing me some much-needed traction, I leap toward the sky, leap toward Dace’s soul—only to watch as Phyre reaches it first.
She captures it in her outstretched hands. Pulls it in close to her chest. The sight of this crazed, unhinged girl handling something so fragile, so delicate, so precious, so easily destroyed—leaves me breathless and horrified.
She stares at it with wide, dreamy eyes, transfixed by the sight of it. But when she notices my approach, she pulls it even closer. Wrapping a protective arm around it, she clucks her tongue and says, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
I lift my palms in surrender, stand silently before her. Watching as she snakes a hand into her pocket and retrieves the turquoise-and-silver lighter she lifted from Cade.
“Did you know my middle name is Oleander?” Her eyes briefly meet mine. “Phyre Oleander Youngblood. How’s that for a mouthful?” she muses, idly flicking the lighter’s ribbed metal wheel with the pad of her thumb. “Although I wasn’t given the name until I was sixteen. That’s when my destiny was sealed. Though it started way back when I was eight. My father told me it was a great honor. One that I should bear proudly. Never mind that it nearly killed me on more than one occasion. But, as it turns out, when it’s all said and done, my father was right. Then again, he usually is.” She reaches into her pocket again. This time retrieving a perfect pink blossom with a short, thin stem she props between her front teeth.
At first I assume she’s going to swallow it whole, but a moment later I watch as she pulls the flowerless stem from her lips and uses the lighter to set it ablaze. The mere act of flame meeting stem is enough to cause a thick cloud of acrid smoke to surround me, leaving me gagging, choking, blurring my vision until everything around me begins to shimmer and halo. Rendering it nearly impossible to keep an eye on Dace’s soul when every single thing is glistening, glimmering with a nimbus of light.
“It’s really too bad it had to end this way.” Phyre assumes a thoughtful expression, as hundreds of brilliant orbs dance between us. “Under different circumstances, I’m sure we could’ve been friends.” She smiles briefly, purses her lips, and exhales a deep breath she directs right at me. Engulfing me in a cloud so noxious I can’t help but fall to my knees.
My body seized by convulsions, my vision swimming with the illusion of glimmering orbs, I clutch hard at the ground and claw my way toward her. Stealing a moment to jerk the neck of my sweater up past my chin, until it covers my nose and my mouth, hoping it will filter the smoke long enough for me to defeat her.
When I face her again, I’m amazed to see a whole host of spirit animals are beginning to creep out of hiding.
The snow is melting.
The earth is warming.
Their forced hibernation has come to an end.
I count rabbits, skunks, squirrels, and sparrows among them. Yet still no one I recognize. No one with any obligation to help me.