“I do want.” I lay my hand against his, aligning our fingers. “I want to do everything with you.” My hand is shaking a little with anticipation. “And first, I want to find Pearl.”
“So…” he says, still gazing at me, “let’s think about her.” Then his lids fall shut, and I close mine, too. At first, I’m distracted by how our palms go sweaty; there’s such heat generated at the touch of our skin. But when I’m finally able to forget about Heath and think only of Pearl… bang.
There’s a surge between us so fierce that the energy almost knocks me down.
I cry out and almost let go, but Heath squeezes my hands, and as I grit my teeth against the intensity and the heat of the current, the colors around us blur, and the storefront window pulls out into a long tunnel that we seem to be careening down.
I squint down the tunnel and see fuzzy shapes of hulking men in dark clothes and hoods. Trucks in front of Dumpsters. Then kids, and more kids. It’s almost like I’m seeing the scene play out underwater. And then—
A giant of a man has Pearl Neederman by the throat.
I lunge forward in alarm, but a vortex of swirling, waterlike air seems to push me back. I can’t move. I can’t stop it.
Then Pearl’s head turns and she seems to look through the tunnel and see me.
There are tears in her eyes.
Chapter 39
Wisty
“HEATH! I THINK I know that place!”
It’s hazy, but I can just remember the smell of sickness in the Gutter that day, Whit running with me on his back as crowds pushed in on us. And the taste of blood…
I tear off toward that wretched place.
“Wisty, wait—” Heath yells, but I don’t stop.
“It’s not far!” I promise. We race across the City. Though I was barely conscious when I was last here, somehow my feet know the way beyond the boarded-up food carts, and I hang a right into the alley. Rats look up at us defiantly as we slow to a stop past the rows of giant garbage containers.
“I told you,” I say breathlessly. The setting looks just like in the vision.
Right down to the hooded men loading kids into trucks.
“Oh my god!” I gasp. “Heath!”
They may be different from the group that took Pearl, but they’re here—the vans, the men, the kids…. It’s really happening. Right now.
Heath protectively tries to pull me to a crouch next to the containers, but one of the men jerks his head toward us at the sound of our voices, and I know we’ve been spotted.
The villains make a break for it then. “They’re getting away!”
It happens too fast for us to join forces, but as Heath and I move to attack, our separate strengths are undeniable.
I see the electric lines above and clench my hands into fists, pulling the power into my body as the severed lines go haywire. Then, when I’m absolutely brimming with M, I fling it out through my fingers. A shower of sparks rains down over the hulking men.
Just like the fireworks on the night they took her.
The kidnappers yell and cover their heads, and as they scatter, Heath goes into Demon mode. He whips forward, a ferocious force of speed and pain zeroing in on each hulking, hooded target in turn.
While I’m trying to get to the kids in the back of one van, I hear a screech of tires and whip around as the second van starts to peel away.
“Wisty, stop them!” Heath yells as the van whips down the alley, its back doors swinging on their hinges. Before I have a split second to come up with a plan, the van swerves to avoid the live wire I left still sparking in the street.
“No!” I scream as the van smashes head-on into the side of a building, and the sound… well, that explosion will echo in my dreams forever.
I start sprinting toward the flames, wailing. If there were any children in there…
“Wisty! Come back!” Heath yells above the roar. “Get away! That van didn’t have any kids in it!”
I sink down to the pavement, collapsing with relief.
“Move back!” Heath cries. I look up and leap away just before another explosion pounds my ears. Trembling, I stagger back toward the first van.
Now only one man remains, and without laying a finger on him, Heath brings the man to his knees on the filthy ground in front of us.
“Where are you taking the captives?” I demand breathlessly, tearing off the captor’s hood.
Underneath, the man is balding, with wind-whipped cheeks and hatred in his eyes. He doesn’t say a word.
“What do you want with these children? Who is your leader?!” I try again, but the man scowls at us and spits at my feet.
