Julius felt like he was having a heart attack. “What did you justdo?” he cried. “That could have—you would have—how did you know that was the right one?!”
“I don’t know!” Bob cried back, slapping his hands to his face in an exaggerated expression of horror. “It’s almost as though I cansee the future!”
“Oh,” Julius said quietly, shoulders slumping as he looking down at the detonator in his hand. “Right. So I guess I can let go of this, then?”
“Only if you want to,” Bob said, scooping Katya up and stripping off the bomb vest before tossing her into the Crown Vic’s back seat like a sack of potatoes. “Right, then! Let’s get going, because between you and me, this place is about to get very crowded.”
He looked pointedly at Justin, still flaming in the sky, but Julius didn’t need the hint. He was already turning to tell Marci to get into the car…and found only empty space.
At this point, Julius would have thought it impossible to panic any more than he already was, but the sudden lack of Marci sent his brain into overdrive. “Marci!” he shouted, whirling around.“Marci!”
“Just a second.”
Her voice was like a balm, sending relief running through his body. The feeling was short-lived, though, because when he finally spotted her, she was crouching on her hands and knees all the way back at the edge of the blackened circle where Justin had first shifted.
“What are you doing?” he yelled, running over to grab her by the shoulders. “Come on! We have to go.”
“But it’s gone!” she said frantically, yanking out of his hold. “It was in my bag back in the gym, and now it’s gone.”
He stared down at her, uncomprehending. “What’s gone?”
“My Kosmolabe!” she cried, pressing her cheek against the ground so she could look along the asphalt at foot level. “It must have fallen out when the magic eaters jumped us. Just give me thirty seconds to find it and—”
She cut off as Julius pulled her up, spinning her around to face him. “We don’t have thirty seconds.” he said, forcing his voice to be calm. “We’ll come back later and look together, I promise, but we’re going to be up to our necks in serious trouble if we don’t leaveright now.So please, Marci,pleaselet it go. For me. Because I’m not going to leave you here, and if you stay, we’re all in danger.”
She stared at him for a long moment, her whole body shaking with urgency, and then she went limp under his hands. “Okay,” she whispered, sliding her bag back onto her shoulder. “Okay.”
Relief flooded into Julius so fast, he almost fell into Marci in his rush to hug her. He didn’t think it was possible to properly process all the emotions stomping through him like a herd of elephants, so he didn’t take the time to try. He simply squeezed Marci tight before tugging her back toward Bob’s car, almost yanking her over in his rush to get them both inside and out of danger. But then, just when he was starting to believe they might actually all make it out of this alive, Justin’s flaring green fire that had been illuminating the Pit from above suddenly snuffed out.
Julius stumbled, his head snapping up, but he couldn’t see a thing. The Pit was once again as black as its namesake, and there was no sign of his brother at all. Not a flame, not a roar, not a flap of his wings, not even the squeals of the magic eaters as they died. Nothing. It was like he’d just vanished.
He was still staring up at the silent void where Justin had been when something whooshed by in the blackness—something enormous and incredibly fast. The only reason he spotted it at all was because he was already looking up, and even then, he didn’t catch more than an impression of power and speed before the thing was gone, vanishing into the dark like a hunting owl. He was still staring after it when his phone began to ring.
He answered it without really thinking. By this point, the pain and repeated shocks had rendered his brain nearly useless. He barely noticed when Marci grabbed his arm and pulled him into Bob’s back seat between herself and the now-stirring Katya. As luck would have it, the call picked up just as Bob hit the gas, knocking them all backwards and sending Julius’s phone clattering to the floor. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because the roar that came through the cell phone’s speaker would have deafened Julius otherwise.
“Do you idiots listen to nothing I tell you?”
The feminine voice was so furious, he almost thought it was his mother, but that wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t high-pitched enough, and there was a brutal edge on the words that Bethesda could never manage. It wasn’t until Bob drew aCin the air, though, that Julius was able to put a name to it. Not that that made things any better.
He scooped the phone off the floor with a sinking heart, leaning back into the Crown Vic’s padded cushions for strength as he raised it to his ear. “Hello, Chelsie.”
“I specifically warned you not to do anything that would bring the Lady down on us,” his sister snarled, making him wince. “That includes letting yourmoronof a brother run rampant breathing fire over a city like some throwback from the dark ages!”
Julius swallowed. “I can’t exactly control what Justin—”
“I know that!”Chelsie shouted. “And it’s the only reason you’re still alive. Justin might not be so lucky.”
Her voice had turned into a growl by the end, and Julius began to sweat. “Is, um, is he okay?”
“At the moment, yes, because I snatched him out of the air before he could get himself killed. But I can’t vouch for his wellbeing from this point forward. I have very little patience foridiots”—there was a sharp crash over the phone, followed by a pained bellow that sounded a lot like Justin’s—“wholose their tempers”— another crash—“and use the power they were given for thedefense of the family”— another bellow of pain—“to make a spectacle of themselves in theAlgonquin’s front yard!”
Justin’s pained cries went through Julius like spears. “Please don’t be hard on him,” he begged. “It’s my fault. I asked him to help. He would never have—”
“Justin doesn’t need your permission to be a fool,” Chelsie said, her voice wavering back toward human, but only just. “He has been warnednumerous times, but his head is like a rock. Now, he’s going to learn the hard way why we do not break the rules, andyouare going to keep your snout out of it. The only reason I’m even calling you is to make sure you’re running. The Lady of the Lakes would have to be deaf, dumb, blind, and asleep to miss a display like that, so if you don’t want the family to disavow all knowledge of your existence, you will get your lousy carcass out of the Pit this instant.”
“We’re running,” Julius assured her.
“Good,” Chelsie said, slightly calmer. “Let me talk to Bob.”
