by Sierra Dean
“Genie? Where are you?”
Against all common sense and any of my better judgment, I ran headlong into the building. Pieces of the walls were coming down. The edifices had all been constructed from polished obsidian to give the lobby a sleek, black finish. Now with the added heat and the force of the explosion, the wall panels were cracking and falling in on themselves in large, sharp chunks.
I narrowly avoided one of the smoky quartz chandeliers falling from the ceiling and landing in a ragged heap next to me with a cacophonous jangle.
“Secret, help.” The voice rang out again from behind one of the concierge desks, and I vaulted the counter. Huge pieces of the walls and a rafter beam had come down, burying someone beneath them.
I grabbed the beam and pulled, but even with my substantial strength, the reinforced steel wasn’t budging.
Move, I pleaded desperately, yanking at the metal with all my might.
My tingling fingers were sticky, like they were attached to the metal, and with one strong tug the bar lifted up and I was able to toss it over the counter like it weighed nothing.
The wall bits were considerably less heavy, and I was able to get them off without much fight, revealing not Genie, but Mercedes curled into a ball on the floor. There was a large gash on her forehead, and her black hair was matted with blood. My stomach lurched at the sight, terrified I might have come too late.
Losing more friends was not part of the bargain I’d made. What good were these powers and the promise of my death if I couldn’t help the people I cared about the most?
“Cedes, are you okay?” I hauled her up to her feet, cupping her face and turning it gently for a better look at the wound. She was pale and her hair was dusted with ash, making her look like a ghostly version of her former self. Her eyes were clear, though, and in spite of the fear I saw there, I didn’t see a reason to worry about her. I let out a sigh of relief. Desmond and Holden had come into the lobby but stood back, seeing I didn’t need help anymore.
“We thought… You’re late. We thought something had happened to you.”
“Where is everyone else?” The lobby looked otherwise empty.
“A few people went out to check for you, but Genie went upstairs. She thought you might have gone back to the penthouse. She was…”
“When? When did she go?”
“She just got into the elevator maybe a minute or two before the explosion. I don’t…” Her voice drifted off, unable to complete the unpleasant thought forming in both our minds.
If Genie had still been in the elevator when everything exploded, there was a very real possibility she was dead.
My stomach clenched, and bile rose in my throat. I refused to believe it. I wouldn’t allow anyone else to die tonight. I didn’t care how unrealistic my hope was, I couldn’t accept Genie being dead.
“Did you hear the elevator fall?” I was already glancing at the bank of double doors, none of which looked badly damaged. But if the elevator had gone down, it would have plummeted straight to the basement.
“No. But I didn’t hear a hell of a lot after the ceiling came down.”
“Stay with her,” I instructed Desmond as I climbed back over the counter. I paused for a moment, looking at them. I should stay here and protect them, but I couldn’t give up if Genie was upstairs somewhere. I memorized what Desmond and Cedes looked like, promising myself there would still be an opportunity to say goodbye properly. “Holden, can you see if anyone else is nearby? Let them know we’re back and what happened.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find Genie.”
From the lobby doors came another female voice, this one less welcome. “Lucas said he was heading up there too, before we all went looking.” Morgan appeared stricken. Evidently even banishment to Siberia had done nothing to diminish her feelings for the wolf king. “I’m coming with you.”
The last person on earth I wanted to have by my side while I searched for Genie was Morgan. But I also didn’t feel like wasting time and energy arguing about it. “Just stay the fuck out of my way.”
I led the way to the stairwell doors, since the elevators were clearly no longer an option. The building had eighty floors, and I had no idea how we were going to figure out where the elevators had stopped.
“If we divvy up the floors, we can check the elevator bays individually,” Morgan suggested. “It’s pretty quick to get from the stairs to each bank of elevators. If I do the odd floors and you do the even, it’ll cut our search time in half.”
Well, goddamn if she wasn’t proving herself to be useful already.
I muttered my acceptance under my breath before adding, “Be careful, okay? The building isn’t going to stay standing forever. We need to do this fast and get the hell out of here.”
“I wasn’t planning to move in.” She sneered and pulled a gun from her duffel bag. I briefly feared she might shoot me right then and there, but she grabbed the door and held it open.
The great bonus of Morgan’s plan was that it meant neither of us needed to help the other, and like she’d said, I now only had to check half as many floors. The first ten I checked yielded nothing except burning ruins, and I was beginning to get disheartened. If I didn’t find the elevator soon, I wouldn’t be able to continue the search. The halls had already begun to fill with smoke, and as I made the run from stairwell to stairwell, passing the bank of elevators on each floor as I went, the smoke was starting to follow me.
On the twentieth floor, I hit pay dirt. One of the elevator doors had been forced open, either by the pressure of the blast or someone prying it apart. I managed to get it open wider, expecting to find the elevator behind it, but instead the black abyss of the elevator shaft was all that waited for me, its maw open wide, ready to gobble me up if I took one wrong step.
The cables groaned dramatically, and I glanced up.
The elevator car was just above my head.
“Genie.” I wasn’t sure she’d be able to hear me, but I hoped like hell if she could, it might give her some hope.