At that, Heath narrows his eyes. A sheet of ice slowly starts to grow from the ground beneath the man’s knees. The ice eats its way upward, over knees and fingers, slowly covering his body. When the frost starts to choke at his neck, the man groans.
“Heath—” I cut in. I’m getting uncomfortable with where this is going. “That’s enough.”
“If we let him go, he’ll tell his leader,” Heath says confidently. When I don’t say anything, he looks up at me. “Wisty, do you want to be able to save more kids or not?”
I bite my lip and nod. That’s the only thing that matters.
“You’re not—” the man whispers through chattering teeth.
“What’s that you say?” Heath leans in, and I want to look away; I just want this to be over.
“You’re not… supposed to… use… magic,” the kidnapper chokes out.
Heath shrugs, and with a flick of his wrist, the man’s whole head becomes encased in ice, his eyes frozen open in their judgmental stare.
“So I’ve heard,” Heath mutters.
Chapter 40
Whit
SASHA IS REALLY GONE.
It doesn’t feel real. Even after hours of chipping away at the hard ground to dig his grave. Even after I watched the soil slowly cover his face as Janine talked about his life, and listened to Ross cry until his throat was raw, I can’t process it.
He was my age. He was my friend.
And he’s dead.
We sit next to the fresh mound, the snow soaking into our clothes.
“What are we doing here?” I whisper, my heart breaking with hopelessness. “We should go home.”
“No.” Ross wipes his eyes and straps on his pack. “We can’t give up. We have to keep going. It’s what Sasha would do, and I’m not going to let him down.”
So with our friend dead and our spirits shattered, we trudge on for hours through the sleet and the snow. We don’t speak, and the quiet of the forest somehow feels both mournful and peaceful at the same time.
By the time the first stars spot the twilight sky, my legs can barely carry me forward. I start looking for a place to make camp, grateful for an end to this awful day.
Janine stops, but she has a strange expression on her face. “Do you hear that?” she asks.
“It sounds like laughter,” Ross says.
I tilt my head, listening hard. What I hear makes me tremble. It can’t be. I look at my companions. “It sounds like—kids.”
We race through the trees toward the noises of children playing, and hope starts to creep back into my heart.
But when we peer over the ridge at the valley below, my excitement withers.
It’s worse than I’d imagined.
“What are they doing to that kid?” Ross gasps.
I shake my head, unable to look away. The scene below is grotesque. The boy is slashing at his own legs again and again with a stick, and its thorns leave screaming red stripes where they hit. His thighs are a mess of blood and welts.
And what’s worse: there’s a mob of children of all ages leaning in toward the spectacle. They’re cheering him on. Every slash provokes another roar of applause.
The camp is small, but there are hundreds of kids milling around the space, waiting for direction. When the torturous performance is over, one of the burly sentries sounds a deafening b
ell.
The kids immediately take off at a trot, like they’re racing, only there’re no markers and no finish. They just circle the small yard over and over, hiking their knobby knees up with dogged concentration. They jump over the kids who are lying on the ground—the ones who aren’t moving—or sometimes they step on them instead.
As they run, I can see most of the other kids aren’t in much better shape than the whipped boy. They’re thin and poorly clothed, and their cheeks are hollowed, their eyes sunken with exhaustion. Some are missing fingers, others toes. I spot one little girl with a dirty rag wrapped around the stump where her hand should be, and I feel bile rise up in my throat.
“Pearl,” I croak, lurching up from behind the ridge.
“No,” Janine hisses, tugging at my arm. “They’ll see us! It’s not her, Whit—it’s not Pearl.”
I know she’s right. This girl’s hair is too light, and her legs are too long. Her face is too old to be Pearl Marie Neederman.
But it could’ve been. These monsters could’ve done the same to Pearl. Tortured her. Maimed her. If she’s here… Who knows what they’ve done.
“We have to break into the camp,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady.
