by Gina LaManna
My pulse raced. I knew what I needed to do. Ilinia held her hands out, murmuring her horrid spell, holding Ranger X captive under the water. I needed to get to Ranger X before he drowned. Time was running out, and my options were limited.
So I didn’t think, I acted.
Reaching for the Ilinia doll, I swiped it, squeezed it tight.
Then I closed my eyes and extended my hands. The spell from the Library of Secrets came back to me in a rush. I took a breath, braced myself, and invoked blood magic of my own.
The power ripped through me, my body nearly seizing with the effort. I wasn’t ready for the rush of power, not even close. My stomach cramped and I bent in half, my soul feeling like it was breaking in half. Through the pain, I kept my arms wide, murmuring the spell over and over again, never once losing sight of The Puppeteer.
Ilinia crumpled on the ground, her eyes vacant. She was under the spell. I should have stopped, but I didn’t. The uncomfortable sense of pleasure at the power coursing through my veins was addictive; I’d tasted the capabilities of mind bending, and I couldn’t seem to stop.
I directed Ilinia until she’d wound herself in the same ropes that’d held us captive. It wasn’t until she slumped over Liam that I shook myself free of the spell, my breaths coming in huge waves, a sense of emptiness taking over my body as Ilinia’s eyes lost their vacant gleam.
I barely stopped to think, wondering briefly if my lips had gone black, my eyes white. I pushed the thought away—it was a dangerous path to go down, wondering if I was just as evil as her.
“Liam, are you awake?” I cut his hands free of the rope. “Liam, it’s me.”
“Fine,” he murmured. “Go.”
I didn’t waste another second. There was no time to climb down the rocks, to pick my way through the stony path. Grasping the Ranger X doll to my heart, I crossed my arms, moved a few steps backward, and took a running start toward the edge of the cliff.
When I reached thin air, I kept running, my body hurtling straight toward the lagoon.
CHAPTER 36
The water struck me hard, the clap of impact stinging against my skin. It was cold, freezing even, but I’d landed in the dark spot at the center of the lagoon and been spared death by rocks. My body plunged deeper, deeper below the surface.
I kept my eyes wide, my body going into shock. Something—a fish, or something worse —nipped at my leg. Seaweed brushed against my toes, a big, black shadow moved beneath me.
X, I thought, kicking deeper. My lungs burned as I reached for him, his torn shirt flapping around his body. Grabbing hold I yanked him higher, higher, until my chest nearly collapsed.
Finally, just as my vision began to explode into a realm of stars, we pierced the surface.
“X!” I cried. “Can you hear me?”
I held the real Ranger X in one hand, his Puppet in the other. Struggling to shore, I pulled him onto the closest rock that I could find. The sun beat down on us as I hauled him halfway out of the water. His lips had turned blue, his face ashen. He wasn’t breathing.
“X!” I cried. “Wake up!”
I defaulted to CPR, compressing his chest, giving him air. Nothing helped. I dropped the doll next to me, and I could feel him fading by the second. If I didn’t do something, he’d leave me forever. If he left me forever…
My last resort became my only option. Terrible and horrible and inevitable. Grasping the Ranger X doll, I laid it out on the rock next to the real thing. For the second time, I closed my eyes and whispered the forbidden spell.
My fingers danced across the doll’s chest as I murmured the spell over and over and over, bringing back the rush of mind bending until tears streamed down my face and the world vanished into blackness.
I didn’t stop, not even as a hole emptied inside me. The cost of the spell—a little piece of my soul going to Ranger X. If I could, I’d give him everything.
“Cannon,” I said, using the name he’d entrusted to me just hours before. I funneled all of my energy into healing him, allowing my hands to do the work that would keep him alive. “Wake up, X.”
My body was drained—mentally, physically, emotionally. . . I had nothing left to give. Finally, I let go of the doll and let the spell lapse. The power poured from me, leaving my body a frail shell of what I’d been before.
It was then that I heard it. A breath. Shallow and raspy, but it was there.
My eyes flew open. “X!”
