“The magic in her aura is gone,” he said in a tense whisper, still holding off the others. “I think you’ve drained it all.”
Crawford collapsed onto the floor, inhalations ragged and exhalations doubling as moans. She looked worse than Hartgrave after the battle beside the highway.
Emily wanted to avert her eyes but couldn’t. Good God, she’d inflicted that agony.Shehad.
“Tell me you’re all right,” Hartgrave demanded. “Ohfuck, this is all my fault, all of it—”
“Not your fault.” She pulled her socks fully off with trembling fingers and pushed her sleeves up to her elbows. “I’m—I’m okay.”
He nodded, expression grim, and advanced on the injured woman.
Oh, no.
With no way to reliably imprison magic-users, he had to kill all three wizards to keep her parents alive. She’dknown it would come to this when she decided to fight. She hadn’t realized just how ghastly it would feel in the moment.
She didn’t want him to be a killer. She didn’t want to be an accessory—to be the reason.
But she had no choice. She turned and ran toward Shaw, trying to think only of what would happen if she didn’t succeed. Trying to rouse anger instead of despair.
Shaw bellowed, “Alex, God damn you,no,” and broke through his spell a moment later. The horror on her face suggested the window to intervene had already closed. Emily faltered.
That was when Shaw struck, closing the distance between them with a flying kick to the stomach.
A shout—Hartgrave’s—rang in Emily’s ears as she hit the floor, knocked breathless. His spell whizzed overhead and bounced Shaw off the nearest wall, but her armor protected her.
Rolling to her side in an attempt to get up, Emily caught sight of Kincaid. He’d seized the last stone.
As he pulverized it, she saw his gun rise from his holster and fly to the ceiling.Throughthe ceiling.
Kincaid looked up. Without even bending his knees, he launched himself after it.
The ceiling let him pass. Like it was an illusion.
Oh, God.
Shouts, the hiss of spells, the sound of trouble. Bernie and Willi tumbled through, hitting the floor fifteen feet below.
21
Things Fall Apart
Willi pushed to his feet, but Bernie lay motionless. Emily screamed, panic all but choking the sound off, as Kincaid touched down a few yards from her friends.
“You killed my Anna!” Willi pummeled Kincaid with spells, all sparking harmlessly off the wizard’s armor. “Youkilledher!”
Hartgrave, rushing up to her, looked as alarmed as she felt about this new disaster.
“Help them!” she insisted.
A brief pause and he shimmered away, calling out something in German as he came out the other side of the jump. She scrambled painfully to her feet, grateful Shaw’s attention had also been caught by the commotion, and risked another glance at Bernie. Still no sign of life.
When she looked back, Shaw was gone.
She didn’t even have time to thinkoh nobefore the wizard reappeared just above her, coming down feet first. Emily hit the floor yet again and could manage nothing in the way of resistance as Shaw sat on her, pinning her arms with muscular thighs.
“I’m removing the teleportation barrier,” Shaw said, putting one hand to the job. “Can you guess where I’m taking you?”
No one was going anywhere as long as the door remained closed, but even the attempt would be catastrophic. Emily was sure she had never produced so much anti-magic as she was pumping out now. No way could she calm down enough to ensure their safety.