“Now?” Ross’s eyes are as wide as saucers. I know he’s thinking of how Sasha died, but the kid is brave, and he nods.
Janine, on the other hand, isn’t having it. “No. We scout it out tomorrow,” she says. “It’s almost dark.”
“It would be so easy to bust them out of there right now,” I point out. “There’s no fence, and they only have a few guards—”
“We don’t know what they have. Something made the kids do those things. Something made that boy…” She shakes her head. “Tomorrow,” she says firmly. “We’re not going in there at night without knowing what we’re walking into. It’s suicide.”
Chapter 41
Whit
I CLENCH MY JAW as we set up camp on the rocky platform. Wolves howl in the distance, and the wind whistles against the rock. I’m trying to keep my teeth from chattering with cold, or grinding in anger and frustration.
Tomorrow. I settle back into my crude bed, sighing, and promising once again: If Pearl’s inside that house of horrors, tomorrow we’ll bust her out.
“You’re shivering,” Janine says, putting a hand on my cheek.
I hold her smooth, gentle fingers to my face. “My clothes are still damp from the river,” I answer, not mentioning the thoughts that are really chilling me to the bone. “It’d be kind of unreasonable for me to expect to be warm at this point.”
Janine shakes her head. “Not unreasonable, really.” I notice she’s got her sleeping bag balled up in her arms. “I was thinking Ross and Feffer have the right idea.” She points over at our sleeping friend, his arms wrapped around the dog. “Shared body heat,” Janine explains, and her wry smile is the first thing that has truly made me feel warm since we started up this Mountain.
“That’s better,” I say, once she’s curled up beside me. I breathe her in, a sweet smell of pine and dirt all her own, and the night feels a little less dark. For a long time we lie quietly, listening to the screech of bats and the rustle of leaves.
“It wasn’t just for the warmth,” Janine finally says, her voice muffled by my chest. “I just… I didn’t want to be alone tonight, you know? I see his face every time I shut my eyes.”
“I know. Me, too.” All their faces. Their eyes, most of all. I see Sasha’s eyes as the life went out of him, Wisty’s eyes brimming as I turned away from her, and the dead eyes of the girl with the missing hand.
“How do we ever sleep again?” Janine asks hopelessly. “I mean, how do we get past this?”
The moonlight catches in her eyes, making them glisten with life, and suddenly I can’t help it—I’m not thinking about the sadness, or the tragedy, or the cold anymore. I’m thinking about the heat in the spot where our legs press against one another. I’m thinking about the outline of her body under the blanket, about how smooth her skin must feel….
I’m thinking about a night spent under the stars with a girl who drives me crazy. Janine.
“Maybe we remember the people we still have,” I whisper, and hear the desire in my voice. “Maybe we act like each day is all we have left, and go from there.”
Janine tilts her head up to me. “So, what would you do if we just had right now?”
I kiss her fiercely then, and she kisses me back, her hands pulling me closer. Even if the world is crumbling around us, tonight Janine and I will feel as completely alive as we ever have, and hold each other tight until the last star is gone from the sky.
Chapter 42
Wisty
AFTER OUR TAKEDOWN of the kidnappers’ vans, Heath makes a point I’ve been trying not to think too much about.
“Makes you wonder what else we could accomplish together, doesn’t it?” He smiles mischievously.
Something comes over me when I see that devilish grin, and I can’t not kiss him. I savor the taste of his sweet lips and drape my arms around his neck, inhaling him.
“Ahem,” I hear a young voice say nearby.
A dozen children are still huddled together by the abandoned truck, staring as we smooch near the still-smoking wreck.
I cough awkwardly, dropping my arms from Heath’s neck. “What are you guys doing out this late, anyway?” I scold the kids, but they just gape at me, still too shell-shocked to move.
The group is a mix of older and younger kids, ragged and well dressed, dark and fair. Whoever’s taking them seems to just want numbers. But for what?
