“No.” I used the craggy wall to pull myself to my feet. I’d like to think I knew a gift horse when I saw one. “I’m up. I’m coming with you.”
“You’ve burned your leg,” she said, pointing.
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. “I hadn’t noticed. And I didn’t burn it, Courtney did.”
“She a blonde bitch with green eyes?” I nodded. The woman pointed back down the way I’d come. “I saw her here last night. She must’ve set a trap for you. There’s a sigil low on the walls over there. As soon as you walked into this tunnel the creature was summoned to come and feed. Good thing you had your firepower, or I might not have got to you in time.”
I opened my mouth to tell her again that I didn’t start that fire, but then I remembered that I was in the middle of a cave and this strange woman had just saved my life and ruined her leggings in the process. I probably owed her a passing attempt at an explanation.
I rubbed my palms together, trying to staunch the heat flaring across my skin. “Yeah. I don’t know how I did that. It just happens sometimes, usually when I’m afraid or really fucking angry. It’s only happened a few times in my life.”
I was being more honest with this stranger than I’d ever been with myself. Nearly being eaten by a slithering shadow had that affect on me.
“Well, good thing you made it happen today.” She nodded toward the sigil. When I didn’t move to follow her, she tilted her head to the side, studying me with those piercing – and eerily familiar – dark eyes. “If it helps any, my brother would tell you to trust me.”
“Your brother?”
“Yeah. I’ve seen him with you. He’s one of your boyfriends, although why he’d let them dump you this far from the school, I don’t know. Maybe you pissed him off with your sunny personality?”
Ayaz.I realized where I recognized her – she had the same intense eyes and dark hair as Ayaz, only her hair hung in matted clumps around her face from the mud on the cave surface. She shone a flashlight toward the end of the tunnel and slid an arm under my shoulder again, providing me with additional support as I hobbled along the wall, trying not to lose my footing on the slope.
“He never told me he had a sister at this school,” I said. “Only a younger sister…”
My voice trailed off as I started to put the pieces together. A name floated on the tip of my tongue.
“You’re Zehra?”
“That’s me.” Her smile was brilliant – a flash of white teeth and full lips. I imagined that was what Ayaz’s smile looked like if he ever bothered to use it.
“Why are you here, in a cave? Are you dead like your brother?”
“I’m very much alive, and I aim to keep it that way. Which is why I need you to talk less and move more.” The beam of her flashlight shone on the sigil I’d seen. “Did you see that glowing just before your fire started?”
“I think so.” My temples throbbed. “I’m not sure what I saw, to be honest. One moment something slithered over my foot and the next my body and the whole cave was on fire.”
“Interesting. You know how to read sigils?”
I nodded. “Your brother taught me.”
“Good.” She traced a line that ran toward the center of the sigil. “Then you’ll see how to get back to the school from here. The easiest way is to follow the ridge until you reach the road, then walk through the front gates. You’re going to have to hurry, though.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said sarcastically as my burn screamed. “I didn’t already know that.”
“That girl – Courtney – she intended that creature to kill you. The Eldritch Club doesn’t expect you to return.”
“Then they’re going to get a big shock,” I grunted as I pulled myself around a large boulder. Across the top of the cave, a faint slash of light and a whoosh of fresh air signaled an exit. “But why are you helping me?”
Zehra beamed that brilliant smile of hers again. “Because you’re Hazel – you stole my brother’s heart and you have fire in your veins. You’re the first one who’s made me believe I might be able to get my brother back. Watch your step here.”
“Thanks.” She fell in behind me as I scrambled up the last steep slope. Fresh moonlight kissed my skin. I turned around to offer a hand to Zehra, but she’d disappeared.
“Where’d you go?” I called out, but the only answer was the hoot of a lonesome owl. “Zehra?”
I had so many questions, but she didn’t want to stick around to answer them, and I had somewhere important to be.
Or did I?
I turned my gaze downhill, where faint pinpricks of light peeked through the trees – the town of Arkham at the base of the peninsula, lit up like a Christmas tree. None of the edimmu could cross the borders of the school, butIcould. All I had to do was run down that hill to the safety of those lights, hotwire a car, and drive as fast and as hard as I could in the opposite direction.