Another breath, this time followed by a cough.
I collapsed onto him, covering his chest with my arms, resting my face against his. “Can you hear me?”
“No,” he breathed, the sound of his voice sending tremors of joy over my skin. “Come closer…”
I curled next to him, resting my head on his shoulder. I adjusted his view so he stared straight into my eyes. “Better?”
“No,” he rasped again. “Closer.”
I inched closer, our lips hovering apart.
“There,” he said, his eyes regaining their light with every smile. “Much better.”
Then he closed the tiny gap between us with a kiss. Cold, brittle, and a little fragile, but perfect nonetheless.
“I love you,” he said. “And my arm hurts. Take me home.”
CHAPTER 37
Monitors clicked, equipment beeped. Every so often, Elle stopped by to refresh my cold mug of coffee and give me a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. And still, Ranger X didn’t move.
“He’ll be okay, you know.” Gus’s voice echoed off the black stone walls of the room. “They only sedated him as a precaution.”
I cleared my throat, keeping my focus on X. “I know that.”
“You look like death.”
I finally turned to Gus. “Is that your attempt at comforting me?”
Gus stood in the doorway of a state-of-the-art room in the Ranger HQ infirmary. When a Ranger got sick, the group preferred to take care of their own.
The old man wore a frown on his wrinkled face. A tiredness hung from his shoulders that belied his normally stoic expression. “He’s—”
“I know he’ll be fine,” I said, pulling myself to my feet and facing Gus. “The doctor has told me a hundred times, and so have the nurses. It doesn’t make it any easier.”
“I’m sorry.”
I paused, halfway turning to face Gus. “Sorry, what?”
He raised a hand to his forehead, massaging stress from his temples before speaking. “I said I’m sorry, Lily. I’m sorry you have to see X like this. I’m sorry you had to be there when it happened, and I’m sorry I don’t know how to help you. I’m not good at this sort of thing.”
I blew out a breath and crossed the room in a few steps. Offering up a smile, I waited until Gus returned it. “You’re doing just fine. It would’ve been worse if you hadn’t arrived when you did.”
After I’d pulled Ranger X out of the lagoon, we’d barely begun the trek back through the woods when Gus, Hettie, and Harpin had appeared at its rocky edges. It was thanks to them that we’d been able to bring X, Ilinia, and even Dillan back to Ranger HQ without additional help.
It was Harpin who’d discovered that Dillan was still alive; injured, but alive. Instead of crashing to a rocky death when Ilinia had forced him over the cliff, his clothing had snagged on an overgrown tree, trapping his body within its branches. Despite the horrible plan he’d been a part of, I had been relieved by the news.
“How did you know where to find us?” I asked. “You showed up at the lagoon right when—”
“We were too late,” Gus said, a flicker of regret in his eyes. “If only we’d been faster, maybe this. . . ” he gestured toward X, “wouldn’t have happened.”
“Gus, you can’t blame yourself.”
“I’m not blaming myself, I’m just stating facts.”
“You never said how you knew where we were,” I said. “Did you—”
“Let’s step outside if you’d like to discuss this.” Gus reached out, pulling me to the side as a doctor pushe
d his way through the door.
“We can talk right here.” I crossed my arms, my eyes following the doctor’s every movement as he took X’s vitals.
“It’s probably best if you take a minute.” The doctor looked up, his voice tinged with exasperation. “Watching me like a hawk will not help things along. X will be out for the next hour. Get a cup of coffee, Lily. Drink it. Talk with your friend, I’m begging you.”
“But—”
“I’ll personally find you the second he wakes up.” The doctor shooed me out of the room. “I promise.”
Pushed by the doctor, pulled by Gus, curious to find out information, I watched Ranger X for one last second. Then the doctor closed the door in my face, and Gus dragged me down the hall to a small conference room. Except the room wasn’t empty.
“Lily.” Hettie rose from her chair, a sleek leather thing that matched the decor of the upscale space. “How is he?”
