He opens his mouth, and blood trickles out as his body slides down the wall. His muscular frame looks deflated and small as he crumples to the floor.
“Neil!” Natalie shrieks, lunging for him.
His black cloak darkens further as blood spreads out around the marble. He blinks once, and then his eyes go still and glassy, reflecting nothing but ceiling.
“No!” Natalie grasps his face, his collar, his arms, as if trying to figure out how to help.
But there’s nothing we can do. Blood pools beneath him, creeping toward Natalie’s knees. The smell fills my nostrils. I cover my mouth to hold back the sudden nausea.
One second he was alive and fighting, and the next, gone. The brutal simplicity of his death winds me, making me dizzy.
“C-careful,” I stammer, grabbing Natalie and pulling her closer. Unwanted calculations flash through my mind—the trajectory of the marble, the few inches that spared her and condemned Neil.
The thought of how close they were standing paralyzes me. My heart pounds so hard I can barely breathe.
The memory of Freddie’s body flashes across my mind’s eye, and Will lying on the floor of C.S.A.M.M.’s lounge—every time I’ve seen a person become a corpse. Lifeless eyes gazing at the ceiling, faces frozen, bodies limp.
Natalie’s breathing quickens, her expression twisting. Past the tears in her eyes, past the numb shock, there’s something else—fury. My blood runs cold at the sight of it.
Then, distantly, a car engine revs. It’s a pitch I’ve heard enough times that it’s painfully familiar.
I gasp. “Natalie, it’s…”
Sophia looks down at the street below, and then back at us. A sneer curls her lip, triumph glinting in her purple eyes.
Hayley jumps to her feet and launches something from her belt. A cluster of jagged spikes beelines for Sophia, a hum prickling my ears like the sound of a drone.
Sophia tilts her head. With a playful wiggle of her fingers, she leaps backward—and lets herself fall.
“No!” Fiona roars, lurching toward the window.
I race after her, more footsteps thundering around me. I stop a stride away, my insides seeming to launch into my esophagus as I look down, where parked cars resemble toys.
Stopped beside the van in front of the building, illuminated by a pale floodlight, is Oaklyn’s silver FJ Cruiser.
From the Journal of Hazel Okada
After all we’d been through, was this going to be the moment Oaklyn finally killed me?
Flat on her bed, my neck and wrists throbbing where the roots had been, I scrambled for an explanation. “Oaklyn, I did it to protect you. The witches found out where you live. It was either you or your mom.”
The awful part is that I didn’t know who I was trying to protect. By lying, was I trying to save our relationship, or did I only care about saving myself?
Oaklyn’s eyes widened a fraction, her fingers hovering over my phone in her hand. “What do you mean, me or my mom? What did you do?”
So she didn’t get that far in my journal. Maybe I could lie my way out of this.
“I—I’m sorry. I was spying for them, it’s true. But then I fell for you, and everything changed.”
She shook her head, her brow pinched. Her hands trembled as her fingers fluttered over my phone screen.
Still lying on the bed, not daring to move in case she decided to strangle me again, I held my breath. The dagger sat on the bedside table, gleaming in the dim light. Its metal had a faint purple hue, the same shade I’d seen in the witches’ eyes.
I could see the moment Oaklyn found the text to Katie. Her eyes went huge. She stepped back, putting distance between us like I was toxic. “You sent her location to the coven?”
“To get them off your back. I knew she could handle them, being a full witch, and…”
The temperature in theroom seemed to drop. Oaklyn’s face transformed into something I’d never seen—something cold and deadly that made my blood turn to ice. This wasn’t the woman who’d held me in her arms and kissed me breathless. This was the person Katie had warned me about.
