“Myra,” Delaney said. “Let’s take this one step at a time.”
“No.”
I twisted the lock and lifted the top of the box. Since I’d put the velvet bag containing the scissors in it, I’d cleaned out all my other keepsakes. I had been afraid my childhood would be tainted by this dark weapon that demanded such a high price.
But now it was not fear I was feeling. It was power. I picked up the velvet bag, let the wooden box drop to the floor.
“Oh, shit,” Jean said. “We need to lock this down. Holy fuck, Delaney we need to stop this. Now, right now. Myra, don’t!”
Then Jean was on her feet lunging toward me, and the tug on my chest was so hot it was like a knife stabbing bone. Stabbing right through my skin, my muscle, all the way through to the other side of me. Thewrong place, thewrong timeof this moment rang me like a gong the size of the moon.
“It’s not worth it,” Bathin whispered.
“It is.”
I gripped the scissors and swung.
Bathin was fast. Supernaturally fast. He grabbed my wrist, stepped sideways into my body, and forced open my hand.
The scissors clattered to the floor.
Wrongwrongwrong.
A wave of vertigo washed over me. And then I felt nothing.
Chapter 17
We wereno longer in my house. We were no longer in a room.
“This isn’t ideal,” Bathin said. He breathed hard like he’d just lifted a car one-handed. A big car. A bus. “And it isn’t going to last long. I don’t know what I can say to make this right, because you refuse to listen to me.”
“You’re a demon!”
“That’s racial profiling, Myra. Just because I’m a demon doesn’t mean I’m evil. I’ve been trying to tell you that since the first day I came to Ordinary.”
“Where are we?” I asked.
“In a place.”
“No. Where are we?”
Panic rolled under my skin. There was only blurry turquoise-silver where the sky should be, and other than Bathin, everything around me was a shade of tropical-ocean-blue and white—blurry and indistinct.
“Where are we? What are we inside?” There was no wind or air or growing things. Where was the air?
“There is air. Or what you need to survive in this state. You’re not going to suffocate.” He reached toward my shoulder.
I slapped his hand away and punched him in the solar plexus.
He“oofed”out air and bent, holding his hand over his gut.
“Keep your hands off me.”
He nodded, spit, then slowly straightened.
“Take me home.”
“No, you need to—”