The elevator was stuck between the twenty-first and twenty-second floors, but if the doors on the twenty-first floor weren’t bowed in, Morgan might not notice.
“Genie, I’m coming.”
My panic-driven motivation blotted out logic. I should have gone to the stairs and run up one floor like a normal person. Instead I stepped out onto the elevator ledge and scanned the surrounding area for footholds. I was reaching for the cable when two strong hands grabbed me around my waist and hauled me back into the hallway.
I flailed, throwing my elbows back to make contact, and managed to thrust my arm hard against something bony.
“Fuck.”
I was quickly released, and I spun around to face whoever had gotten hold of me.
“Lucas? What the hell were you thinking?”
“What was I thinking? I was stopping you from falling twenty floors to your death. What were you thinking, climbing out there like that?”
“Genie’s stuck in the elevator, and I’m not sure how long it’s going to hold.” I said all this without a pause for breath, my words tumbling out one after the other in a messy, incomprehensible sentence.
“You’re not much good to her if you try to climb up from the bottom.” He took hold of my hand, and this time I didn’t pull away. We ran towards the stairs, and he led the way up to the twenty-first floor.
Morgan was lying on her belly in front of one of the elevators, the doors barely open. She was speaking, but I couldn’t make out the words.
“Is she in there?” I skidded up beside her, dropping onto the floor so I could see what had drawn her focus. The main brass doors had been pried apart about a foot, and the interior elevator doors were open maybe twice as wide.
Genie was sitting in the corner of the car, her head tucked between her knees and her arms wrapped over herself. She was shaking so hard I could hear the tremors against the walls of the elevator.
“Can we get these open any wider?” I tugged at the heavy door, but Morgan grabbed my hand to stop me.
“See the way it’s bowing out at the top?” Following her gaze, I noted the obvious structural damage the door had encountered, the brass tops of the doors angled in steeply. “I’m worried the car is tipped in. If we open the doors any wider, it might fall.”
I released the door immediately and got my face as close to the gap as I dared, not wanting to risk shearing it off if the elevator were to suddenly fall. Did I have magic in my new arsenal for this? I could burn up a thousand corpses like they were candles on a cake, and I could lift impossibly heavy objects. There had to be a use for Aubrey’s skills here.
“Genie, can you hear me?” I was worried she was so deep into a state of shock she wouldn’t be able to move. I had no idea whether or not the elevator could support the weight of two people, and if I had to climb in after her, there was no guarantee either of us was going to make it out again. “Genie, baby, I need you to look at me.”
Her whole body gave a shudder, and she let out a small, petrified mewl, but she lifted her head. “S-S-Secret?”
I’d never seen her more scared. When I’d first met her, she, along with my ancient great-grandmother, helped to save me from a pack of feral werewolves hoping to turn me into a breeding machine. Even then, with the Loups-Garous hot on our tails, she had been fearless.
Letting her stay here with me had been a mistake. I should have made her turn the car back around and hightail it out of New York at the first sign of trouble.
The problem was, I saw a lot of myself in Genie. She was a sweeter, better version of me, but there were other similarities. If I’d told her to leave, she would have stayed anyway, putting herself at even greater risk. And if I’d left her behind during the raids, she would have been in this position anyway. Albeit much higher up in the building, and possibly worse off for it.
“Hi, hon.” I tried to keep my voice soothing and in control, but it was hard not to lose my shit when my baby sister might plummet to her death at any moment. Lucas had gone to the elevator two doors down and was gingerly working to pry the doors apart while keeping a careful eye on us. I knew if anything were to jostle or move, he would stop in a heartbeat, but I was still nervous.
“Are you g-going to h-help me?”
My heart broke that she even had to ask. Did she think I was here to watch her die?
“Of course. Of course I’m here to help you. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”
“We got them,” she whispered. “We got our guy.”
I hadn’t been thinking about what had happened with the other teams. Since arriving at the hotel and seeing the state it was in, my primary focus had been making sure everyone was alive and relatively well. But I’d known they had to have done some damage, considering all the dead corpses in the street.
“I knew you would. You’re my tough, badass sister. If anyone could kill a necromancer, it would be you.”
While trying to keep her calm, I was racking my brain for ideas of how to use Aubrey’s power. It seemed to function on a very simplistic basis, at least for me. Think of something and make it happen. I could will the most basic concepts into existence. If I wanted fire, something burned. If I wanted strength, I was strong. But how could I conceptualize saving a life? And if I couldn’t do it for Genie, how could I try to bring Keaty back from the dead?
“Do you think you can stand up?”
She glanced at the rubble on the floor, and her eyes welled up, the trembling starting anew. “I-I-I-I—” She couldn’t get past that one vowel. Releasing her knees, she attempted to push herself up off the floor, but she was shaking so badly I feared the vibrations might be enough to send the whole car falling.
“Sweetie, I need you to calm down. Can you do that for me?” Asking the impossible was something I had mastered of myself, but to demand it from others seemed cruel. “You need to take a deep breath.”
Genie tried, but it sounded like she was breathing through the back of a fan. This would never work if she didn’t relax.