“He’ll be fine.” I returned my grandmother’s hug, breaking away quickly to address the others in the room. “Ainsley, you’re back?”
“I have a few hours before I need to get going, but I heard what happened and I had to come.” She grasped my forearms and scanned my face. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”
Harpin didn’t offer any such greeting. His eyes were locked on the floor, his expression one of indifference.
“I guess we’re all here,” I said quietly. “The Core.”
Hettie waved a hand and the door flew shut. “Yes.”
“Now can someone please tell me how you found us?” I focused my attention on Gus. “How did you show up at the edge of the lagoon just in time to help us back?”
“We were just doing the jobs Ainsley laid out at our last meeting,” Gus said. “Harpin and I were tracing blood magic. We realized that Ilinia would’ve needed help with her agenda—if not in breaking free from jail, then once she’d made it to the outside world. She’d been locked away for so long she wouldn’t have had enough resources on her own. So we began there, while Hettie—”
“While I played my senile card and looked into the Candidates,” Hettie interrupted. “I snuck into The Oasis.”
“They let you talk to the Candidates?”
“No.” She looked smug. “But I didn’t need to—I realized one of them was missing. Then I overheard the guards muttering about how you had gone off into The Forest with Liam. They were talking about getting ahold of X for instructions, but by then, he was already missing. Since I had heard Liam’s description of the lagoon, I had a good idea where the pair of you would be heading.”
“It was around that same time that I arrived at the bungalow to ask you a question about your potion in progress. The mind bending one.” Gus gave me a knowing stare, but he didn’t wait for a response. “You weren’t there.”
“And when the three most important people on the island go missing,” Harpin chimed in, his voice oily with sarcasm, “of course the alert is sounded.”
“We put our heads together and realized that Dillan was in on it. I recognized your potion as an attempt to fight blood magic, and we figured you’d gone looking for her,” Gus said. “We connected the rest of the dots with Hettie’s help. The timing, that was a lucky break. If we’d been luckier, we would’ve been there before this happened.”
I swallowed as Gus nodded toward the hallway where Ranger X lay motionless behind closed doors.
“Why’d you hide it from me?” Gus asked, startling me from a haze. “The potion. Why hide it?”
“The potion?” I stalled. “I wasn’t hiding it.”
Gus tapped his cane against the floor. “I know when you’re lying, and I know when you’re hiding something. You’re doing both.”
“Do tell us more about this wonderful potion,” Harpin said, the request a mix of genuine curiosity and morbid fascination. “Something wonderful, I’m sure. Everything Lily touches turns to gold, we all know that.”
I turned to Harpin, ready for war. But Gus prevented it by speaking louder than both of us combined.
“It was good. A damn good potion.” Gus’s voice cracked with surprise. “Why’d you hide it? I’ve never seen anything like it. You left a tiny batch of it in a corked bottle, and I saw your ingredients. I put the rest together myself. When you went missing, I forced Poppy to confirm my suspicions.”
“Because!” My chest tightened as I turned to Gus. “Because of this group, and because of my stupid assignment!”
“Lily, we were worried about you.” Ainsley frowned. “You had so much on your plate that when we decided on the assignments, it was agreed to keep you out of harm’s way if at all possible. Not that it worked.”
“If I’m staying in this group—if The Core is going to do its job—a few things need to change.”
I stopped for a breath and scanned the group. My chest heaved with exertion, fear hovering just on the edges of frustration. I’d never been so confrontational, so demanding of anyone in my life.
“I’m telling X about us,” I said. “That’s my first condition.”
“If you can convince me why we should loop him in,” Hettie said, “I’ll agree to it.”
“Because he cancelled the Trials.” I pointed a finger toward the doorway. “He’s lying in a hospital bed because he will do anything to protect this island. You were worried about him having a conflict of interest with us because he’s a Ranger and we’re The Core. Well, I think we have the same priorities. He put the island above the Ranger program when he cancelled the public events, and that is good enough for me.”
Hettie’s face remained unreadable. Harpin looked at the ground, an amused smirk on his face. Ainsley and Gus made themselves busy staring at the ceiling.
