“Wait,” he said. “You didn’t tell us she would seriously just help us.”
And that seemed to incense Jason enough to get him on his feet. “Because she’s fucking lying. Shut up, Pete, and sit your ass down,” he snarled.
But Pete did not. He glanced from Jay to her and back again. Then dashed for the door. Followed by four others, scrambling after him. Including, of all people, fuckingTyler.
“You goddamn cowardly little punk,” Jay hollered after him.
But it made no difference. He was gone.
Which was good, it was very good, because it meant the first part of her plan had worked. Now she was down to a handful of wolves—and the ones that were left were probably going to panic soon, if Jay was any indication. He paced angrily, and after a moment, gestured to something she couldn’t see behind the curtains that lined the wings offstage.
The place where they hid when they did what they did to me, she thought, just as Jordan dragged Seth out on stage. Her Seth, all tied up and bloody and dazed. Like they’d been beating him. Like he barely even knew what was going on.
And okay, yeah, that was a good ploy. It almost distracted her. She took a step forward, heart in mouth, completely unaware of any threat that might come at her from the sides or from behind. But the thing was—distractions didn’t matter. It made no difference that her attention was elsewhere.
A wolf leapt at her from the left, and the weapon she had inher right hand—a rolling pin bound to her wrist with a leather shoelace—jerked upward of its own accord, raising her arm with it. Then it came down so hard on the open maw of that lunging wolf, she saw teeth spiral out from the point of contact. She felt the crunch of the blow all the way up her arm. Bones snapped, blood spattered finely over the seats behind them. Then it just landed at her feet in a heap.
Unconscious, she knew, without even looking.
Though she looked anyway. She calmly eyed the crumpled, furry mess.
Before tightening her grip on the rolling pins she had attached to both wrists. The ones she’d heavily dosed with Make Nice just before coming here. The ones that protected her, no matter what. And then she flicked her gaze toward an open-mouthed Jason.
“You didn’t really think that would work against a witch, did you?” she said.
But clearly he did, because he tried it again. “Get her,” he yelled, at which point several things happened all at once. Seth became sensible enough to understand what was happening and tried to get up. Several full-blown wolves sprang out from what felt like every corner of the room. And the rolling pins did what she had primed them to do.
Only they did it in a way she had never imagined in a million years when she’d done this.
She had assumed they would just block anything incoming. But apparently, that wasn’t the only way the rolling pins interpreted their mandate to defend her. They also decided that if two wolves leapt at her at the same time, the best approach was not to try to smack them both.
It was to get her out of their path.
And they did it by dragging her backward. They snapped her arms behind her and yanked. Then she simply went where they moved her. She wound up five feet from where she had been before, staring breathlessly as those two wolves just smashed into each other. They joined the tally of crumpled unconscious heaps of fur.
Astonishing,she thought. But it got even more so, when the pins seemed to realize she was still in danger. Because as soon as they did, one of them hooked itself under the arm of the nearest chair. And somehow, impossibly, incredibly ithauled her off her feet.
She performed an honest-to-god cartwheel, a real cartwheel.
Despite never having done a cartwheel in her life. Then before she could catch her breath, or wonder if she’d wrenched her own arms out of their sockets, the weapon in her other hand took advantage of where she had landed—on a chair that was beyond some beast’s claws and teeth—and smacked it across the back. She heard the bones of a shoulder blade crack.
Followed by a howl as another wolf crumpled.
But the magic didn’t stop there. It didn’t wait for her to catch her breath. It turned her, so she could hit a wolf coming at her from the left. Then again when another one came at her from the front. Back and forth, until it felt as if she was constantly moving.
And in ways she hadn’t known she could move. She was maneuvered into jumps she wasn’t capable of, over wolves so large and terrifying she would never have attempted such a feat on her own. She blocked blows she barely saw coming, whacked chairs into attackers before she even understood they were there.
And best and most incredibly of all: when three wolves regrouped and came at her simultaneously, there was no leaping, no evading. The pins just somehowtwirledher. They briefly turned her into a spinning top, outstretched arms hitting everything as she spun. And when they did she couldn’t help it.
Despite the terrifying circumstances, despite how horrible this all was, it just happened. She felt herself whirling so fast her feet actually left the floor—and shelaughed. She laughed with pure amazement and delight, face turned up to the ceiling of the auditorium. Like it was the sky, like it was the stars above her, like this wasn’t the stifling place that had haunted her memories for a decade.
It was something else. It gave her back her strength.
The whole situation did, she thought, as the spinning slowed, and the pins let her sink back down onto her feet. Because nowshe could survey the absolute havoc she had wrought, and oh, it was incredible. It was impossible. There were whole heaps of wolves lying all around her. Others fleeing at the sight of what she could do.
Then on the stage, Seth, still on his knees. Staring at her across the auditorium, with so much awe and astonishment and gratitude in his eyes that she wasn’t sure how she could ever have doubted his feelings. They were as clear as glass, as air, as anything had ever been to her. She would always know it now.
He belongs to me, and I belong to him, she thought.
