He jumped in front of her. His phone’s frantic beep-beep-beep alert went off, and she suddenly realized what it was: Morse code. SOS.
One of the women had a dark bob that stood out against the snowstorm like ink on paper. Her companion’s hair was a brilliant crimson.Snow White and Rose Red, her brain supplied as if this were the contribution she most needed right now.
The next second, luminescent magic sizzled from the women’s fingers, racing outward—not directly at her or Hartgrave, but around them all. Like that, the four of them were hemmed in by a sizable dome. Trapped. Hartgrave was casting, too—a barrier between them and the two women, splitting the dome in half.
Could this possibly be what it looked like? Had he been hiding in Ashburn from some sort of magicalhit squad?
She’d wanted adventure. She’d wanted to know Hartgrave’s secret. Two wishes fulfilled for the price of one—a price that might be far too high.
“You’re supposed to be dead,” Rose Red said to Hartgrave, breaking the fraught silence. She sounded British—and furious.
“Wasn’t really in the mood for it,” he said, the tightness in his voice undercutting the devil-may-care words.
Emily forced herself to breathe and consider the options. No one else was nearby, no one was likely to see them from the road, but there had to be something she could do. She was anti-magic, for Pete’s sake—this was the one time that cruel twist of fate could be helpful.Sheought to be the one jumping in front ofhim.
Except she’d never had an instantaneous effect on Hartgrave’s enchantments, and if any magic was instantaneously fatal ...
Rose Red was saying something. Emily refocused in time to catch, “And Kincaid will beveryinterested to hear what you’ve been up to.” The woman’s scowl deepened. “But I’m just as happy to bring you back to him in pieces. Your choice.”
“You know you’re not getting out of this,” Snow White added.
Hartgrave shot Emily a look of infinite meaning, and in that instant she knew. He couldn’t get them out—but she could.
She was the key. She was.
A heady feeling, despite the danger. No,becauseof it. She could show what she was made of and compensate for the little matter of being rendered helpless by asphalt.
As she tore off her gloves, he whispered, “Wait until we’re both at the edge—I need to be in arm’s reach. And don’t touch my shield.”
At that, his barrier glowed red. But he didn’t need to distinguish it from the air, as it happened, because the next moment the Sisters Grimm sent a wave of fire roaring against it.
Hartgrave, who’d been taking a few cautious steps away from the center of the dome, staggered backward, shouting a warning. Emily hit the ground right before flames burst through a scorched-black weak spot and whizzed across the space she’d just been occupying.
“Stay behind me!” he ordered, shoring up his spell. To the attackers, he added, “She has nothing to do with this—let her go.”
Rose Red’s laugh was chilly. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Drop our defenses soyoucan go, you mean.”
Hartgrave crab-walked two more steps to the left. Emily followed, wondering why he didn’t just run to the edge of the dome, and feeling even more perplexed when he stopped altogether.
“What do you plan to do with her? That is,” he added, “if you don’t inadvertently kill her trying to get to me.”
“I’m sure Kincaid will have ideas,” Snow White said. Ominously.
Hartgrave, shuffling a yard closer to the shimmering edge, bit off a curse as two more flames sizzled through hairline fractures in his shield. It seemed as if each movement sapped at his defensive position.
Rose Red called out: “Already tiring, are you? Your shield is collapsing.”
She was right. It had curved, melting under the barrage. Hartgrave opened his mouth to respond and had a coughing fit instead.
“We’re close enough, damn it,” Emily hissed. “Let me try!”
She took his answering cough to mean “go right ahead,” leapt the remaining half-dozen feet and pushed both hands onto the barrier.
Nothing happened.
She leaned her entire body into it, knees trembling as anxiety kicked up to full-out fear. Hartgrave’s faint redshield, the only thing standing between them and immolation, was well and truly failing. Tiny bits of fire broke through at multiple pinprick points—she ducked to avoid one—and he couldn’t do anything about it, couldn’t stop coughing.
They were going to die.