“Haven’t your parents told you that monsters come out after curfew?” I ask, going for a lighthearted tone. Still no one speaks.
Unless… it’s me they’re afraid of, I realize with a pang. I’m the monster that comes out after dark, thanks to Bloom’s antimagic rhetoric. And now they’ve just witnessed us starting an electrical fire, blowing up a car, and freezing a man. Not exactly the stuff sweet dreams are made of.
I sigh. “Go on, get out of here!” I clap my hands, and that seems to shake a few of them out of their stupor. They start to scamper in all directions. “Go home to your mamas, and tell them you saw the fire witch and her horrible spells!”
And maybe tell them how we saved your lives, too.
“Thank you, Missus Fire Witch,” a tiny girl in a pink jumper says. She kicks the frozen man as she passes. “He’s better that way.” She reminds me a bit of Pearl Neederman with her wise, old eyes.
“Hey, what’s your name?” I ask.
“Bettina Alexandra Gannon.” She leans forward conspiratorially. “My mom says you have to say your whole name if you want people to remember you. You won’t forget, will you?”
I put my hand over my heart and look at her solemnly. “I won’t forget.”
I’ll remember these kids, remember what it took to save them. Maybe we did do something good here tonight. And maybe we could do it again.
After the last kid has run home, I look at Heath, grinning. “Thanks for getting me out of the house. Even if you had to break in first.”
He’s smiling, too, but it’s a different sort of smile. He gazes at me from under those lashes, that unflinching look he first hooked me with at the celebration. He takes a few slow, deliberate steps across the cobblestones toward me, his steady, suggestive gaze making the distance feel like miles.
“Speaking of home…” Heath brings my bandaged hand to his lips, kissing the knuckles tenderly one by one, and I hold my breath. “May I show you mine? Would that be all right?”
I feel the flush on my neck as I nod. I chatter constantly as we walk. Not doing a great job of hiding my butterflies.
“So,” Heath says as we reach the steps of the building’s front porch. “Do I still frighten you, Wisty Allgood?”
“I had a shard of glass at your throat a few hours ago,” I say wryly, and Heath smirks. I stand up straighter, meeting his bold gaze. “You’ve never frightened me,�
� I answer.
Heath leans closer. “I wish I could say the same,” he murmurs.
Then his lips are on mine, gentle at first, then pressing hard. As Heath moves slowly backward up the porch stairs, I lean into his kisses, letting him pull me upward.
Another step. Another.
The fever spreads over me, up my legs and chest, up my neck….
Oh, no, I think, just as I feel my hair catch fire. Please, not now.
I start to jerk away from Heath, afraid I’ll burn him, but he only grips my body tighter, his hold firm, his lips insistent.
The fire streaks across my skin as any sense of caution I had a second ago falls away. The pale yellow flame climbs higher and hotter, roaring between us.
I don’t even care. There’s no pain. Only pleasure.
It feels like all I’ve ever wanted.
Chapter 43
Wisty
THE AIR VIBRATES with our white-hot heat, like nothing I’ve ever known. It’s like my blood itself is boiling. The sensation spreads through my body like a match to gasoline, snaking in seconds from my toes up into my feverish brain.
We stop to draw in a breath, and our eyes connect. It’s just a fleeting moment but it feels like time stops. His eyes wrap me up with a look of complete devotion.
No one has ever looked at me this way.
And there’s something else in Heath’s look, too: power.
The power of love and lust and heat, controlling my body and my brain and my magic. A power fed by every touch. It’s there between the frenzied kisses, crackling and hissing in the flames.
It’s so intense between us, like every thought, every emotion is shared and translated into the very real, very physical fire raging around us.
Getting hotter. And hotter. And hotter.
There’s a sudden whoosh as the roof above the porch goes up in flames.
Heath doesn’t even seem to notice. He’s still pulling me toward the doorway to his building.
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