“Fine,” Hettie said again. “You have a week to invite him into the group, and then the offer expires.”
“A week?”
“I’m making big plans, Lily. I need to know if X will be joining us. Soon.”
“Thank you.” I gave a curt nod at my grandmother. “The second thing that needs to change are my responsibilities. If you are all out investigating blood magic, I want to be there, too. I am not sitting around all day in my bungalow like some princess kept in a tower. Understood?”
A few mumbles sounded from the group.
“Understood?” I pressed again, until each of them agreed. “Great. Lastly, I want to go to prison.”
“Uh, Lily?” Ainsley stood up, pressing the back of her hand to my forehead. “Have the doctors taken your temperature?”
“No, the jail where Ilinia is being kept,” I said with growing agitation. “Now. While Ranger X is sleeping.”
“You’re afraid he won’t approve.” Harpin gave a slow smile. “He’d keep you locked away, like that princess in a tower you’re worried about.”
“Shut it, Harpin,” Hettie said again. “Why do you want to go, Lily?”
“I need to understand why. Why she tore Liam apart. Why she murdered a Candidate. Why she had my boyfriend shot and why. . . ” I couldn’t speak the last part of the phrase. “I need to talk to her—will you accept my terms, or not?”
Hettie glanced around at the group. Save for Harpin’s thin smile, the rest of The Core had stern expressions. “Gus?”
“I’ll take her,” he said. “And I’ll have her back within the hour.”
“We will be there as long as it takes,” I said. “I am getting my answers.”
Hettie walked me out of the room, her arm looped through mine while Gus retrieved his cane.
“Why’d you agree with me?” I asked. “You accepted my terms without argument.”
She faced me. “I’m a reasonable woman, and I understand a reasonable request when I hear one. Lily, we’ve been waiting for you to step up—to step into your role. When you know something is right, go after it. Trust your instincts.”
“Come.” Gus pulled me away from Hettie with that one simple word. We left, marching down the hall, past X’s room, away from The Core. A few minutes lat
er, he turned abruptly. “In here.”
“This isn’t the exit.”
“We’re getting there. We have one stop to make before we leave this place.”
CHAPTER 38
“I need to show you something before we head to the jail,” he said. “And I apologize if I overstepped my bounds in doing this, but it was necessary.”
“Is that why you volunteered to take me?” I asked. “So you could show me something else? Are we even going to see Ilinia?”
“We’ll get to the jail. You have my word.”
I waited patiently as Gus pressed a button that buzzed us through a doorway. We stepped through into a place I’d been before. Blinking lights lined the ceiling, the walls, and the floor of the otherwise dark tunnel. It looked as if the solar system had been bottled up and splashed through the tube.
We passed through to more familiar settings. “There,” Gus said. “You recognize it?”
He gestured through a maze of clear walls to the lab. Inside, scientists in white suits and goggles moved between beakers and bowls, jars and vials. Small fires in every shade of orange and blue glowed underneath pots and pans of all sizes. One experiment in particular caught my eye.
“Jinx & Tonic?” I twirled to face Gus. “Is that what I’m looking at?”
Gus stared over my shoulder at a tall, slender tube of bubbling liquid the color of pearls. “I’m not sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like I said, I found the leftover corked vial you’d stashed in the supply closet,” Gus said. “I must have walked in on you and Poppy while you were creating it, and I’m guessing you hid the supplies from me while Poppy blabbed on and on about her nail polish. I only know the name because I quizzed Poppy when I realized you were gone. She didn’t know much, but she knew enough to get me started.”
I tilted my chin a little higher. “And?”
“And it got me curious.” Even as Gus’s eyes darkened with apology, a light shone in his irises. Nothing in this universe excited him more than his storeroom and the potions created there. “Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I pieced together the spell. Silver, to reflect the unsavory spells back outside the body. Gentle herbs so the spell won’t injure the user. And most importantly, lily of the valley. To remember yourself, when the rest of the world goes blank.”
