“Um. Is it me, or is the wind—”
A mailbox banged into the window, and I jumped. When the glass webbed, my blood turned to ice.Now it breaks?
I retreated so fast I knocked into a table and then into a chair. Suddenly, a tree—a full-grown, huge-ass tree—skidded down the street, its roots twisting like avolitor’s. When the roots lifted, flipping it onto its leafy crown, Remo shot across the inn.
“We need to get to the basement!” His roar, combined with the impact of the trunk against the pavement outside, had my heart blasting against the zipper of my jumpsuit. “Amara!”
A segment of white-picket fence slammed into the window, crackling all the places the mailbox had spared.
I ripped around. “Shouldn’t we try to get to the train?”
Remo’s fiery red hair fluttered around as though the wind had somehow penetrated the cracks in the façade. Besides its deafening howl, the air was still quiet inside.
“Massive trees are flying around, and you want to go outside?”
“If we can’t die—”
“What if we can? What if the last world just created illusions, and my death was one of them? We need to get to the basement. Now, Amara!”
I whirled around and headed toward the staircase I’d noticed earlier, then tore down the cement steps, Remo on my heels. The explosion of glass somewhere in the inn startled me, and I stumbled down the last three steps, shooting my hands forward. I officially detested stairs.Cinching my lids shut, I fell. My palms smacked into the concrete first and then my knees. Although my face didn’t suffer from my clumsiness, my elbow shrieked in pain all over again.
I yanked back my injured arm but remained hunched even though all I wanted was to crawl into a ball and lick my wounds.
“Amara?”
Slowly, breathing through my pain, I opened my lids.
Remo was crouched in front of me. “Are you okay?”
No, I wasnotokay. We’d figured out the code just to get hit by a freaking tornado?
He lifted my face.
I twisted my head so that it slid off his roughened palm, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of seeing me in pain. “I’m fine.” I rocked back onto my heels and glared at the shiny concrete under my bent legs.
Remo’s concern clung to the air between us, charging it. Unless it wasn’t concern. Unless it was smugness that I was so damn weak without my powers.
Wood splintered somewhere above us, and Remo jumped to his feet, then lunged toward the basement’s entrance. A glance over my shoulder revealed a table tumbling down the stairs. I needed to get out of the way, but somehow, I couldn’t locate the willpower or strength to get up and save myself. What was the point?
Remo groaned, and I thought he’d gotten hit but found him shouldering the door. The hinges groaned as he leaned all of his weight against it. Either it was the heaviest door, or it was stuck. The wood tabletop screeched as it got stuck between the walls of the staircase. Sweat glistened on Remo’s brow as he pushed and pushed. I should’ve gotten up and helped him, but instead I sat there, my anger foaming like white caps. I wanted to scream like I’d done in the Cacti Desert, but all that had done was hurt my lungs.
A deafening crack sounded over the howling wind, and then the tabletop split in two like butterfly wings and flew straight at me. I squeezed my eyes shut, certain I was about to be struck, but the impact never came. And then the wind stopped blowing, and my hair stopped floating like Glade kelp around my face.
A latch clicked, followed by a booming thump.
I opened my eyes but could see nothing.
Either Remo had gotten the door shut, because there wasn’t the faintest trickle of light, or I was dead.
I heard heavy panting. Mine but also someone else’s.
I guessed I was still alive.
Something collided softly with my knee. I assumed it was Remo’s boot until he spoke, and I realized he wasn’t standing over me. “You think you can make a faelight out ofwita?”
Swallowing, I pressed my palms together and extricated my dust. Its filaments glowed in the darkness as I stretched and weaved them into an orb which I tossed upward. It levitated toward the ceiling and spread light over the tight quarters, glinting against the shelves filled with stacked wine bottles and highlighting the edges of a countertop under which sat two large white boxes with portholes.
Remo was leaning against the door, breathing hard. His eyes ran over my still kneeling form. “Are you okay?”
