‘I’ve got you, I’ve got you,’ Jackson whispered over and over as he crashed to the wet sand beside me. ‘You’re good, I’ve got you.’
‘Run.’ I panted into his neck, offering no protest when he picked me up from the ground. ‘There’s a wolf.’
He pulled me closer, his head on a swivel.
‘I don’t see it?’ he said after a moment. ‘Did you get it?’
‘No. It nearly got me.’
My body was cold but my blood was warm as it ran down my back, staining Jackson’s shirt. I was too weak from the henbane and malachite to try to heal myself.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, holding me like a piece of fragile glass, about to break.
‘Where’s Wyn? Is he OK?’
‘He ran right out after you. You didn’t see him?’
I tried to shake my head but my neck was too stiff.
‘And Lydia?’
‘Right over there.’
He pointed off beyond the edge of the ocean, a familiar silhouette staring out to sea. ‘Props on putting out the fire, but jeez, Em, did you have to flood the entire island?’
‘I’m not doing this,’ I told him, my hair plastered to my head, the rain stinging my eyes as I clung to him, feet slowly moving one in front of the other.
‘Good old Mother Nature then. Her timing never misses.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I said in a whisper. ‘Look.’
I slipped out of Jackson’s arms, still leaning back against hischest to stay upright, and turned towards the ocean. Wiping the water from my face as best I could, I squinted at the silhouette of the girl I thought I knew, arms raised to the sky as the storm crashed around her. She turned to face me, her brown eyes were golden, sparking like the lightning itself as she brought down the saltwater storm, and when she lowered her arms, lightning bolts danced on her palms.
‘What the hell …’ Jackson whispered, now leaning on me as much as I was leaning on him. The rain stopped, the skies cleared, the silhouette came into focus.
‘There you are.’
Wyn almost knocked Jackson off his feet when he rushed me, swooping in from the other side of the bonfire’s skeleton, but I pushed him away, all my attention on the swirl of magic at the water’s edge.
You won’t be alone much longer.
I hadn’t caused the storm, Lydia had.
Because Lydia was a witch.
Chapter Twenty-Six
No one said a word on the way back to Bell House.
The four of us bundled ourselves into the car, still soaked through, Jackson blasting the heat in mid-July. Wyn took the passenger seat, leaving me and Lydia in the back.
Once the storm was over, she had walked back from the beach in a daze, allowing us to direct her to the car and strap her in but ignoring our questions, mine and Jackson’s. Wyn kept quiet, one concerned hand on my shoulder at all times until we were safely in the back of the car and on the road home to Savannah. Everyone was afraid, everyone was confused. Jackson concentrated on driving while Lydia slept, twisted up in her seatbelt, her head in my lap. Wyn spent the entire drive turned around in his seat, eyes on me, leg bouncing up and down and anxiety rolling off him.
When we pulled up outside Bell House, he leapt out the car before it came to a stop, bolting to my side to help me out while Jackson pulled his sister out of the backseat and carried her sleeping body up to the house.
‘Just when I thought I was getting a week to myself,’ Ashley said, ushering the four of us inside, scanning the square beforeclosing the door behind us and turning the lock. I hadn’t realized the front door to Bell House had a lock. It couldn’t be a good sign.
She surveyed the damage as we staggered into the parlour, four messed-up teenagers barefooted, bloody and bedraggled, still wearing our damp clothes and stunned expressions. My ruined shirt was smeared pink with washed-out blood, Jackson’s too, and Lydia’s crocheted cover-up was ruined, ripped to pieces by the lightning she’d channelled.
