I was praying to anything listening that it was Dani’s third object, because Max or no Max, I still needed that object if I was to do the spell.
I snuck out past the Phi Kat house, keeping low. I hoisted my legs over the old barbed-wire fence, the faint smell of fire catching on the breeze. A wildfire? Or another one of the brothers’ bonfires?
My nerves were on edge. I jumped at every sound of the wind blowing through the creosote bushes and each snap of a twig.
I squinted in the low light, flinching at every movement in the grass, terrified that someone or something would jump out of the bushes. The moon cast just enough light that every shadow of a rock looked a little like a figure looming in the dark, and the distant coyote bray sounded like a scream.
What if the brothers were still out there? I couldn’t run away this time. I sent another text to Max.Going into the canyon. If I’m not back by dawn, tell Robetresse. Tell everyone.
But I’d already gone too far to get a signal. I turned off my phone to conserve the battery.
It took me longer than I thought to reach the spot again, a rough crag of red rock down a weathered cliffside. I dug my foot in, testing my weight, then climbed onto it. Suddenly, I realized climbing in the dark wasn’t one of my brighter ideas, but something told me this was it. I just needed to get down there.
I moved steadily down.
Below me was only a chasm of blackness, and though I wasn’t that high up—it couldn’t have been more than twenty-five feet—my stomach swooped violently. A bird echoed in my ears, screeching like a nighthawk about to take its prey. My eyes swiveled wildly, and I fumbled for the headlight to shine on the bird and scare it off, but the light slipped off my forehead and clattered to the rocks below.
The smell of burning filled my nose. When I shut my eyes, images were burned behind my eyelids. Symbols on the cattle skulls, symbols thatIhad drawn as a warning, as a reminder, as yet another one of my plans that hadn’t worked out as I’d imagined. Dani’s face, over and over again. A pale hand, a strand of blond hair plastered against her forehead.
Concentrate, Cella. You can do this, I ordered myself.
My foot stretched for the next foothold. As my hand reached out for a rock, it slid off a sharp edge, slicing my palm down the center. I cried out at the pain and clung with my other hand to the rock.
Shit shit shit.
“I’m so sorry, Vern,” I whispered to the sky. How the hell was I going to climb down with only one hand?
I remembered the last thing he’d said to me. I was leaving the library for the day, and he looked at me. “Just keep moving forward,” he said quietly. Vern believed in me. He thought I could do this. For him, I had to. I would.
I went over the facts in my head, tried to keep them straight, repeating them like a mantra.
But the symbols just kept burrowing in my eyes, and the birds sounded closer now. My eyes yearned for light, and my heart thumped erratically in my chest.
The flap of wings sounded near my ears, and a wild screech filled the air. The bird was going in for the kill.
Wings beat furiously; beaks pierced my neck, my face. I swung my arms to keep them all off me, shoving away razor-sharp talons. My foot slipped, and my remaining grip on the rock fell away.
A scream ripped apart the air—mine, I realized—and then I was falling.
FROM THE JOURNAL OF DANICA STEWART
APRIL 2ND[THE DAY AFTER THE MURDER]
Then if this mortal Body thou forsake,
And thy glad Flight to the pure Æther take,
Among the Gods exalted shalt thou shine,
Immortal, Incorruptible, Divine:
The Tyrant Death securely shalt thou brave,
And scorn the dark Dominion of the Grave.
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