“And my invite seems to have gotten lost,” Karen snapped. “Given I’m responsible for your meet cute, I’d expected a little more gratitude.”
“It was overlooked. It won’t happen again,” Rebecca stated.
Karen grinned, pointed her gun at Eloise, and squinted. “Tell me again why I can’t shoot the bitch.”
“Waste of ammunition,” Rockhard said.
Dave and Ezra began battling the elementals with their fists. Bones crunched, but nothing kept them down. Every strike that should have dropped them only slowed them for half asecond. Their bodies bent in impossible ways, bones cracking and resetting as if pain had been edited out of existence. But the living were starting to tire.
Harry rolled his sleeves up and grinned. “Only the dead can fight the dead.”
Was that our new motto? Had I missed the vote?
Harry’s fist slammed into an elemental, and the body went down like a sack of potatoes. Oh, that was our new motto. As you were.
I grimaced as Eloise hit us with another wave that made my knees buckle. Lenson caught my elbow. “I got you.”
“Oof, she’s packing some punch,” Rockhard said.
“This isn’t combat,” Dave snarled, slamming an elemental into a parked car hard enough to cave the door in. “It’s slaughter.”
“For you,” Eloise corrected.
The spirits surged forward, drawn by the carnage. I felt their panic clawing at my spine. They wanted to help, but they didn’t know how.
Harry took down another elemental. Okay, we were doing this. I was doing this. Fuck.
I closed my eyes and made a decision that would absolutely come back to haunt me. Literally. “Stay with me,” I whispered. I dragged Donn’s power through my veins and slammed it outward.
The veil thinned. Ghosts screamed as gravity claimed them. One by one, they solidified. Flesh snapped into place. Breath hit lungs that hadn’t drawn air in decades. The spirits gasped, staggered, cried out in shock and pain and wonder. Then, they looked at the hollowed elementals and, more importantly, the woman at the center of it all.
They swept forward in a wave, channeling all of their fear and rage into a fight for their afterlifes. They’d been held here or dragged back from their peace, and they were pissed.
The fight turned brutal, and the street exploded in violence. Eloise retaliated with uncontrolled magic that scorched the earth and shattered stone. Rebecca stayed close, taking down anyone who got too near, while Karen shouted with glee every time she threw potion bombs at the hollowed-out elementals, which made them explode.
My grandmother’s hold was slipping. We were winning. But I felt it all. Every solidified soul was a drain, a thread pulled tight around my ribs. Our eyes met across the street—Roberts women on opposite sides of a war. Her gaze flickered to the left and her lips curled up. She thrust her hand toward Rebecca.
“No,” I shouted.
Power slammed into my friend’s chest, vicious and precise. Rebecca gasped, her back arching as her heart stuttered beneath the force. Ezra roared her name. I didn’t think. I reacted. My magic snapped around Rebecca’s heart before she’d even fallen to her knees. Ezra abandoned the fight and caught the woman he loved in his arms.
Rebecca collapsed, but her heart kept beating. Once. Twice. Alive. But the cost was immediate. Spirits screamed as their bodies unraveled. Flesh faded. Weight vanished. They were yanked back into incorporeal form, ripped from solidity like it had never been theirs to keep.
Eloise watched it all with dawning delight. “Oh,” she breathed. “There it is. Love was always your weakness. I taught you better than that.” She turned to me, eyes bright and knowing. “You can only hold one miracle at a time. How fascinating.”
I staggered, my vision blurring as the truth landed like a blade.
She smiled wider before vanishing, her words left trailing behind. “I’ll see you soon, Granddaughter.”
The magic collapsed in on itself. Hollowed elementals fell, finally inert. White Castle stood broken. Rebecca lay breathing. Barely.
Hudson was at my side in an instant, arms wrapping around me as my knees buckled. “Cora. Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” I whispered, though the world was already dimming. “I’m still here.”
But Eloise had learned something vital tonight, and next time, she wouldn’t leave us breathing.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