And there it was. My answer.
I might not be able to save her with a thought, but I was betting I could mellow her out. Aubrey had been able to manipulate Holden and me with almost no effort at all. He’d seized all of Desmond’s control in a matter of moments. If he could do all that, surely I could make Genie breathe a little easier.
Calm. I projected it at her like a mental weapon.
A final shudder rocked her, and she closed her eyes, letting her head thump against the back of the car.
I hadn’t wanted her comatose!
This power was too foreign to me. I still wasn’t sure how it worked. I was on the verge of panic when her eyes fluttered open again, this time pale white like those of the dead. She stared straight ahead, but now her breath was normal, and her body no longer shook.
I’d made her so calm she was basically a zombie. Now I wasn’t so different from the necromancers I’d set out to kill, except instead of controlling the dead, I could manipulate the living.
That was a very frightening ability to have.
“What’s going on?” Morgan asked. “What the hell is happening with her eyes?” She’d crawled back a few inches, obviously frightened of what she was seeing.
I was scared too.
Was this what it felt like for Sig to wield control over me? I had the power to do whatever I wanted with Genie, and the only thing I wanted to do was rid myself of that power. Being responsible for another human was too daunting a task to be enjoyable. No wonder Sig so rarely made me do his bidding. To have all this control over someone was too much responsibility.
“Stand up,” I whispered, and Genie did, smoothly and without any hesitation. Still, the elevator groaned.
Morgan’s gaze was now fixed on me. She’d figured it out, at least in part. She knew I was piloting Genie’s actions, though I doubted she could understand how deep my control went. I could do anything, damn near anything, provided I could come up with the right word for it.
“How…?”
I cut my eyes to her briefly, giving her a quick warning glare that demanded silence. How could I be expected to steer the SS Eugenia and explain myself? Explanations wouldn’t come easily. If I could get Genie out of this and get us all out of the building before it collapsed, I’d gladly take the time to explain my devil’s bargain with Aubrey.
Now was not the time.
Lucas, responding either to the instructions I was giving or to Morgan’s surprised questions, abandoned his efforts at opening the other door and came back over, looming above us like a threat.
“Walk to me,” I instructed.
“Her eyes,” Lucas breathed, steadying himself on the wall. “They’re white.”
Ignoring them both, I continued to focus on Genie. She came towards me like a sleepwalker, with her arms down beside her and her distracted vision off somewhere in the middle distance. Still, she moved with purpose, and every step she took made the elevator groan more.
With a heavy kathunk, the car shifted and dropped an inch. My heart fell all the way to the bottom floor, because for one fraction of a moment I was absolutely convinced I was about to witness my sister fall to her death.
Stop, my inner voice commanded. STOP.
The elevator went still, but when I glanced back to Genie, her eyes had returned to normal. So there were limits to this gift. I could only execute one command at a time. Either I held the elevator in place, or made Genie move. I couldn’t do both.
“You have to help me.” I stared right at Lucas, with my mind focused more on the car than on him. “Please.” My expression must have shown an impressive amount of desperation, because he didn’t even pause.
“What do you need?”
“I can keep it from falling, but I need you to grab her.”
“Secret, that’s impossible, you can’t—”
“I can,” I shouted. “Don’t question it. Just believe me
. I can.”
His expression told me he believed I might have lost my mind, but I hoped he still trusted me enough to do what I needed him to.
“Lucas, you have to do this for me.”
He heaved a sigh then got down on his knees, crawling towards the elevator doors.
“Morgan, keep the doors open,” he said, lying flat on his stomach. “Eugenia? Genie? It’s Lucas, can you hear me?”
I couldn’t hear whether or not she responded, I was too busy keeping all my attention locked on the elevator.
Stay.
Morgan pulled the doors back a few more inches, and the metal groaned in protest. An agonizing, white-hot spear of pain smashed through me, like a physical blow to the skull. I staggered, straining to keep concentrating.
Stay.
“Come on, baby girl, just a few more steps and I’ve got you. That’s right. You got it.” Lucas’s tone was comforting in a way mine hadn’t been. Even I believed his words as he cajoled her forward. I would have gone to him too.
The car screamed, pressing against the open brass doors, grinding metal on metal in a high-pitched wail. A fist closed on my brain and squeezed, forcing me to shut my eyes if I was going to keep it up.
Stay.
“I’ve got you. You got it. I’ve got you.” The relief in Lucas’s voice and the sudden cry from Genie gave me enough hope to open my eyes slightly.
Genie was in his arms, and Lucas was helping her to her feet.
I let go of the thought, and the moment I did the doors jerked open, forcing Morgan to release them. An instant later the car scraped against the doors in an ear-splitting shriek, and the elevator fell, plummeting all the way to the basement, leaving us staring at the empty pit of space the car had formerly occupied.
“Genie?” I stared at my sister, breathing heavily. I could barely believe she was standing in front of me, unscathed save for a few bumps and bruises.
“You saved me.” She wrestled herself free of Lucas and moved to embrace me, but Morgan caught hold of her arm and tugged her back.
