I saw March’s grin through the corner of my eye just fine. “My hero,” he said, and though I wanted to smile, too, I didn’t let myself. I still hadn’t forgotten the morning before.
“You—” he started, but then we both saw the shadow against the tree just a few feet ahead.
We both stopped moving, breathing, blinking for a heartbeat.
Then March sang, “Who wants some delicious tiiime?!”
He must have been out of his damned mind.
Movement ahead. I gripped the piece of wood tighter and held my Life Clock by its chain higher.
“Come now, don’t be shy. I promise you full, juicy, mouth-watering seconds,” March continued.
“March!” I hissed because the wraiths had already seen us, and they were slowly slipping out of the shadows from behind branches and trunks.
“I’ll warn you, though—keep your fingers offher.” And he nodded at me. Grinned like there weren’t four timewraiths right there ahead of us. “She’s all mine, and I don’t share.”
Strange gears turned in my stomach. My blood was near a boiling point.
The wraiths growled, and the hair on my forearms stood to attention—while March waved them off. “I know, I know. I’m a selfish bastard. What can you do, right?”
I wanted to kiss the stupid grin off his face as much as I wanted to kick him for this.
All four wraiths charged us at the same time.
We ran—and we were faster than them. They were hungry, just like the flowers had said, but that only made them stumble the first few feet. Then, they were running just as fast as us—even faster.
Fire in my veins. If I was afraid, I didn’t feel it. I only felt the wild beating of my heart and was focused on only one goal—to get to the others, and to bring the wraiths with us.
We did.
We found them as we left them—Seth on the right, Mimi on the left, the others ahead, just a couple feet behind the pile of Life Clocks on the floor.
Screams. Levana and Helen had their eyes closed while the others looked about ready to die standing.
“Over here! Over here!” Cook called, jumping up anddown, waving his hands for us, but March and I moved to the other side of the tree because we still needed to be close to help Seth and Mimi. They were Clubs, and they could probably magic plants better than everyone else, but these were actual timewraiths.
For a second there, as we turned to the left of the trunk, I thought the wraiths would keep following us. They had their eyes on March and me, all four of them, but the moment they were close to where the branches waited to cage them in, someone threw something that hit the first wraith on the shoulder.
Cook—and his boot rolled on the floor as the wraith stopped to look at what had hit him.
“Here—over here! We’ve got Life Clocks, over here!”
The wraiths changed course instantly.
March and I turned and ran back just as fast. Mimi and Seth were already working the branches and the cords while Cook still called for the wraiths who continued to move right into the trap we’d set for them.
I dropped the piece of wood, my hand already covered in purple smoke, my magic at the ready, coming easier to me than it had ever before. Must have had something to do with the fact that my life literally depended on this.
Green around the branches as the wraiths kept moving, mindless things, reaching out their hands for the Life Clocks, for the other Hands standing behind them.
A scream—Levana.
The branches snapped together all at once, slamming against the bodies of the wraiths, pushing them all the way to the trunk, trapping them in.
It worked, it worked, it worked!
Then I sawexactlywhy the wraiths were as feared as they were in the Clockrealm.
