She gripped the front of Gaia’s clothes and rolled, slamming her down. She landed on top of the cursing woman and reached for something, anything, to shut her up with. Her searching fingers found the mask. Instead of beating Gaia with it, Ellory cracked it in half right by the woman’s head. Gaia flinched, and it felt good, so good, to make her the terrified one for once. Every conversation they’d ever had played on a loop in Ellory’s mind, combined with every time she had cowered from Gaia’s masked face and every time she’d swallowed her retorts to Gaia’s victim complex. This was who was terrorizing her? Some blond-haired white woman who was more afraid of being called a racist than she was of actual racism?
“I’ll kill you,” Ellory snarled, drawing her fist back.
“PROFESSOR,” Gaia screamed. Tears peppered her reddening face, and she looked pathetic and small without her mask to hide behind. “SHE’S HURTING ME.”
Ellory would have been stunned by the audacity if Gaia hadn’t reminded her of how much danger she was in. Ellory drew her up by the collar and slammed the woman’s head against the floor, taking a sick satisfaction in her pained cry. It wasn’t enough to knock her out, but it did disorient her enough that Ellory felt safe climbing to her feet.
The doorway was filled with Old Masters.
Somewhere, Colt’s rickety voice commanded, “Stop her.”
Ellory grabbed her bag and fled into the night.
36
Ellory had expected it to be difficult, if not outright impossible, to find the hidden clearing again, but it was as if Riverside Campus were eager to suck her back into its concealed areas. Fear made her surroundings smudge together. Every sound was an Old Master seconds away from capturing her. Her vision blurred, and her chest burned, and she was sure she must have looked unhinged to anyone who saw her, but the campus was empty and dark. She could see only the path ahead, which led her all the way to the lake without injury.
Tai and Cody needed her. Hudson and Boone, if they were sleeping there as well. She wouldn’t let them down.
She was in the middle of drawing a summoning circle—frantic edges, bare of offerings—when the ghost light appeared to lead her way. It vibrated, as if it, too, were in a hurry, as if it knew that she wasn’t safe lingering here. The rotting pile of fish had been cleared since she’d last been there, but the flowering rushes drooped like they were considering an early grave, too.
She had her Taser in one hand and her phone in the other. It didlittle to stave off the anxiety of knowing that she was being hunted like a duck during the fall season. Everything Colt had revealed tumbled around her throbbing head, the proprietary way he’d said,This won’t hurt, as if that would be her only problem with what the Old Masters were doing. With what they had done. It made her sick, even more sick than not knowing what she would have done if they had inducted her. Would she have given up on her investigation, ignored all red flags like Boone, just for a taste of that same power? Would she have forgotten the Lost Eight if she’d been given the magic to keep Carol healthy for the rest of her life?
Shedidn’t know, and she hated herself for that.
Every time she blinked, she saw Hudson’s face: his half smiles when he didn’t want to admit he found her funny, the aloofness he wore like a shield against being taken advantage of by a populace who saw his last name first, all the soft affection he poured into his friendship with Boone. He had been the first person to believe her, the person who had helped her most, and at some point, he had become a support system she couldn’t bear to lose.
They had taken him from her as easily as they’d tried to take her power. And that, she knew, she could never let stand.
Let the rest of the world forget him. That was their mistake to make.
She would remember and remember and remember.
The ghost light zipped through the trees, and Ellory hurtled after it. She slapped branches and leaves out of her path. She skidded over rocks and twigs. Her foot caught in an exposed root that sent her tumbling onto the leaf-coated ground, scraping her palms and sending another zing of pain from her hip down to her ankle. Light hovered over her, waiting for her to get her bearings, but the cold earth had slapped some sense into her. Riverside Campus was alivewith rustling and shouts, the Old Masters bearing down on her, and she was running out of energy. Even if she made it to the hidden tower, what then? Another creature could be waiting. Or, worse, they could surround her and starve her out.
How could David take on Goliath? Even with a Taser, not a slingshot, Ellory felt outmatched.
Yet Letitia Rose had sent her a guide, a way to escape the fate that she hadn’t. Ellory owed it to Tai and Cody, to Hudson and Boone, to the Lost Eight and to herself, to keep going.
She pushed herself up and hobbled onward.
The shingled roof of the schoolhouse crested the trees, like a lighthouse directing her through rocky waters. Ellory was so busy staring at it that she almost didn’t notice the person who stepped into her path. She slipped to a stop, inches away from colliding into the broad chest of Liam Blackwood.
“No.” The word fell from her lips in a breathless plea. “Not you. Please not you, too.”
“It doesn’t have to be like this.” Liam looked like he had the first day she’d met him: white-and-black-striped polo and loose blue jeans, clean-shaven jaw and swooping chestnut hair. He was so handsome that it pained her, though not as much as his presence. “They’ll stop chasing you if you stop running. Don’t you want to stop running?”
Ellory shoved past him, but he caught her by both wrists. She was on a mission, but he was lacrosse captain. Her struggles for freedom were laughable in the face of the easy strength he was using against her. She could use magic, but she felt too raw, too volatile right now. She might kill him. She didn’t want himdead.
“I don’t understand.” Her eyes stung, but she refused to cry any more tears over this man. “If you’re one of the Old Masters, why did you even ask me out?”
“I’m not one of the Old Masters.” Liam lookedsad, like he knew whatever he said next would be no better. “I’m a part of your dream, Ellory.”
“Sorry…what?”
She stopped fighting, stopped moving, stoppedeverything. Colt had said something similar, but the desire to escape and rescue her sleeping friends had pushed the bizarre revelation about herself to the back of her mind. Now, trapped and forced to face it, she could feel her surroundings blur as though the backdrop to this conversation were unnecessary. As though she and Liam were the only two people in this world.
“You’re dreaming. You’ve been locked in a dream for three years now, and you’re only now awake enough to recognize the truth. This is how the Old Masters siphon magic. They’ve crafted a spell that lets you slumber while your magic feeds theirs. The magic allows you to live a full life in the world the dreamers have created, occasionally moderated by an Old Master. In your case, your moderator was Preston Colt. Your part of the dream was me.” He looked down as though seeing himself for the first time, his black plimsolls lined with dirt from his trek through the hazy forest. “It’s an amazing likeness, but the real Liam Blackwood doesn’t know who you are. I’m just a story you were telling yourself, encouraged by the spell to distract you from the truth you’d forgotten.”
